Book contents
- The Cultural Politics of Digital User Experience Writing
- The Cultural Politics of Digital User Experience Writing
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- I Mapping the Profession: The Language Work of UX Writers
- II Establishing Status
- 3 Skilling the Writer
- 4 Claiming (Non-)Creativity
- III Producing Little Texts
- Conclusion
- Appendices
- References
- Index
3 - Skilling the Writer
UX Writing and the Professionalization of (Elite) Language Work
from II - Establishing Status
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2025
Book contents
- The Cultural Politics of Digital User Experience Writing
- The Cultural Politics of Digital User Experience Writing
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- I Mapping the Profession: The Language Work of UX Writers
- II Establishing Status
- 3 Skilling the Writer
- 4 Claiming (Non-)Creativity
- III Producing Little Texts
- Conclusion
- Appendices
- References
- Index
Summary
This chapter discusses how UX writers claim elite status through discursive processes of professionalization and skilling. In this case, I am specifically interested in how UX writers as members of a relatively new and emerging professional group define and legitimize their (language) work. The chapter draws on critical sociolinguistic research on language work as well as scholarship in the sociology of professions to examine how UX writers discursively legitimize and professionalize their own work. In my analysis, I observe the construction, codification, and indexing of ’writing-as-designing’ as a (supposedly) unique skill in UX writing, arguing that it is the (dis)avowal of skills through which UX writers can establish their professional field, a practice that is always also connected to particular value judgements. Ultimately, I connect this case study to broader questions of language work, suggesting that in order to understand not just the elite language work of UX writers but also hierarchies of language work more generally, it can be fruitful to broaden such scholarship with a view to professionalization and skilling.
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- The Cultural Politics of Digital User Experience Writing , pp. 57 - 83Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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