Ask a librarian: The profession, professional identities, and constitutive rhetoric of librarians

organizational communication;profession;professional identity;institution;constitutive rhetoric

Garcia, Mattea A.

关键词: organizational communication;    profession;    professional identity;    institution;    constitutive rhetoric;   

Others  :  https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/24280/Garcia_Mattea.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

美国|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Institutions can be powerful influences on our personal and work lives and can constrain andenable our behaviors. It is through communication that institutions are created and sustained.Professions, institutionalized occupations, are one example of institutions that play an important role in organizations. Terms like profession and professional evoke certain expectations abouttypes of work and workers. Organizational communication scholars, however, often treatprofessionals as non-distinct from other organizational members or uncritically employ the termsprofession and professional. This study explored the meanings of profession and professionalidentity for librarians. Specifically, this research analyzed librarians’ rhetoric about their work. Interviews with public and academic librarians were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using modified grounded theory approaches combined with rhetorical analysis. Librarians’ rhetoric revealed insecurity about the stereotypes and misconceptions held by the public. Librariansactively defended their professional status by delineating certain activities as truly librarian and aligning their activities and professional identities with the profession of librarianship’s values and standards. By aligning their activities and professional identity with the broader practices, values, and standards of the field, professionals add meaning to their work, defend theirprofessional status, make sense of their roles, and (re)constitute the profession. This worksuggests that professional identity can be usefully seen as tied to activities as much as to social membership. The research also guides our understanding of communication’s role in creatingand sustaining institutions and providing coherence and meaning to work.