The notion of “the professions” that Faber uses in his
article is interesting, but also comes across as very quaint. This probably has
some relation to the issue (as he considers it) of increasing
de-professionalization of the fields he considers. It’s a seductive quality to
have for a job, to be able to trace it back to the medieval notion of guilds of
practitioners jealously guarding their secrets. But I think the era of doctors,
lawyers, and academics being separate and elite has long since passed. I’m not
entirely sold on Faber’s position that this is largely, or even partly, due to the
use of “professional communication” as a “catchall term,” divorced from his
definition of the professions.
I’m glad Faber brings up information availability as a
factor in de-professionalization. I can’t tell if Faber views this as more
negative than positive. It’s true that a professional message can be “immediately
subject to ridicule or challenge” (326), but is this uniformly bad? When it
leads to children not being vaccinated because their parents simply refuse to
heed the advice of doctors, it’s probably detrimental. But do we really want to
go back to a time when access to “elite knowledge” was privileged? This doesn’t
need to coexist with disrespect of professionals’ pronouncements. Isn’t it
possible that greater access to knowledge can make a general audience more
receptive and understanding of professionals, as opposed to “priests” passing
down mystical knowledge?
As we enter an era of wider access to knowledge, it is also
an era of greater specialization of knowledge. It takes a higher degree of
precision and a narrower focus to make discoveries or expand human
understanding. This is a natural product of centuries of invention and
expansion of knowledge. If anything, we need professionals more than ever to
explain what they do to audiences. A century ago, a medical doctor probably
could have understood the broad strokes of the average physics journal article.
Not likely today. What happens when the average person theoretically has access
to the sum of human knowledge, but can’t understand most of it? Some space must
always exist for professional communication.
Faber, B. (2002). Professional Identities: What is
Professional about Professional Communication? Journal of Business and
Technical Communication, 16, 306-337.
I did not catch the connection that Faber makes between de-professionalization and the liberal use of "professional communication" as a catchall. Your first paragraph motivated me to take another look at the article. Upon a second quick reading, I have to agree with you that it is a bridge too far. You also make an excellent point about accessibility of elite knowledge.
ReplyDeleteI think you might be right when you say that "if anything, we need professionals more than ever to explain what they do to audiences." With the emergence of WebMD and do-it-yourself lawyers, for example, the more professionals need to articulate their knowledge. Maybe even, they need to justify why they are necessary. One reason, of course, is that they know what they don't know, which is one way to distinguish a professional from other workers.
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