La comunicación escrita en la Sociedad del Conocimiento. Formación universitaria y desempeño profesional

Abstract

The reflection that arises in this article is provided around three axes: (i) on the one hand, the basic role played by discourse, mainly writing, as the basic element of the Information Society and Knowledge; (i) on the second, the function that has to be served by the university as guarantor of training in a skill which has become essential for any professional activity in contemporary society: written communication; (iii) finally, it deals with challenges concerning didactics, and especially, with the challenge that linguistics has to face so as to propose useful learning models of written communication. Nowadays’ society and economy have been described as the Society of Knowledge. In this context, it is essential to point out that it is through discourse that knowledge flows (Chiapello & Fairclough, 2002: 195). For this reason, the primary objective of education at university becomes the study of how discourse has to be created in order to be effective in generating and disseminating (and also in selling) knowledge.

The current context of continuously innovating knowledge, organizations and individuals have to acquire new skills to survive and evolve. Education, therefore, must be continued and focused rather on the development of the learning skills than on mere knowledge transmission (Homs, 2008: 209). According to some experts, among the competences that a professional needs to have are included, on one hand, the ability to manage and interpret large amounts of information, and, on the other hand, the capacity to communicate messages that may fit different types of issues and receptors.

In summary, communication skills, especially written communication, are becoming a necessary knowledge, relevant to carry out a professional activity (Surma, 2005), and a transversal professional skill for different fields of knowledge (Montolío 2006, 2007, 2008a y 2008b; Montolío & López Samaniego, 2010). Hence the need that the university guarantees to their students, future professionals, the provision of such competences required to communicate through writing.

At the same time, we are witnesses of a transformation of writing at a variety of levels that needs to be reflected in pedagogical teaching writing models: regarding the units and reading styles, new media technology, the increasing multimodal written text, the continuous evolution and hybridization of professional genres, etc.