## Constance Kampf*

## Towards a theoretical basis for operationalizing knowledge communication

## Abstract

Knowledge  communication  is  an  emerging  means  of  understanding  the  individual processes  involved  in  constructing  and  passing  knowledge  from  person  to  person. Knowledge  communication  works  together  with  technical  communication  in  the knowledge society. The concept of knowledge communication compliments technical communication  by  allowing  for  the  interpersonal  aspects  of  knowledge  creation and  diffusion.  Combing  technical  and  knowledge  communication,  then,  covers  the three major components of the knowledge economy - creation, diffusion, and use of knowledge. In this paper I propose that we consider three approaches to understanding the  interaction  between  technical  communication  and  knowledge  communication  Culture as a system, Communities of Practice, and the intersection of Kenneth Burke's notions of terministic screens and entitlement.

## 0. Introduction

Knowledge communication can be understood as the process through which individuals construct and share knowledge, with technical communication as a global process throughout which knowledge communication is constantly recurring. As knowledge becomes a central driver in national economies (Information Society Commission to the Irish Government, 2002) economies are increasingly relying on creation, diffusion, and use of knowledge. Technical communication focuses on the latter, communicating knowledge for use in society. In combining technical communication with knowledge communication, the processes of communicating how to use technology and understanding  audiences embedded  in  cultural  contexts  are  complimented  by  communication

* Constance Kampf, Ph.D The Aarhus School of Business Denmark cka@asb.dk

9

processes occurring between individuals as they create knowledge and transfer knowledge to each other.

Technical  communication  brings  together  linguistics  and  rhetoric through genre, audience analysis, discourse analysis, etc. The fi  eld of rhetoric, based in Aristotle, as well as more recent work, provides part of the foundation for technical communication, bringing in key notions of situatedness for understanding one's audience through the concepts of ethos, pathos, and logos. These concepts offer technical communicators tools for understanding the rhetorical situation. As we reconceptualize our understanding of technical communication to interface with the interpersonal process of knowledge communication, we need to uncover the juncture between the larger, societal based communication processes  and  interpersonal  communication.  This  larger  society  picture can be understood as the system in which the three aforementioned processes on which knowledge economies depend - creation, diffusion and use in society - interact with each other.

To  uncover  the  interaction  between  technical  communication  and knowledge communication, we need to reconfi  gure our use of theoretical constructs for understanding the relationship between interpersonal and group communication processes, as well as the creative and reductive processes involved in communicating in a work context. The combination  of  interpersonal  and  group  communication  and  the  creative and reductive processes of communicating through genres and norms offer possibilities for unpacking and operationalizing the notion of context for knowledge communication. I propose that we consider three approaches to understanding the interaction between technical communication and knowledge communication - Culture as a system, Communities of Practice, and the intersection of Kenneth Burke's notions of terministic screens and entitlement .

## 1. Culture as a System

Culture as a system offers us a manner of situating the rhetorical situation in a larger context - that of a cultural system. In approaching audience through the notion of culture as a system, a manner of operationalizing the interaction between ecological factors, norm, and consequences can be seen. The elements of the systematic approach to culture can be applied from a societal perspective to operationalize the context in outside

· influences

·

origins or

ecological

factors

technical communication, and from an individual perspective to operationalize  the  context  in  knowledge  communication. The  framework used comes from Geert Hofstede's frame for his research on dimensions of culture, but differs from the dimensions of culture in that the focus stays on the larger picture or context for culture as a dynamic system with norms both defi  ned more concretely than dimensions of culture and situated within the interactions between:

- Outside infl  uences including technology which supports knowledge communication
- Origins or ecological factors such as geography and history
- Consequences as manifested in institutions such as government, law, policy,etc.

