JOURNAL
10.1177/0021943604265953
Jameson
/ WRITER-READER
OF BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
RELATIONSHIP
CONCEPTUALIZING THE
WRITER-READER RELATIONSHIP
IN BUSINESS PROSE
Daphne A. Jameson
Cornell University
Writers achieve an appropriate writer-reader relationship in business prose not by merely switching
from their own to the reader’s viewpoint but by artfully interweaving multiple rhetorical and linguistic
elements. The writer-reader relationship is expressed through the many possible combinations of vision
and voice, which originate in the textual identities of the implied writer, the implied reader, and, sometimes, other characters. By combining multiple visions and voices, writers create what Bakhtin called
intentionally hybrid, internally dialogic language that fulfills a social purpose by reflecting human relationships even when the subject matter is impersonal and technical. You-attitude is but one instance of
such language and is not always the best choice. Texts written by Sherron Watkins, former vice president
of Enron, illustrate how a writer’s decisions about textual identities, vision, and voice may affect the
course of corporate events in dramatic, unexpected ways.
Keywords: narrative theory; implied reader; implied writer; you-attitude; dialogism; voice; tone;
point of view; perspective; Enron
“I am incredibly nervous that we will implode in a wave of accounting scandals,”
Enron Vice President Sherron Watkins wrote in an anonymous letter to Kenneth
Lay, chairman of the corporation. “My eight years of Enron work history will be
worth nothing on my résumé, the business world will consider the past successes as
nothing but an elaborate accounting hoax” (see Appendix A).1 These words began a
chain of events that revealed a dramatic corporate scandal and ultimately led to the
demise of not only Enron but also Arthur Andersen, its auditor. Investors lost
money, employees lost jobs, and the business world lost public respect. Watkins’s
prophetic words became famous as Enron collapsed. But what makes these words
interesting to those who study business language and its impact is the extent to
which they violate a central principle of business communication: you-attitude, the
expression of a relationship in which writers or speakers intentionally subordinate
Daphne A. Jameson (Ph.D., University of Illinois, 1979) is a past president of the Association for Business Communication and an associate professor in the organizational management, communication, and
law area, School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University. She thanks the reviewers and editors for
their insights and suggestions. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Daphne A.
Jameson, Statler Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853; e-mail: [email protected].
Journal of Business Communication, Volume 41, Number 3, July 2004 227-264
DOI: 10.1177/0021943604265953
© 2004 by the Association for Business Communication
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their priorities to those of readers or listeners. In trying to influence Lay to investigate further, Watkins focuses squarely on her own concerns, fears, and self-interest.
To explore the complexities of the writer-reader relationship, in this article I
apply concepts from narratology and linguistics to business prose. I address three
questions: How should we conceptualize the writer-reader relationship in business
prose? What choices must writers make when they express this relationship in a
text? Why are such choices important in business practice? I assert that a complete
analysis of the writer-reader relationship in business prose must go beyond the traditional concept of you-attitude, which oversimplifies the writer’s options. The
conceptualization I propose juxtaposes the metaphors of vision and voice in written
discourse. I argue that writers achieve an appropriate writer-reader relationship not
by merely switching from the writer’s to the reader’s viewpoint but by artfully
interweaving multiple rhetorical and linguistic elements. Writers must define the
textual identities of the characters implied in the text: the I, the you, and, sometimes,
the others. These identities then lead to choices about whose vision and whose
voice the text will reflect. Vision includes not only point of view but also perspective, distance, and focus. Voice—the instantiation of vision in words—encompasses metaphoric parallels with each aspect of literal voice: pitch, inflection, intonation, articulation, pace, and volume. Juxtaposing the implied reader’s vision and
the implied writer’s voice creates what Bakhtin (1981) called intentionally hybrid,
internally dialogic language, one form of which constitutes you-attitude.
Whereas you-attitude is often considered the quintessential characteristic of
good business writing, I assert in this article that this expression of a writer-reader
relationship is not always desirable. Discourse that exemplifies you-attitude may
fail to convey the writer’s vision when it is, in fact, essential. The writer may lack
sufficient knowledge of the reader’s point of view and perspectives. The organizational context may make it presumptuous for a writer to express the reader’s vision
explicitly. Sometimes, a balance between the reader’s and writer’s visions is more
appropriate. In yet other cases, the vision or voice of someone other than either the
writer or reader should prevail. To make sound decisions about the rhetorical and
linguistic elements through which a text expresses the writer-reader relationship,
writers must consider the multiple possible combinations. You-attitude is but one
type of hybridized, dialogic language, and others are often better choices.
After showing how past studies have laid important groundwork, this article first
proposes a way to conceptualize the writer-reader relationship in terms of textual
identity, vision, and voice; it then shows how these rhetorical and linguistic elements interact; finally, it explains how the possibility of multiple visions and voices
complicates writers’ choices. To illustrate the ideas and to demonstrate the importance of writer-reader relationships, I use three documents written by Enron Vice
President Sherron Watkins (Appendices A-C), showing how her rhetorical and linguistic choices of identity, vision, and voice created dramatically different effects
that perhaps influenced the course of events at Enron.
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PAST EXPLORATIONS OF YOU-ATTITUDE
I use the term you-attitude to refer broadly to the primacy of the reader over the
writer in business prose. This privileging of the reader is manifested not only in surface features of language, such as the choice of pronouns and verb forms, but also in
underlying decisions a writer makes about what to include and what to exclude
from a business document. When a writer gives priority to the concerns and questions readers may have, deemphasizes his or her own concerns, and acknowledges
readers by using language that fits their level of expertise and conveys respect, then
a business text achieves the quality of you-attitude.
Although sometimes extended to encompass the primacy of the audience over
the communicator in both written and oral discourse, the concept of you-attitude
has primarily been associated with writing. You-attitude stands out most clearly in
persuasive documents, such as sales letters and advertising materials, in which it is
appropriate to state explicitly how readers will benefit from taking recommended
action. However, you-attitude can be used in most types of business writing, even
the most routine, informative documents. Business writers almost always know
more than readers about a topic and thus may be inclined to skip details, condense
explanations, and use technical vocabulary that would confuse readers. The principle of you-attitude says that writers should put themselves in the place of readers
and adapt the message to their needs.
The term you-attitude is problematic, for the concept encompasses more than
you and more than attitude. Reducing you-attitude to either awareness of the
intended reader (the you) or to the use of second-person pronouns has been criticized by Campbell, Riley, and Parker (1990); Rodman (2001); and others. The
word attitude is too narrow, implying perhaps that personal opinion plays a bigger
role than it does. Some scholars, therefore, have offered variant terms, such as youviewpoint, reader orientation, and you-perspective. You-attitude remains the most
commonly used term, despite its limitations.
You-attitude has long been an accepted principle of rhetoric in business contexts. Weeks (1985) and Carbone (1994) traced the history of the term to the early
part of the 20th century when George Burton Hotchkiss applied principles of modern rhetoric explicitly to business contexts. Hagge (1989) argued, though, that the
concept, if not the term, was developed much earlier and is in essence an extension
of classical rhetoric principles. In previous studies of you-attitude, scholars have
drawn most frequently on studies in linguistics and the philosophy of language.
Rodman (2001), for instance, used theories of politeness, case grammar, and information structure to analyze how writers express you-attitude. She made two especially important points. First, you-attitude is gradable, not binary; it is a matter
of degree, not an either-or condition. Second, “strategies for enhancing the youattitude conveyed by a text appear to have a cumulative effect” (p. 22). Campbell
et al. (1990), applying speech act theory, showed how a writer’s choice of pronouns
and grammatical subjects interacts with rhetorical context to create you-attitude.
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Their contribution was to illustrate concretely how writers can use specific sentence patterns to achieve you-attitude. Ewald and Vann (2003) analyzed you-attitude in terms of syntactic contexts and semantic representations that ask the reader
to adopt a particular identity. They explored the ethical dimensions of you-attitude
by showing how a series of letters constructed an appealing identity for readers,
which led some to self-deception.
Only recently have researchers sought to show the effect of you-attitude through
empirical research. Most notably, Shelby and Reinsch (1995) demonstrated how
message characteristics, including several aspects of you-attitude, predicted readers’ perceptions of a text’s tone, which in turn predicted readers’ levels of commitment to take the action the text requested, which in turn predicted satisfaction with
the message. Concerning some specific message characteristics, however, Shelby
and Reinsch said that their “results do not fit neatly into current theoretical conceptualizations of you-attitude, and they suggest the need for additional theoretical
analysis” (p. 320).
Responding to that expressed need, I wish to present a theoretical conceptualization of the writer-reader relationship in business prose that encompasses but
extends beyond you-attitude. In a previous article, I asserted that when we talk
about you-attitude, we are really referring to a sensory juxtaposition of sight and
sound—a combination of one person’s vision and another person’s voice
(Jameson, 2000). In the following discussion, I develop that idea in depth, illustrate
it in contemporary business texts, and extend it to create a broader conceptualization of the writer-reader relationship.
TEXTUAL IDENTITIES OF
WRITERS AND READERS
In any piece of writing, a complete analysis of the writer-reader relationship,
including you-attitude, needs to start by looking closely at the implied identities of
the intended reader (the you) and the writer (the I). Writers implicitly or explicitly
attribute personality, values, attitudes, and other qualities to both themselves and
others. These characterizations form the core of the writer-reader relationship as
expressed in the text. I will use the term textual identities to distinguish the writer,
reader, and other characters as implied in the text from the whole, live human
beings they represent.
The Implied Writer
Because business texts concern actual rather than fictional events, actions, and
people, we often approach the analysis of such prose in too literal a way. We may
falsely assume, for instance, that the writer as projected in the text of a business
document is exactly the same as the live person or persons who wrote the document. Yet a business document is an artifact—a representation of reality, not reality
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itself. Every business document, from a routine e-mail to an extensive research
report, presents someone’s interpretations of facts, events, people, and situations.
Who is that someone? The whole, live human being who writes is never exactly the
same as the writer’s representation of self implied in the text. In literary studies, this
textual identity is called the implied author, but I prefer the term implied writer
when referring to the parallel concept in nonliterary prose.
Narrative theory offers important insights that pertain to both literary and nonliterary texts (Booth, 1961; Chatman, 1978; Slatoff, 1970). In literature, the live
author differs from the text’s implied author, who may differ from the character
through whose vision the story is told who in turn may differ from the narrator
through whose voice the story is told. These distinctions apply in nonliterary prose,
The principle of you-attitude says
that writers should put themselves in
the place of readers and adapt the
message to their needs.
too, though they are rarely mentioned. Considering them explicitly will help us
better understand and analyze writer-reader relationships. In some business situations, the first distinction between the live writer and the implied writer is explicit.
