In considering this week’s readings, I am struck most by our textbook’s two essays on the implications of ethics in the technical communication classroom and the way they encourage instructors to think critically about ways to subvert dominant culture in their own classes by simply exposing that (hegemonic) culture (on pg. 217: “Even though we teach the discourse of the military-industrial complex, we can make clear that alternative cultures exist and that we identify with those cultures”). While these texts claim that encouraging the accepted discourse of professional writing implicitly recruits students to an enculturation which may not be a good one, both Dale L. Sullivan’s “Political-Ethical Implications of Defining Technical Communication as a Practice” and Carl G. Herndl’s “Teaching Discourse and Reproducing Culture” gloss over carefully defining the very ethos of the dominant culture they wish to disassemble. Doing so is likely beyond the scope of their articles, so perhaps it would be helpful to analyze why this culture is worth adopting as the standard to which technical communication courses might ideally react.

Sullivan quotes Patricia Bizzell as writing, “Our dilemma is that we want to empower students to succeed in the dominant culture so that they can transform it from within; but we fear that if they do succeed their thinking will be changed in such a way that they will no longer want to transform it” (222). I take that latter part to mean that once students become professionals they grow jaded and sated by the security of increased finance and find the dominant culture in which they are now operating guileless. But what is so wrong with the dominant culture that we should grieve when the student-turned-professional enjoys it? Because the scope of a blog post is brief and the concept of culture (dominant or no) is incredibly developed, I’ll pick and choose what parts of dominant culture might be apt for critique in the technical communication classroom.

In an essay we’ve read during our ‘Pedagogies’ week of our course, Lee E. Brausser writes that language practices like “passive voice and the decontextualization of information… as well as other aspects of organizational cultures, promote a disregard for the human subject that is problematic for any culture or cultures outside of the dominant one” (476). And that as the dominant group continues to practice these traditions, it will continue to impose order on the Other. So of course, there’s this, that current language practices produce an implicit push on marginalized cultures (and as Sullivan points out, Carolyn Miller argues in “Genre as Social Action” that in some degree, the instruction of specific genres is ultimately classist (214) ). Indeed, the one indoctrination of dominant culture Sullivan singles out in “Political-Ethical Implications” is the inherent problem of teaching genres, that genres enable agency only through those who can write them and know their language. There is also, of course, some of the more obvious and more discussed means of oppression dominant culture is often critiqued for (eg., gender, race, class) but there is one element I wonder is worth including in talking about dominant culture.

Talking about (the lack of) ethics within company-formulated manuals, conversations on the of passivity and objectivity in research writing,  these are manifestations of dominant culture in technical communication that presume maybe the most extreme form of (classist) criticism: that literacy is valued as a signifier of  human safety. In “Contesting the Objectivist Paradigm,” Lee E. Brasseur writes that, “…any assumption by a dominant group of what constitutes common sense only serves to separate ideology and practice of expert knowledge from subsequent human action” (477). In a way, literacy seems like the most basic (and common) form of common sense, that what Brasseur calls human action seems the kind of action that is, on the most basic level, assumed. I realize I am kind of playing devil’s advocate, that in discussing dominant culture, topics like gender, class, race, etc., seem to be the kind of touchstones to be addressed, but I think discussing one ability that is always assumed can be  interesting– raising questions like, ‘Isn’t literacy assumed because it is what dominant culture has deemed good for you because it…is?’. As Jilian pointed out a few weeks ago, IKEA eliminates this  potential site for critique by using a “Less is more” aesthetic to its instruction manuals: it eliminates language. This completely visual document, this sub-genre, maybe, eliminates what Miller and Brasseur might find contestable. So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that in an admittedly radical way, privileging not only passivity and ‘objective’ language but language itself in certain documents might be unethical and dangerous to certain users of goods.

As a final and poorly arranged observation: Bizzell’s claim that writing instructors fear that students will not lift up the banner of  change after being direct deposited a certain amount of times in a way implicitly speaks to the dirty discourse of dominant culture, that it numbs the will for change until it atrophies. Any enterprise of discourse able to do this, whether the enterprise of technical communication or otherwise, should, as the above authors make clear, be challenged.