These interactions are illustrated in Figure 1:

Figure 1: Culture as a dynamic system

<!-- image -->

In Figure 1, the origins, norms, and consequences balance each other, and shift to maintain that balance as outside infl  uences, such a s technology, are introduced into the system. Focusing on the dynamic system portrayed in Figure 1 offers a manner of including cultural context in understanding the rhetorical situation. In Figure 1, the infl  uences from outside the system are indicated as affecting the origins or ecological factors directly and the norms and consequences indirectly. Thus, the  arrow  from outside infl  uences  enters  the  system  through  origins. Hofstede (1984) defi  nes outside infl  uences as forces of nature, forces of  man,  trade,  conquest  and  scientifi  c  discovery.  Kampf  &  Kastberg (2005) also  include  technologies,  such  as  the  internet,  as  an  explicit part of outside infl  uences. Outside infl  uences have the ability to change or shape the origins or ecological factors which affect norms and consequences. These norms, underlying values, and their consequences do

norms consequences o outside influences:

Technologies

Cultural

contact

Multinational

corporations

Economic

status in the

world

4

origins or

ecological

factors:

Terminology

History

Tradition norms Genres Conventions Logic patterns Rhetorical structures not change directly through outside infl  uences, rather the outside infl  uences shift the physical environment, thus causing change in the system. For example, in the case of technical communication, we can use the dynamic system to portray the cultural bounds of technical communication shown in Figure 2. This operalization of cultural boundaries allows technical communicators to approach audiences from a situated perspective through the combination of norms, origins and outside infl  uences.

Figure 2. Systemic model of culture as a self-reinforcing system applied to technical communication (Kampf & Kastberg, 2005)

<!-- image -->

As the systemic model of culture demonstrates the interaction between examples of technical communication and the larger context in which they are formed, the model can also be applied to examples of knowledge communication to offer a model for operationalizing the context in which knowledge is created and diffused. Eppler (2005) defi  nes knowledge communication from an interpersonal perspective, and argues that it  goes  beyond communicating information 'because it requires conveying context, background, and basic assumptions' as well as 'personal  insights  and  experiences.'  (p.  3)  Eppler's  defi  nitions  approach rhetorical  concepts  such  as  ethos,  logos,  and  pathos  without  using  a rhetorical frame of reference. Eppler's defi  nition also builds a case for a rhetorical theory based approach to understanding knowledge communication. Figure 3 shows how knowledge communication can be seen as a consequence of experience, intuition, and rhetoric (ethos, logos, pathos) in the systemic model of culture.

consequences

Examples of

technical

communication Outside inflences:

Computer mediatec

Communication Origins or ecological factors:

Experiences and

insights of individuals

Intuition Horms:

Ethos, Logos,

Pathos

Sharing of

Narratives,

Storytelling Consequences Knowledge Communication Transfer of know how Co-creation of knowledge

Figure  3.  The  systemic  model  of  culture  applied  at  the  individual  level  to Knowledge Communication.

<!-- image -->

Figure 3 offers a model for operationalizing the context in which knowledge communication occurs. The outside infl  uences are posited as the computer-mediated communication technologies which enable knowledge communication and add the technical affordances of speed and reach which increase the potential of knowledge communication. The origins are framed at the level of individual experiences because knowledge communication is an interpersonal communication process, affected by the intuition and insights of the communicators. The norms box represents the rhetorical situation in which the interpersonal communication takes place through ethos, logos and pathos, as well as the modes of communication through which knowledge is communicated. These modes of communication include storytelling and narrative based interactions. The consequences of the norms inherent in the rhetorical situation being acted out are knowledge communication as both transfer of know-how and co-creation of knowledge.

This  model  offers  a  manner  of  beginning  to  unpack  what  Eppler (2005)  refers  to  as  the  'black  box'  of  context.  By  applying  rhetorical analysis at the level of norms in interpersonal communication, we can include the interactions between the people involved in a communicative situation as part of a systematic analysis of context. Norms in the modes of sharing knowledge, such as using narratives and telling stories, are infl  uenced by the experience and insights of the communicators in the origins box. Thus, the model in Figure 3 offers a view of context and the audience in an interpersonal knowledge communication situation which can be operationalized.

