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Miller, Carolyn. “A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing” College English. 40(6). 1979. 610-617. doi.org/10.2307/375964.

This piece by Carolyn Miller focuses on introducing new (for 1979 and still important today) “notions of what technical and scientific rhetoric can be and do” (48). Her work here looks at more than just the connections between scientific writing and technical communication though. She is extremely critical of the perceived connection between science and technical communication in this piece because of the traditional positivist view of science (which is clearly, to Miller, not the role of technical communication) and the historic connection between engineering and technical communication (as a service course). She claims that this positivist connection to technical writing is a “form of intellectual coercion, it invites us to prostrate ourselves at the windowpane of language and accept what science has demonstrated” (50). This windowpane metaphor is important to technical communication because it places individuals either inside or outside a particular place (or discourse community), and is often used by science fields to separate those who “see” what is self-evident and those who do not (Clay Spinuzzi would call this a “hero” complex).

Miller, after discussing the connections that are assumed to be between technical communication and science fields, calls for a new epistemology for technical communication. This is a call that is echoed through much of the research on technical communication still, including other works by Carolyn Miller, David Russell, Anne Beaufort, Mary Soliday, J. Blake Scott, and many others. The epistemology she creates here “holds that whatever we know of reality is created by individual action and by communal ascent” as a way to see the world (51). She continues developing her epistemology later by saying “if we pretend for a minute that technical writing is objective, we have passed off a particular political ideology as privileged truth” (52). This is important to think about in connection with other cultural research, and discourse community work, because the cultural connections that technical communicators deal with, between communities both inside and outside of the entities we work for, are important communities that define and redefine the work that we do and the knowledge that we share or produce.

This article is a historically foundational research piece for my comprehensive exams and my own dissertation research because it brings me to an understanding of much of the background, histories, and stereotypes of technical writing in the academy. It also helps me build an understanding of historical pedagogies in the field and where the field has space to grow. While this has many uses in the research I plan to do, I do not think that Carolyn Miller fully answers the need for cultural understanding, even though she hints at this need with her discussion of community and acknowledgement of forces outside of the technical writer. It also lays out many of the issues that still plague the perception of technical and professional writing and communication, both in the classroom and in professional work (specifically as monodirectional communication). She does introduce a need to begin to transition from technical writing to a much more technical communication, or rhetorical, focus as a field (which I feel we need to continue transitioning to, because I see it in my own department).

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Grabill, Jeffrey T. and Michele W. Simmons. “Toward a Critical Rhetoric of Risk Communication: Producing Citizens and the Role of Technical Communicators” Technical Communication Quarterly. 7(4). 1998. 415-441. Doi.org/10.1080/105722598909364640.

In this article, Grabill and Simmons focus on the social construction of risk and risk communication. Their study attempts to define risk as arhetorical by decontextualizing the concepts of risk and failure as something that is socially constructed. Grabill and Simmons define risk as currently having three aspects in the professional communication field: as something that “dissolves the separation between assessment and communication,” foregrounds the power in risk communication, and the technical communicator is the only person with the research and writing skills necessary for all of the processes involved in risk communication (360). Their goal was to define how important it is to examine both the disciplines and the institutions involved in risk communication to better understand how the various hierarchies of power are established and exercised in the communication of risk. These definitions of communication structure and power create a new meaning (at least for 1998) into how we as technical communicators are “supposed to” communicate with the “general public.”

Grabill and Simmons use Michel Foucault’s “The Subject and Power” as a lens through which to look at the concepts of risk and the power structures involved in the conversations surrounding risk. Foucault claims that “institutions exercise power through regulating and constraining knowledge making, production and consumption through rules and practices. Understanding how power is exercised, and looking for gaps, we can resist, even alter, unequal power relations” (as qtd. In Grabill and Simmons, 361-362). Foucault’s view (and Grabill and Simmon’s) shows that the power structures involved in document construction is one in which the power of decision making is given to “experts.” This choice of decision making, and distribution of information ends up masking the complex social connections and interactions that are involved in the creation of knowledge, therefor denying the citizens involved any real power in the creation of the knowledge and limiting the social needs of knowledge making. This, I (and Grabill and Simmons) would claim, would also weaken the message given by the “experts.”

This article holds some very important connections for my potential research, one is that I probably need to better acquaint myself with Foucault, and the other is that power formation is something that has the ability to evolve the messages of technical communicators for good and for ill. By looking at how risk communication deals with the social needs (or doesn’t) of the field, I will be able to find connections to other research. There are some interesting parallels between social construction, risk communication, and power structures that I should be aware of in looking at the needs of the audience. This helps inform my research when defining what is social within the field and being aware of who the decision makers are and how that can affect the work produced, its interactions and its intentions. Also, being aware of various communication structures, how they work, and how they are perceived is something that all technical communicators should be aware of.