For instance, the live writer may be a subordinate drafting a document for a boss’s
signature, a public relations person writing for an executive, or a freelancer
ghostwriting for a client. Even when a person writes his or her own documents,
however, the whole human being is bigger and more complex than the abstracted
self projected in the text. In fact, the live writer is always different from the implied
writer because every individual has many facets of personality, character, and
knowledge, but no single piece of discourse can project them all.
The implied writer is also sometimes different from the person through whose
vision the ideas are presented (paralleling the central character in literary contexts). For instance, managers frequently must explain and justify policies to
employees through the eyes of higher level executives or boards of directors. Even
when managers do not agree with a decision, they must often explain it to others by
conveying the views of decision makers. Conversely, managers often need to communicate to higher executives the views of line employees, union officials, suppliers, or other constituencies. Being able to write about a topic through someone
else’s vision is an important management skill. In a few rare cases, the implied
writer may even differ from the person through whose voice a business document is
written (the narrator in literary contexts). For instance, sales letters and promotional materials sometimes are written from the point of view of fictional characters, complete with names and signatures.
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These distinctions among the live writer, implied writer, implied source of
vision (central character), and implied source of voice (narrator) are important
because, as phenomenological criticism has emphasized, what engages readers is
the encounter with a human mind, “the sense not merely of a human hand behind
the work but of a human consciousness informing it” (Slatoff, 1970, p. 94). This
quality is as essential in nonliterary as in literary prose. To engage the reader and
establish credibility, a writer must project personality, character, and ethos.
Related to the idea of the implied writer is a concept that social theorists call the
scheduling of roles: “the individual is allowed and required to be one thing in one
setting and another thing in a different setting, the role that is given primacy at one
occasion being dormant on another” (Goffman, 1961, p. 151). This concept is
familiar to anyone who, in a given day, faces the psychological adjustments of alternating among the roles of a parent of one’s children, a child of one’s parents, and a
spouse of one’s partner. Within their work lives, too, people have multiple roles. For
instance, a person might write as a member of a department within a company, as an
elected union representative, or as a member of a certain profession—an engineer, a
physician, a certified public accountant. In each case, the person could construct a
textual identity that reflected the particular role by implying qualities and values
that matched.
The Implied Reader
Besides having implied writers, texts have implied readers, a concept used in literary criticism to mean not only the qualities attributed to real or ideal readers but
also the roles readers are asked to play as active creators or interpreters of the text
(Iser, 1974, 1978; Tompkins, 1980). Iser said that a written work lies halfway
between two poles—the author’s text and the reader’s actualization of the text in the
reading process. Eco (1984) went further to assert that a well-organized text not
only suggests who the intended reader is but actively builds up the kind of competence needed to be that kind of reader. That is, a text may incorporate ideas that help
readers learn what they need to know to interact with the text in a preferred way.
In adapting the term implied reader to business communication, I mean the collective qualities that a writer ascribes to the intended reader or readers and the ways
that the writer asks readers to interact with the text. Writers may construct the
implied reader explicitly, for instance, through direct address, through
metadiscourse that guides a reader’s interaction with a text, or through phrasing
that suggests the reader’s motivations (e.g., to save money, save time, or achieve
success). More often, however, the construction of the implied reader is more subtle. It may involve parallels between the reader and other people, implications about
character and values, or clues about how to best understand a text. Most corporate
annual reports, for instance, assume but do not state explicitly that the implied
reader believes in capitalist philosophy, supports the company’s goals, and is too
busy to read the entire report so welcomes guidance about what is important.
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Whether overt or implicit, an implied reader exists in most business documents and
forms an important basis for the expression of the writer-reader relationship.
The implied reader in business texts not only establishes identity but also can
encourage the reader to take action. In the sweepstakes letters that Ewald and Vann
(2003) studied, the implied reader was constructed as winner, a textual identity that
motivated the real reader to enter the sweepstakes contest. In some of the shareholder reports that Jameson (2000) analyzed, the construction of a student-toteacher relationship between the implied reader and implied writer encouraged the
real reader to invest more to achieve dollar-cost averaging, even though a fund’s
performance had declined. The depiction of implied readers thus has the power to
influence real readers’ specific actions taken in response to texts.
Textual Identities in the August 15 Letter
To illustrate the concept of textual identities of writer and reader, consider the
letter Sherron Watkins wrote on August 15, 2001, to Kenneth Lay, chairman of
Enron (Appendix A). The context was as follows: The impetus for the letter was the
all-employee meeting scheduled for August 16 to address concerns raised by the
sudden resignation on August 14 of Jeffrey Skilling, president and chief executive
officer of Enron. Lay asked employees to submit questions for him to address at
that meeting, and Watkins put her unsigned letter in the specified drop box. At the
meeting, Lay said that employees who were troubled by anything at Enron should
talk to him or anyone in top management. Later that day, Watkins met with Cindy
Olson, head of human resources, identified herself as the author of the letter, and
agreed to meet with Lay to discuss it.
Who is the implied writer and how does that constructed identity differ from the
live writer? Sherron Smith Watkins—the whole person, the complete human
being—had many personal and professional roles: Enron vice president, former
auditor at Arthur Andersen, certified public accountant, University of Texas
alumna, daughter of an accounting teacher, wife, mother, Presbyterian, taxpayer,
investor, upper-middle-class White female, native U.S. citizen of German ancestry,
and so forth (Coloff, 2003; Morse & Bower, 2002; Swartz, 2003; Yardley, 2002). In
the opening of her letter, though, she states the one primary role in which she writes:
member of a group of Enron employees who did not get rich in the past few years
through stock options, profit sharing, and possibly unethical practices.
In connecting the identity of the implied writer to such employees, Watkins
alluded to the fact that when the stock price had risen, reaching its maximum of
more than $90 in August 2000 and staying at more than $80 in early 2001, some
executives had sold part of their stock and made millions of dollars. For instance, in
the year before the stock collapsed, Skilling had sold $27 million and Lay $26 million worth of stock (Lowenstein, 2002). Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow
made more than $55 million from his involvement with the questionable partnerships (Swartz, 2003, p. 310). Certain executives, Watkins implies, knew that the
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company’s fortunes might decline because of questionable practices in which they
were involved. Unlike them, other employees had not sold their stock, either
because the retirement plan prohibited it or because they still believed in Enron.
The textual identity Watkins constructs for this letter’s implied writer is a limited, abstracted projection of herself, the whole, complex, live person. The letter
does not even hint at most of her roles in life—parent, spouse, citizen, and so forth.
No mention of her political or religious affiliations are included, nor is her gender
revealed. She does not heighten her credibility by mentioning that she is a CPA, nor
does she give her name. The anonymity explicitly separates the implied writer from
the real writer. The implied writer is a member of a group, not just an individual.
The construction of this implied writer is the first step in expressing the writerreader relationship in the text.
In her letter, Watkins also constructs an implied reader—her representation of
the person she believes Lay is or at least the person she chooses to project in this one
document. She assumes that Lay is neither involved in the misdeeds nor even aware
of them. Furthermore, she assumes that he will be concerned about the information
she is providing and will want to investigate. Talking about how some determined
employees, including herself, are searching for a solution that will save the company, she assumes that Lay will want to be part of that effort. In short, the textual
identity of Lay, as constructed by Watkins, is an innocent leader, duped by underlings, who will be shocked by the information and will want to right the wrongs.
How do the textual identities of the I, the you, and the others interact to create the
writer-reader relationship expressed in nonliterary discourse? In analyzing this
relationship, I will use two sensory metaphors: vision and voice. By vision, I refer
to the themes, ideas, and line of reasoning that guide a text, but not the specific language used. A particular vision can be expressed in many different ways depending
on the writer’s choice of vocabulary, sentence patterns, and other stylistic features. I
will use the term voice to refer to the specific linguistic features that instantiate a
text’s vision. Genette (1980), Chatman (1978), and Bal (1997) complain that critics
have confused these two elements of narration. In Narrative Discourse, Genette
characterizes the distinction between vision and voice in terms of the questions
“who sees?” versus “who speaks?” (p. 186). Bal criticizes narrative theorists for not
making “a distinction between, on the one hand, the vision through which the elements are presented and, on the other, the identity of the voice that is verbalizing
that vision” (p. 143). In the next two sections of this article, I show how the textual
identities of the writer, reader, and sometimes other characters relate to business
documents’ vision and voice, which in combination express the writer-reader
relationship.
THE METAPHOR OF VISION: WHO SEES?
The metaphor of vision has a long history in criticism of literary and nonliterary
prose. Different terms for the concept have been used, including point of view
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(Bakhtin, 1981; Booth, 1961; Chatman, 1978), perspective (Iser, 1978), and
focalization (Bal, 1997; Genette, 1980). Whatever the terminology, the metaphor
captures the critical challenge of all communication: Vision depends on perception,
which, as Bal notes, involves
so many factors that striving for objectivity is pointless. To mention only a few factors: one’s position with respect to the perceived object, the fall of the light, the distance, previous knowledge, psychological attitude towards the object; all this and
more affect the picture one forms and passes on to others. (p. 142)
Some scholars have expressed discomfort with the vision metaphor. Chatman,
for instance, says that “the use of terms like ‘view’ and ‘see’ may be dangerously
metaphorical. We ‘see’ issues in terms of some cultural or psychological predisposition; the mechanism is entirely different from that which enables us to see
cats or automobiles” (p. 155).
Vision has merit as an analytical metaphor for prose, though, if we consider its
several distinct though related elements: point of view, perspective, distance, and
focus. If we think of using a camera to take photographs, we can better understand
these elements. Point of view is where one stands in relation to the subject of the
photo. Perspective is the inevitable distortion in relative size, shape, and depth of
what is seen. Distance is how far from the subject one stands. Focus is what one sees
clearly through the camera lens, whereas closer and further away objects seem
fuzzy and others are totally out of the picture. Each aspect of literal vision has a parallel in the metaphoric vision of a business text.
Point of View
Although the term point of view is sometimes used broadly to encompass what I
have called vision, I think it is helpful to limit these. By point of view, I mean a fixed
place, position, or stance from which a subject is seen. Sometimes a point of view is
stated explicitly, as in such expressions as the following: “From the point of view of
an outside investor”; “Because we are the market leader”; “As a long-time
employee”; or “Based on 15 years of auditing experience.” At other times, the point
of view is implicitly indicated by such details as the choice of technical or
layperson’s language. By providing a direction from which to observe something, a
point of view helps create a coherent vision.
