Also, because a large part of my research paper focuses on self-reflection and -awareness, I am finding myself more attuned right now to other researchers’ declarations that communicators and professionals must “be knowledgeable, self-conscious or self-aware, self-reflective, and self-critical” (Gough & Price, p. 322). More than any other tool, technique, or skill taught, I think self-awareness and self-criticism are the hardest skills to teach or learn. And yet, I believe they are more important to effective communication than any other skill.

I’m not sure I understand Dombrowski’s question: “Can ethics be technologized?” but I do understand his position that “[w]e should not expect such technologies to substitute for personal judgment and responsibility” (p. 331). If technologizing ethics means somehow creating systems or software that can make ethical judgments, that just doesn’t seem right or even completely possible. But why must it be considered an “ethical burden…a weight from which we can never fully be relieved” (Dombrowski, p. 331, my emphasis)? Sure, ethics are often so gray it’s frustrating to try to determine what’s right or wrong. But I think humans are instinctually (mostly) ethical beings, so ethics are not so much a burden as just a part of being human. Perhaps Sartre said it best: “philosophy is what philosophers do. It is not a lifeless system of principles but a task, and one which is never complete. It is a task with which we are always saddled—a burden, yes, but also the root of our very humanity” (Dombrowski, p. 336). Ethics will always be a part of us and technical information will never be able to “determine fully either its own meaning or its own ethicality” (Dombrowski, p. 332).

I continue to be drawn to this question we keep running into about whether we are or should or should not be teaching to the industry, “[indoctrinating] our students in the forms appropriate to their employers” (Sullivan, 1990, p. 213). I can’t decide whether or not I think it’s a bad thing to teach to the industry; after all, we are educated to be employed and employers want to see that we know a thing or two about their industry, but I think I do agree with Sullivan (1990) that “modern composition instruction reflects this technological consciousness: it casts the writing process in terms of problem solving, stresses objectivity and thereby denies a writer’s social responsibilities, distances the interaction between writer and reader, deals with abstract issues, and denies politics” (p. 212). Again, if I’m reading this correctly, I think what Sullivan is getting at here has a lot to do with my final conclusions in my own research, that professional communication is not clearly defined, black and white processes but is, instead, flawed by our humanness. So, to teach composition courses in a way that denies a writer’s social responsibilities or deals with abstract issues only harms their prospects of succeeding in the workplace.

Dombrowski, P. M. “Can ethics be technologized? Lessons from Challenger, philosophy, and rhetoric.”

Gough, J., & Price, A. “Developing ethical decision-making skills: How textbooks fail students.”

Sullivan, D. L. (1990). “Political-ethical implications of defining technical communication as a practice.” In J. Johnson-Eilola & S. A. Selber (Eds.), Central works in technical communication (pp. 351–364). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004.

I didn’t intend to focus on only one of our readings this week, but Selzer got me thinking. But since this week’s theme is workplace studies, I guess my biggest question would be, when it really comes down to it, how much time does a professional writer or engineer ultimately have to devote to their writing process? Like Nelson, or even in my own personal experience, I guess you find the writing process that feels most natural to you, that gets the job done well, and you hone that process into such a finely tuned skill that you are capable of meeting deadlines, no matter how tight, using the process that works for you.

To at least acknowledge some of our other readings, here are a couple thoughts:

In Winsor’s (1990) discussion of engineering and writing, she observes how “[w]riting is viewed as a part of an engineer’s job but not as part of engineering,” and then details how lab results are translated into reports that pull from already-existing lab results and reports that are then compiled with “documents written by other people” in the workplace to complete the final production of the product at hand (p. 342). I guess my question is: how can people—engineers in this case—deny that writing is not separate from any given task? How can they miss how much writing they take part in to reach their final goal? Nothing we do, as professionals, is free of writing, which means everything we do is infiltrated with the process of writing. Writing creates knowledge and knowledge is delivered or transmitted through writing.