In no uncertain terms, Mirel’s claiming that one’s ability to discern and address a rhetorical situation in the workplace is a slave to one’s tech abilities. After discussing the pros/cons of a table or other means of visual data (eg., graphs), Mirel writes of the Detailed Charge Report, “Readers can redesign the row groupings to get this desired arrangement of they use the sort function…But, as noted earlier, few respondents understand the uses of technical capability” (389). I wonder sixteen years after being published, if this can still be reasonably claimed, if technology still reigns as master and there still exists such separation.

Because I’ve not had the joy of actually working-working and have not been instrumental in facilitating the process of data retrieval, discerning appropriate data, arranging, then making meaning of that data (at least to my knowledge), I can only speculate, but if the workable data is tabular and numerical, I suspect modern workspaces are easily prepared to deal with it– in my limited experience with workplace technology, most computers are equipped with Microsoft Excel which can be used to perform tasks that might resemble the composition and manipulation of Mirel’s Detailed Charge Report. Mirel writes that her subjects’ disappointment with the Detailed Charge Report was the result of “invention issues.” She writes, “The report does not select and display key data relevant to readers’ needs. For instance, it gives a fine-grained level of detail on exact monthly and year-to-date costs…But it does not include higher-level figures on variances between budgeted and actual costs…(387). Excel, I think, performs this kind of task without difficulty. Switching between sheets (on the bottom left: Sheet 1, Sheet 2) various groups of data can be shown with tables, graphs, charts embedded in the sheet itself. Because the rhetorical situation can affect the data after the technology produced it, data can easily be changed and the table will immediately adapt to whatever data has been changed or fed to it.

So yes, technology does still reign as rhetoric’s master (in this context), but it’s a nonstarter. The likelihood of a professional communicator incapable to perform the manipulation of data, the tabulation of that data, all with an eye on its readability and visual composition is, I think, slim. However, handling “pressing business problems” (382) still requires collaborative rhetorical strategies to ameliorate. And as an afterthought: Using Google’s cloud technology (using Spreadsheet through its Drive), I suspect, will and, probably has, made this easier.

Writing That Works, Tenth Edition. Walter E. Oliu, et al.

A note: Like crafting an in-office memo or company wide e-mail, critiquing a textbook relies on many factors: context, tone, style, etc. Last class meeting, Rachel expressed her neutrality for the cheesy albeit effective use of goofy images and accompanying speech bubbles from a text we shared in another course. While cheesey, this pedagogic technique is an example of a feature I value in a textbook. So, because the way textbooks choose to instruct is subjective, I’ll be using a concrete criteria for which to critique Writing That Works. For this review, I’ll examine WTW beneath the backdrop of the ENGL 304 Syllabus

INTRODUCTION
What separates WTW from other business writing textbooks lies in its ability to develop in fine detail not just the mechanics of professional communication mainstays (resumes, letter writing, memos), but their designs, their quirks, and the culture in which the circulate. The text has many strengths, but most salient is its ability to instruct in a way that considers these genres and documents as a means to an end: interaction among humans. While it spends many pages clarifying the obvious (the importance of white space in Ch. 7) and the not so obvious (grant and research proposals in Ch. 13), WTW stresses that adherence to accepted and formal designs, documents, and other ways of information exchange is perhaps the greatest signifier of productive and healthy business writing.

To achieve this, Oliu and the gang divide WTW into four parts:

1. The Writing Process
2. Essential Skills: Collaboration, Research, and Design
3. Writing at Work: From Principle to Practice
4. Revision Guide: Sentences, Punctuation, and Mechanics

Beyond this division, sections are subdivided by chapters until section four. The third section, with nine of the the text’s sixteen chapters, dominates the bulk of the book. This third section offers practical guidance for at-work writing is stressed (proposals, presentations, even job hunting). Proceeding to the final part of the book, section four serves as a reference for polishing sentence level prose by discussing proofreaders’ marks, mechanics and tips for ESL wrtiers.

