Varying Routes and Routines through Cluster Criticism

By Emily January Petersen

"Personnel should vary their routes and routines and avoid all large crowds and gatherings." This is the most frequent phrase I heard during my stint as an associate editor for a large, nonprofit organization’s security department. My position consisted of producing a daily security summary of the world as it pertained to our company’s overseas personnel. I worked with a team of security analysts who had been former FBI, CIA, or NSA operatives. They kept tabs on the situations in their assigned countries and made contacts with embassies and security organizations worldwide. My job was to compile their research into a readable, accessible, and ultimately skimmable report for the bigwigs of the company. I also had researching, writing, editing, proofreading, and supervising responsibilities.

The repetitive use of language, such as the phrase I highlighted, is one of the issues I faced as a technical communicator. The daily document we created reflected security incidents that had, would, or could affect our company’s personnel. After each article, an analyst would comment with advice, telling personnel what to do in such a situation or how to handle a similar situation should it arise. Frequently, our reports would include information on demonstrations, protests, or targeted burglaries in certain areas. The advice to "vary routes and routines and avoid all large crowds and gatherings" became frequent. Although the advice is sound, it became redundant. It became something that I would add to articles, because who needs a security analyst to "analyze" that? It became a phrase that my coworkers and I would repeat in casual conversation as a joke.

Traditional technical writing advice cautions not to vary word choice just for the sake of variety, but to use the same language consistently. However, the repetition in our document did several things to harm the relationship we had with our audience. First, the frequent appearance of certain phrases told our readers that such advice was most important, when in reality it was not. Second, such advice likely became invisible and ineffective to those who read our report due to the frequency. Third, the use of such redundant language possibly alienated our audience, because the advice we gave was always the same. Therefore, the message we were sending was that our analysts did not care enough about our personnel to vary their own "routes and routines" in order to analyze the unique, daily security situations. Why should our readers even bother to read? Why produce the report if nobody is reading it? This is the cycle that began in our organization with the use of rote phrases.

A rhetorical method of analysis can correct the thoughtless reuse of boilerplate text, which is frequently cited as appropriate to technical writing. Cluster criticism would have given me, as a technical communicator, a tool to prevent such an incident from happening in my document and also a tool to correct any such breaches of client trust or credibility with my boss. Although what technical communicators do can be rote or mechanical, we should also learn to "vary our routes and routines" for our audience, for the purpose of our documents, and for our credibility.

Cluster criticism can be used on company documents to assess the effectiveness and the impact on audience needs. However, this is not the intended use of this method. The traditional method of using cluster criticism is to analyze an artifact in order to identify "god" and "devil" terms to reveal ideals and ultimate evils in speeches or more persuasive documents. Such terms are seen as a way for a speaker or writer to identify with one’s audience. In a technical document, however, the method for identifying god and devil terms, not the terms themselves, is what can help a technical communicator locate areas of company documents that may need variation from the same old routine.

Cluster criticism can be used on company documents to assess the effectiveness and the impact on audience needs.

The first step is to identify the key terms in the document. This includes looking at the frequency and intensity of the terms. In the case of my document, the frequent use of "vary routes and routines" and "avoid all large crowds and demonstrations" would have revealed those to be key terms or phrases. After identifying these terms, a technical communicator can chart the additional words and phrases that are clustered around the key terms. Which words are frequently used in tandem with the key terms? Is there a cause-and-effect relationship between the key term and another term clustered around it? The resulting clusters will show the most frequent words in a document and also the words that commonly surround those terms.

The next step is to find patterns and attempt to explain the clusters. Traditionally, this is where god and devil terms are noted, but a technical communicator could analyze whether or not these clusters represent what the document is meant to convey. Do these key terms alienate readers? Are the key terms and clusters representative of the most important information? Do these terms accomplish what they are supposed to accomplish?

In my case of the security document, my clusters would have revealed that the phrase "vary routes and routines" was used frequently and therefore important. However, our security analysts would not have agreed that such advice would be the most important or most pertinent on any given day. Yet its frequency and intensity said otherwise. This is the message our readers were likely receiving. Rhetorically analyzing our document would have revealed this discrepancy to us before the director of our department called a meeting about it. We could have corrected our own rhetoric by focusing less on rote advice and instead working to highlight incidents and issues that mattered most. We could have changed the way that we produced and organized the document.

Additionally, uncovering the clusters may have shown us that we needed to create a separate document that contained all of this standard advice. We could have distributed this document once a month, only to new overseas personnel, or included it in the country reports we updated when a company leader would travel. We could have found a more efficient and effective way of disseminating such standard information, rather than cluttering up our daily document with redundant phrases.

Our daily document would have benefitted from cluster criticism analysis. We could have refocused our efforts on unusual situations or unfamiliar advice in emergencies. The articles chosen to reflect the urgency for such advice could have been pertinent to that country and the current climate, rather than just repeating standard security procedures. We could have improved our esteem and value in the company if we had realized sooner how our comments were becoming routine and likely affecting our audience’s engagement with our document.

However, I did not have the tool of cluster criticism in my technical writing toolbox. Instead of using this rhetorical method of analysis to improve our document and excel at my job, I instead heard this timely feedback from the director of the department, who brought the issue to the team’s attention. He cautioned us against using certain phrases so frequently and against copying and pasting those terms into every pertinent article. He warned that our document would lose credibility and viewership if we recycled certain phrases into all of our work instead of actually analyzing the situations and providing customized advice based on the country, the situation, and the personnel in the area. It was an eye-opening meeting for all of us, and we made a renewed effort to "vary our routes and routines" within the document and to think more critically about what sorts of advice can and should apply to distinctive situations. If a situation did call for that advice, we varied the language and wrote with the interests of our audience in mind. This was done with the goal of reflecting concern to our readers and also to improve our document and the process through which we analyzed the security incidents.

In varying our own routes and routines, we attempted to identify with our readers. Before varying our language and advice, cluster criticism would have revealed our clumsy attempts to get the work done and a disregard for readers’ concerns and security issues overseas. Cluster criticism can expose these identification shortcomings. If the clusters do not focus on what is important to the company or reinforce the value of a technical communicator (or security team, in my case), then the audience will not effectively identify with and see layers of meaning in documents produced. Charting key terms and clusters around those terms can reveal much about a document, and it can also be an exercise in evaluating one’s own work or a company’s documents. If the clusters are not conveying the messages that the company wishes to communicate, it may be time to "vary one’s routes and routines." gi

Emily January Petersen (januarypetersen@yahoo.com) holds a BA in English with an emphasis in editing and technical writing from Brigham Young University and an MA in English from Weber State University, where she taught composition courses for four years. She is currently a PhD student in the theory and practice of professional communication program in the English department at Utah State University, where she is a research fellow. Before academia, she worked as an associate editor for the security department of a large nonprofit corporation.