Allen, Atkinson, Morgan, Moore, and Snow’s (1987) article on collaboration had me thinking about my own experiences with collaboration, particularly in the more obvious or forced, if you will, group work collaboration projects assigned or required in a class like ours. While I would never have really considered my everyday work at the magazine “collaborative,” Allen et. al’s definition of collaborative includes “a peer’s critiquing of a coworker’s draft (Anderson),” which I participate in daily with no questions or qualms (p. 353). But my group experiences in this class,  (though I’ve been extremely fortunate in the people I’ve worked with and often feel like the weakest link!) have felt far less intuitive. Group work or document collaboration feels forced. How does one person not become The Leader? What do you do if some people don’t add their notes to the shared document? Won’t a person who’s naturally more outgoing or naturally a better writer or editor naturally become the one who the rest of the group turns to—and how do you avoid these sorts of hierarchies? Or do you even have to avoid these hierarchies in collaborative work?

WORKS CITED

Allen, N., Atkinson, D., Morgan, M., Moore, T., & Snow, C. (1987). “What experienced collaborators say about collaborative writing.” In J. Johnson-Eilola & S. A. Selber (Eds.), Central works in technical communication (pp. 351–364). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Selzer, J. (1983). “The composing process of an engineer.” In J. Johnson-Eilola & S. A. Selber (Eds.), Central works in technical communication (pp. 317–324). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Winsor, D. A. (1990). “Engineering writing/writing engineering.” In J. Johnson-Eilola & S. A. Selber (Eds.), Central works in technical communication (pp. 341–350). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004.

As we continue our consideration of visual elements, design, and influence, I realize how little I’ve either A) paid attention to such discussions in past undergraduate and grad-level courses, or B) how little exposure I’ve actually had to such discussions. To constantly keep in mind the effectiveness of visual elements in the development of a text or document is something that seems obviously necessary, and yet, is something I, personally, fail to consider as frequently or thoroughly as I should. What scholars like Kumpf (2000) are doing is exactly what needs to be done: bringing to lightall of the elements any writer or developer of a text should have in their back pocket, from writing skills to knowing how to effectively use the plethora of computer software features now available (p. 402). Kumpf actually provides, at one point, a very simple explanation I’m not sure I had arrived at myself about why there seems to be such a sudden surge of support for visual communication, as we saw in last week’s readings. He (2000) says: “Twenty years ago, most technical writing classes acknowledged visuals, but those visuals were secondary to text. Moreover, most students then could not import visuals into the text, but rather saved them in an appendix” (p. 403). I guess this seems obvious now, but of course visuals would apparently be seen as thrust upon a pedestal—our channels and mediums for communication have gone visual in this digital era. So written communication is not lesser in any way, visuals are just becoming supplementary in their importance in digital and other documents and texts.

I thought in Barton and Barton’s (1993) discussion of the map as visual representation and the rules of inclusion and exclusion was an incredibly important perspective to consider. As we continue to move headlong into an increasingly visual era, I think, as with maps, viewers and users of digital technologies and texts have to be fully aware of what the visual elements are meant to be representing, what the visual elements appear to be representing, and what the visual elements are not (or are not able to) representing (p. 238–39). It is, thus, equally as important for technical communicators and information designers to always be conscious of their choices—making informed choices and being careful of what visuals they choose, or don’t choose, to represent the information they are transferring. Finally, in Barton and Barton’s (1993) closing thoughts, they say “the governing aesthetic of the visual as collage-palimpsest is not the modernist ‘less is more’ but rather the postmodernist ‘less is a bore’—an aesthetic that privileges complexity over simplicity and eclecticism over homogeneity…” (p. 248). In juxtaposition to last week’s readings, particularly Lauer and Sanchez’s discussion of visuospatial thinking, Barton and Barton’s description of the modernist “less is a bore” aesthetic is surprising. Maybe in 1993 this would have still been the preferred aesthetic, the complex over the simple, the eclectic over homogeneous, but it seems we’ve moved into more a “less is more” aesthetic where visual designs that are simpler are arguably clearer, more effective, and more visually appealing—and this could arguably be a result of our society’s need for expediency, anymore, which is a direct result of digital technology. As we are able to find information more quickly, we need the visuals around us to “speak to us” quickly, and visuals that are not complex and eclectic, butare simple and homogeneous, tend to grab our attention and keep it for the necessary seconds it takes for us to internalize the information. Of course, simple and homogeneous does not mean not aesthetically pleasing. With the surge in visual thinking, we need information quickly but it still has to look good enough to interest us.