The  parallel  systemic  models  of  culture  applied  to  both  technical communication  (fi  gure  2)  and  knowledge  communication  (fi  gure  3) demonstrate the norms in both contexts as rhetorical in nature, and offer a method for applying rhetorical concepts to understand instances of both the interpersonal process of knowledge communication and the more global process of technical communication. Through these models which operationalize context at both interpersonal and social levels, rhetorical constructs are demonstrated as normative forces which underlie both knowledge communication and technical communication.

## 2. Communities of Practice

In contrast to the systematic model of culture approach to understanding the intersection of technical communication and knowledge communication, an approach modelled in Wenger's communities of practice offers a manner of combining the interpersonal and social together. Whereas the systemic model of culture shows how norms based in rhetoric underlie both technical Communication and knowledge communication, the duality of participation and reifi  cation underlying Wenger's concept of communities of practice brings the individual and the global together through the duality of individual participation and reifi  cation from the global context. Participation and reifi  cation are two processes which Wenger demonstrates as underlying the knowledge communication which occurs in communities of practice. Wenger defi  nes practice as based in meaning which emerges from this duality of participation and reifi  cation. Figure 4 demonstrates Wenger's model of meaning (1998, p. 53):

axperience, meaning participation living in the world acting membership interacting mutuality forms points of focus documents monuments projection instruments reification nogotiation According to Wenger, as people participate in practice and use artefacts in the world around them, they produce meaning. Wenger uses the eastern ying yang form for his model to represent motion, or negotiation of meaning which goes on between participation and reifi  cation. Communities of practice negotiate meaning. The practice of negotiating meaning integrates participation and reifi  cation, with participation being a creative process and reifi  cation being a reductive process - content and structure are intertwined to produce meaning or knowledge in an environment.

Figure 4. Wenger's Model of meaning emerging from the duality of participation and reifi  cation (1998, p. 63).

<!-- image -->

Participation explained as experience 'living in the world, ' acting, and interacting, implies an individual perspective, similar the the defi  nition of knowledge communication as an individual process explained in the systemic model of culture approach. But here Wenger also includes processes of identifi  cation, such as membership and mutuality. So that participation is not merely an individual process, but operates at the interface between individuals and the group, or community as practice from Wenger's perspective.

Reifi  cation focuses on the material aspects of genre with the inclusion  of  forms  and  documents,  but Wenger  also  includes  the  interactive processes of points of focus and projection, implying that reifi  cation goes beyond the material objects to include the manner in which

world the group chooses points of focus and the manner in which individuals project their understanding onto the objects.

The combination of reifi  cation with participation highlights the manner in which individuals interact together with the material objects of genres in an environment. The connection between the individual and group comes through the shared material objects and experiences, but the model does not open up a space for the larger picture of context operationalized  by  the  systems  model  of  culture  perspective  because  a place for the rhetorical process inherent in knowledge communication is missing.

This combination of reifi  cation and participation in communities of practice could be understood as a detailed view of the manner in which norms are played out in context, with genre following Miller's defi  nition of genre as a repeated response to a recurring situation. Individuals participate by responding to the repeated situation, and through the collective responses, they work together to enact, form and reform genres. Reifi  cation  is  a  group  based  reductive  process  channelling  the  manner in which community members participate, and participation itself is  a  creative process through which individuals experience the world around them. Thus, the communities of practice model plays out the interpersonal aspects of knowledge communication as people participate in communities of knowledge formed around work objects.

Wenger's frame of reference, focused on communities of practice, offers a dynamic approach to the manner in which individuals participate and interact with the materiality of genre. However, the larger cultural context in which the individuals and material objects are situated is lacking from the model. This model also offers a more complex view of knowledge from a perspective which includes both the individual actions and participation in a community of practice in through which knowledge is communicated. Using Wenger's approach, technical communication and knowledge communication interact with each other through genre, with technical communication focusing on mastery of genre for conveying information and knowledge communication focused on the creation and recreation of genre through individual participation.

