authorship and discourse communities

Like so many other concepts, what counts as authorship varies by discourse community. An easy example of this is the difference between the writings of a creative writer writing fiction for a general audience and a literary critic writing for an academic journal. The differences are potentially endless. One may use dialogue between pretend characters while the other cites noted authorities and their work to argue a point. Both are authors, but the kind of authorship would not transfer well between the different discourse communities.

In academic writing, there are also differences between discourse communities for what counts as authorship. For example, the scientific community has slightly different standards when listing multiple authors of a study than the liberal arts community. Compare these discourse communities with the business and technical writing communities for an entirely different conception of authorship. Is the an author of your monthly billing statement? Especially now that so many companies use a computer to create such forms?

Institutions and discourse communities shape their construction of authorship based on their needs. In business it is more important to have a standard billing statement or letter that can be modified at will to meet specific needs than to worry about a specific author of that form. In the academic community where authorship is very important to gaining promotion and tenure, the author is constructed very carefully indeed.