No
matter how new or old your vehicle is or whether you have roadside assistance,
it is important to try to be prepared for unexpected situations. Many of the newer cars that exist come with
systems that alert you when your tire pressure is low and you are in need of
putting air in your tires, yet, many people do not own a newer vehicle. No matter what your situation is, knowing how
to change a flat tire on your own is an important and essential skill.
Many
venues on the Internet offer a step-by-step procedure on how to change a flat
tire. Edmunds.com, a well-known site
that according to the site itself and the Better Business Bureau began in the
1960s as a newsstand publication, provides an extensive amount of vehicle data,
reviews, and advice. Among the content
on the site is instructions on how to change a flat tire. The popular site provides background data, in
addition to, expert and customer reviews manifested over time exclusive to
individual vehicle makes and models.
When
analyzing the activity systems that surround this text, it was initially
thought that the text was written foremost for one who had experienced their
first flat tire and wanted to learn how to replace it. This initial assumption was based on the idea
that the audience likely does not know a great deal about cars if they are
looking for information on how to do this very basic car repair. I, myself, am not completely ignorant to
common car issues because I have had my fair share of minor car troubles, yet,
I did not know how to change a flat tire.
With that said, after thinking closely about the different aspects that
make up an activity system, I really started to focus on the aspect of the
terminology used in the text. There were
parts that were easy to understand because the text used the rhetorical device
distinctio, that is, it defined what the tools mentioned in the text needed to
change a flat tire were based on what they looked like and what their uses were
to expand the size of the audience. But,
it was not until later on in the text that the use of terminology lost me even
as one who is novice on the topic of “car part” jargon.
The
following example illustrates where I became lost: when first tightening the
wheel lugs back on the spare tire once the flat tire is removed, the text
instructs the reader to be sure to not “cross-thread” the lugs and they should then
screw on easily. To better understand
this, I decided to look up what cross-threading is, and Dictionary.com defined
it as: “the characteristic of a bolt inserted at an angle so that the original
threads aren’t damaged.” After reading
the Dictionary definition, I was still a little confused due to the jargon of
the definition itself. Now this might
not be commonplace for most people, but I am going to assume it might be unless
the individual has been subject to instances where they have worked with having
to put things together using nuts, bolts, and the like. With that said, I argue that the text is
predominantly terminology males would know over females, however, in order to
not generalize, I want to point out the important cultural aspect of activity
systems and the activity systems that make up this text.
Men
generally do more manual labor than women do in the United States. This may have begun based on their biological
build in comparison to the anatomical build of a woman. Men generally have more muscle mass than
women do and are able to lift larger objects with greater ease. However, as women have become a large part of
the workforce in the United States, there is actually an aspect of
organizational communication theory dedicated to the gender-based division of
labor found in occupations in the U.S.
These concepts are known as “gender-work” and “gendered-work.” Gendered-work is work delegated to women and
gender-work is work confirming women’s natural tendencies and abilities
(Buzznell 1994). Based on these concepts
and taking an even closer look into the activity systems that make up this
text, it became apparent to me that the terminology is likely directed toward men
or occupations that are statistically more likely to have more males working in
them than females. Those occupations within
the activity systems surrounding this text being roadside assistance personnel,
that is, those that are responsible for providing paid customers with help when
they are experiencing an issue with their vehicle (that show up driving a tow
truck), mechanics, and even police officers in some cases. After considering those whom are most likely
to get a call to aid one when they have a flat tire, individuals in these
occupations would be most likely to make up the divisions of labor within the
activity systems that make up this text.
There is a reason many American’s carry roadside assistance, it is likely
that they have become accustomed to reserving any needed repairs on their
vehicles to those whom specialize in vehicle-based activity systems. These activity systems being divisions of
work that are predominantly “male jobs.”
Outside
of analyzing the activity systems surrounding the text, analyzing the writing
style the text is written in outlines the reason for its use of prose. While elements of the official style can be
found in the text, as mentioned, the author uses distinctio when defining what
a tire iron is by describing how to locate the “jacking points” on one’s
vehicle: “the tire iron is the L-shaped bar that fits over the wheel lugs. If you don’t know where your jacking points
are, look them up in your owner’s manual.”