## 3. The Intersection of Burke's Terministic Screens and Entitlement

In contrast to Communities of Practice in which the individual perspective is seen as creative and the group or genre perspective as reductive, Kenneth Burke posits individual processes of interacting with the world as reductive, through the notion of terministic screens. Then, for Burke the productive process occurs through the group, set out in his concept of entitlement. When the reductive processes operate at the individual level and the productive processes operate at the group level, knowledge communication the notion of context is emphasized over the individual for articulating the creative aspects of the knowledge economy.

Terministic screens is a concept that Burke refi  ned from Veblen's notion of occupational psychosis. He developed the concept across several books, exemplifi  ed by the following quotes:

'a way of seeing is also a way of not seeing.'

From Permanence and Change (1954)

'Men seek for vocabularies that will be faithful refl  ections of reality. To this end they must develop vocabularies that are selections of reality. And any selection of reality must, in certain circumstances, function as a defl  ection of reality.'

Grammar of Motives (1945) p. 59

When I speak of  'terministic  screens,'  I  have  particularly  in  mind some photographs that I once saw. They were different photographs of  the  same  objects,  the  difference  being  that  they  were  made  with different  colored  fi  lters.  Here  something  so  factual  as  a  photograph revealed notable distinctions in texture, and even in form, depending upon which color fi  lter was used for the documentary description of the event being recorded.'

Langugage as Symbolic Action (1966) p. 45

Terministic screens can be understood as linguistic fi  lters which we, at the individual level, develop through our personal experiences. These fi  lters are encoded in the language that we use to describe work, and in the vocabulary inherent in the situations in which we work. The terminology we use to describe and perform work directs the attention of the individuals engaged in interpersonal communication and obscures or defl  ects other information available in the situation, much like the color fi  lters which Burke describes in the third quotation above. Much as the defi  nitions of knowledge communication which use the vocabulary and theory of interpersonal communication (i.e. Eppler 2005) defl  ect:

1) the interaction with communities of practice highlighted in Wenger's model of participation and reifi  cation

2) the operationalized notion of context which includes rhetoric as part of the norms in both technical communication and knowledge communication.

Entitlement can be understood as community processes through which we create terminology through our shared signs and shared manner of attaching terminology to those signs. In explaining entitlement, Burke challenges the traditional logic that words are the signs of things, or labels which we attach to the objects around us by using the notion of entitlement to argue the inverse - that things are the signs of words. In other words, that by the linguistic process of entitling, the group creates things (i.e. the material objects of genres such as documents and forms).

Burke  describes  entitling  in Language as  Symbolic  action as  follows:

'In sum, then the dialectical resources intrinsic to entitlement and abbreviation would be these:

- (1)  There can be a verbal expression of varying duration that sums up, or entitles, a non verbal situation.
- (2) this expression can be so abbreviated that a portion of it stands for the whole of it, the shorter portion thus in effect being the title-of -a-title.
- (3) similarly, an actual object can have this same abbreviated role, as when something identifi  ed with a person ceases to be merely what is in itself, but becomes in effect an aspect of that person, or we may think of a particular tree as the 'essence' of a situation involving yard, house, sky, season, mortgage, and so on;
- (4) when an expression is thus reduced to a portion of itself (a word) and a nonverbal situation is represented by some fragment or portion that is felt to stand for the essence of the situation (which is in effect its context), conditions are now ripe for a shortcut whereby the summarizing object can be paired with the summarizing word.' (p. 361).

This process of creating language which Burke calls entitlement, does not produce terministic screens, but rather 'entitlements' or identifi  able signs of non-verbal situations. Terministic screens operate from the individual level, and entitlement operates at the group level.

