Technical Communication
| 549 |
Alred, Gerald J. St. Martin's Bibliography of Business and Technical Communication. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997. An extensively annotated bibliography of 376 items divided into sections on research and history, theory and rhetoric, profession and curriculum, genre studies, technology and visual theory, and interdisciplinary connections, each with several subcategories. Includes complete contact information for journals, professional associations, conferences, and Internet discussion groups, as well as an author index and a subject index. |
| 550 |
Anderson, Paul V., R. John Brockmann, and Carolyn R. Miller, eds. New Essays in Technical and Scientific Communication: Research, Theory, Practice. Farmingdale, N.Y.: Baywood, 1983. Twelve essays take a serious scholarly approach to empirical research, theory, pedagogy, and historical study in the field of technical communication. Essays include Lee Odell, Dixie Goswami, Anne Herrington, and Doris Quick, "Studying Writing in Non-Academic Settings"; Linda Flower, John Hayes, and Heidi Swarts, "Revising Functional Documents: The Scenario Principle"; Lester Faigley and Stephen Witte, "Topical Focus in Technical Writing"; Jack Selzer, "What Constitutes a 'Readable' Technical Style?"; James Zappen, "A Rhetoric for Research in Sciences and Technologies"; Charles Bazerman, "Scientific Writing as a Social Act: A Review of the Literature of the Sociology of Science"; and David Dobrin, "What's Technical about Technical Writing?" Winner of the NCTE Award in Technical and Scientific Communication. See: Charles Bazerman and James Paradis, eds., Textual Dynamics of the Professions: Historical and Contemporary Studies of Writing in Professional Communities [580]. |
| 551 |
Blakeslee, Ann M. "Bridging the Workplace and the Academy: Teaching Professional Genres Through Classroom-Workplace Collaborations." Technical Communication 10.2 (2001): 169–92. Two case studies of classroom-workplace collaborations in which students solved workplace problems as part of an academic course requirement demonstrate how such collaborations help in the teaching of professional genres. Students in a 300-level class of undergraduates only and students in a 400-level class of both undergraduate and graduate students completed projects that were provided by professionals in industry or academia. The results suggest that classroom-workplace collaborations may have several benefits. The collaborations can prove valuable to the students because they expose them to workplace activities and cultures, introduce them to the genres associated with those activities and cultures, and provide occasion for reflection and application of students' classroom and theoretical knowledge. See: Nancy Roundy Blyler, "Theory and Curriculum: Reexamining the Curricular Separation of Business and Technical Communication" [583]. |
| 552 |
Blyler, Nancy Roundy and Charlotte Thralls, eds. Professional Communication: The Social Perspective. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1993. Fourteen essays examine the ways that the social paradigm in the study of writing and rhetoric can contribute to an understanding of professional communication. Essays include Charlotte Thralls and Nancy Roundy Blyler, "The Social Perspective and Professional Communication: Diversity and Directions in Research"; Bruce Herzberg, "Rhetoric Unbound: Discourse, Community, and Knowledge"; Ben Barton and Marthalee Barton, "Ideology and the Map: Toward a Postmodern Visual Design Practice"; Thomas Kent, "Formalism, Social Construction, and the Problem of Interpretive Authority"; Joseph Comprone, "Generic Constraints and Expressive Motives: Rhetorical Perspectives on Textual Dialogues"; James Porter, "The Role of Law, Policy, and Ethics in Corporate Composing: Toward a Practical Ethics for Professional Writing"; Janice Lauer and Patricia Sullivan, "Validity and Reliability as Social Constructions"; and Mary Lay, "Gender Studies: Implications for the Professional Communication Classroom." Winner of the NCTE Award in Technical and Scientific Communication. |
| 553 |
Brockmann, R. John, ed. The Case Method in Technical Communication: Theory and Models. St. Paul, Minn.: Association of Teachers of Technical Writing, 1984. The case method holds that writing is best learned by performing in situations that specify data, characters, politics, and a writer's role. This collection offers seven essays on using and generating cases, an annotated bibliography on the case method in communication, eight cases for writing, and two cases for graphics. Includes R. John Brockmann, "What Is a Case?"; Marcus Green, "How to Use Case Studies in the Classroom"; and Charles Sides, "Comparing the Case Approach to Five Traditional Approaches to Teaching Technical Communication." See: Robert L. Brown, Jr., and Carl G. Herndl, "An Ethnographic Study of Corporate Writing: Job Status as Reflected in Written Text" [584]. |
| 554 |
