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Challenges for ABC Members in 2000

Outstanding Teacher Lecture Preparing for my talk as winner of this year's Outstanding Teacher Award forced me to look closely at my years as a teacher--my skills, my attitudes, and my growth over those years. It also gave me the opportunity to assess the profession of teaching business communication and the state of the field itself. I have examined what my own professional life has entailed and the discussions I've had with Association for Business Communication (ABC) members through the years. One overwhelming theme has emerged: many of us feel isolated and powerless as we fight administrations to keep our programs. Our business communication programs are regarded as weak and are susceptible to change more so than other disciplines. I am challenging ABC to fill the void many of us feel. We need some strengths to fall back on when we are asked who we are and to support us when we are under attack. I have four challenges, each based on an attitude I have observed during my tenure as a business communication instructor. Meeting any one of these challenges would help us take pride in our profession. Meeting all four would empower us to stand up a bit straighter in the fight. Support Plain Language Across the Continents The plain language movement has no "academic sponsor," and I can think of no more appropriate group to endorse it than ABC. In some ways the push for plain language is much stronger in countries other than the US. However, this movement is deserving of serious attention everywhere. I would hope that the members of this association would be the flag bearers. In fact, back in 1985 Gretchen Vik wrote that "as business communicators we need to keep track of the movement's figures" (p. 66). She pointed to the interest of the Department of Commerce and the American Bankers Association in plain language as validation of "the concern we as business communicators have shown for the subject" (p. 66). However, we have not followed her suggestion and could do much more. When I worked on my dissertation in the mid-1980s, I interviewed a vice president at State Farm about the rewriting of insurance policies into plain language. We first discussed the challenges of meeting the plain language requirements of 34 states' laws. He explained the company's drafting process and pointed out that the lawyers had lost some of their say in the writing of policies. The final step was to send the policy drafts to the Document Design Center for editing and help with the design of the policy. Because the rewritten policies actually filled more pages, there was a concern with increased expenses in the printing process. So State Farm found a thinner paper that did not bleed, bought new printing presses, and decided to glue the spines instead of using staples. They now could fold the policies once and use a business-size envelope. They saved over a million dollars in postage simply by eliminating the staples. The lengths the plain language laws would force a company to go were fascinating. Nowhere had I read any of those details. However, when I submitted an article with those details to one of our journals in about 1988, one reviewer wrote, "this old stuff again! I thought we were through with plain language by now." I had my doubts about an organization that had members with attitudes like that. Why wouldn't we want to know what lengths a company had to go to in order to meet the needs of its policyholders? That was probably 13 years ago, and the plain language movement is more active than ever in 2000. The Security and Exchange Commission is probably the most visible proponent for plain language today; however, there is other activity as well. For example, I teach a unit on plain language in my corporate communications class. Just this semester, I have been able to make a very strong point to my class about the current activity. The Food and Drug Administration required Glaxo Wellcome to produce a document in plain language explaining the side effects of Lotronex because several women who had taken the drug for irritable bowel syndrome became extremely ill. …