WRITING PROCESS (CHs. 1-4)
WTW stresses purpose-driven and audience-aware writing. In this first section, WTW discusses (1) how to compose the cornerstones of business communication like memos, letters, and proposals. Plenty of visuals are provided. To be sure, this is the text’s bread and butter for instruction: use many visuals with marginalia to reinforce the text written before it. (2) WTW encourages “writing systematically.” Claiming that process will produce helpful work documents, WTW adores processes like outlining, brainstorming, and checklists.

RHETORIC & PERSUASION
Last week, it seemed that one common criterion for evaluating the general quality of a text book was the use or appearance of the word “rhetoric.” Like a few other texts considered then, WTW lists the use of “rhetoric” only once (in reference to avoiding rhetorical questions within professional communication). Because WTW is a text designed for the business writing classroom, perhaps the word would be even more useful here rather than technical writing textbooks. To be sure, much of the material used in WTW focuses on saving face and establishing credibility (ethos) while persuading a co-worker or authority figure (pathos) that the new plan to change a practice or policy is worth their time (logos). Ultimately though, Oliu and company effectively achieve introducing the reader to the knack of rhetoric without saying as much.

VISUALS AND ORAL COMMUNICATION (CH. 7)
Not as an illustration, but as a kind of visual affect, WTW uses color and colored text boxes to spice up and organize the text. Orange is used for headings and as a background colors to differentiate between the meat of the text (ultimately, dos and don’ts) and auxiliary information (“Voices In the Workplace,”Ethics Notes”). As mentioned, WTW heavily relies on visuals to instruct. Clearly marked (eg., Figure 7-9), the graphic element of WTW is mostly always used in antiphony with the text. The less than ideal student who considers reading a chore will benefit from this feature. Of course, the illustrations also provide quick, concrete examples of document format, tone, style.

RESEARCH AND WRITING TECHNOLOGIES (CH. 6)
Nested in the text’s second section, Chapter 6, “Research Your Subject” guides the on-the-job researcher from very beginning raw data collection to polished product. From interview tips (“Be pleasant but Purposeful”) and designing a questionnaire (“Keep it as brief as possible”) to library and online usage (Ebscohost), WTW also provides metasearch engines and subject directories (see below) for the researcher.

• vLIB
• Infomine
• SCOUT
• LII

Beyond the research process, WTW stresses the ethics of citation and provides clear and useful APA and MLA citation guides marked by colored margins for easy side-of-the-book findability.

DOCUMENT GENRES AND TYPES OF WRITING
Like instructing the aforementioned business communication mainstays, WTW gives consideration to a surprisingly wide range of genres and types of writing. With the exception of Twitter (which might not be germane considering what kind of business writing is desirable), WTW is brilliantly up-to-date re: modes of workplace communication. From medium selection to the appropriateness of when an instant message conversation should happen, WTW covers the obvious genres to the less obvious (eg., transmittals).

ELECTRONIC COLOPHON
The ancillary companion to the text takes a few days for registration. If not registered, the online element to WTW is unremarkable and ultimately not very helpful. To boot, there’s
nothing to write home about in terms of design:

The online component (unregistered) is really only helpful for instructors to assign quizzes and exercises. The tutorials link is somewhat helpful. Here, a student can access entry-level web design and online research tips.

WITH ENGL 304 (CHs. 8-15)
In the business writing classroom, I can reasonably see WTW approached chronologically. As WTW might be applied to WVU’s ENGL 304 it most certainly fits the bill (it is, in fact listed among the suggested ENGL 304 textbooks for instructors. But in accordance to the syllabus, approaching the text from front to back might not be putting it to its best use. Its scope and length are just too much. However, it would be very useful for ENGL 304′s two major processes: “The production of a professional writer’s portfolio and the production, with one other student, of a proposal and presentation project.” In this light, WTW is a shoe in. However, one process of the presentation project, the Rhetorical Analysis Memo, would certainly be arhetorical if this text was used, that is, it wouldn’t use the three rhetorical key words and their modes of meaning we’ve come to know and love.