In the August 15 letter to Lay, the implied writer Watkins establishes her point of
view quickly. She writes from a position inside Enron and, more specifically, inside
the financial division of the corporation. Her stance is that of a loyal employee who
is concerned that the company extricate itself from its problems. She takes the
viewpoint of someone determined to help the company rectify mistakes and thus
survive. The point of view is literal in that she reports her first-hand knowledge of
company records and the existence of valuation issues. She writes from inside the
organization, reporting up the hierarchy. As congressional leaders noted in
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hearings, the word whistleblower is inappropriate because it denotes someone who
reports misdeeds to external authorities. Watkins stayed inside the organization in
communicating her message.
Only in the last paragraph does the implied writer Watkins acknowledge the
intended reader’s point of view, and she does so in a very limited way. She recognizes Lay’s position as chairman only when she mentions the short time frame
before the all-employee meeting. She says she knows Lay cannot address the problem fully by then, so she is just asking that he assure employees that he and Rick
Causey, chief accounting officer, will investigate thoroughly.
Perspective
It is useful in the analysis of writer-reader relationships in business prose to distinguish between point of view and perspective, though past writing on narrative in
general and on you-attitude in particular conflates them. I distinguish point of view
as a fixed place from which something is seen, whereas perspective is one’s interpretation of what is seen from that place. Watkins’s point of view is inside Enron;
her perspective is that dangerous deception is occurring there. Other employees
who wrote from the same point of view in contemporaneous documents had quite
different perspectives. Perspective always involves distortion, though the word
here has no pejorative implication. Whereas point of view is the fixed position from
which something is seen, perspective is the inevitable distortion in the relative size,
shape, and depth of what is seen. Distortion in writing encompasses the writer’s
interpretation of motives, causes, and responsibilities, as well as the foregrounding
and backgrounding of details.
Like painters, writers use perspective to interpret their vision in a way that paradoxically seems more real than a mere presentation of factual details. Consider the
analogy from art history. Pre–Renaissance Western painting did not use perspective
but had a flat effect in which everything appeared on the same plane, equidistant
from the viewing point. Lack of perspective creates a sense of neutrality, a lack of
emphasis. With the development of perspective in the early Renaissance, painting
gained the illusion of depth, with some objects closer and some farther away from
the painter’s point of view. To create perspective, objects are distorted: Rectangles
become trapezoids, circles become ovals, and bodies become distended. Some elements seem bigger and closer, others smaller and farther away. Distinctions
between foreground and background appear. Yet the paradox of perspective is that
what is distorted seems more realistic, not less.
A principle of general semantics aptly fits this situation: “The symbol is not the
thing symbolized; the word is not the thing; the map is not the territory it stands for”
(Hayakawa, 1978, p. 25). The text of any piece of business discourse, even that
which seems most neutral and routine, contains some perspective, some interpretation. “We cannot attain complete impartiality while we use the language of everyday life,” Hayakawa asserted (p. 41).
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How does Sherron Watkins’s August 15 letter illustrate the concept of perspective? Writing from the point of view of a loyal insider, she creates a particular perspective by linking events, observations, suppositions, and technical knowledge to
create a picture of intentional deceit that implicates Jeffrey Skilling. She envisions
public disclosures, disgrace, and collapse because disgruntled employees know
about the accounting irregularities. She interprets the fact of Skilling’s departure in
a negative way, speculating that his motive was to escape before an inevitable collapse that he could predict. She suggests several times how facts could be interpreted differently by “the layman on the street.” Against this, she pictures some
determined employees, including herself, searching valiantly for a solution that
will save the company.
In adapting the term implied reader to
business communication, I mean the
collective qualities that a writer ascribes
to the intended reader or readers and
the ways that the writer asks readers
to interact with the text.
One way to understand perspective better is to identify the perspectives that are
not used in a piece of discourse. Using the same point of view, that of a loyal insider,
Watkins could have taken other perspectives. For example, she could have put the
impending implosion of Enron in the background and justice for individual
employees in the foreground. She could have interpreted the events as a contemporary Greek tragedy caused by MBAs’ massive hubris. She could have centered her
criticism not on Skilling but on Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow—a change
she did make in her August 22 memo (Appendix B), as we shall later see.
Distance
A third element of vision is distance—that is, the extent of involvement in and
knowledge of the subject being discussed. Distance can be manifested in a text
explicitly when a writer claims or denies involvement or knowledge. Alternatively,
distance can be conveyed implicitly through the level and type of detail.
The August 15 letter reveals the implied writer Watkins’s literal closeness to the
subject when she mentions her detailed knowledge of financial transactions. She is
reporting direct observations, not hearsay or rumor. The impetus for writing the letter was distress at the news that Skilling had resigned as chief executive officer after
holding the position only 6 months. She feared that this news foreshadowed major
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troubles because Skilling had wanted the job badly, and she suspected he would
resign only if he expected a disaster. Furthermore, she explicitly includes herself in
the quest for Enron’s salvation.
Distance can be emotional as well as literal. Emotional closeness results when a
person feels responsibility, expects personal repercussions, or has put a professional reputation on the line. Such closeness is manifested by inclusion of individual concerns within larger contexts. The August 15 letter highlights the impact of
Enron’s problems on the implied writer, who expresses fears that her 8 years of
work history will become worthless or even negative career credentials. She wonders whether she can afford to stay at Enron.
Focus
Focus refers to what elements are emphasized as most prominent in the vision.
In the camera analogy, focus includes focal length and depth of field. A photographer adjusts focal length by choosing a wide-angled versus telephoto lens to see a
broader or narrower view, or a zoom lens to vary focal length quickly. Like a zoom
lens, Watkins’s letter shifts from the broader view about the future of the company
to the narrower view about what reassurances Lay can give at the meeting the next
day.
Depth of field in the camera analogy refers to the zone in which objects are distinct whereas nearer and farther away objects are fuzzy. In her letter to Lay, Watkins
changes the depth of field several times to focus on four elements: her own situation, Skilling, the problem transactions, and the all-employee meeting. In paragraph 1 she focuses on her own concerns; in paragraphs 2 and 3 on Skilling; in paragraphs 3, 4, and 5 on the transactions; in paragraph 6 on herself and then Skilling
again; in paragraph 7 on the transactions again; and finally in paragraph 8 on the allemployee meeting. The shifting focus creates a stream of consciousness effect,
rather than a clear line of argument. Given Watkins’s time constraints and the emotionally charged subject matter, this lack of logical organization is not surprising.
The metaphor of focus applied to language is powerful because humans share a
universal physical ability: to change the focal point of their literal vision at will,
looking at a particular object close by or one farther away. In one case, the broader
scene is fuzzy; in the other, the nearer objects are fuzzy. A similar shifting of focus
occurs in prose. As Genette (1980) emphasizes, “the commitment as to focalization
is not necessarily steady over the whole length” of a piece of writing (p. 191). When
writers create vision in a text, they have many choices of how to combine point of
view, perspective, distance, and focus. Furthermore, writing involves a choice
among or a combination of writer’s, reader’s, and other’s visions. Longer discourse
is likely to have a combination, for it is hard to sustain a single vision.
Only writing that incorporates the reader’s vision, however, meets an essential
criterion for achieving you-attitude. The August 15 letter does not meet this criterion. The letter’s dominant vision is not that of the reader but, instead, that of the
implied writer, an anonymous employee who did not get rich by selling stock when
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others did. She writes from the point of view of a loyal insider, who has knowledge
of certain questionable transactions and who wants to help rectify them. Her perspective is that the transactions involved intentional deceit and that Skilling did not
disclose his true reason for resigning but that corporate salvation may still be possible. She is close to her topic both literally and emotionally. Her shifting focus
reveals her personal and professional distress. Overall, this vision fixes the reader’s
attention squarely on the implied writer’s concerns, not the reader’s.
THE METAPHOR OF VOICE: WHO SPEAKS?
Whereas vision tells us who sees, voice tells us who speaks. Voice is literal in
speech but metaphorical in writing. By the term voice, I mean the specific linguistic
features, such as vocabulary, sentence structure, and imagery, that instantiate a
text’s vision. Even when processing a text silently, readers imagine a person speaking, a linguistic consciousness. They mentally hear the voice of the speaker through
an ability that cognitive psychology calls inner speech. To that imagined speaker,
readers attribute personality, attitudes, and emotions. This process is imperfect, and
the writer’s challenge is to forecast what imagined voice the reader will infer from a
written text.
Whether a text reflects the vision of the implied writer, implied reader, or
another character, this vision may be expressed in any of several possible voices. To
cite a specific example, consider how the vision of the August 15 letter could have
been expressed in different voices. We have identified the implied writer Watkins of
the August 15 letter as member of a group of employees who did not get rich and as
the person whose vision dominated the letter. That vision, from the point of view
inside Enron’s financial division, took the perspective that deceit had occurred and
threatened the company, as well as Watkins’s career. Given that particular vision,
the writer (the live person Watkins) could have conveyed the vision through words
that would have expressed anger and indignation, or depression and desperation, or
whining and fawning, or optimism and determination, or many other qualities.
Voice is independent of vision, though whether they complement one another
affects clarity, coherence, and impact of the text.
Like vision, voice is not a single attribute, but a combination. Elements of literal
voice—pitch, inflection, intonation, articulation, pace, and volume—have parallels in voice as expressed in writing. The August 15 letter illustrates these elements.
Pitch
Pitch refers to qualities of sound frequency that convey emotion, regulate conversation flow, and make speech pleasant or unpleasant to hear. Listeners perceive
low-pitched, soothing voices more favorably than high-pitched, shrill voices. Cook
(2002) suggests that some pitch combinations that convey positive and negative
emotional states are “cross-cultural universals of paralinguistic understanding” (p.
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96). In written discourse, pitch can be conveyed by phrasing that is melodious and
soothing versus that which is grating, cacophonous, or shrill. If readers infer a voice
with an unpleasant pitch, they will attribute negative personality traits to the imagined speaker. Readers infer pitch from a text’s sentence patterns and word choices.
