Systemic Involvement in Human Discourse: A Bi-modal Approach to IT Discourse

Taking an interdisciplinary and bimodal approach to genre analysis, this paper examines the influence of an IT system on a genre of technical communication: the technical trouble ticket. This genre is examined first as an organizational practice, and then as a set of rhetorical statements; finally, the two approaches are combined and the role of the system in creating, controlling and enabling trouble tickets is discussed. Primary findings are that (1) the combination of these two approaches yields a deeper understanding than either of the approaches alone and (2) that the system, though non-rhetorical in itself, nonetheless controls, coordinates, and enables human text in trouble tickets, thereby playing a major role in the achievement of the rhetorical goals of the genre.