This panel interrogates relationships of power that are often hidden from view. In technical communication, certain relationships evade easy examination. Independently and as a group,  our research reveals that things– especially in the fields of technical communication and in the larger discourse known as professional writing– are not as they seem. This panel attempts to better understand what lies beneath the surface level of our primary texts to wrest an interconnectivity to surrounding mutable texts that is not necessarily apparent.

Aaron Dawson looks at the connections between professional writing programs and the universities that house those programs, specifically the rhetoric of their mission statements. Often, we consider questions about these separately: What is the role of the university? What is professional writing? Dawson will examine at how the two elements engage with one another in both land-grant and non-land-grant universities.

Next, William Deaton investigates how genres become assimilated to the technical communications canon. Deaton describes recipes on epicurious.com as a type of procedural rhetoric that is ripe for study within the field of technical communication. He then speculates why that genre is not accepted within the field, arguing for a reassessment of the generic conventions of instructions and recipes.

Finally, Jay Kirby looks at relationships between economic conditions and technical communication pedagogy. The relationship between technical communication and business has seen much attention. However, these studies frequently focus on single jobs or single businesses. Kirby attempts to show lines of interaction between prevailing teaching theories and overall economic conditions and asks, which is affecting the other?

In laying bare the hidden connections between these elements, we hope to open up new lines of inquiry into the field.

In other words, the question about ethics seems to hinge on whether ethics come from within (“personal ethical responsibility”) or from without (“conditions” and “circumstances” that make for ethical decisions). Perhaps unknowingly, I think Gough and Price touch on an issue with creating the sort of “schematic” for ethical decision making when they are discussing circumstances for ethical decision making. Here they state that “ethical considerations require a human interest” (323). Maybe we could rephrase this to say that ethical considerations require an audience.

And, technical communicators no doubt agree that audience is important. And, perhaps we can point to heuristics that will help us understand a given audience. But at the end of the day, a true ethical decision must take place within a situation involving real people. And any sort of schematic for making these decisions will necessarily be lacking. Still, one can see the temptation to look for these schematics. They can provide an easy “check list” to making an ethical decision. But will that decision truly be ethical in a given situation? I worry the answer is no.

So then, how might we teach ethics. To me, Dale Sullivan made an interesting attempt at describing how to teach ethics by appropriating Carolyn Miller. In Sullivan’s essay, he does not try to lay out a one-size-fits-all ethical decision-making device. Instead, he looks at the definition of technical communication as social practice and attempts to situate ethics within that schema, with that schema representing a particular situation.

The main move Sullivan seems to make for teaching ethics is to make teaching technical communication political. To do this, Sullivan pulls on classical traditions of rhetoric as political discourse in opposition to classical traditions of “business writing” as the discourse of “slaves” (216). In doing so, he attempts to show that situating technical communication as a purely business-oriented type of communication strips technical communicators of the ability to make ethical decisions. Sullivan concludes, “[t]herefore, our present way of defining technical communication as the discourse appropriate for industry is equivalent to defining it as the rhetoric appropriate for slaves—those barred from making decisions about the ends, those whose decision-making authority is restricted to determining the most efficient means of obtaining predetermined ends” (216).

To remedy this, Sullivan suggests broadening the definition of audience to include the public—“even an imaginary one” (217). Now, the idea of assuming an “imaginary” public  seems counterproductive to me. In doing so one could fall prey to one’s own prejudices or the prejudices of society. However, when Sullivan describes his own class, we can see how these ethics can become more situated. In class, Sullivan assigns his students to different interest groups who debate a real social situation, in this case, copper mining strikes in 1913 (218). By situating students in a real (albeit historical) situation, I think that Sullivan creates a space where students can explore ethics without the necessity of the sort of “check lists” that Dombrowski decries and Gough and Price strive for. He figured out the third path.