Bryan, John. "Seven Types of Distortion: A Taxonomy of Manipulative Techniques Used in Charts and Graphs." Journal of Technical Writing and Communication 25. 2 (1995): 127–79. Whether distortions in presenting data in graphic form occur inadvertently, through guile, or because of software defaults, the increased use of graphing software requires communicators to be more vigilant about distortions. Seven types of distortion have been well-documented: manipulation of scale ratios (extreme differences between x and y axes); manipulation of the second dimension (fat lines representing what should be one-dimensional lines); manipulation of the third dimension (drop shadows and perspectives that inaccurately suggest volume); color distortion (highlighting or diminishing particular data); manipulation of composition (using design, typography, orientation, or embellishment to distract or overinterpret); manipulation of symbolism (failing to distinguish comparative data or obscuring data with illustrations); and manipulation of affect (using emotionally charged illustrations). |
| 555 |
Connors, Robert J. "The Rise of Technical Writing Instruction in America." Journal of Technical Writing and Communication 12 (1982): 329–52. The need for technical writing instruction grew in the latter part of the nineteenth century in the United States as engineering education grew and classical education shrank. However, no courses in technical writing were offered before 1900, reflecting the hope that freshman composition would suffice. It did not, as complaints in professional journals about nearly illiterate engineers attest. The first technical writing textbook, in 1908, concerned usage for professionals. The 1911 textbook by Samuel Chandler Earle is the first genuine attempt to address the needs of an advanced undergraduate technical-writing course. It condemned the "two cultures" split, chastising English teachers for regarding engineers as philistines. Earle used the modes of discourse as his pedagogical model. By 1920, though, books using technical-writing formats began to appear, along with a wave of books that attempted to humanize the engineering student by combining literature with writing instruction. World War II dramatically increased the need for technical-writing instruction: technical writing became a distinct job description, and teaching technical writing began to have more professional status, a trend particularly strong since the 1970s, with the appearance of professional societies and journals. |
| 556 |
Couture, Barbara. "Categorizing Professional Discourse: Engineering, Administrative, and Technical/Professional Writing." Journal of Business and Technical Communication 6 (1992): 5–37. Because knowledge depends on interpretation that is constrained by communal values (see Winsor, "The Construction of Knowledge in Organizations" [577]), scholars of professional writing need to develop an understanding of how discourse is framed and interpreted in organizations. Rhetorical categories can help reveal both textual and contextual elements in interpretive frames. Such categories are not technical labels but indicators of situations, disciplines, and forms that operate in particular contexts. Three rhetorical categories that identify group values and their effect on interpretation appear to have theoretical and empirical validity. The first, engineering writing, responds to the professional values of scientific objectivity, professional judgment, and corporate interests. The second, administrative writing, reflects decision-making authority and promotes institutional identity. The third, technical/professional writing, aims to accommodate the audience by meeting professional readability standards. Defining the characteristics of these types more precisely can help describe writing in ways that are more telling and more usable for those who teach professional writing. |
| 557 |
Draga, Sam, and Van Doss. "Cruel Pies: The Inhumanity of Technical Illustrations." Technical Communication 48.3 (2001): 265–74. A review of research on the ethics of visual communication reveals that the definition of ethics is almost always associated with deception and distortion. While it is important to incorporate visuals with honesty and accuracy, technical communicators should also expand their understanding of the ethics of visual communication and develop techniques that bring humanity as well as honesty to technical illustrations. Too often, particularly in writing that reports human fatalities, visual images objectify and dehumanize people for purposes of statistical manipulation. However, using pictographs or superimposing bar graphs and line graphs on pictures or drawings of human subjects are two possible ways to humanize the visual display of information. |
| 558 |
