Thursday, November 10 | 12:30-2:00 p.m. | Ponderosa Commons Multipurpose Room (2012)
Despite the prevalence and importance of intertextuality in workplace writing, it receives scant attention in textbooks, which tend to treat texts as standalone, decontextualised entities, thereby denying students the opportunity to engage with multiple texts in the way that they may expect to in the workplace. The study described here, drawing on students’ work in Hong Kong, discusses challenges relating to a series of assignments designed to address the intertextual nature of workplace writing. The paper argues that intertextuality, which is often treated as a theoretical concept or phenomenon, should perhaps be given more prominence as a component of writing that can be addressed in classroom settings.
Stephen Bremner is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at City University of Hong Kong, where he teaches courses relating to workplace communication.