I would argue that we can’t teach disagreement for disagreement’s sake. After all, too much discord would leave an collaborative work impossible to carry through. And a lot of the foundational studies of collaboration (cited by Allen and also noted in my own readings) come from Kenneth Bruffee. Bruffee says an aim of collaboration is consensus. Everybody needs a stake in the issue and a group needs a goal of reaching consensus. But Bruffee himself notes that collaboration without proper guidance can “perpetuate, perhaps even aggravate, the many possible negative effects of peer group influence: conformity, anti-intellectualism, intimidation, and leveling down of quality” (Bruffee, 1984, 652). Therefore, Bruffee says the selection of groups is important to ensure that the groups work together well (Bruffee, 1973 637). Of course, looking at Allen’s work with her colleagues, this type of “perfect” group is not always possible. In fact, when discussing the typologies of group collaboration, Allen notes that some groups are designed to “synthesize” otherwise disparate knowledge (363). So, in the real world, we may not always be able to rely on perfectly drawn up groups.

Bruffee introduces another idea for combating the negatives of collaboration: abnormal discourse. Certain group members will be outside the normal discourse of the group. This could result in the person being marginalized in the group, but it could also result in a revolution in the way the group thinks (Bruffee, 1984, 648). To me the question (that I will leave unanswered) is how can we ensure a positive result from abnormal discourse? Can we—or should we—train students to introduce “noise” into a discussion to see whether that results in a better outcome? Maybe.

John Trimbur offers a critique of Bruffee’s ideas in “Consensus and Difference in Collaborative Learning.” Here, Trimbur argues against accepting consensus as a goal for many of the same reasons that Bruffee was hesitant. Trimbur, though, is unwilling to say that consensus will ever necessarily create an outcome that is good for everyone. “Instead,” he writes, “I want to displace consensus to a horizon which may never be reached.” In this way, consensus becomes “a utopian project, a dream of difference without domination” (615). In other words, consensus is a measure against which you can pit reality. By interrogating the difference between the reality and some supposed “consensus,” we may be able to better understand each other in group work. Perhaps this is something more teachable.

What might be troubling is that both Trimbur and Bruffee were discussing collaboration in the context of collaborative learning. Allen and her compatriots are looking at collaboration as a real world product. Still, while the trick to productive collaboration may just be to collaborate more (just as the trick to better writing may just be to write more), some understanding of how we can better prepare students for these activities might improve workplace writing long term. Allen’s work seems to confirm some of the suspicions voiced by Bruffee and Trimbur. And looking at them together, perhaps we can create a coherent way to address collaboration in the classroom.

Works Cited

Allen, Nancy et al. “What Experienced Collaborators Say about Collaborative Writing.” Central Works in Technical Communication. Ed. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 351-364. Print.

Bruffee, Kenneth A. “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’” College English. 46.7 (1984): 635-652. PDF.

Bruffee, Kenneth A. “Collaborative Learning: Some Practical Models.” College English. 34.5 (1973): 634-643. PDF.

Trimbur, John. “Consensus and Difference in Collaborative Learning.” College English. 51.6 (1989): 602-617. PDF.

Technical Communication in the Twenty-First Century (TCTC) was compiled by Sidney Dobrin, Christopher Keller and Chirstian Weisser. Their book focuses on technical communication through many lenses—they list 10 themes—, but the most ubiquitous themes are rhetoric (used explicitly), the writing process and connections to the work place.

Though the authors do not divide the book such, one could read the book as having four main sections: theoretical grounding, the writing process, types of documents, and an appendix with reference materials. Outside of the appendix, all chapters in every section follow the same format. The chapters begin with a section titled “Real People, Real Writing.” These sections present an interview about writing with a professional writer. The authors cast a wide net for writers, ranging from engineers to marketers to police officers. Chapters are punctuated with activities set off by graphics labeled “Explore,” “Analyze This,” and “In Your Experience.” Further, each chapter ends with overviews of the chapter, multiple case studies (some of which are accessible online, others are on an instructor’s DVD), and writing scenarios that revolve around particular themes such as “collaboration,” “ethics,” or “technology.” A Web site companion to the textbook includes PowerPoint overviews of each lesson, additional activities, and quizzes.

This is the first edition of the textbook. Currently, the textbook is in its second edition. According to the textbook’s accompanying Web site, the second edition added a chapter entitled “Technical Communication in a Transnational World.” The first edition does not address much about cross-cultural issues. The first edition contained a few strange design choices and what I would guess are design errors. But overall, the textbook seemed as though it would provide a strong grounding for a class. That said, with Amazon stocking only four new copies of the book, my guess is this is not a popular textbook.

