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

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910971096403321
• Autore: Lassen Inger <1951->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Philadelphia, PA, : John Benjamins Pub., 2003
• ISBN: 9786612254505; 9789027296825; 9027296820; 9781282254503; 1282254502; 9781423761372; 1423761375
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (201 p.)
• Collana: Document design companion series, , 1568-1963 ; ; v. 4
• Disciplina: 808/.0666
• Soggetti: Technical writing; Technical manuals; Readability (Literary style)
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: 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.
• Sommario/riassunto: 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.