Walking a Fine Line: Writing 'Negative News' Letters in an Insurance Company

This limited case study examines the situated-language practices associated with the production of negative letters in an insurance company. Using genre and sociocultural theories, the study combines textual analyses of a set of negative letters together with writers' accounts of producing these letters to identify effective (as defined by the company) strategies for composing this correspondence. These letters are examples of generic action, and they demonstrate that genres function as constellations of regulated, improvisational strategies triggered by the interaction between individual socialization and an organization. Moreover, these constellations of resources express a particular chronotopic relation to space and time, and this relation is always axiological or value oriented. In other words, genres express space/time relations that reflect current social beliefs regarding the placement and actions of human individuals in space and time. The article identifies some of the strategies that characterize effective negative messages in this organization. It also critiques this text type for enacting a set of practices and related chronotopic orientation that is against the interests of its readers and writers.