Barton, B. F., & Barton, M. S. (1993). Ideology and the map: Toward a postmodern visual design practice. In J. Johnson-Eilola & S. A. Selber (Eds.), Central Works in Technical Communication, (pp. 232–252). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Kumpf, E. P. (2000). “Visual metadiscourse: Designing the considerate text.” Technical Communication Quarterly, 9(4), pp. 401–424.

Salvo, M. J., & Rosinski, P. (2010). Information design: From authoring text to architecting virtual space. In R. Spilka (Ed.), Digital Literacy for Technical Communication: 21st Century Theory and Practice, (pp. 103–127). New York, NY: Routledge.

I do think there is an importance to what Brumberger and Lauer and Sanchez are all arguing—that learning to think verbally and visually (or visuospatially) can only enhance a student’s ability to create meaning within a text, that the two—verbal and visual—should not be thought of as binaries. It seems like, for example, many students’ use of slideware for the purpose of presenting to an audience would be far more advanced, meaningful, and captivating if, from the get go, we were taught how to convey meaning, like Dick Hardt, through words and images and colors and white space and page design and typography. There’s a lot to be said for pictorial representation—for showing, not telling, as I was so often reminded to do in my creative writing days. After all, a picture’s worth a thousand words, right? But the issue Lauer and Sanchez tackle is interesting—what if we aren’t all capable of thinking visually? What if some are just naturally more gifted in visuospatial awareness than others? I think we have to be wary of relying on classroom projects such as those Lauer and Sanchez suggest on page 209: “These activities are decidedly nonprofessional writing activities and therefore may strike some as an impractical use of time, but they are not impractical if they help low-spatial thinkers to develop options other than words to communicate persuasively.” I feel like projects that seem “impractical,” maybe particularly at the college level more so than high school, do risk becoming a waste of time because students don’t engage with the assignment or take it seriously because what’s the point? They only have to do well enough to get a decent grade, they may think—the project’s not going to go anywhere, be seen by anyone other than the teacher, be used for anything. But I think the poster assignments Lauer and Sanchez provide as examples (comparing high-spatially minded student work to low-spatially minded students) are a good example of in-class projects. Obviously, the resulting work illustrates exactly where improvements can be made to help many students think more visually.

WORKS CITED

Brumberger, E. R. (2007). “Making the strange familiar: A pedagogical exploration of visual thinking.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 21(4), 376–401. doi:10.1177/1050651907304021

Lauer, C. & Sanchez, C. A. (2011). “Visuospatial Thinking in the Professional Writing Classroom.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 25(2), 184–218. doi:10.1177/1050651910389149

The focus of the text is the writing process and document design for different workplace genres. The majority of the textbook focuses on written communication between employees—i.e. memos or emails, for example—and written communication between employees and outside parties. There is little focus on verbal communication, particularly amongst employees within a workplace. One of the most unique elements of the book are the “Voices of the Workplace” contributions—from a president, CEO, customer service manager, sportswriter, first grade teacher, associate attorney, information analyst, mechanical engineer, congressional staff member, licensed mental health counselor, marketing media coordinator, university senior career counselor, and the like, who bring the workplace perspective into the text.

WRITING PROCESS

The entire book, in some way, is devoted to the writing process, from brainstorming to delivering your information to your audience to styling your texts precisely. The authors address assessing audience and purpose, writing the draft, and then revising the draft. In Part Two, collaborative writing is discussed in terms of writing with a team and dealing with conflict in collaboration, and is then outlined, including planning, research, writing, review, and revision.

RESEARCH AND WRITING TECHNOLOGIES

Part Two, chapter 6 deals extensively with research. Primary research is broken down into experience, interviewing (determining whom to interview, preparing, conducting, and expanding your notes), observing, and using questionnaires, for which an example is provided in-text. The authors detail library and Internet research, then discuss source documentation. Here, a special section is devoted to APA and MLA guidelines.