Gelinas, Ulric J., D. V. Rama, and Terrance M. Skelton. "Selection of Technical Communication Concepts for Integration into an Accounting Information Systems Course: A WAC Case Study." Technical Communication Quarterly 6 (Fall 1997): 381–401. In a project to improve communication skills for accounting majors in an accounting information systems course, faculty in accounting and technical communication collaborated to determine the precise discipline-specific forms of communication appropriate for the course and ways to make communication instruction integral to the curriculum. In accounting, as in many technical fields, discourse forms have not been well described. Where discipline-specific communication texts exist, their use is impeded by the mismatch between textbook goals and course goals. In the present project, collaborators first adopted the quality measure of "fitness for use" (in place of traditional measures such as readability). This measure proved applicable to both accounting problem-solving and writing, and was easy to explain to students. Next, a small number of specific forms of communication were chosen for assignments—a "playscript" model for documenting procedures, interviewing, and report writing. A small set of specific skills was then targeted: situational analysis, document planning, and presentation mechanics—all developed in the context of fitness-for-use. Over several semesters, a very successful pedagogy developed. Some specific elements here may be transferable to other disciplines—the fitness-for-use measure and document planning skills—but the general approach may be a helpful model for bringing WAC into fields where little is known about how practitioners function as a discourse community. |
| 559 |
Harris, John S. Teaching Technical Writing: A Pragmatic Approach. St. Paul, Minn.: Association of Teachers of Technical Writing, 1992. Beginning teachers of technical writing (and more experienced teachers looking for new ideas) can learn much from a book that not only presents materials and methods for teaching the course but also speaks frankly about the career path of such teachers in the academy. In twenty-one chapters, Harris defines technical writing, describes programs and textbooks, and tells how to work within an indifferent English department, design a course, teach special forms (proposals, correspondence, term papers, graphics), grade papers, and get promoted. See: Thomas N. Huckin, "Technical Writing and Community Service" [701]. See: Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber, "Policing Ourselves: Defining the Boundaries of Appropriate Discussions in Online Forums" [681]. |
| 560 |
Hart-Davidson, William. "On Writing, Technical Communication, and Information Technology: The Core Competencies of Technical Communication." Technical Communication 48.2 (2001): 145–155. Writing is the core technology that all information technology systems seek to leverage; by extension, then, technical communication plays a central role in all information technology systems. In the development of information technology, technical communicators deal with two critical issues: identity (fixed or fluid) and strategy (situated or flexible). Technical communicators in both the workplace and the academy, however, can take on an even more pivotal role through the construction of theories about their work that expand the core expertise by raising new questions, researching new possibilities, and inventing new information technologies that build on their expertise and that help shape policy. By claiming and cultivating the conceptual spaces where identity and strategy are closely aligned, technical communicators can enter discourses in social, ethical, and political arenas. |
| 561 |
Johnson, Robert R. User-Centered Technology: A Rhetorical Theory for Computers and Other Mundane Artifacts. N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1998. Modern technology is for the most part system- or artifact-centered. However, the end of technology should be refigured in terms of the user: the human who interacts with the technology. Based in rhetoric, the user-centered model focuses on the user's situation. User-centered theory classifies user knowledge in terms of practitioners, producers, and citizens. User as practitioner assumes that users are just that—mere users of tools that have already been designed and delivered; user as producer assumes that users not only employ the technological tools available to them, but also are capable of designing and maintaining them. User as citizen envisions users as contributing, responsible members of technological enterprises. The user as citizen produces and participates, rather than just consuming. In addition to user knowledge, human-technology interaction and technological determinism are also central to user-centered theory of technology. |
| 562 |