Burke brings together the function of rhetoric as both a constitutive and interpretive process through his notions of terministic screens and entitlement. Terministic screens allow for user agency, whereas entitlement appears to be focused more at the cultural level, with the agency shared by the 'tribe,' the language itself, and the context of situation. 1 In other words, 'terministic screens' appear to be extrinsic, while 'entitlement' appears to be intrinsic. Carmichael summarizes Burke's essay, 'Antinomies of Defi  nition,' from a Grammar of Motives as demonstrating that 'the intrinsic and the extrinsic can change places' 'such that to defi  ne is always to contextualize and to uncover the absence of a solid ground for a claim to knowledge.' 2  So if the intrinsic and extrinsic can change places, the interpretive process of 'terministic screens' at the individual level and the constitutive process of 'entitlement' at the group level may well be interrelated in a similar way to Wenger's creative process of participation at the individual level and reductive process of reifi  cation at the material and group level, exhibited by the ying-yang interaction in Figure 4. The implications of this reciprocity for understanding knowledge communication include:

- 1)  the  creation  of  knowledge as process with both interpersonal and group communication aspects
- 2)  the reifi  cation of knowledge as occurring both at the individual level of experience through terministic screens and as a group process through entitlement
- 3)  genres as 'entitled' through group interaction and both reifi  ed and recreated through individuals repeatedly enacting them

Thus, Burke's concepts of terministic screens and entitlement work together to blur the boundaries between the interpersonal processes currently understood as knowledge communication and the contextualized global processes included in technical communication.

## 4. Conclusion

Although  knowledge  communication  is  currently  discussed  by  Epplers a specifi  cally interpersonal process situated in context, the three frameworks discussed - the cultural systems approach, communities of practice, and the intersection of terministic screens and entitlement - all bring knowledge communication into the realm of technical communication through the interaction of individuals in larger rhetorical contexts. The cultural systems perspective demonstrates how norms in rhetoric are part of context in both knowledge communication and technical communication. Wenger argues that communities of practice create and communicate knowledge through participation and reifi  cation which include the interaction of individuals and groups (i.e. communities of practice). In addition, Burke's concepts of terministic screens and entitlement demonstrate how the creative processes inherent in entitling language and forming genre are group processes, and reductive processes can also operate at the individual level through terministic screens. Thus, Burke blurs the boundaries between technical communication and knowledge communication by presenting a group processes as creative and individual processes as reductive - directly in opposition  to  Wenger's  model  of  communities  of  practice. This  opposition does not necessarily indicate the need to accept one and reject the other, instead it highlights the fragility of distinctions such as interpersonal vs. group communication processes and opens the door to more complex models for understanding knowledge communication.

These three frames offer perspectives for conceiving of knowledge communication as distinct yet inseparable from technical communication. All three frameworks contain elements of rhetoric for unpacking context. The creative and reductive processes in Wenger's communities of practice and Burke's entitlement and terministic screens merit more refl  ection, and inclusion in a richer understanding of knowledge communication couched in both interpersonal and rhetorical processes involving the group or community.

## Bibliography

Aristotle. On Rhetoric . Translation by George Kennedy 1991: New York: Oxford University Press.

- Burke,  K.  1945,  1969: A  Grammar  of  Motives .  Berkeley:  University  of  California Press.
- Burke, K. 1954, 1984: Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose . Berkeley: University of California Press, 3rd. ed.
- Burke,  K.  1966: Language  as  Symbolic  Action .  Berkeley:  University  of  California Press.
- Eppler, Martin J. 2005: The Concept of Knowledge Communication and Its Relevance to  Management .  USI  Research  Note.  Lugano:  University  of  Lugano,  Faculty  of Communication Sciences.
- Hofstede, G. 1984: Culture's Consequences . Newbury Park: Sage Publications, p. 22.
- Kampf, C. & Kastberg, P. 2005: 'Appreciating the ties that bind technical communication to culture: a dynamic model to help us understand differences in discourse structure.' IPCC International Conference Proceedings, Limerick, Ireland.
- Miller, C. 1994: Genre as Social Action. In Freedman and Medway, eds. Genre and the New Rhetoric . London: Taylor & Francis.
- Wenger, E. 1998: Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, Identity . Cambridge University Press.

22