Sentence patterns can lower or heighten implied pitch. In her letter, Sherron
Watkins uses interrogative sentences for several purposes: to get attention (paragraph 1), to imply accusation (paragraph 4), to emphasize the dilemma (paragraphs
3 and 8), and to request action (paragraph 8). Rather than asserting claims in declarative sentences or making demands in imperative sentences, she achieves the same
goals by using interrogatives, thus lowering the pitch of her voice. These types of
sentences constitute what in the philosophy of language are called indirect speech
acts. As Searle (1975) explained, “A sentence that contains the illocutionary force
indicators for one kind of illocutionary act can be uttered to perform, in addition,
another type of illocutionary act” (p. 59). For instance, a sentence that has the force
of a question can also convey a request or demand. The result is a lower, softer pitch.
Because ordinary conversational requirements make it difficult to state imperatives, politeness is the primary reason for indirect speech acts. “There are culturespecific rules of the use of language,” according to Saddock (1974), “that tell us that
it is uncivil directly to request something of a social equal or superior”(p. 114). In
their cross-linguistic studies, Brown and Levinson (1987) found that this particular
use of indirect speech acts appears to be “universal or at least independently
developed in many languages” (p. 136).
In addition to sentence patterns, word choice affects a text’s pitch. Watkins
heightened the pitch of her language, for instance, by choosing the vivid verb
implode and strong noun scandal in her expressed fear that Enron would “implode
in a wave of accounting scandals.” The imagery of Skilling’s abandoning a sinking
ship also heightened the pitch. She did not, however, use shrill words when referring directly to the reader.
Inflection
Inflection—that is, coordinated changes in pitch—allows a speaker to give different meanings to the same word, such as to express sarcasm, irony, or disgust. For
example, with rising inflection, Oh, great! is positive; with falling inflection, these
words mean the opposite. In writing, the parallel is words or phrases that imply
double meanings, usually one straightforward and one ironic. In imagining the personality and character of a speaker through inner speech, readers are influenced by
inflection.
Several linguistic choices in the August 15 letter convey inflection. The words in
quotation marks, such as “‘redeployed’ employees” and “personal reasons,” suggest alternative interpretations. Balanced rhetorical questions, such as, “Is that
really funds flow or is it cash from equity issuance?” imply the writer’s skepticism.
Watkins’s mother, who saw the draft letter, warned her to omit what she perceived
as sarcasm (Coloff, 2003).
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Intonation
Intonation is the expression of the writer’s attitude toward the reader and the
subject matter. Intonation is important because it signals status and other relationships between writer and reader. Literal voice can convey attitudes of equality, condescension, or subservience. Likewise, voice inferred by reading a text can convey
such positive or negative qualities. Linguistic features that express intonation
include forms of address, level of diction, pronoun patterns, tags, qualifiers, and
hedges. Attitudes about the writer-reader relationship are initially implied by forms
of address and choice of conventions (e.g., “Dear Mr. Lay”). A writer’s choice of a
formal or informal level of diction subsequently affects tone. Watkins uses several
informal expressions, such as “it sure looks” and “pony up,” that suggest a peer
relationship with the reader but may result from the time pressure under which she
composed the letter.
If readers infer that the voice of a
text is pretentious or condescending,
the writer-reader relationship will be
harmed.
Pronoun patterns affect tone in a deeper way. In the August 15 letter, first-person
plural pronouns dominate; Watkins uses we 14 times, and 13 of these refer to Enron
collectively, including her personally. This pattern, which Brown and Levinson
(1987) called the “respectful-plurality principle” (p. 202), conveys that Watkins
and Lay share a problem to be solved. The “business ‘we’” draws on two sources of
power: the corporate entity itself and membership in a group, a reminder that the
reader is not alone, according to Brown and Levinson. Watkins poses a question
that establishes herself as part of the solution: “How do we fix the . . . deals?” In the
closing she asks “What do we do?” not “What should you do?” or “What should
Enron do?”
Tags, qualifiers, and hedges also affect tone. Twice, Watkins embeds assertions
as subordinate clauses within a kernel sentence marking the assertion as her
thought (e.g., “I think that the valuation issues can be fixed”; Appendix A). These
kernel sentences, which are hedges, modify the illocutionary act. Watkins uses the
hedge “I think” on one hand to limit her claims but on the other to mark the assertions as her own as opposed to someone else’s. The illocutionary force of “I think”
is to take credit for the ideas but not to state them without qualification as absolute
facts, a double purpose that Brown and Levinson (1987, p. 164) have discussed.
Similarly, she changes the tone when she attaches a concession before an
interrogative:
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I know this question cannot be addressed in the all-employee meeting, but can you
give some assurances that you and Causey will sit down and take a good hard
objective look at what is going to happen to Condor and Raptor in 2002 and 2003?
Instead of the imperative (“Do X!”), she uses a concession (“I know you cannot
do Z”) followed by an interrogative (“but can you do X?”). The power of indirect
speech acts, according to Searle (1975), is that they convey both the literal
meaning plus a specific type of extra meaning: “What is added in indirect cases
is not any additional or different sentence meaning, but additional speaker
meaning” (p. 70). Thus, Watkins’s choice of “can you give some assurances
that . . .” conveys not only the request but also information about her attitude
toward and relationship with the reader.
Articulation
Articulation refers to the precision with which a speaker moves tongue, lips, and
mouth to pronounce words intelligibly. Insufficient articulation results in lack of
clarity; overarticulation, though, can be insulting—a way of talking down. Articulation in the voice of a text is conveyed through precision, explicitness, and level of
detail in explanations. Too little articulation results in readers being confused
because of omission of needed definitions, use of technical terminology they do not
understand, wrong assumptions about their background knowledge, or similar
problems. Conversely, if a writer overarticulates by providing definitions, examples, and explanations that readers do not need, the effect may be condescension.
Choosing the ideal level of such articulation requires that the writer understand
what readers already know about a topic and what level of expertise they possess. If
readers infer that the voice of a text is pretentious or condescending, the writerreader relationship will be harmed.
In writing her August 15 letter, Watkins assumes that, besides knowing Enron
well, Lay understood the general principles and some technical terminology of
accounting and finance. She implies that she is writing to a knowledgeable person
who does not need each detail explained. Yet she provides key specifics to support
her assertions about stock price trends. Thus, through the chosen level of articulation, Watkins constructs an implied reader who understands business principles
and the Enron context.
Pace
Pace in speech refers to the number of words spoken per minute and the length of
time used to express each idea. A speaker whose pace is too fast, especially when
the topic is complex, loses the audience; a speaker whose pace is too slow annoys
the audience. Making a parallel with written discourse, I use the term pace to
mean the speed with which the writer moves from point to point and the amount of
space allocated to points (i.e., are they elaborated in detail or summarized briefly?).
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Through the mental process of inner speech, will the reader imagine a person rattling off words rapid fire, chatting at a conversational rate, or explaining slowly and
patiently? A positive relationship between writer and reader depends on the
writer’s choosing the appropriate pace for particular readers.
In written discourse, pace is implied by several features that will affect the
reader’s experience of inner speech. Delaying the overall main point gives an
impression of a slower pace, as do lengthy descriptions and explanations of each
idea. Long sentences and long paragraphs suggest a slower vocal pace. The reader’s
perception could even be influenced by visual elements such as headings and listings, which might imply a faster pace.
The pace of the August 15 letter is moderately fast. Watkins writes directly, getting attention with rhetorical questions in paragraph 1 and then moving quickly to a
summary of the problem in paragraph 2. She immediately asserts that the suspicions of accounting improprieties are well founded. The sentences and paragraphs
are relatively short, increasing the pace. Offsetting the speed, though, is the omission of headings or any visual cues about a hierarchy of ideas. Without these, a
reader cannot guess which sentences are most important and thus must mentally listen, through inner speech, to every word.
Volume
Speakers can speak too softly or too loudly, the former implying a lack of confidence and the latter aggressiveness or anger. In written language, volume is implied
by word choice, especially the vividness of descriptions, the use of modifiers and
intensifiers, and the inclusion of loaded or hot-button expressions. Format choices,
such as capital letters and exclamation points, also contribute to volume. The
writer-reader relationship is affected by the perceived loudness or softness of the
text. As in the case of e-mail, readers may be offended by the inference that writers
are shouting at them through format and other features.
Watkins’s letter provides vivid expressions that, frequently quoted, came to typify the Enron situation, such as “to implode in a wave of accounting scandals.” The
imagery connotes the demolition of a building, collapsing in on itself—an implosion rather than an explosion. The letter uses intensifiers such as “I have thought
and thought,” as well as loaded words such as “risky place to work.”
Verbs also affect a text’s perceived loudness. Watkins uses a series of active
verbs linked to the subject we, meaning Enron collectively: “we recognized funds
flow of $800 million”; “we capitalized [Condor] with a promise of Enron stock”;
“we are hiding losses”; “we booked the Condor and Raptor deals”; and “we
enjoyed wonderfully high stock price.” By choosing this sentence pattern, Watkins
emphasizes the culpability of Enron.
Overall, the voice in Watkins’s August 15 letter as inferred from pitch, inflection, intonation, articulation, pace, and volume seems to be that of a person who is
distressed, anguished, yet determined to do her part to help save the company by
finding a technical solution—a way to unravel the improper transactions, take
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responsibility, and move forward. Her voice expresses doubt, too, an uncertainty
about the good faith of the corporate leadership. Most of all, her voice expresses
strong emotion through its sentence structure and vocabulary.
We can imagine the same vision presented through different voices. Suppose
that the vision remains the same: An insider’s perspective of deceit and hope for salvation. If the implied writer were Watkins the CPA, the voice might be less dramatic
and more analytical, cold, and professional. If the implied writer were Watkins the
employee advocate, the voice might be hot, outraged, and morally indignant.
Watkins even might have chosen a voice that mimicked someone else—for
instance, a corporate lawyer or a public relations official. Each of these rhetorical
and linguistic choices would have modified the writer-reader relationship
expressed in the text.
COMBINATIONS OF IDENTITY, VISION, AND VOICE
The way that a writer combines textual identities, vision, and voice creates a
text’s writer-reader relationship. The starting point of this combination is the construction of the you and the I because, as we have seen, a writer can create many
variant implied writers and readers while retaining essentially the same content. In
the August 15 letter, the implied writer is a fearful employee, not an inquisitive
auditor. The implied reader is a deceived victim, not a dishonest conspirator. Once
such textual identities of writer and reader are defined, four basic combinations of
the primary vision and primary voice are possible.
The Implied Writer’s Own Vision and Voice
The combination of the implied writer’s own vision and voice is the natural
inclination of most writers, who see the world from their own positions and speak in
their own voices. Therefore, first drafts almost always have this combination of primary vision and voice. In completed documents, this writer-centered combination
is appropriate when the main purpose is to express the writer’s ideas and concerns
clearly or when neither imagination nor research provide a sound basis for making
assumptions about the intended reader or readers.