Johnson-Eilola, Johndan, and Stuart A. Selber. "Sketching a Framework for Graduate Education in Technical Communication." Technical Communication Quarterly 10.4 (2001): 403–437. Graduate education in technical communication should offer an expansive view of the field. One way to achieve that view is through a three-dimensional framework that places the multiple and varied approaches to technical communication into one coherent structure. Rather than introducing students to the field of technical communication through an historical survey or through the conventional topics, this framework, geared toward a standard entry-level course in technical communication, organizes the field's modes of analysis (in this case, rhetorical, spatial, empirical, and critical modes) into three categories: thinking, doing, and teaching. Such an arrangement highlights and encompasses the diversity of the discipline, and can also provide a space in which the discipline can grow. A sample syllabus is included. Winner of NCTE award in technical communication. |
| 563 |
Katz, Steven B. "The Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust." CE 54 (March 1992): 255–75. The ethos of expediency, objectivity, logic, and narrow focus that characterizes technical writing and deliberative rhetoric can become an ethical imperative. This ethos, adopted by the Nazi regime and combined with science and technology, helped create a "moral" basis for Nazi culture, an ethos of the society as a whole. The Holocaust is not an aberration, a breach in the standard of virtue, but a result, in part, of the ethic of expediency. Expediency in deliberative rhetoric traces back to Aristotle, for whom even ethical prudence is an element of praxis and for whom utility is itself a good. The Nazi regime represents an extreme in which the polis as a whole adopted a telos of expediency. We should not ignore the implications of our own extreme adoption of expediency in an individualistic and materialistic technology-driven capitalist society. We should make awareness of the ethical force of the role of expediency in rhetoric part of our teaching of ethics in technical communication. |
| 564 |
Koerber, Amy. "Toward a Feminist Rhetoric of Technology." Journal of Business and Technical Communication 14.1 (January 2000): 58–73. A rhetoric of technology enables meaning-making about technological aspects of the world; a feminist rhetoric of technology, therefore, enables meaning-making that reflects feminist concerns about technology. In contemplating what a rhetoric of technology might look like, there are three ways that a feminist approach should differ from a nonfeminist approach. First, a feminist rhetoric of technology should expand the definition of technology into one that addresses the concern that current definitions of technology exclude the historical contributions of women. Second, feminist scholars should also ask different research questions; specifically, their questions should aim to account for technologies' role and participation in the construction of gendered meanings. Finally, a feminist rhetoric of technology should move beyond the design and development phases of technology in order to address the fact that although new technologies are often promoted as liberatory, they rarely meet that potential. These three suggestions are a starting place in the move toward a feminist rhetoric of technology, a rhetoric that will draw from, as well as challenge and contradict, nonfeminist rhetorics of technology. |
| 565 |
Lay, Mary M., and William M. Karis, eds. Collaborative Writing in Industry: Investigations in Theory and Practice. Amityville, N.Y.: Baywood, 1991. The theory and practice of collaborative writing as it applies to workplace writing, along with studies of the implications of this research for the classroom, are the subjects of twelve essays, including David K. Farkas, "Collaborative Writing, Software Development, and the Universe of Collaborative Activity"; Timothy Weiss, "Bruffee, the Bakhtin Circle, and the Concept of Collaboration"; Barbara Couture and Jone Rymer, "Discourse Interaction between Writer and Supervisor: A Primary Collaboration in Workplace Writing"; William Van Pelt and Alice Gillam, "Peer Collaboration and the Computer-Assisted Classroom: Bridging the Gap between Academia and the Workplace"; Dixie Elise Hickman, "Neuro-Linguistic Programming Tools for Collaborative Writers"; and Roger Grice, "Verifying Technical Information: Issues in Information-Development Collaboration." Winner of the NCTE Award in Technical and Scientific Communication. |
| 566 |
Locker, Kitty O. "What Do Writers in Industry Write?" Technical Writing Teacher 9 (1982): 122–27. Students in technical writing classes are often surprised to hear that people in business and industry routinely write more than ten pages a week and often much more. Writing is invaluable because it provides a permanent record, it is often more effective than other means of communicating, it is often less expensive than other forms of communicating, it is taken more seriously than oral communication, and so on. Thus, a huge amount of writing goes on in the workplace— See: Carolyn B. Matalene, ed., Worlds of Writing: Teaching and Learning in Discourse Communities of Work [593]. |
| 567 |