Pg. 5 of the 304 syllabus says, “Students who have completed English 304 should be able to:”
1.“Apply strategies for analyzing professional writing contexts…”
2. “Compose and design documents…”
3. “Apply rhetorical arguments…”
4.  “Conduct research and analyze data” with “proper methods of documentation” and to
understand ethics within the realm of research
5. “Know and apply composition methods and document design strategies…”

Broadly put, the goals amount to this: English 304 must be rhetorical. That is, English 304 must pay attention not only to what students should write, but to how and why writing happens in specific contexts for specific purposes. While WTW doesn’t approach making meaning and establishing credibility under the guise of “rhetoric,” it does an exceedingly good job of instructing them. Again, using WTW for the instruction of Aristotelian rhetoric may be a misstep, but supplements like hand outs or in-class lectures on the topic of rhetoric don’t seem too far out of reach.

For me (and for reasons here applicable), where Bing truly differs from engines like Google or Yahoo! is not in its ability to render results that are apt using complex algorithms or metadata buried deep within the code of a given web page, but through social networking (typically Facebook) and relying on the help of others, usually those you know, to help find the information you need. In column ⅓ web results are listed, in the middle column are relevant ads, and most importantly, the last column takes stock of your friends’ relevant interests (given the particular search) or if they have answered a question about the search somewhere, usually within the Quora database. In this light, Bing capitalizes on explicit uses of homogeneity and heterogeneity. Using a homogenous group (all members in this group can be categorized under ‘friends’), an almost inconceivable amount of results, heterogenous of course, are refined and designed to produce better results. Also, the fine granularity of a search may be made more course through Bing’s rightmost column.

On the idea of Mapping, Salvo and Rosinski write that, “Becoming a mapmaker means selecting and arranging preexisiting information in order to assist a user in learning something or accomplishing some task, often with visual extra-textual display of the data” (114) and that the act of map making necessarily asks its maker to make (unconscious choices about orders and hierarchies. In this light, the extra-textual element of Bing almost makes that perhaps unconscious chore extraneous.

Finally, if the concept of the folksonomy, the “practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content,” relies on data and metadata to architecting a productive information design, Bing seems to be the epitome. Its metadata is most definitely created “not only by experts but also by creators and consumers of the content” (118). By using what is listed in the rightmost and leftmost columns, results become imbricated (depending on how many friends you have, what their interests are, and ultimately, what you search for) and “smart”.

So, it seems like Salvo and Rosinksi would be tickled about Bing; its ambience creates a human agency through social media that other search engines have not yet realized. They write, “By staying engaged in information design considerations, technical communicators will be well poised to help usher in and shape a potential future of ambient contextual information and retrieval in the age of digital literacy” (104). Bing seems to by a step forward in a new ‘information design consideration.’ For the record, however, I’m not a Bing user. Sometimes in life, you need to disgust yourself and towards that pursuit digitally seek out whatever image, video, whatever that will suffice. I don’t necessarily want my friends to see that I’ve searched for the URL of “hairy cowboy butts” with which to change a friend’s homepage.

In “Making the Strange Familiar,” Brumberger laments the academic shackles preventing a utopian environment that would emphasize visual thinking: “In the ideal postsecondary environment…we would transcend disciplinary boundaries and turf to work with faculty outside of English in team teaching and developing cross-disciplinary projects, courses and curricula that would help our students learn to think visually as well as verbally” (381). If this were possible, I wonder, if one could gather resources from a university’s art, anthropology, and/or computer science departments, what would make for an ideal assignment to teach visual thinking?

As robust as this week’s articles are, they seem hard-pressed to cite some concrete examples of what this kind of utopian assignment might look like, or even what it might look like when constrained to resources only English instructors might have. George’s “From Analysis to Design” discusses her student’s projects for her Africa in the Popular Imagination class, but these projects are pretty specialized. In defining visual thinking, Brumberger at first puts visual thinking in affected (not the ‘contrived,’ definition, but relating to affect theory) or perhaps phenomenological terms: “As I learn more about design – from a hand-on perspective rather than a more academic one- I find myself looking and seeing more purposefully, supporting the idea that visual thinking is an active problem-solving process” (380). She then goes on to define visual thinking as an “active analytical process” that  puts into play perceiving, interpreting, and producing through seeing, imagining and drawing (381).