The August 15 letter that Watkins sent anonymously to Lay exemplifies the
combination of the writer’s own vision and voice. The antithesis of you-attitude, it
is almost totally writer centered. The implied writer, whose vision and voice dominate the letter, is a member of a group of employees who did not get rich by selling
Enron stock, as did others; is an insider who has direct knowledge of some questionable transactions and strong suspicions about others; yet is still a loyal
employee looking to find a solution to save Enron by rectifying the problem. One
reason the August 15 letter follows this pattern is that Watkins wrote it quickly in
response to a surprise announcement and needed to submit it before a meeting to be
held the following day.
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The Implied Reader’s Own Vision and Voice
Although unusual, a totally reader-centered piece of discourse is possible. In an
attempt to capture the reader’s vision, writers sometimes subordinate themselves so
much they disappear from the text. Prose with this combination directly reflects
what readers think and attempts to use their own language. Consider, for example,
an adult composing a brochure aimed at young teenagers to influence them not to
smoke. To determine the text’s vision, the writer will need to analyze young teens’
motivations and concerns and then focus on these in the text. For instance, the perspective of the readers’ vision may put short-term issues about peer pressure and
social acceptance in the foreground but long-term health issues in the background.
To instantiate this vision in words, the writer will probably eliminate his or her own
adult voice and instead use young teens’ colloquial expressions to create an intonation with which the readers identify. The challenge of prose written in the reader’s
voice is that it often sounds insincere or condescending because most writers have
difficulty creating prose in another person’s voice that comes across as authentic.
The pitch may be too shrill, the ideas overarticulated, or the volume too loud. Done
well, though, such a brochure could succeed in its purpose. However, this combination of reader’s vision and voice does not constitute you-attitude because it conveys
no relationship between writer and reader. Instead, the writer is absent, and an
almost fictionalized narrator persona provides the voice.
The Implied Writer’s Vision and
Implied Reader’s Voice
In contrast to either writer-centered or reader-centered texts, business prose can
juxtapose the writer’s and reader’s visions and voices. The combination of the
implied writer’s vision with the implied reader’s voice usually comes across as
manipulative or disingenuous. Imagine the antismoking brochure written in the
young teen’s voice but with a vision from an adult point of view and with adult perspectives about smoking. Many business documents do take this approach. For
instance, letters to potential customers often disguise the writer’s vision in language that mimics the reader’s style in an attempt to tell the reader what to think.
The reader’s concerns and points of resistance are concurrently omitted, and the
result is presumptuous or dishonest.
The Implied Reader’s Vision and
Implied Writer’s Voice
Business prose that achieves you-attitude artfully juxtaposes the writer’s voice
and the reader’s vision and thus demonstrates a relationship in which the writer
expresses an understanding of the reader’s vision. As Bakhtin (1981) stresses, verbal discourse is a social phenomenon, an expression of human relationships. When
the subject matter is impersonal and technical, as it often is in business contexts
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(e.g., financial analysis, accounting treatments, investment strategies, legal issues),
it is even more important to be able to reflect human relationships in the language
chosen. The substance of discourse with you-attitude reflects the reader’s point of
view, perspective, distance, and focus. That vision is expressed, however, through
the voice of the implied writer, demonstrating rhetorically and linguistically that
the writer understands and respects the reader. In the case of the antismoking brochure, this combination would show that the adult implied writer recognized the
teenage reader’s concerns but also hoped that the reader would gain certain benefits
from taking the recommended action. The technical subject matter relating to the
scientific analysis of nicotine and the medical problems caused by smoking would
be tempered with the expression of human relationships and values.
This juxtaposition of the reader’s vision and the writer’s voice is one specific
example of what Bakhtin (1981) calls hybridization, which he says is important in
both literary and nonliterary prose. Hybridization is an encounter “between two
different linguistic consciousnesses, separated from one another by an epoch, by
social differentiation or by some other factor” (p. 358). In business prose, the writer
and reader are the two consciousnesses, separated by generational differences in
the case of the antismoking brochure and by organizational hierarchy differences in
the case of Watkins’s messages to Lay. When a writer uses hybridization intentionally, the result “is not a mixture of two impersonal language consciousnesses” but
instead “a mixture of two individualized language consciousnesses” (p. 359). This
leads to a collision between different beliefs about the world that are embedded in
the two contrasting languages and styles. Bakhtin calls such language internally
dialogic because the two consciousnesses are set against each other, not mixed. We
may think of you-attitude, then, as one particular instance of intentionally hybridized language that becomes internally dialogic as it fulfills a social purpose by
expressing human relationships even when the subject matter is technical. I do not
mean to imply that the you-attitude combination of reader’s vision and writer’s
voice is always the best choice. In fact, the other combinations are more appropriate
in certain circumstances. Furthermore, there are many possibilities beyond the four
basic combinations of primary visions and voices. In many cases, the textual identities that are important include others beyond a single implied writer and single
implied reader. A complete understanding of the writer-reader relationship in
business prose requires analysis of all the visions and all the voices the text reflects.
THE COMPLEXITY OF MULTIPLE
IDENTITIES, VISIONS, AND VOICES
The combination of the implied reader’s vision and the implied writer’s voice is
but one of several types of hybridized, internally dialogic language found in business prose. In fact, even short business texts frequently incorporate the visions and
voices not only of the writer and reader but also of other people. The writer-reader
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relationship is often inextricably linked to the linguistic consciousnesses of these
other characters as represented in the text.
Longer business texts frequently express more than one voice and more than one
vision. In a complex document, a writer might incorporate not only his or her own
vision but also those of several different implied readers and of other people or
groups. Additionally, the writer might present parts of the text in his or her own
voice and others in the voice of the reader or others. In the case of the antismoking
brochure, separate segments of the document might be in the voices of a teenager,
of a doctor, of a parent, and of a cancer researcher. The visions reflected might correspond to each of those voices. In analyzing such texts, it is important to consider
the whole work because, as Rodman (2001) points out, the misconception that youattitude is binary arises when we look at sentence-length passages.
Business prose that achieves youattitude artfully juxtaposes the writer’s
voice and the reader’s vision and thus
demonstrates a relationship in which
the writer expresses an understanding
of the reader’s vision.
Most dialogic texts have a primary vision and a primary voice that dominate,
with others clearly supplementary; understanding the connections among these is
important to both writers and readers. Bakhtin (1981) stressed that the power of
multiple linguistic consciousnesses arose from contrasts—the collision of values
and beliefs. Genette (1980) described the phenomenon of mixing voices or visions
in terms of a music analogy, which implies a smoother, less discordant effect while
still recognizing the power of contrast:
A change in focalization, especially if it is isolated within a coherent context, can
also be analyzed as a momentary infraction of the code which governs that context
without thereby calling into question the existence of the code—the same way that
in a classical musical composition a momentary change in tonality, or even a recurrent dissonance, may be defined as a modulation or alteration without contesting
the tonality of the whole. (p. 195)
Readers experience multiple linguistic consciousnesses linearly—one by
one, sentence by sentence. This inherent feature of the reading process means
that we encounter shifting visions and voices in a dialogic text. Using an analogy
of a kaleidoscope, Chatman (1978) offers a way of thinking about how the
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sentence-by-sentence reading process influences the overall effect of hybridized, dialogic language:
The activity of reading can be characterized as a sort of kaleidoscope of perspectives, preintentions, and recollections. Every sentence contains a preview of the
next and forms a kind of viewfinder for what is to come; and this in return changes
the “preview” and so becomes a “viewfinder” for what has been read. This whole
process represents the fulfillment of the potential, unexpressed reality of the text,
but it is to be seen only as a framework for a great variety of means by which the virtual dimension may be brought into being. (p. 279)
A single dominant vision or voice can provide unity, but supplementary visions
and voices can create a more complete understanding—a kaleidoscope of rich,
interwoven ideas.
ANALYZING MULTIPLE IDENTITIES,
VISIONS, AND VOICES
To illustrate the way that an analysis of textual identities, vision, and voice can
lead to deeper understanding of the writer-reader relationship in a business text, let
us contrast Sherron Watkins’s August 15 letter with a memo she wrote the following week (Appendix B). Whereas the August 15 letter featured the implied writer’s
vision and voice alone, the August 22 memo incorporates several people’s visions
and several people’s voices. Using the proposed theoretical conceptualization of
vision and voice, I will show how the August 22 memo brings several linguistic
consciousnesses together and thus creates in a nonliterary text the kind of intentionally hybridized, internally dialogic language that Bakhtin (1981) described in
literary texts.
Although written to the same person on the same topic in the same week,
Watkins’s memo of August 22 presents a strong contrast with her letter of August
15. The memo is less writer centered and less emotional. By integrating the visions
and voices of people other than the writer and reader in important ways, the memo
well illustrates the power of intentionally hybridized, internally dialogic language.
The Context of the August 22 Memo
The context in which Watkins wrote the August 22 memo was stressful.
Responding to Lay’s comments at the all-employee meeting on August 16, she met
with human resources chief Cindy Olson, revealed herself as the author of the anonymous letter, and arranged to meet with Lay as soon as possible. Olson said that a
face-to-face meeting might get a better result because Lay “gravitates towards good
news” and might convince himself the situation was less serious than it was
(Swartz, 2003). In preparation for the meeting, Watkins wrote five documents. At a
congressional hearing, she testified that she used the memo, the subject line of
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which was “Summary of Raptor Oddities,” as talking points during her August 22
meeting with Lay.
Textual Identities in the August 22 Memo
The implied readers of the August 22 memo and August 15 letter are very similar, but the implied writers are quite different. Both documents portray the implied
reader Lay as being unaware of the improper transactions. The implied writer’s
assumptions are that he will be concerned and will want to act quickly to try to rectify the situation and save the corporation from impending collapse. Constructing
the implied reader in this way, whether or not true, makes it easier for Lay to accept
the information and act on it. Watkins testified before Congress that she did, in fact,
believe that Lay had been misled.
The implied writer of the August 15 letter was a distressed member of a group of
employees who had not gotten rich when others had and who feared it was risky to
continue working at Enron; in sharp contrast, the implied writer of the August 22
memo is a professional accountant and experienced auditor reporting concerns
about the propriety of certain transactions and their potential impact on the company. She omits all mention of personal concerns about the impact of the situation
on her career or on her financial situation. She writes as an individual, not as a member of a group. If she is disaffected or fearful, she does not show this. She writes
with the assumption that her job is secure, not in jeopardy. She writes strictly in her
professional role, without mentioning any other roles she plays in real life. And, of
course, she is no longer anonymous, though she does not put her name, or Lay’s, on
the memo.