Writing technologies are only intermittently covered throughout the text, touching on topics such as writing for the web or on the web, composing e-mails, instant message correspondence, graphics software for design, and presentation software.

RHETORIC AND PERSUASION

Chapter 1 discusses how to determine your purpose and assess your audience’s needs, two factors that effect the organization of information and its effectiveness and persuasiveness. But other than persuasion, rhetoric is hardly, explicitly written about. Much of the book deals with determining what your purpose is based on who your audience is, particularly in regards to different forms of workplace writing. In chapter 13, Writing Proposals, the authors briefly touch on persuasive writing—here naturally, rather than anywhere else in the book, because a proposal is intended to do just that: persuade. And in chapter 14, the practice of delivery is explored, including practice run-throughs and using techniques like eye contact, movement and gesture, vocal pace, volume, and inflection.

STYLE AND TONE

Due to the nature of this textbook—i.e. effective written communication in the workplace—style and tone are essential elements. In Part One, the authors touch on emphasis, including active and passive voice, point of view, and language elements such as word choice, bias, and using plain language versus jargon. In Part Two, the different styles of source documentation are outlined before the authors move on to style issues in document design, and Part Three deals specifically with choosing the appropriate medium and form for a given situation, including writing and formatting letters, memos, and international correspondence, as well as a brief look at sending email and instant messages and the “netiquette” that entails. Later, in chapters 8, 9, and 15, style and tone are again attended to as the authors define how to write and format letters and memos, deal with tone—especially in positive and negative messages, and discuss writing for the web, particularly how simple style and appropriate tone are essential for web content. Finally, Part Four in its entirety is devoted to stylistic tools including sentences, punctuation, and mechanics.

DOCUMENT GENRES AND TYPES OF WRITING

This textbook focuses extensively on the different genres of workplace writing and the types of writing one might be required to do in the workplace. The longest section of the textbook, by far, is Part Three, Writing at Work: From Principle to Practice. Here, the authors spend six chapters (nearly 200 pages) covering how to write business correspondence, informal and formal reports, instructions, and proposals. Each chapter includes several sample documents as well as writer’s checklists.

DOCUMENT DESIGN

Document design is an important component of this textbook. The authors explain the importance of document design, in general, before detailing the importance of design for the different genres mentioned previously—formal reports, emails, etc. From margins, columns, typography, and templates to illustrations, format consistency, headings, and page design, document layout and design are well defined. Chapter 7, Designing Effective Documents and Visuals, “provides guidelines and models for designing” (Oliu, Brusaw, & Alred, 2007, p. 205), emphasizing that clarity and consistency allow your reader to better understand and use your document for their needs.

VISUALS AND ORAL COMMUNICATION

While the focus of this textbook tends to revolve around written communication—i.e. words rather than visuals—the authors do try to incorporate discussion on using visuals, as well as giving presentations and conducting meetings. Chapter 7 looks specifically at typography, highlighting devices, page design, and integrating visuals like tables, graphs, flowcharts, maps, and photographs, and within each section, the authors implement many of the very tools and techniques they are outlining in the book.

Overall, this textbook seems like a very comprehensive collection of guidelines for writing and achieving success in the workplace. Each chapter is introduced with an overview and closed with a summary, exercises, and suggestions for collaborative classroom, research, and web projects. With this edition, the authors aim to incorporate more attention to global communication, ethics, digital tips, visual communication, and finding a job.

WORKS CITED

Oliu, W. E., Brusaw, C. T., & Alred, G. J. (2007). Writing that works: Communicating effectively on the job (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s.

the virtual reality of computer interfaces represents, in part and to a visible degree, a tendency to value monoculturalism, capitalism, and phallologic thinking, and does so, more importantly, to the exclusion of other perspectives. Grounded in these values, computer interfaces, we maintain, enact small but continuous gestures of domination and colonialism (Selfe and Selfe 433).