Writing Process

TCTC organizes its writing process around what it terms the “Problem Solving Approach.” The approach has five elements: plan, research, draft, revise, distribute. Each element offers tasks (ie, under revise: “Test the usability of the document”) that will help develop the document. The authors are careful to note (and repeat) that the approach is not linear. They construe the process as requiring practice to know when to utilize the different elements of it. That said, the introduction to the process looks hierarchical. And at times in the documents chapters, the textbook runs through the process linearly. At other times, the authors insert a “PSA” graphic next to generalized discussion, which accentuates its nonlinearity. And, in at least one instance, the text explicitly shows how one might move from element to element nonlinearly to complete a task.

Rhetoric and Persuasion

This textbook, unlike others we have seen, addresses rhetoric explicitly. A brief look at the authors’s CVs reveals that each teaches classes in rhetoric or works for a rhetoric department. Chapter two of both editions introduces rhetorical terms and concepts. TCTC uses the rhetorical triangle, couched in workplace terms. The book also describes “exigency” and uses that as a basis for much of the work in the “plan” stage of the PSA. It then connects other elements of the PSA to ideas of audience, author and text. Unstated but present are allusions to the rhetorical cannon: questions for the student to answer about organization stands in for arrangement, questions about distribution media for delivery. While the book doesn’t shy away from rhetorical terminology as other books seem to do, the terms only dominate in chapter two.

Document Design and Visuals

Chapters 7 and 8 of the textbook (chapters 8 and 9 of the latest edition) deal directly with design. Chapter 7 uses the term “visual rhetoric” and defines numerous types of graphics and images, two elements the text terms as distinct. Additionally, the text provides theoretical guidelines for visuals. Chapter 8 introduces what the editors call “elements” and “principles” “document architecture.” These include ideas such as balance and connection along with typography and white space. These two chapters are also quite visual heavy; I would estimate these chapters contain more visuals than text and the authors work to give numerous examples of successful and unsuccessful document designs for the various elements and principles they define.

Style and Tone

TCTC addresses style and tone throughout, both in terms of content and the implications of visuals on style and tone. The critical focus tends to be on using tone as a way to demonstrate professionalism. Both in the appearance and content, the editors provide examples of texts that show appropriate versus inappropriate tones.

Document Genres and Types of Writing

The textbook uses 12 chapters to address genres and types of writings. They begin with documents that nearly everyone will have to write: emails, letters, memos, resumes, cover letters, etc. Then, the editors move to increasingly complex or specialized documents: Websites, formal reports, manuals and so on. Each section has many pictures of examples and each section defines many subordinate types of documents. Additionally, the authors note the variety of ethical and technological issues that might accompany particular documents.

Research and Writing Technologies

In the opening chapters, the authors tend to take a descriptive stance on technologies: this is what is available; this is how you may use it. This leaves something to be desired because the book doesn’t outline specific uses. However, the editors remedy this in the document genres, showing how different technologies may benefit a particular text. Additionally, choosing a technology or medium for distribution figures into the textbook’s “Problem Solving Strategy.”

Ethics

I also wanted to address ethics because the authors thought ethical discussions quite important. Ethics is mentioned twice in the “Problem Solving Approach,” and each specific document chapter has some discussion fo ethics.

At the same time, that statistic gave me pause. The comparison to a Soviet-era propaganda machine seemed over-the-top. And, looking at the other examples made me realize: These are all print examples. And, some of these examples (Nature, Science, New England Journal of Medicine) were rather rigorous and academic. I would argue that comparing PowerPoint to Nature is irrelevant at best and misleading at worst. For Tufte is ignoring two central elements to PowerPoint presentations: the speaker and what the speaker says.

At the outset, we can see some odd linguistic tricks Tufte uses to make his argument. In the second paragraph, Tufte writes: “this chapter provides evidence that compares PowerPoint with alternative methods of presenting information” (3). The emphasis is in the original, but let’s compare it to what Tufte has to say in the following paragraph: “The evidence indicates that PowerPoint, compared to other common presentation tools, reduces the analytical quality of serious presentations of evidence.” Tufte seems to be waffling between “presentation of information” and “presentation.” The former term seems quite generalized; the latter, in my understanding (and I’d guess I’m not alone), generally refers specifically to in-person, oral, speech-like information.