By defining these terms the text reaches a much larger audience.
The text also uses exemplum, or examples of what was stated in the
preceding paragraph in the text using example, but its use of exemplum is
outdated. The text references the 1970s
sitcom Happy Days for entertainment purposes, which is hardly a television show
of today’s generation, which points to an older anticipated audience and also
limits readership. The following is an
example of how exemplum, that is, a “real-life” example of running into the
situation of getting a flat tire in the following example used in the text:
Changing a flat tire is not a very pleasant
experience. It seems like your car purposely tries to get a flat tire at the
least opportune moments. Like when you are rushing home from work to catch your
favorite episode of "Happy Days," for instance. You know, the one
where Fonzie rides the killer bull while on vacation in Colorado.
The
other examples used clearly for entertainment purposes reference a stream of
commercials that were popular in the early 2000s narrated by a loud,
large-muscled, tall, African American man known as “Mr. T.” Mr. T yells utterances in these commercials
that are hardly understandable, yet the commercials are meant to represent a
comical approach to remaining tough in difficult situations. The examples used in the text use men as
their subjects, and Mr. T. is undoubtedly meant to pertain to a male
audience. The message behind Mr. T. as
the main character in the commercials he is represented in have an underlying
message of “toughness.” Toughness is a
male characteristic, yet, of course, that is not meant to suggest that only
males embody toughness. However, there
are feminine and masculine personality traits that exist and toughness is a
masculine trait.
The
author also uses parallelism, that is, putting ideas of the same importance
into like structures grammatically by breaking up the two major, broad steps of
changing a flat tire into two bolded headings. The first of the steps being
“jack up the car” and the second being “remove the flat and install the spare.” This rhetorical device provides additional
clarity and removes the potential for abstraction by using distinctio in the
paragraphs following each of the major steps.
The examples of the rhetorical
devices are clear indicators that the text is written, in part, using plain
style prose. The text does not
oversimplify the process of changing a flat tire, because even the last paragraph’s
closing instructions tell the reader to look for the maximum speed the driver
can operate the vehicle with based on the anatomical structure of the spare
tire.
While
plain style prose is supposed to generate the widest audience based on its very
plain use of language, in this text, a large audience is left out. With that said, while this text is step-by-step
instructions for how to change a flat tire and effective instructions for how
to do a task is best written in plain prose in order to elicit higher levels of
reading ease, this particular text is not solely representative of plain style
prose. Elements of the official style
are represented in the text with its use of technical jargon, such as, the use
of the technical term “cross-threading.”
Official style prose largely limits audience size because only those
with specialized knowledge of the topics within are able to understand it. For that reason, official style prose is
largely marked by low reading-ease and a higher grade-level of writing. Based on
this idea, discussing the context this particular text is found in sets up the
foundation for better understanding how the activity systems within the text
connect to the context, and most importantly, the text itself.
Going
back to discussing gendered-work or occupational divisions based on gender, the
context itself reinforces the concepts the activity systems and prose style
reveals about the text and a narrowed audience.
After exploring the site’s surroundings of the actual text or its
context, the text appears to be largely directed toward a male audience. This
is based on the examples used, that is, Happy Days and Mr. T. In addition to its use of the official style
prose and technical jargon found in the activity systems that make up the text,
and other elements such as the pictures located on the instructions for
changing a flat tire’s page. The
pictures include only males, and the caption below the pictures reads: “make
sure to jack up the car using the proper jack points.” This is located at the top of the page prior
to the beginning of the actual text, which suggests that outside of the title
it is one of the first things the viewer sees.
This use of official style prose right away in the texts automatically
minimizes the audience to a smaller size because it is written before the
actual text itself. Jargon that loaded
suggests an assumed knowledge base of the subject matter. These concepts suggest connections between
activity systems, context, rhetorical devices, and prose used that make up a
web. That web being the text itself,
which embodies all of these elements and suggests larger themes.
-C. Joslin
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