I have been thinking about this a lot—the overarching superiority and dominance of the “white man,” of Americans, of the middle and upper classes. The Selfes’ article echoed Bosley’s discussion, I thought, of ethnocentricism. The images used on computer interfaces, Selfe and Selfe continue, “These images signal—to users of color, to users who come from a non-English language background, to users from low socio-economic backgrounds—that entering the virtual worlds of interfaces also means, at least in part and at some level, entering a world constituted around the lives and values of white, male, middle- and upper-class professionals” (433). In the almost 20 years since Selfe and Selfe wrote this article, this has not changed.

What I struggle with is: how do we change this? How, when “these borders are represented and reproduced in so many commonplace ways, at so many levels, that they frequently remain invisible to us,” do we bring those of color and non-English backgrounds and low socio-economic backgrounds onto the same level as the white middle-class? How do we “in Mary Louise Pratt’s words, [make it] ‘the same for all players’” (Selfe and Selfe 430–431)? Personally, I am of the belief that changing the interfaces seems like a simple enough switch that the next “generations” of Microsoft and Apple products that come out can come up with equally as intuitive or convenient images and symbols to represent functionalities as those currently in use. Also, I fear with anyone much over the age of a school child may be a lost cause for equal opportunities, for we’re talking about oppression and inequality that is generations in the making. And I believe it will take cultivating equality in the upcoming generations—the youngest now in school, those not yet in school, and those generations not even yet born. And I think it’s a matter of ensuring institutions of education—any educational institution—have the same equipment for students’ use and that teachers receive the same training in technology, as part of their teaching degree course work, not something they’re quickly walked through as part of their job training. Inequalities will continue to be perpetuated if we continue to remain unaware of the subtle ways in which they are perpetuated through language and technology.

As for Howard’s discussion of the ownership of texts, electronic and otherwise, this is yet another topic I’ve recently spent a lot of time thinking about and discussing. I tend to speak quickly, reactively, and think later. So my first inclination when discussing the ownership of electronic texts, is to say that once a writer has “gone public” with a text—particularly in this instance (in my mind) online texts—that material becomes shared text. I think there are certainly still copyright laws and even common etiquette that should be implemented and followed, but I think with digital technology and the web, it is going to become increasingly difficult to manage copyrights on texts. Texts are rampant on the web anymore, and authors are going to have a battle to fight in maintaining sole control of their text, I think. But, on the other hand, I feel as users of digital technology and the web, we have a responsibility to learn a new etiquette that has never needed to exist in the past. I think there is a “digital users etiquette” that may need to become more than just an “etiquette” and become more a set of standards/regulations/laws that must be followed if electronic texts are going to become more shared than owned.

Take Pinterest, for example, a few months ago there was some controversy that went viral about Pinterest users accountability as owners (or not) of the links/items/photos they were pinning. Pinterest founders had written into their terms and agreements (which is another issue we’re all aware of in copyright cases—how many users ever actually read the terms and agreements of anything online or elsewhere?) that once a user had pinned something they were claiming sole ownership of that link/item/photo through permissions they had requested or received from the original owner. Of course, as we all know, tracing many things online back to the original owner is often times difficult, or even impossible. I remember becoming outraged that Pinterest had put the burden on me, as a user. I felt it was their responsibility as the founder of a web network that had stumbled into phenomenal success, should have had the foresight to come up with a way to protect their users from copyright and permissions infringements. But the more I thought of it and started paying attention to other Pinners, I got frustrated with the users, and that’s when I determined that there was a need for digital and web user etiquette—properly crediting photographers, properly crediting sources and authors, taking the time to trace an image/site/idea/item back as far as possible, to the origin if possible. But is that even enough? According to the scenarios Howard outlined, it may not be.

I had a lot of reactions to and thoughts about this week’s readings, so I feel I could go on and on. But I’ll stop here…

WORKS CITED

Howard, Tharon W. “Who ‘Owns’ Electronic Texts?” Central Works in Technical Communication. Eds. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford, 2004. 397–408. Print.

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.

I thought the bad-news letter writing scenario is a great assignment (ENGL 304, 2.18, p. 26). I think it would be very hard, though! But it’s a perfect exercise. Practice without having to imagine, too hard, about the situation. It brings the writer directly into the situation and demands they think thoroughly and critically about their response.