And here, of course, is the problem. Comparing Nature (or the New York Times, or emails (12), or technical reports (13)) to PowerPoint is a false equivalency. You will not be able to deliver the same sort of information through PowerPoint that you would through a technical paper.

And, in some instances, this seems to be Tufte’s point. For some situations, a technical report or an email conversation or a journal article from Nature is the correct medium. And, when dealing with critical technical issues such as whether a shuttle is flight-worthy, these more data-rich methods are probably the right media.

Sometimes, though, we need information delivered to a diverse audience, in person, and orally. And I don’t know whether we should throw out PowerPoint in these situations. Sure, many of Tufte’s critiques hold true. And his analysis of the structure behind PowerPoint itself is one I am sympathetic to. But, without an analysis of what is being said versus what is being shown on the screen, I don’t know how valuable this critique is. For instance, Tufte praises special parallelism. And certainly PowerPoint should take advantage of this. But, by leaving out what was (or was not) spoken during the presentation, we have no way of knowing whether presenters are creating other types of parallelism that might overcome some of the downfalls of individual slides.

Moreover, as we’ve seen in class, many of the best presenters create a synergy between the oral part of the presentation and the PowerPoint. Measuring either alone does not paint the full picture. Therefore, even some of Tufte’s suggestions are less impactful. What point is there in reimagining our slides if we have not considered yet how those slides interact with our speech.

Tufte claims to have amassed an “unbiased collection of 2,000 PP slides,” but I disagree. In choosing only to look at the text, Tufte has revealed himself as biased toward long-form, written material. A more thorough analysis of the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness—I’m no convert!) of PowerPoint would require looking at the full presentations, not simply the disembodied slides.

Most of the class focused on discussion, which I enjoy. The professor would show us designs from magazines, and we would critique the designs. (For anyone with little confidence in their designs—read, me—the true horror were critique days: Your design went up on the projector, and everyone critiqued it.) I don’t remember much talk of “visual rhetoric” per se, but we did look at many of the elements Claire Lauer and Christopher A. Sanchez mark as important: use of white space to draw attention, an uncluttered presentation with a dominant image, tying the images into the thematic ideas without relying on words. Nifty, but I remember one thing irritated me about this course; we never really focused on learning the tools, such as PhotoShop, InDesign, and Illustrator. We went over the basics, and I think I graduated with “competence” in the tools. Truly great designs, though, were out of my reach because I didn’t have the technical skill to pull them off.

While I won’t say this class recreated the “studio environment” Eva Brumberger envisioned, we did have some of the hallmarks. We had to plan everything by hand. Our “drafts” were always done on paper with a pencil. And we, the students, would rework and critique our work, creating some of the “process” that goes into design. But, at the end of the day, we’d have to fire up a computer and put that design to disc, on a PDF, emailed to our professor. That last step is what killed me.

And—here is the detour—this got me thinking about composition. I, and I would guess others, would contend composition is a process that is difficult to codify. And, I don’t think I’m alone in this class when I say I’m sympathetic to Kent’s ideas that writing happens as a process of dialog. But, we also had frustrations about Kent in class: How do you teach this writing if nothing can be codified?

Well, while I may hold on to this ideal with writing, reading about visual communication made me wonder whether I have the same ideas about that type of rhetoric. My own experience in a class that was—at least tangentially—about visual communication showed me that what I really wanted was a technical, step-by-step instruction for how to create a design—and not just in my mind; I wanted to know how to use the computer to make this design whole.

Brumberger seems to suggest that composition instructors would do well not to put all faith in computers or those coveted (?) computer-based classrooms. Instead, we should work with students so that they understand this hard-to-qualify “process” of writing. The reality is, though, that these students will have to perform myriad writing tasks on a computer—sometimes through multiple programs and revisions on a computer. And, just as I was frustrated with my inability to translate my pencil-and-paper design to a computer file, I wonder whether some students face similar frustration about writing itself. In other words, am I more willing to approach writing as a nebulous process because I’m comfortable with it. And, consequently, am I frustrating students because my own comfort doesn’t translate into their comfort.