Longo, Bernadette. Spurious Coin: A History of Science, Management, and Technical Writing. New York: State University of New York Press, 2000. Within the framework of the historical tension between scientific knowledge-making and liberal arts knowledge-making, technical writing becomes both a genuine and a counterfeit form of currency of scientific knowledge. The scientific knowledge constructed and communicated by scientists and engineers is taken as true currency in a culture dominated by scientific culture, whereas the scientific knowledge made by technical writers with liberal arts backgrounds is considered spurious. The unscientific language practices that can, and do, make scientific knowledge must be transformed into science before they can become genuine currency of scientific knowledge. Intellectual practices spanning centuries of Western civilization, such as the use of clear, correct English; maximum efficiency of production and operation; the need to contribute to the wealth of scientific knowledge aimed at bettering the human condition; the tension between the role of science and the role of art within a culture; and the urge to purify language and standardize practice, frame this cultural history of technical writing. |
| 568 |
Markel, Mike. Ethics in Technical Communication: A Critique and Synthesis. Westport, Conn.: Ablex, 2001. The relationship between ethics and technical communication should be considered a practical art rather than an abstract theory. Traditional ethical systems do not offer effective problem-solving techniques, but they do provide necessary insight into values that have long been a part of civilization. In developing new, practical approaches to ethics, the long heritage of philosophical ethics has to be considered. Likewise, business ethics should also be studied in order to understand the relationship between ethics and technical communication, because technical communicators typically face one of business ethics' most common conflicts—the conflict between an organization's utilitarian thinking and an individual's subjective, rights-based thinking. Overall, technical communicators wrestling with issues of truth telling, liability, multicultural communication, intellectual property, and codes of conduct, will benefit from an approach to ethical decision making that involves clearheaded, practical thinking about rights, justice, utility, and care, in a free and open discourse. |
| 569 |
Miller, Carolyn R. "A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing." CE 40 (1979): 610–17. A pervasive positivist view of science is the source of the erroneous belief that technical writing is a skills course. Believing truth to be a function of perceiving material reality, positivists wish scientific and technical rhetoric to subdue language and transmit bare technical knowledge. Technical-writing textbooks endorse this antirhetorical belief. The shortcomings of the positivist view are evident in the confused definitions of technical writing it produces ("clarity" neither defines nor characterizes technical writing), in its emphasis on form at the expense of invention, and in its tendency to analyze audience in terms of "levels" (which reduces to vocabulary choice). Yet scientists themselves no longer hold a positivist view but understand that knowledge is inseparable from the knower: communal discussion and argument determines knowledge. From this perspective, teaching technical writing is a form of enculturation, not a set of forms and techniques, but an understanding of how to participate in a community, a thoroughly humanistic endeavor. |
| 570 |
Miller, Carolyn R. "What's Practical about Technical Writing?" Technical Writing: Theory and Practice. Ed. Bertie E. Fearing and W. Keats Sparrow. New York: MLA, 1989. 14–24. Technical writing has long been regarded as practical in the "low" sense of being mundane and untheoretical. This view gives rise to a contradiction in technical writing instruction: that workplace writing is at once imperfect (requiring improvement through instruction) and authoritative (the goal of instruction). This contradiction mirrors the larger conflict between practical and humanistic studies in the recent history of education. Professional education tends to acquiesce in treating common industry or professional practice as useful and therefore good. There is a "high" sense of practicality, though, that can be applied to technical writing and other professional education. Aristotle characterizes rhetoric as techne or art, a middle term between theory and practice, "a productive state that is truly reasoned." To this should be added Aristotle's sense of phronesis or prudence: rhetoric in this sense is a form of conduct, like ethics, drawing upon observation of human affairs in order to take socially responsible action. Practical rhetoric of this sort must allow for criticism and judgment, and take responsibility not only for the corporation but for the larger community in which it operates. |
| 571 |