At the outset of reading the ENGL 305 guidelines, I wondered: How is 305 going to be different from 304? At first glance, both courses seemed very similar—other than the usability test assignment, which was new to 305. But the overarching question through which my reading was then filtered was: How do “Technical Writing” (ENGL 305) and “Business and Professional Writing” (ENGL 304) differ? Another difference I did find, in comparing the two sets of guidelines, were the points listed in 305 for “Understanding the rhetorical situation of technical writing”: “Issues in translation from experts to lay readers” and “How to write for multiple, simultaneous audiences”—these two bullets differed from the ENGL 304 handling of the rhetorical situation. These points seem more complex compared to ENGL 304′s dealing with the rhetorical situation, which seems more basic. Does the technical communicator have more responsibility compared to the business or professional writer?

One of the course goals in ENGL 305 is the ability to “evaluate and modify a document to ensure its usability and accessibility for an audience”—this point had me wondering: Does this mean the technical communicator has greater authorship? Or a better command of their topics? What is a technical communication student getting through the course goals outlined that is different from what a business and professional communication student is getting through the goals of ENG 304? In many places the course guidelines exactly echoed each other. Generally, it seems one of the greatest challenges facing an ENGL 304 or 305 course is taking these guidelines and implementing them properly in the classroom, following the schedule of readings and assignments and inspiring the students as much as possible to fully engage with each assignment.

In Wilson’s article, a concept we’ve discussed before came up again. He writes: “Does using industry as a model and bending communication theories and pedagogies to fit the needs of industry put our loyalties too much on the side of industry?” (78) Presumably, this question came up when we read Thralls, Blyler, and Miller, all of whom Wilson references. Basically, the question is: who’s leading who? Are academics teaching too much to industry? Is industry pushing the academy? How should it be? Should industry have such a significant influence on learning in the classroom? It seems like it should. But what are the arguments against that? Again, I know we’ve talked about this in class before and I’m finding it a hard argument to wrap my mind around.

On page 87, Wilson writes, “The workplace (even more so the postmodern workplace) does not come in a neat package like some assignments or end-of-chapter exercises. Teaching our students to view the world as if it does constrains their thinking and their ability to see new possibilities.” I agree with this. But I maintain that even teaching in a postmodern way and giving postmodern assignments that encourage thinking outside the box, beyond the black and white or right and wrong, will still never fully-prepare students for the actual workplace. Because instructors cannot predict the situations that will come up within in the multitude of workplaces and scenarios within those workplaces. But yes, I agree with Wilson that it is essential that instructors help students realize the workplace will never be delivered in a neat little package.

My idealistic nature reared its head as I read Bosley’s “Cross-Cultural Collaboration.” I found her observations to be spot-on and infuriating—she mentions in her introduction to the article that Americans have “fixed assumptions that we are at the center of everything.” I find that declaration to be so true and agree with Bosley that “we can no longer maintain that perspective,” for “to do so limits us in profound and dangerous ways” (467). I’ve also always held, like Bosley addresses, that Americans are driven too much by individualistic competitiveness and not enough by “cooperative learning” (469). That is the idealist in me. I feel like all things in moderation are better than extremism, that collaboration and team work (and more importantly, avoiding partisan-style modes of operation) are ultimately more productive and beneficial than pitting people (employees, students, etc) against each other. Of course, I’ve been put in my place many times in the past from those who side more with Euro-North Americans’ belief “that intra-group competition increases productivity” (Bosley 469). I struggle with how to create a balance—a bit of competitive spirit certainly never hurt anyone, but…can’t we all just be friends? Let’s drop the ethnocentric individualism and acknowledge and familiarize ourselves with the multitude of cultures by which we’re surrounded.

WORKS CITED

Bosley, Deborah S. “Cross-Cultural Collaboration.” Central Works in Technical Communication. Eds. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. pp. 466–474. Print.

PWE guides for teaching ENGL 304 & 305 (2011).