I can hardly critique these articles for not addressing what this kind of assignment might look like. I’ve been brainstorming for a while now, and good lord– I can say I truly am having a hard time thinking of one. Perhaps, however, in a style similar to the music video method of approaching ENGL 101’s rhetorical analysis assignment, one could compose a visual argument by presenting a thesis through digital means.Using audio software to play clips of the song (of the lyrics used to make a claim) over footage that relateing to a thesis might force a student to think visually. For example, in ENGL 101, one of the options I gave my students for the rhet analysis was Toby Keith’s “Trailerhood” (for the record, I think Keith  contaminant of popular music). Instead of writing a paper with subheadings, topic sentences, and a predictably located thesis (using verbal thinking), maybe a student could use visual thinking by repeating the audio that emphasizes community over footage of where she grew up (streets, businesses, and homes) along with any other images or additional footage to make a claim about how we think of community (As an aside: the repetition and inevitable non-linearity of the music would be a bit jarring and thus neat).

Though this hypothetical assignment only uses technology from non English departments (software like Logic or Cakewalk through a music department, nice cameras from a journalism department), it is a start, I suppose, that most of us instructors in class could realize in our own classrooms.

Brumberger, E. R. (2007). “Making the strange familiar: A pedagogical exploration of visual thinking.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 21(4), 376–401.

“The Politics of the Interface” was certainly a tough pill to swallow. For the uninitiated, the Selfe’s mission here is to denude common (and implicitly colonial) principles underlying the interfaces of the very machines this is read  and written on/with. The authors write that “In effect, interfaces are cultural maps of computer systems…such maps are never ideologically innocent or inert” (432). So far, I’m buying it. The Selfe’s go on to criticize the institution of the desktop (of the interface variety) which,  “Construct[s] virtual reality, by association, in terms of corporate culture and the values of professionalism.” Continuing this discussion, they claim that “The interface does not, for example, represent the world in terms of a kitchen countertop, a mechanic’s workbench, or a fast-food restaurant– each of which would constitute the virtual world in different terms according to the values and orientation of…women in the home, skilled laborers, or the rapidly increasing numbers of employees in the fast-food industry” (433).

In my relatively short time in Academia, there have been some arguments I’ve read that seem to me obviously swollen with bogus claims and bombastic, yet unremarkable, theses (especially common and all the rage right now seems theses re gender and sexuality: e.g.: Luce Irigaray’s ‘e=mc2 being a ‘sexed equation’). I’ve read the Selfes’ claim with this same “Give me a break” reaction.  In their criticism of the desktop interface they contrast the desktop with alternative interfaces that might be more fair (the mechanic’s workbench, the kitchen countertop). We have, I think a pretty unfair comparison; these alternatives are certainly more specific than just ‘desktop’ (there are modifiers for the interfaces). If our desktop was the CEO’s Desktop or The King’s Stationary Unit, I could maybe see the basis for criticism, but it’s just called a desktop. The image of the interface is entirely up to the user, so I’m not sure of its derivation anyways. As far as organization goes, would it be uncommon for a kitchen to be organized in such away that could mirror a literal desktop? A apparatus to house untencils, trash for items needing discarded, a system that stores machines (drawers: folders).

Also, this is perhaps the first text I’ve read to criticize rationality as a reigning principle for functionality. The Selfes’ harangue IBM’s DOS’ environment of using “rationalistic traditions of making meaning” which prevents one from using a computer device in a  “intuitive rather than logical manner” (437). If you’ve seen Superbad (not the movie) or recent electronic poems/e-lit in the past few years, you’ll know that the digital’s hyperrationalistic language can foster what we might call experimental web spaces or means that are used for more than just “using text than reading it” (Bernhardt 411).

These kinds of issues seem sensitive to criticism, or at least, I feel an a low level unease having reactions to texts like this that aren’t immediately positive and in line with their clams. I haven’t read the other posts yet (I make a conscious effort not to read others’ posts before I write mine in fear of destablaizing my initial thoughts to our readings), but I hope we can talk about this in class– if these kinds of criticisms are utterly unaware and potboiler or are actually raising issues that will ultimately help make electronic literacy more widely available and void of political biases.