Odell, Lee, and Dixie Goswami, eds. Writing in Nonacademic Settings. New York and London: Guilford Press, 1985. Fourteen essays describe how to conduct research on writing in the workplace; what such research has found concerning the structure of professional discourse, the use of electronic media, and the social/institutional influences on nonacademic writing; and how such research can influence academic and nonacademic writing instruction. Essays include Stephen Doheny-Farina and Lee Odell, "Ethnographic Research on Writing: Assumptions and Methodology"; Carolyn R. Miller and Jack Selzer, "Special Topics of Argument in Engineering Reports"; Lester Faigley, "Nonacademic Writing: The Social Perspective"; David A. Lauerman, Melvin W. Schroeder, Kenneth Sroka, and E. Roger Stephenson, "Workplace and Classroom: Principles for Designing Writing Courses." |
| 572 |
Sauer, Beverly. "Embodied Knowledge: The Textual Representation of Embodied Sensory Information in a Dynamic and Uncertain Material Environment." Written Communication 15 (1998): 131–69. The dynamic, uncertain material world of a coal mine raises ethical questions concerning textbook notions of instructions as systematic procedures that can translate expert knowledge to lay audiences or that can prescribe safe behaviors to highly specific, local, and unpredictable environments. While workers in risky environments may in fact follow instructions, they still experience failure and injury. Management and engineering solutions will not suffice unless they reflect embodied sensory information that assesses risk in practice, on-site, rather than just in theory, on paper. Non-textual sources, such as the gestures of experienced miners when recounting work successes and failures, need to be explored and included when experts represent embodied information that is not articulated in written texts. |
| 573 |
Selber, Stuart A, ed. Computers and Technical Communication: Pedagogical and Programmatic Perspectives. Greenwich, Conn.: Ablex, 1997. Placing computers and computing activities within the cultural context of a technological society, seventeen essays examine the pedagogical and programmatic issues that face technical communication teachers and program directors. The essays, arranged in four sections, address challenges that must be met if humanistic instructional practices at both the undergraduate and graduate levels is a goal of technical communicators. Part One, Broadening Notions of Computer Literacy, focuses on the design and use of computer hardware and software in a variety of contexts, such as social, cultural, political, ethical, and legal. Part Two, Exploring Pedagogical Frameworks for Computers and Technical Communication, considers the ways teachers and program directors might facilitate critical literacies suggested by part one. Part Three, Examining Computer-Supported Communication Facilities from Pedagogical Perspectives, calls attention to the complications and challenges in supporting the computing needs of technical communication programs. Part Four, "Planning for Technological Changes in Technical Communication Programs," offers guidelines for long-term thinking about computers and technical communication in instructional and institutional contexts. Essays include Stuart A. Selber, "Hypertext Spheres of Influence in Technical Communication Instructional Contexts"; James E. Porter, "Legal Realities and Ethical Hyperrealities: A Critical Approach Toward Cyberwriting"; Johndan Johnson-Eilola, "Wild Technologies: Computer Use and Social Possibility"; Ann Hill Duin and Ray Archee, "Distance learning Via the World Wide Web: Information, Engagement, and Community"; Brad Mehlenbacher, "Technologies and Tensions: Designing Online Environments for Teaching Technical Communication"; Richard J. Selfe and Cynthia L. Selfe, "Forces of Conservatism and Change in Computer-Supported Communication Facilities: Progammatic and Institutional Responses to Change"; Tharon Howard, "Designing Computer Classrooms for Technical Communication Programs"; Stephen A. Bernhardt and Carolyn S. Vickrey, "Supporting Faculty Development in Computers and Technical Communication"; Pamela S. Ecker and Katherine Staples, "Collaborative Conflict and the Future: Academic-Industrial Alliances and Adaptations." Winner of NCTE Award in Technical Communication. |
| 574 |
Smith, Elizabeth O. "Strength in the Technical Communication Journals and Diversity in the Serials Cited." Journal of Business and Technical Communication 14.2 (April 2000): 131–84. A citation analysis of the ninety-nine most frequently cited serials for technical communication scholars over a ten year period demonstrates the strength of five technical communication journals: IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, the Journal of Business and Technical Communication, the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Technical Communication, and Technical Communication Quarterly. Identifying the journal these serials call on for background and support also demonstrates the diversity of the technical communication discipline. Because of this diversity, technical communication scholars must be skilled in accessing and analyzing information from across the disciplines. The list of serials covered provides newcomers to technical communication with a good starting point for exploring the field, while experienced professionals may encounter new source materials. |
