A corporate employee newsletter offers an ideal opportunity to discover how literacy functions as a means of assimilating individuals into a social structure. Underlying the corporate newsletter's assimilative function are the assumptions: (1) that in reading, employees rely on attitudes toward types of texts evolved within society as a whole; and (2) that employees create and enter into roles and relationships cued by the text. The newsletter is designed to resemble an ordinary newspaper, so that readers accept the newsletter as truthful and reliable. Furthermore, stories contained in the publications, such as articles praising heroic acts of particular employees, are intended to define the role of the good corporate employee. Analysis of story selection and revision also reveals that articles seek to humanize the corporation as paternal caregiver, and to portray it as active rather than passive. Because the corporate newsletter is a means of attempting to shape the attitudes and roles of readers, teachers must enable students not only to be literate, but to be critical of the messages they receive because of their literacy. Otherwise, students may be all too easily subjugated by those who would inflict identities and roles upon readers. (SG)