Accessibility and acceptability in technical manuals : a survey of style and grammatical metaphor / Inger Lassen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lassen, Inger, 1951-

Series:

Document design companion series ; v. 4.

Document design companion series, 1568-1963 ; v. 4

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Technical writing.

Technical manuals.

Readability (Literary style).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (201 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, PA : John Benjamins Pub., 2003.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Accessibility and Acceptability in Technical Manuals is written for an audience with a general interest in readability studies, linguistics and technical writing. With the main emphasis on technical manuals the book is primarily targeted at those who have a special interest in the design and use of utility texts and how these texts are received and understood by a multifaceted audience. Accessibility is not a new research area and many explanations have been offered over the past years as to why non-experts often have difficulties in comprehending texts written by technological experts. This book offers a new approach to accessibility studies by exploring not only style, but also attitudes to style, by asking text consumers which style they prefer for different parts of the manual. A key role is played by the Systemic Functional Linguistics' notion of grammatical metaphor, a stylistic choice that is commonly used in technical literature. Grammatical metaphor - although apparently obstructing the comprehension process of some readers - is a common element in the preferred style that separates the 'insiders' from the 'outsiders'. An explanation of this rather surprising result is offered by resorting to Critical Discourse Analysis.

Contents:

Accessibility and Acceptability in Technical Manuals

Editorial page

Title page

LCC page

Table of contents

Symbols

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1. Research disciplines and methods

Chapter 2. Field, Tenor and Mode dimensions

Chapter 3. Register analysis

Chapter 4. Categorizing text through genre analysis

Chapter 5. Research methods and survey

Chapter 6. Information structure

Chapter 7. The technical manual as social semiotic

Chapter 8. Discussion and conclusions

References

Appendix: Survey of writing style in technical manuals

Name index

Subject index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612254505

9789027296825

9027296820

9781282254503

1282254502

9781423761372

1423761375

OCLC:

52938551