The dominant vision and voice of the memo arise from this implied writer but
are not the only vision and voice the memo reflects. The third section of the memo
introduces several other characters who work in the financial division of Enron:
Jeff McMahon, Cliff Baxter, and an unnamed manager in the principal investments
group. By reporting their visions of what was going on and by quoting their voices
directly and indirectly, Watkins uses hybridized language to try to increase her
influence on Lay. It is as if, in writing, the implied writer and her textual colleagues
are ganging up on the implied reader. We could imagine that, if this discourse were
face-to-face instead of in writing, Watkins would charge into Lay’s office with
McMahon, Baxter, and the others trailing behind her to corroborate her claims. As a
result, the writer-reader relationship as expressed in the August 22 memo is quite
different from that in the August 15 letter.
Vision in the August 22 Memo
Like the August 15 letter, the August 22 memo paints an overall picture of
improper accounting based on deceit; however, the new vision is more focused, less
emotional, and based on the perspectives and points of view of multiple people. The
focus is more clear, consistent, and linear in the August 22 memo than in the
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jumbled stream of consciousness of the August 15 letter. In the August 22 memo,
the implied writer presents four numbered points, each similar to ones raised in the
August 15 letter, but more coherent. The sequence moves from factual discrepancies that an auditor might discover, to a critique of the financing arrangements, to
the testimony of employees about the problems, to suggestions about how Lay
might proceed. The memo omits some elements from the earlier letter but introduces one important new element: Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow’s
involvement.
The distance between the implied writer and the subject matter is close in literal
terms but not in emotional terms. The implied writer, as well as the other characters,
have direct knowledge of facts, figures, and details of transactions. However, unlike
the August 15 letter, the August 22 memo omits all personal references to
Watkins’s résumé and career prospects, as well as references to employees whose
personal financial situations were harmed because they did not have inside information that led others to sell their stock.
Like the August 15 letter, the point of view of the August 22 memo is inside the
company and inside the financial division. The implied writer and reader, as well as
the other characters, are positioned inside the company, but only the implied writer
can report from a point of view observing events in the financial division. The
implied writer is still working within the organization, alerting higher management
to problems discovered.
The August 22 memo conveys the perspectives of the implied writer and, later,
of McMahon, Baxter, and others. The inclusion of these additional perspectives in
the third section of the memo broadens the interpretation of deceit to encompass not
only Skilling, the chief executive officer, but also Fastow, the chief financial officer.
Although the August 15 letter did not mention Fastow, the August 22 memo suggests that he is guilty of conspiracy and corruption, though the implied writer mentions him only by job title, not name. Skilling’s culpability is still discussed, but the
closing sentence highlights Fastow’s role.
Like the August 15 letter, the August 22 memo’s perspective is that the facts
reveal deceptive practices, not mere accounting errors or oversights. The implied
writer interprets the facts, observations, and other sources of information as indications of serious corruption. The memo omits the personal issues that concern
Watkins but foregrounds issues that should deeply concern a company chairman—
questionable accounting, transactions not at arms length, unresolved losses, and
improper compensation.
Overall, the primary vision of the August 22 memo is that of the implied writer;
however, this implied writer is a professional accountant and auditor who is reporting observed problems, not a distressed, fearful employee. The memo’s primary
vision is supplemented with those of the other characters—McMahon, Baxter, and
unnamed employees—who provide additional information about the nature of
Enron’s problems. The spotlight in this memo, then, is on neither the writer nor the
reader but on the company itself, the transactions in question, and the business
events.
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The August 22 memo does not meet the criteria for you-attitude in that it does
not present the reader’s vision or even speculate what the reader’s vision might be.
The memo does not explicitly discuss the reader’s concerns or highlight benefits
the reader might gain by doing what the writer suggests. An unstated assumption,
perhaps, is that the company chairman should be interested in and concerned about
the types of issues raised. Yet Watkins knew from Cindy Olson that Lay did not
welcome bad news.
Voice in the August 22 Memo
The voice of the August 22 memo is quite different from that of the August 15
letter. The primary voice, that of the implied writer, is aligned with the changed textual identity—professional accountant and auditor. The supplemental voices of
McMahon, Baxter, and other characters create a powerful hybridized, dialogic language that allows the writer-reader relationship to be more harmonious. We can
trace some of these differences to the writing process that Watkins used as she
composed the memo.
The primary voice of the implied writer. The primary voice of the implied
writer, manifested in pitch, inflection, intonation, and volume, dominates the
text. The voice of this memo lacks the shrill pitch of the earlier letter. The use of
neutral language and indirect speech acts creates the more modulated pitch.
Each of the first three sections of the memo starts neutrally by making a major
factual claim (e.g., “the equity derivatives transactions do not appear to be at
arms length”). The initial development of the points is also impersonal and factual (e.g., “the related party was unable to lay off this risk”). The implied writer
uses the first-person singular pronoun only three times, to label ideas as her
thought or wish.
In the last section of the memo, the pitch is kept soft when the implied writer proposes action by posing four questions rather than using imperatives or declaratives:
“Can the general counsel of Enron audit the deal trail and the money trail between
Enron and LJM/Raptor and its principals? Can he look at LJM? At Raptor? If the
C.F.O. says no, isn’t that a problem?” The implied writer thus, in essence, recommends that Lay have the lawyers audit the trail of transactions. She alerts Lay that if
Fastow refuses to cooperate, this signals a major problem. She indicates to Lay who
she believes is the key player and most guilty party: Fastow. These charges are
brought in a voice softened by questions used as indirect speech acts. This type of
rhetorical question structure invites the reader to agree with the writer immediately,
putting them on the same side.
Yet the voice does have inflection, variations in pitch that lead the reader to conclusions not explicitly stated. Each of the first two sections starts with statements of
fact or observation. Then the implied writer poses questions that signal skepticism
while avoiding an accusatory tone. For instance, when she asks, “What else is going
on here?” the reader knows that the answer cannot be “nothing” or she would not
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have posed the question. Such phrasing invites the reader to participate in completing the message by filling in the blanks and answering the questions.
Counterbalancing the skepticism implied by this inflection, the memo builds up
a positive writer-reader relationship through intonation, an expression of the
writer’s deferential attitude toward the reader. The implied writer creates a more
positive tone by hedging rather than asserting absolutes; for instance, she chooses
the phrase “do not appear to be” rather than “are not” and “I think we do not have a
fact pattern that would look good to the S.E.C. and investors” rather than “the facts
will not look good to the SEC and investors.”
To express you-attitude or other forms
of hybridized, dialogic language, writers
must understand and artfully interweave
the multiple elements that contribute to
the construction of vision and voice.
Using several of the politeness strategies Brown and Levinson (1987) believe
affect tone, the implied writer presents herself as someone who is trying to solve a
puzzle but needs the reader’s help. She writes, “Who bears that loss? I can’t find an
equity or debt holder that bears that loss. Find out who will lose this money. Who
will pay for this loss at the related party entity?” This is certainly a pose because
Watkins (2003) in fact believed that this was “some of the worst accounting fraud I
had ever seen” (p. 435). A more accusatory voice would have conveyed the ideas
with a declarative: “Enron will bear the loss because no other equity or debt holders
exist.” The imperative “find out” is the one instance in which Watkins violates
politeness protocol by using an explicit demand, which highlights the strength of
her conviction.
The pronoun patterns, which also affect intonation, signal a turn away from the
August 15 letter’s use of the respectful plurality principle. Rather than using we to
suggest the writer’s and reader’s working together to solve the problems, the
August 22 memo rarely uses the first-person plural pronoun but instead uses Enron
repeatedly. This shift to the third-person construction distances the implied writer
from the problem and the efforts to solve it. Yet neither does she choose secondperson pronouns to emphasize that the problem is the reader’s.
Although the volume of the memo, created by vividness of vocabulary and use
of loaded words, is fairly soft in the first two sections, it becomes louder in the third
section. This section is organized in terms of examples of external validation for the
claim that “employees question our accounting propriety consistently and constantly.” In describing the situation, the implied writer uses one especially vivid
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phrase that was often repeated in later press reports and congressional investigations: “There is a veil of secrecy around LJM and Raptor.” She also chooses strong
descriptors when naming the people whose testimony supports her claims. One was
“highly vexed” and another “complained mightily.” The voice in this part of the
memo is strong.
Others’ voices as supplements. In this third section of the memo, the implied
writer introduces the voices of the other characters, which have an important
effect. By using quotation and attribution, the implied writer can maintain a
favorable relationship with the reader yet provide a powerful vision labeled as
belonging to someone else. With this type of intentionally hybridized language,
Watkins is able to insert a charge of corruption and the vivid word crooked yet
not take blame. She writes, “I have heard one manager-level employee from the
principal investments group say ‘I know it would be devastating to all of us, but I
wish we would get caught. We’re such a crooked company.’” Genette (1980)
calls this “double focalization” (p. 209). Such double-voiced language creates
powerful effects, which Bakhtin (1981) describes as follows:
The words of the author that represent and frame another’s speech create a perspective for it; they separate light from shadow, create the situation and conditions
necessary for it to sound; finally, they penetrate into the interior of the other’s
speech, carrying into it their own accents and their own expressions, creating for it
a dialogizing background. (p. 358)
In congressional testimony, Watkins said that Lay winced when he read the quotation about Enron’s being a crooked company.
Through attribution, the memo uses intonation that softens the impact of the
charge that Fastow is guilty of conspiracy and corruption. The passage uses indirect
rather than direct quotation: “Employees quote our C.F.O. as saying that he has a
handshake deal with Skilling that LJM will never lose money.” This is thriceremoved hearsay—the CFO supposedly told employees who told Watkins who is
telling Lay. Nevertheless, this is a powerful piece of intelligence for Lay—if he
himself is innocent.