Maybe this boils down to one of the keys Brumberger brings up for teaching visual thinking: “making the familiar strange.” Talking about rhetoric in terms of visuals is much less familiar to me, and I’m less comfortable for it. Still, this has allowed me to see how—perhaps—other people might consider writing. In this way, perhaps Brumberger’s curriculum for visual thinking could help teachers who are comfortable with composition make the process more comfortable for their students. The five elements may well read: demystify composition and rhetorical thinking, make the familiar strange, conceive of composition as a process, valuing visual and verbal thinking, creating a studio environment.

Two of these elements likely have a place in the majority of composition classrooms, demystifying composition and rhetoric and conceiving of composition as a process. A third, valuing visual and verbal thinking, is probably present to some extent. But I’d like to consider the other two as possibilities for extending composition pedagogy. When describing making the familiar strange, Brumberger notes that students would take small areas of familiar ground and focus on those areas until they became “strange” and until the students could approach the areas as design. Could we, as composition instructors, trouble the “familiar” compositions of emails, text messages, Facebook updates, tweets, etc. to help students focus on the composition? Also, what might a “studio environment” look like for composition? And would there be value in creating one?

The author seems to have much more power in Bernhardt’s mind. Three of Bernhardt’s “dimensions of variation” (410) in the differences between print and digital text seem to give the author more power. The texts being “spacious,” “graphically rich” and “customizable and publishable” all seem to give authors more ability to craft a text as they choose. Other variations seem to empower the reader in digital texts, but I don’t know if I buy it.

For instance, consider the idea of “interaction.” While being able to interact with the text seems to give the reader more opportunities, Berhardt’s language shows another side: “However, writers of print material cannot force the interaction, they can only invite it” (413, emphasis in original). Here, we see that, while interactive texts may give readers an opportunity to interact with the text, to a greater extent, this type of digital text actually allows the author to force interaction, which gives, again, more power to the author.

Similarly, Bernhardt notes that digital texts can be “functionally mapped,” meaning they have symbols that tell readers how the text can be used, and that they can be “navigable,” meaning readers can quickly find information. But, we encounter issues here that may also draw power away from the readers. First, the whole idea that the text is “functionally mapped” belies the fact that this is necessary simply because the reader is being placed in an uncomfortable position in the digital environment. Bernhardt addresses this indirectly, noting that “users of computer systems are often handicapped by not having useful, productive strategies for approaching computer-based text” (420).

Digital texts are well suited for nonlinear texts, Bernhardt argues (419). And this may free texts to do more things. But this is not terribly unlike a text in codex; we can flip, in a nonlinear fashion, to any section of the text. Further, in many digital texts, our ability to move nonlinearly is hampered; I’m thinking of going page-by-page through a Kindle or watching a video of text. Here, I don’t know if any power is taken from the reader, but none is added, either. And on balance, it seems that the author’s power is buffed, the reader’s nerfed.

I guess at some point I should decide why—or whether—this matters. I tend to think it does for two reasons, one that centers on the reader, and one that centers on the writer.

For the reader, we (an English department writ large?) need to provide an arsenal of tools to prepare a reader to encounter a digital text. To some extent, this has been studied at universities: “digital literacy,” “electracy.” But I don’t know whether this has penetrated into curriculum—particularly primary school curriculum—the way traditional literacy has. And I’m fairly certain no widespread effort exists to bring literate adults the skills of digital literacy. And without both of these efforts, we’ll relegate wide swaths of the population to ignorance of digital texts. This could result in authors of digital texts being unable to utilize the full repertoire of digital texts or these authors taking advantage of people unable to navigate these texts—depending on how nefarious you take these authors to be.

And for authors, the great power demands great responsibility, something technical communicators might embrace. After all, the increasing scope and responsibility would put us into that rarified “symbolic-analytic” work. That said, we cannot become too enamored with our tools. Because of the relative novelty of digital texts, we must be more careful when considering our audience. Rhetorical or linguistic moves we might expect the average literate reader to understand may have counterparts in the digital realm that are not likewise understood by these same readers.

Or, maybe the dated discussion is the answer. Perhaps, now, people are fully comfortable navigating digital texts—but I doubt it.

Works cited

Bernhardt, Stephen A. “The Shape of Text to Come.” Central Works in Technical Communication. Eds. Johndan Johnson-Eiola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 410-427. Print.