Wilson, Greg. “Technical Communication and Late Capitalism: Considering a Postmodern Technical Communication Pedagogy.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication 15.1 (2001): 72–99. PDF.

I’m noticing a recurring theme in our readings: the idea of consensus. Slattery writes that “writers work toward the end product by creating and modifying a target document until it becomes authorized by the group to be the finished documentation” (319). The wording might vary, but the concept is the same: a product, document, or philosophy, once created or in the process of creation, can be modified until a consensus is reached that the product or document is complete or the philosophy is the accepted truth.

In Faigley’s piece, he explains that “Rohman defines ‘good writing’ as ‘that discovered combination of words which allows a person the integrity to dominate his subject with a pattern both fresh and original…’” (529) According to this, then, Slattery’s definition of “reusing text” is bad writing because it’s simply a taking over of someone else’s combination of words. Good writing, or a person’s ability to dominate a subject with a pattern both fresh and original and the discovery of uniqueness within that subject—this definition does not allow today’s technical writers the option of being a “good writer” because technical writers, though they may dominate their subject, cannot do so with freshness, originality, or uniqueness (529).

Given Elbow’s point, based on “one of the standards of Romantic theory: that ‘good’ writing does not follow rules but reflects the processes of the creative imagination,” it’s no wonder I’ve always called myself a Romantic (530). I like this theory. I like to believe that, in some ways, anyone has the inherent ability to write using their processes of creative imagination. I don’t think though that teaching only creative writing could really work for most people. I think the cognitive process of decision making is a given, with any writer of any skill level. But I think writers have to have teaching in the skills of writing well. That is not always intuitive, as original and intuitive the creativity may be.

I really like the question Flower, Hayes, and Britton are asking: is this really how writing happens? Is writing “a process of making linguistic choices from one’s repertoire of syntactic structures and lexical items” (366)? My inclination is to wonder: how can anyone do anything that is not a process of making choices and decisions based on a repertoire of pre-existing thoughts, ideas, knowledge? However, the romantic in my thinks writing, at least, is very much a creative and intuitive process. At least, in certain circumstances. Certainly, writing is a cognitive process in some situations, such as in the academy. I would amend Flower and Hayes’ position that “The process of writing is best understood as a set of distinctive thinking processes which writers orchestrate or organize during the act of composing,” by saying that the process of writing can be best understood as a set of distinctive thinking and creative processes which writers orchestrate or organize during the act of composing (366).

There is so much to talk about this week, with these readings, I think. I really liked the readings. I love the topic of studying the process of writing. I love discussing the different theories (cognitive versus creative/Romantic). I like looking in detail into the modern day workplace and studying this concept of fragmentation and collaborative document production and IT/technical skills required for today’s technical writers. So much great material to cover!!

WORKS CITED

Faigley, Lester. “Competing Theories of Process: A Critique and a Proposal.” College English 48.6. (1986): 527–542. PDF.

Flower, Linda, and John R. Hayes. “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing.” College Composition and Communication 32.4 (1981): 365–387. PDF.

Hart-Davidson, William, Clay Spinuzzi, and Mark Zachry. “Visualizing Writing Activity as Knowledge Work: Challenges & Opportunities.” ACM SIGDOC. (2006): 70–77. PDF.

Slattery, Shaun. “Undistributing Work Through Writing: How Technical Writers Manage Texts in Complex Information Environments.” Technical Communication Quarterly 16.3 (2007): 311–325. PDF.

The assumption underlying the treatment of qualitative sampling in many current technical communication texts seems to be that qualitative research can be interesting to readers in our own field but that it will never carry weight with larger audiences outside our field because its findings cannot be generalized in the same way that those of quantitative research can. We believe that this imbalance—an imbalance that seems to persist despite researchers’ calls for complementarity between quantitative and qualitative approaches—is at the heart of the gap that exists in regard to qualitative sampling.