| 575 |
Spilka, Rachel, ed. Writing in the Workplace: New Research Perspectives. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1993. Nineteen essays report on research in workplace communication based on the social-perspective model and examine implications of recent research for teaching and future research. Includes Barbara Couture and Jone Rymer, "Situational Exigence: Composing Processes on the Job by Writer's Role and Task Value"; Jamie MacKinnon, "Becoming a Rhetor: Developing Writing Ability in a Mature, Writing-Intensive Organization"; Judy Segal, "Writing and Medicine: Text and Context"; Jennie Dautermann, "Negotiating Meaning in a Hospital Discourse Community"; Graham Smart, "Genre as Community Invention: A Central Bank's Response to Its Executives' Expectations as Readers"; Rachel Spilka, "Influencing Workplace Practice: A Challenge for Professional Writing Specialists in Academia"; and Stephen Doheny-Farina, "Research as Rhetoric: Confronting the Methodological and Ethical Problems of Research on Writing in Nonacademic Settings." |
| 576 |
Staples, Katherine, and Cezar Ornatowski. Foundations for Teaching Technical Communication: Theory, Practice, and Program Design. Greenwich, Conn.: Ablex, 1997. This collection includes twenty-two new essays divided into four sections: Theoretical Foundations, Practical Foundations, Professional Roles for Technical Communicators, and Program Design. Each essay is concise and includes a thorough bibliography. Theory topics include an overview, by Mary Coney; organizational context, by Teresa Harrison and Susan Katz; rhetorical theory, by Ornatowski; social construction theory, by Mahalingam Subbiah; and cognitive psychology, by Janice Redish. Topics in the practical section include ethics, by Scott Sanders; gender, by Linda LaDuc; collaboration, by Rebecca Burnett, Christianna White, and Ann Hill Duin; new technology, by Henrietta Shirk; and media design, by Stuart Selber. In the professional roles section are essays on technical writing, by Roger Grice; technical editing, by Elizabeth Turpin and Judith Gunn Bronson; and visual communication, by Kenneth Rainey. Program design includes an overview by M. Jimmie Killingsworth; four-year programs, by Sam Geonetta; two-year programs, by Staples; certificate programs, by Sherry Burgus Little; service courses, by Nell Ann Pickett; research programs, by Billie Wahlstrom; and evaluating programs, by Meg Morgan. |
| 577 |
Winsor, D. "The Construction of Knowledge in Organizations: Asking the Right Questions about the Challenger." Journal of Business and Technical Communication 4 (1990): 7–20. Research on communication failures that led to the Challenger explosion asked why those who knew about the faulty O-rings failed to pass the information on to decision makers. This question betrays a simplistic notion of knowledge and a conduit model of communication. Knowledge is, in fact, socially conditioned and does not come about, as is usually imagined, by contemplating evidence. The engineers and managers of the Challenger project were using different ideas of what counted as evidence, influenced by factors other than evidence, chiefly by membership in task groups with particular views of the project. Knowledge is not certain. Thus, information—such as that the O-rings were faulty—cannot simply be passed on. Reception of a report does not signify reception of information because information does not convey its own interpretation. The questions to ask in this case concern the rhetorical power to affect communal knowledge, which is the crucial factor. See also Couture [556]. |
| 578 |
Winsor, Dorothy. "Engineering Writing/Writing Engineering." CCC 41 (1990): 58–70. We accept the idea that knowledge is shaped by language, but engineers tend to see knowledge as coming from physical reality without textual mediation. Textbooks often reinforce the view of language as merely a means of transmitting information. A study of a veteran mechanical engineer's writing showed, though, that most source documents and his own writing were based on other documents rather than direct observation. Writing about a new engine, the engineer referred not to the engine but to documents reporting the results and interpretations of tests, to technical summaries, and to handouts used in oral reports. Moreover, many of the reports were written in such a way as to suggest that decisions were consistently made in an orderly way on the basis of prior information, rather than on hunches or instinct. These reports reflect the engineers as they imagine themselves to be. Engineering writing, like all writing, constructs the world that the writer can bear to inhabit. |