Medieval origins of corporate communication: Sampson of Oxford and the Method of Letter‐writing

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to provide corporate communication educators and practitioners with historical information about the origins of their field, so that they may have a greater understanding of their own roles in the continuum of communication theory and practice.

Design/methodology/approach

Research into secondary and primary literature on the development of the medieval art of letter‐writing, ars dictaminis, frames an analysis of the career and influence of Thomas Sampson, a fourteenth‐century teacher of ars dictaminis and other business subjects. Sampson's textbook, Method of Letter‐writing, is compared to another example of the genre, The Principles of Letter‐writing, written some 250 years earlier by Anonymous of Bologna and published in a widely available current textbook.

Findings

Compared to The Principles of Letter‐writing, Sampson's text is direct, concrete, and demonstrates a high degree of audience awareness. Instead of separating theory from practice, Sampson integrates the two, producing engaging model letters that also function as case studies.

Originality/value

While today's rhetoricians do not accord Sampson the kind of respect they do the authors of more theoretical letter‐writing manuals, they concede that Sampson was an influential teacher. This paper concludes that Sampson's impact as an educator is itself worth studying. Copies of Method of Letter‐writing continued to circulate long after Sampson's death, contributing to the origins of corporate communication as we know it.

Citation

Wetterhall Thomas, M. (2008), "Medieval origins of corporate communication: Sampson of Oxford and the Method of Letter‐writing", Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 112-123. https://doi.org/10.1108/13563280810848238