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Faigley, Lester. “Nonacademic Writing: The Social Perspective” Writing in Nonacademic Settings. Ed. Lee Odell and Dixie Goswami. Guilford Press: New York. 1985. 231-248. Print.

In this article, Lester Faigley focuses on three different theoretical perspectives commonly used in professional communication (as of 1985). He develops definitions for the textual perspective, individual perspective, and social perspective of technical communication. In this work he explains how each perspective is developed and how each perspective is commonly used within technical and professional communication work. While dated, Faigley’s work shows us that each of the perspectives that the field uses are formed, often, in academic departments outside of professional communication departments. While these definitions that Faigley gives his audience can help create a better understanding of conversations in the field of technical communication, it is most important for my potential research to use his work to understand that he focuses on the social perspective and claims that it is the most useful for the field (arguments that he echoes or is echoed by research such as Mary Soliday, Mike Rose, Carolyn Miller, and many other researchers over the years).

Leaning into the social perspective that Faigley discusses, he developed his perspective through the framework of Mikhail Bakhtin as a way to show the usefulness of the social perspective. He also uses this framework to also show various flaws in the textual perspective and the individual perspective. Through this use of Bakhtin’s work (as many social focused technical communication researchers do), he shows that technical writing should be built on social foundations because of its more specified role that it plays outside of the academy. To do this he shares a series of main foundations that discuss the social issues that has importance for my work in professional communication. Those foundations are communication is linked to the culture of any particular society, writing is focused on the forms and genres (and discourse communities), academic and non-academic writing have overlapping communities, and that discourse competence allows entry into the community. These are important to Faigley (and my work) because they are all foundations that are built on larger implications outside of an individual course, program, or person.

Leaning into how this text works well for my work, it becomes a potential article to help operationally define, and prove the importance of, the social perspective in my research, which I often focus on issues of the social construction of power or the use of power in communication. Many of the other works that I have begun selecting for my potential research are focused on the social needs of professional communication (such as Soliday’s or Millers work) and Faigley’s work gives a clear definition and one that gives foundations that meet my own understanding of the work in the field. By using Faigley, Miller, Driskill, and Grabill and Simmons as foundations to guide the social needs of the field that I am working in, I can develop my own research project that may be able to help better define the role of writing within or to a community outside of the technical communicator.

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Driskill, Linda. “Understanding the Writing Context in Organizations” Writing in the Business Professions. Ed. Myra Kogen. NCTE: Urbana, IL. 1989. 125-145. Print.

In this article, Linda Driskill focuses on the idea of understanding contexts because the success or failure of business documents depends on contextual knowledge and how technical communicators use it (and is often discussed as “business savvy” in a business program). Her work develops specific approaches to particular aspects of communication (genres are the basis of communication courses, writing behaviors lead to standardization, technology is a source of behaviors) (57). From these three behaviors she develops a “systems approach to organizational behavior” and a pedagogical stance for teaching technical communication courses (57). These approaches are often, (a) not concerned with meaning (what Driskill calls a “company as a large abstract machine”), and (b) taught as a context free course (or generalizable information only zones) (57-58). By framing her work in this way, Driskill is able to separate the expectations from the actualities of the work in the field.

Her views on technical communication contradict previous work by Lester Faigley (his article on Nonacademic Writing) because, as Driskill claims, Faigley refuses to connect the idea of culture, and its definition, with other disciplines that work with culture. This is important to note because Faigley’s work is important to the field but by not connecting the ideas of culture with other disciplines, it limits the ways in which we as researchers, and teachers, can make connections to culture in the technical communication field. Because of these issues with Faigley and others, Driskill calls for a “greater congruence between organizational situations and rhetorical studies” (67). To do this she says, much like other researchers (Miller, etc.), that we need to develop much broader models of meaning and the sources of meaning in the writing contexts we teach and face. This is a similar call to genre research of Soliday, Prior, and Henze, because each of the researchers are arguing for a broadening of contexts and definitions that are using both organizational and rhetorical terminology as tools to guide decision making in technical communication (67).

Driskill’s article does some very interesting things for my potential area of study and dissertation research, such as separating the concepts of structure and culture as well as internal versus external contexts. It connects with much of my collected research on pedagogies in technical communication because of her call for more contextual learning and to a more thorough and explicit use of genre theory in preparing students for work beyond the academy (Mary Soliday and J. Blake Scott also make this call in their various works). Driskill’s piece also becomes an important historical text for my area of study because Driskill attempts to explain the connections and differentiations of discourse communities of both internal and external “sources of context” for technical communicators and technical communication courses. It’s also important to know that she also attempts to address what those contexts may mean for the writing processes (thinking about developing students). These are important things to consider when we develop or redesign more and more courses that are originally focused on technical writing or technical communication courses in specific disciplines (WID) and, as outsiders to the discipline, try to provide value and transfer opportunities to those students and programs through the pedagogies by tying coursework to “real world” writing.