WORKS CITED

Selfe, Cynthia L. and Richard J. Selfe. “The Politics of The Interface.” Central Works in Technical Communication. Eds. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford, 2004. 428–445. Print.

Certainly Greg Wilson’s “Technical Communication and Late Capitalism : Considering a Postmodern Technical Communication Pedagogy” was no exception. Examining the capability of agency within the professional capacity and discourse of technical writing, Wilson depends on Robert Reich’s three-tiered hierarchy of the postmodern working world to help transplant and sustain the technical communicator’s role in an industrial position out of the world of rote practice onto the shores of local and global change (We are again under the reich of Reich. I am coincidentally going through a Reich phase. Go figure).

Though Wilson’s article was uplifting in a few ways, there appeared a deeply tacit classist ring underlying Reich’s hierarchical system as used by Wilson. When Wilson claims, “At times when a company is overtly trying to change the way it does business, employees have opportunities to articulate themselves as symbolic analysts,” I’m sure he speaks only of those employees who have the opportunity to metamorphose into symbolic analysts—those mired in routine production service, and to a much lesser extent an in-person service, are not equipped to mobilize themselves (85). In this light, is Reich’s model apt for class criticism? Or perhaps, the reality is that harsh, that we will, and have, worked in an economy whose rewards are mirrored by one’s class and Reich’s model reasonably follows.

Classist or no, a perhaps more apposite question might sound something like, ‘When do we know when a company is ‘trying to change the way it does business’?” That is, when do we know to assert ourselves to a symbolic analyst position if we are currently not occupying one?

Wilson points out that, “The obvious implication of Reich’s classifications is that if workers want job satisfaction (and if not job security, perhaps lasting market- ability), they either need to train for a job in the symbolic-analytic category or rearticulate their job in terms of symbolic analysis. In other terms, meaningful agency is most available to workers in the symbolic-analyst category” (84). So when do we recognize change to enact a rearticulation?

I would argue that instead of waiting for the company to “overtly [try] to change the way it does business” (emphasis mine), technical communicators with hopes of being symbolic-analytic workers (or technical communicators already in that position and hoping to register themselves in its higher echelons) should -and here’s where this comes full circle- use systems thinking to distinguish when to (re)articulate (85). To not wait for the overt overhaul, but rather, the micro and local change. Depending upon how an industry/corporation is organized, maybe this quiet, not overt, change is departmental. But by, “learning to see the world not as discretely compartmentalized units but more as a web of interrelated and overlapping elements,” we can distinguish from Modernist notions of linear and hierarchical change to Postmodernist notions (87-88). Growing webs spinning with opportunities for agency (by way of Reich’s four principles) giving rise to dynamic, system-analytic behavior, not maps.

Seeing that this article was written in or around 2006, I thought it would be kind of cool and useful to use Spinuzzi’s criteria for an ideal model of visualizing writing practice with potential contemporary models and to see how those criteria can be used with (online) services available in 2012. That the “distributed nature of writing activity that takes place within and across information systems is a powerful, yet difficult feature to harness” is still true, but with today’s services, hopefully easier than it was six years ago, I composed a spreadsheet (70).  So lo(l) and behold:

(click this link for spreadsheet)

DIIGO is especially useful for bookmarking and information storage. A “folksconomy” if there ever was one. Diigo allows diigo-ers to capture HTML as well as an image of text from a toolbar installed into your browser. While really great in this way, Diigo struggles to qualify for the ‘Data driven’ category—processing within Diigo isn’t possible.

EVERNOTE, like Diigo, encourages bookmarks, but takes visualizing writing and productivity further. Bookmarking is possible, individual projects are marked clearly, and data production (the ability to type within Evernote, is possible. Seems only interactive in the sense that if you truly want to make this service available to a group (of one or more), then Evernote Premium is required (otherwise, I guess, sharing a username and password through an individual account is, though probably unnerving due to multiple simultaneous logins and ethical ambiguity, possible.