The impact of the writing process on the memo’s voice. The August 15 and 22
documents’ striking differences in voice perhaps arise from the time pressure
under which Watkins wrote the first—delivering it the day she wrote it—versus
the 6 days she used to draft, rethink, and revise the second before her meeting
with Lay. In Power Failure, a 2003 book that she collaborated on with Mimi
Swartz, Watkins described her writing process. She started drafting on August
17 and called or met with contacts in the legal, finance, and credit departments to
check on facts and clarify technical points. On August 20 she started organizing
her materials and consulted with three more people. The chief risk officer of
Enron said he would rather not see the materials. She spoke on the phone at
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length with a former mentor at Arthur Andersen to confirm her understanding of
the accounting principles; he documented the conversation in a detailed memo
to the file. Jeff McMahon, a colleague and former treasurer of Enron, reviewed
her draft and met with her to discuss it. He recommended changing the word
irregularities in the subject line to make the tone less inflammatory; Watkins
substituted oddities. He stressed the need to be clear and credible about complex
technical accounting issues because her meeting with Lay would only last 30
minutes. As a result, Watkins distilled the draft to one and a half pages and
reduced the accounting terminology. She also added a concrete example
McMahon suggested. Her goal, he advised, should be to make Lay just nervous
enough to start an investigation. Watkins said that she sought to reach that goal
by being earnest and respectful, but a little pushy.
McMahon’s suggestions helped Watkins adjust the articulation and pace of the
memo’s voice. She had to explain highly technical accounting concepts to Lay,
who, though a prominent executive, had limited background in accounting. Over
the next few days, she rewrote explanations, cut accounting jargon, and simplified
the language. She distilled the complicated discoveries into four points, each with a
top-level summary sentence and separate numbered division. The format with lists
and indentations gives the illusion of faster paced reading. Though the subject matter is more complex, the August 22 memo has 20% fewer words than the August 15
letter.
The contrast between the types of discourse represented by the August 15 letter
and August 22 memo has been described in linguistic terms by Halliday (2002). He
said that all discourse involves hesitation, revision, and change of direction, but
these are hidden in highly self-monitored discourse, such as writing that becomes
public only in its final, edited form when “the reader is shielded from seeing the
process at work” (p. 340). The August 22 memo was highly self monitored; the
August 15 letter was not.
In summary, the August 22 memo uses the visions and voices of the implied
writer and others to convey a complex situation. The resulting hybridization of language allows Watkins to present ideas the reader will not welcome while maintaining a positive writer-reader relationship in the text. Though Watkins took into
account what she knew and heard about her intended reader, Kenneth Lay, she did
not attempt to write explicitly from his point of view or perspective. The memo
does not, therefore, meet the essential criterion that defines you-attitude, though it
is far less writer centered than the August 15 letter.
CREATING YOU-ATTITUDE THROUGH
HYBRIDIZED, DIALOGIC LANGUAGE
As I have shown, neither the August 15 letter nor the August 22 memo exemplifies you-attitude because they do not express the vision of the reader or suggest the
benefits he might receive from taking the recommended action of investigating the
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situation further. To see how the proposed theoretical conceptualization of the
writer-reader relationship in business prose might help us identify and use youattitude, let us turn to a third document Watkins wrote as a result of her subsequent
interactions with Lay. Watkins’s e-mail of October 30 to Elizabeth Tilney uses youattitude to a much greater degree than either of the other two documents. Like the
August 22 memo, the e-mail also incorporates multivoiced, intentionally hybridized language.
The Context of the October 30 E-mail
The context of the e-mail was as follows. At her meeting with Kenneth Lay on
August 22, Watkins requested a transfer because she was not comfortable continuing to report directly to Fastow, who she believed was the architect of the improper
transactions. Lay reassigned her to the human resources group. However, her background was in financial management, and she was given little real work to do. Lay
did not take Watkins’s advice to use a new law firm to investigate the situation
because the old law firm had been involved in the questionable transactions. He
also resisted her advice to restate earnings and take other steps necessary to try to
rectify the errors. The financial status of Enron deteriorated rapidly. On October 16,
the company announced that it would take a $544 million after-tax charge against
earnings because of the questionable transactions. Shareholders’ equity declined
by $1.2 billion.
Watkins made one more attempt to convince Lay to try to save the company. On
October 29 she met with him and delivered a two-page document explaining specific steps they could take to rebuild the company and protect his reputation. He
asked her to share the document with Elizabeth Tilney, senior vice president of
advertising, communications, and organizational development, and to work with
her on the initiative.
You-Attitude in the October 30 E-mail
Thus, on October 30, Watkins e-mailed Tilney, attaching the document given to
Lay and asking to work for her in public relations and investor relations. This e-mail
uses you-attitude, combining the reader’s vision with the writer’s voice. The e-mail
states the request quickly and then moves on to mention specific reader benefits—
how granting the request will help Tilney: Watkins can play the devil’s advocate on
the accounting issues, can anticipate the challenging questions, can develop
answers to those questions, and can start immediately on the steps necessary to try
to save Enron.
By using hybridized, dialogic language, the e-mail reveals a web of power relationships. The request is stated indirectly and attributed to Kenneth Lay: “Ken
thinks it would be a good idea for me to work for you in our PR [public relations]
and IR [investor relations] efforts.” The sentence constitutes an indirect speech act,
conveying a request (“let me work for you”) in the form of a statement of fact (“Ken
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thinks that . . .”). The immediate action Watkins requests of Tilney—to meet the
next day—is also cast in terms of Watkins’s access to Lay. She has an appointment
with him the next afternoon and wants to meet with Tilney before then. Yet Watkins
shows deference to Tilney both in the voice she chooses—“I’d sure like to meet
with you on this”—and in her offer to rearrange her own schedule as necessary to
meet at Tilney’s convenience. She closes deferentially: “Please call. Thanks.”
This e-mail illustrates how the visions of people other than the writer and reader
sometimes are essential. Here, the vision of Lay—as reported by Watkins—is critical. Watkins attributes the request to Lay rather than to herself. The three-way juxtaposition of Watkins, Tilney, and Lay constitutes an extension of the two-way
intentionally hybridized language that Bakhtin (1981) discussed.
Though the e-mail highlights the benefits to Tilney of Watkins’s working for her,
the e-mail does not exclude Watkins’s concerns. She says that she has not really had
a job since her first meeting with Lay on August 22; this assertion is both an explanation of why she can work on the PR effort immediately and an expression of her
frustration, as she is not someone accustomed to doing nothing. You-attitude does
not require the total elimination of the writer’s vision, but the reader’s must
predominate.
ACHIEVING APPROPRIATE WRITER-READER
RELATIONSHIPS IN BUSINESS PROSE
Though you-attitude—the combination of the reader’s vision and the writer’s
voice—is usually good, maximum application of the principle is not always desirable. In fact, what is more important is that writers carefully consider the multiple
ways that a writer-reader relationship may be expressed in a business text. As I have
shown, the possibilities extend beyond the visions and voices of the implied writer
and reader to those of other characters, such as Lay in the October 30 e-mail and
McMahon and Baxter in the August 22 memo. Given the many possible combinations and permutations of textual identities, vision, and voice, we may conclude
that business writers need to understand their options and artfully interweave multiple rhetorical and linguistic elements that affect the writer-reader relationship in
any text.
If Sherron Watkins had used more you-attitude in each of these pieces of discourse, the results might not have been ideal. Had she applied the concept of youattitude to the August 15 letter, Watkins would have decreased the expression of her
own vision and instead included Lay’s. Decreasing hers would not have been too
difficult. She would have subordinated or eliminated her own concerns and feelings. She would not have mentioned her own career prospects or résumé.
Increasing the expression of Lay’s vision in the letter, though, would have been a
challenging task, given that she did not know him well personally and did not know
to what extent he was involved in the questionable transactions. A key question
would have been how to portray the implied reader: Lay the innocent victim,
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deceived by those he had trusted, or Lay the guilty party in a conspiracy to defraud
investors and secretly enrich executives. Depending on the way that the writer envisioned the implied reader, you-attitude would have led to quite different lines of
reasoning.
In later congressional testimony, Watkins said she believed that Lay was not
involved in the questionable transactions but had been intentionally misled by Skilling and others. Assuming that she had wanted to construct this type of implied
reader and then to transform this letter into one that exemplified you-attitude,
Watkins would have had to omit or downplay key pieces of information that conflicted with Lay’s vision. Knowing he disliked bad news, she might have understated the danger the company faced. Suspecting he would resist believing Enron
employees were at fault, she might have focused on errors made by accountants at
Arthur Andersen or lawyers who advised Enron. Realizing that Lay, like any top
executive, would want to protect his own image, she might have complimented his
past achievements and stressed the potential benefits of his taking the initiative to
investigate. Clearly, the letter would have been very different if the writer had
assumed the point of view and perspective of the reader.
A rhetorical shift to greater you-attitude, however, might have been selfdefeating. Lay might not have recognized the emotional turmoil of employees and
might not have asked those with serious concerns to speak to a company officer.
The voice as well as the vision of the writer-centered letter captured his attention.
Although this situation was certainly atypical, other situations do sometimes call
for discourse that focuses on the writer, not the reader. Sometimes, what is critical is
for the writer to explain clearly a point of view and perspective with which the
reader is unfamiliar. Sometimes the writer has too little information to judge accurately what assumptions to make about reader’s motivations, priorities, or attitudes.
When such situations arise, writers need to consider the option of sticking with
their own vision and not trying to incorporate you-attitude in a text. Although it is
always wise for a writer to gather information about and analyze readers, it is not
always good to try to write from the reader’s point of view rather than one’s own, to
incorporate the reader’s perspectives explicitly in the text, or to state reader benefits
overtly.
Watkins could also have increased the you-attitude in the August 22 memo, but
doing so might have been counterproductive. The memo highlights improper transactions and suggests the culpability of some of Lay’s team of top executives—
charges Lay probably did not want to hear. The hybridized, dialogic language that
interweaves the vision and voice of the implied writer and other characters—but
not the reader—makes this possible. If the memo had been written from Lay’s point
of view and with his perspective, it would have downplayed or eliminated some
critical, though painful, revelations. However, this approach would not have provided the information he needed to pursue the questions with the appropriate people. In many situations, a careful balance among the writer’s, reader’s, and others’
visions is necessary.
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To increase you-attitude, the memo could have had direct explanations of benefits Lay would receive from investigating the charges fully and promptly. It would
have been hard, though, for a subordinate to make these kinds of statements to a
superior without sounding presumptuous or foolish and without violating organizational protocol. Whereas a salesperson can always state reader benefits overtly to
a potential customer, it is less clear-cut when a subordinate should state benefits
directly to a superior, especially when the benefits accrue to the individual more
than the organization.
Though the October 30 e-mail does have you-attitude, it could have even more if
it eliminated mention of Watkins’s situation—that she did not have a real job—and
if the benefits to Tilney were either expanded or discussed in more detail. Again, the
result might have been negative because credibility is sometimes lowered when a
writer focuses on the reader’s benefits but does not acknowledge his or her own.