DEVONTHINK seems a superior Evernote, though it doesn’t seem to encourage group-based collaborative research.

(GOOGLE?) For some reason I feel like Google’s services shouldn’t qualify though I can’t quite pin down why. But in terms of “visualizing writing practices in an effort to create intelligible accounts of knowledge work,” Google (Docs) is certainly contender. Though seeing a partner write, tracking changes, or chatting, Docs really encourages a high level of process rather than practice. With its almost overwhelming volume of services, Google does not, like Diigo or Evernote, allow one to store, organize, or visualize constituent parts of a project that one can really see.

So, the article’s primary question: “How can we ‘see’ and understand writing practices and patterns that take place across temporal, spatial, personal and system boundaries?” In 2012 there still is a lack of the utopian management system that encourages all six means of production and visuality. At least as far as I’ve interpreted it. Hopefully in class we’ll have a chance to discuss which of these services (or others) are not necessarily the best or even the most preferable, but how said services allow us to “see” writing in relation to this particular article’s criteria.

Hart-Davidson, William, Clay Spinuzzi, and Mark Zachry. “Visualizing Writing Activity as Knowledge Work: Challenge & Opportunities.” SIGDOC ‘06. ACM Press, 2006. PDF.

BUT: Our readings this week (viz. Charney) have done an exquisite job unpacking the bad rap qualitative methods have received in academia. Especially as they are treated in the explicitly unscientific realms. While this demystification of qualitative studies was elucidating, I found Sullivan and Porter’s attempt to give a phronetic and heuristic treatment to theory, practice, and method a little less thoroughgoing. Especially when it came to their discussion of method.

Prior to this post I was really only (consciously) aware of two research methods: ethnography and census. Sullivan spends a lot time writing about the lofty multimodality method, method-driven research, and problem-driven research, which, of course, also involves the opportunity to appropriate a kind of method, but spends little time discussing the actual method of choosing a method. She writes, “…Methods are given procedures, well-established and trustworthy bases for observing practice, and that properly applying method to practice can help us verify or generate models and theories” (307). Yes, methods complicate theories, test their limits, and help us to easier gain access to knowledge that would otherwise be unavailable through theory, but how do we know exactly which method to apply? In other words, is there a theory that helps deduce which method to choose, or is the choice really only a matter of sheer common sense?

If I had to take a stab at guessing, I’d say the first question to help refine the choice is qualitative vs. quantitative question. Common sense reigns here: If there are numbers involved, quantitative, if you’re interested in researching non-numeric data, qualitative. (This all sounds base, but I’m trying to think/write through this). After this front of questioning, I’m a bit hazy. I think as students with substantial backgrounds in all things literary, qualitative research seems completely innocuous. Methodology re quantitative certainly seems a bit more intimidating.  I found here and here  an aesthetically amateurish, but informative glossary of research methods that has helped clarify, for me at least, what options are available (And with our research proposals due early next month it might not be a bad idea to brush up on some of these methods– for me, at least).

Maybe critiquing this essay, griping that Sullivan, in an effort to exact some heuristic humanity to research, doesn’t closely examine which methods lend themselves to phronetic study is unfair. That wishing her to do so distastefully expects the essay to transcend the scope to which it has been re(de)fined. But deciding to include choice, as a heuristic element, as a serious determiner of how to establish and exercise a successful praxis via research should include what choices we should make as researchers in regards to how to choose a method.  To make this even more complicated, Sullivan quotes E. W Eisner and A. Peshkin as they write that, “What constitutes a problem is not independent of the methods one knows how to use. Few of us seek problems we have no skill in addressing. What we know how to do is what we usually try to do” (308). Does this mean that the more methods we’re aware of means the more problems we’d be not only more likely to address, but to recognize in the first place? If so, and in the meantime until our proposals, I’ll be brushing up on the quality quantity of my methods.

Sullivan, Patricia and James E. Porter. “On Theory, Practice and Method: Toward a Heuristic Research Methodology for Professional Writing” Central Works in Technical Communication. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber, eds. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 300-13. Print.