Watkins could also have chosen to remove from the e-mail the references to the
point of view and perspective of a third party: Kenneth Lay. By attributing the
request to him rather than to herself, and by tying the action request to her scheduled meeting with him, she risked Tilney’s negative response to the power play. Yet
had Watkins not incorporated Lay’s vision into the e-mail, she would have risked
both a lower chance of success and a charge of concealing relevant information.
This example illustrates, then, that sometimes a piece of writing needs to highlight
the vision of someone other than either the reader or the writer.
The e-mail also illustrates how difficult it is to understand readers’ motivations.
Doing so is essential if writers are to use you-attitude, but they often lack adequate
information. In this case, unbeknownst to Watkins, Elizabeth Tilney had a conflict
of interest. Her husband, a Merrill Lynch investment banker, had invested in the
questionable partnerships for which his company had raised funds. The following
year, when called to testify at a congressional hearing, he refused, citing the Fifth
Amendment protection against self-incrimination (Thornton & Zellner, 2002).
Despite the you-attitude in both the October 30 e-mail and its attachment, these
could not save Enron. On November 3, the corporation restated its 1997 to 2001
financial statements to comply with generally accepted accounting principles, as
Watkins had recommended in August. It was too late, though, to regain investors’
and lenders’ confidence. On December 2, Enron filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.2
Enron’s demise has been analyzed as an epic narrative of capitalist hegemony (Boje &
Rosile, 2003) and as a story of leaders’ failure to communicate ethically and responsibly (Seeger & Ulmer, 2003). From my analysis of key texts, however, I see Enron’s
demise as an example of how individual writers’ rhetorical and linguistic decision
making may affect the larger course of events in unexpected and powerful ways.
CONCLUSION
I set out to answer three questions in this article: How should we conceptualize
the writer-reader relationship in business prose? What choices must writers make
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when they express this relationship in a text? And why are such choices important
in business practice?
The writer-reader relationship, I have argued, is created through the many possible combinations of vision and voice in text, which originate in the textual identities
of the writer, the reader, and, sometimes, other characters. By choosing a combination of more than one person’s vision and voice, a writer creates what Bakhtin
(1981) called intentionally hybrid, internally dialogic language. This type of language reflects human relationships even when the subject matter is impersonal and
technical, as it often is in business contexts.
To express you-attitude or other forms of hybridized, dialogic language, writers
must understand and artfully interweave the multiple elements that contribute to the
construction of vision and voice. Deciding when to use you-attitude requires careful judgment that cannot be removed from specific organizational and human contexts. Weighing these considerations, writers may choose to emphasize their own
visions, to balance the reader’s and writers’ visions, or sometimes to emphasize the
vision or voice of someone other than the writer or reader.
These rhetorical and linguistic decisions affect the interpersonal and professional relationships among people in business, as well as actions that result from
those relationships. All business texts have this power, but some, like those of
Sherron Watkins, affect corporate history dramatically. Even when business prose
seems ordinary, we should remember that it provides what Chatman (1978) called a
rich kaleidoscope of perspectives, preintentions, and recollections that can influence readers in unexpected ways.
APPENDIX A
August 15 Letter
Released by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee,
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, as part of its February and March 2002
hearings, and posted on its Web site: http://energycommerce.house.gov/.
Dear Mr. Lay:
Has Enron become a risky place to work? For those of us who didn’t get rich over the
last few years, can we afford to stay?
Skilling’s abrupt departure will raise suspicions of accounting improprieties and valuation issues. Enron has been very aggressive in its accounting—most notably the Raptor
transactions and the Condor vehicle. We do have valuation issues with our international
assets and possibly some of our EES MTM positions.
The spotlight will be on us, the market just can’t accept that Skilling is leaving his
dream job. I think that the valuation issues can be fixed and reported with other good will
write-downs to occur in 2002. How do we fix the Raptor and Condor deals? They unwind
in 2002 and 2003, we will have to pony up Enron stock and that won’t go unnoticed.
To the layman on the street, it will look like we recognized funds flow of $800 million
from merchant asset sales in 1999 by selling to a vehicle (Condor) that we capitalized
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with a promise of Enron stock in later years. Is that really funds flow or is it cash from
equity issuance?
We have recognized over $550 million of fair value gains on stocks via our swaps with
Raptor. Much of that stock has declined significantly—Avici by 98 percent from $178
million, to $5 million; the New Power Company by 80 percent from $40 a share, to $6 a
share. The value in the swaps won’t be there for Raptor, so once again Enron will issue
stock to offset these losses. Raptor is an LJM entity. It sure looks to the layman on the
street that we are hiding losses in a related company and will compensate that company
with Enron stock in the future.
I am incredibly nervous that we will implode in a wave of accounting scandals. My
eight years of Enron work history will be worth nothing on my résumé, the business world
will consider the past successes as nothing but an elaborate accounting hoax. Skilling is
resigning now for “personal reasons” but I would think he wasn’t having fun, looked
down the road and knew this stuff was unfixable and would rather abandon ship now than
resign in shame in two years.
Is there a way our accounting guru’s can unwind these deals now? I have thought and
thought about a way to do this, but I keep bumping into one big problem—we booked the
Condor and Raptor deals in 1999 and 2000, we enjoyed wonderfully high stock price,
many executives sold stock, we then try and reverse or fix the deals in 2001, and it’s a bit
like robbing the bank in one year and trying to pay it back two years later. Nice try, but
investors were hurt, they bought at $70 and $80 a share looking for $120 a share and now
they’re at $38 or worse. We are under too much scrutiny and there are probably one or two
disgruntled “redeployed” employees who know enough about the “funny” accounting to
get us in trouble.
What do we do? I know this question cannot be addressed in the all-employee meeting, but can you give some assurances that you and Causey will sit down and take a good
hard objective look at what is going to happen to Condor and Raptor in 2002 and 2003?
APPENDIX B
August 22 Memo
Released by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee,
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, as part of its February and March 2002
hearings, and posted on its Web site: http://energycommerce.house.gov/.
Summary of Raptor Oddities:
1. The accounting treatment looks questionable.
a. Enron booked a $500 million gain from equity derivatives from a related party.
b. That related party is thinly capitalized with no party at risk except Enron.
c. It appears Enron has supported an income statement gain by a contribution of its
own shares.
One basic question: The related party entity has lost $500 million in its equity derivative transactions with Enron. Who bears that loss? I can’t find an equity or debt holder
that bears that loss. Find out who will lose this money. Who will pay for this loss at the
related party entity?
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If it’s Enron, from our shares, then I think we do not have a fact pattern that would look
good to the S.E.C. [Securities and Exchange Commission] or investors.
2. The equity derivative transactions do not appear to be at arms length.
a. Enron hedged New Power, Hanover and Avici with the related party at what now
appears to be the peak of the market. New Power and Avici have fallen away
significantly since. The related party was unable to lay off this risk. This fact pattern
is once again very negative for Enron.
b. I don’t think any other unrelated company would have entered into these
transactions at these prices. What else is going on here? What was the compensation
to the related party to induce it to enter into such transactions?
3. There is a veil of secrecy around LJM and Raptor. Employees question our accounting
propriety consistently and constantly. This alone is cause for concern.
a. Jeff McMahon was highly vexed over the inherent conflicts of LJM. He complained
mightily to Jeff Skilling and laid out five steps he thought should be taken if he was
to remain as treasurer. Three days later, Skilling offered him the C.E.O. spot at
Enron Industrial Markets and never addressed the five steps with him.
b. Cliff Baxter complained mightily to Skilling and all who would listen about the
inappropriateness of our transactions with LJM.
c. I have heard one manager-level employee from the principal investments group say,
“I know it would be devastating to all of us, but I wish we would get caught. We’re
such a crooked company.” The principal investments group hedged a large number
of their investments with Raptor. These people know and see a lot. Many similar
comments are made when you ask about these deals. Employees quote our C.F.O. as
saying that he has a handshake deal with Skilling that LJM will never lose money.
4. Can the general counsel of Enron audit the deal trail and the money trail between
Enron and LJM/Raptor and its principals? Can he look at LJM? At Raptor? If the
C.F.O. says no, isn’t that a problem?
APPENDIX C
October 30 E-mail
Released by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee,
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, as part of its February and March 2002
hearings, and posted on its Web site: http://energycommerce.house.gov/.
From: Watkins, Sherron
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 4:45 PM
To: Tilney, Elizabeth
Cc: Olson, Cindy
Subject: PR for Enron
Beth,
Attached is the handout I gave Ken Lay today in our very brief meeting; I think I left
you a voice mail on this.
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Ken thinks it would be a good idea for me to work for you in our PR and IR efforts re:
our current crisis. Beth I think you know my involvement from Cindy, and that I haven’t
really had a real job since my first meeting with Ken re: these matters in late August. I can
jump on this asap.
The viewpoint is that I can effectively play a devil’s advocate on the accounting issues
and be sure we anticipate the tough questions and have answers. My personal opinion is
that it’s very hard to know who in the organization is giving us good answers and who’s
covering their prior work.
The attached outlines my viewpoint on the fact that I think we need to come clean and
restate; Ken and I did not get much chance to discuss this; I’m tentatively on his schedule
Wed afternoon. I’d sure like to meet with you on this. I have one meeting on Wed that I can
change. Please call. Thanks.
Sherron S. Watkins
Vice President, Enron Corp.
713-345-8799 office
713-416-0629 cell
Attachment: Disclosure steps to rebuild investor confidence
NOTES
1. The documents discussed in this article were released by the U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Energy and Commerce, as part of its hearings held in February 2002. The background
information about Enron in this article is from witness testimony. Transcripts of the testimony, Web
cast archives, and all documents are available at the committee Web site: http://energycommerce.
house.gov. For a good contemporary news account, see Eichenwald and Henriques (2002).
2. Andrew Fastow pleaded guilty on January 14, 2004, to criminal felony charges that he conspired to disguise Enron’s finances and risk and that he defrauded the company for his personal gain
(Eichenwald, 2004). He settled civil charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission and
agreed to pay $23 million in civil and criminal penalties. Prosecutors recommended he serve a 10year prison sentence. Jeffrey Skilling was indicted on February 19, 2004, charged with conspiracy
and securities fraud related to the manipulation of Enron’s financial statements (Emshwiller &
Barrionuevo, 2004). Prosecutors’ attention then turned to Kenneth Lay (Emshwiller, 2004).
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