Koerber’s conclusion (470) struck me as particularly illustrative of at least one of this week’s themes: the binary between quantitative and qualitative. I feel the need to play Devil’s advocate, however, by arguing that his conclusion seems too general. Surely, there are more people out there—scholars, theorists, researchers, scientists, writers—who believe there is more good in the complementarity of qualitative and quantitative studies than there is in forcing a gap between the two. Surely, even the most practically minded scientist would admit that qualitative studies only add to their quantitative work, opening new avenues of research, or at the very least provoking new questions to be explored.

I was also struck, as I have been with some of our other readings, by these authors’ and their colleagues’ reiterations of how difficult some technical writing concepts are to teach: “But when they discussed qualitative research techniques such as interviews, focus groups, ethnography, and textual analysis, they did not describe procedures for sampling systematically or provide terms to help novice researchers become familiar with qualitative sampling. … Although our field has many examples of excellent qualitative research, this research lacks a consistent vocabulary for sampling methods, so teaching or discussing effective qualitative sampling in a systematic way was difficult” (Koerber 457, my emphasis). I imagine that reason more than any other could explain, at least in part, why it is so necessary for those in technical writing to continue working toward a (re)definition of the field and of the technical writer’s role. I did think, though, that Koerber did a fine job of describing the “three major categories of sampling…convenience, purposeful, and theoretical” (462).

Charney pulled me into her camp when she stated in her introductory paragraphs: “It seems absurd to assume that anyone conducting a qualitative analysis or ethnography must be compassionate, self-reflecting, creative, and committed to social justice and liberation. Or that anyone who conducts an experiment is rigid and unfeeling and automatically opposes liberatory, feminist, or postmodernist values. But such assumptions underlie the current critiques…” (283). Indeed, the tension between qualitative and quantitative cannot be so simple as this, so black and white. It is in fact “absurd” to me that researchers on both sides, or those outside of either camp, would generalize so drastically, drawing a line in the sand between two arguably complementary methods of research and study. But for those in the sciences, or who favor quantitative, or are generally just more practically minded and less creatively minded, how do we persuade them to loosen their vice-like grip on the need for answers, on the need for evidence? How do we convince them that neither quantitative nor qualitative methods can necessarily “deliver up authority” (Charney 283)?

In an attempt (weak though it may be) to draw some sort of connection between or offer some sort of insight into Slavin’s “Practical Guide to Statistics,” I question Linda Flower’s position (as quoted by Charney) “that statistical evidence has meaning only as part of a cumulative, communally constructed argument” (287). To me, this sounds a lot like how we’ve been defining “knowledge” in our class discussions these past weeks, but also makes me question the validity of something so seemingly definite as a statistic derived from cold hard numerical facts. How can a statistic only have meaning through communal construction?

Finally, I can’t help but observe that sometimes, ever so briefly in our readings, there seem to be elements of such cattiness revealed between scientists and compositionists, or tech writers and engineers, or professionals and academics, or what have you. Charney writes: “Compositionists readily assume that disciplines that adopt scientific methods do so for reflected glory and access to institutional power” (288). If this is true, which I venture to say it is more oft than it isn’t, who is at fault here—the two parties duking out for that prized position atop the pedestal? Or the third party—i.e. the institution—that has set in motion this competitive edge, placing more weight and more value on the results garnered from the scientific method than those gathered from qualitative research?

WORKS CITED

Charney, Davida. “Empiricism Is Not a Four-Letter Word.” Central Works in Technical Communication. Eds. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 281–299. Print.

Koerber, Amy and Lonie McMichael. “Qualitative Sampling Methods: A Primer for Technical Communicators.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication 22.4 (2008): 454–473. Sage Publications. Web. 4 June 2012.

That being said, however, the persistence of technical writing scholars’ need to redefine the term/field/inudstry is one part fascinating, one part frustrating to me. Like defining “rhetoric,” I don’t understand why so much time, energy, and intelligence is used up on neatly defining these terms or theories. Part of me wants to argue that rhetoric or technical writing are indefinable, are too many things and everything, and can’t we just let them be. But I know my peers will lambaste me with their retorts. :-) So, on to my questions on this week’s readings.

I tend to like, or fall for, theories that take “a major departure” from original, foundational, or popular theories, so I found myself entranced by Thralls and Blyler’s discussion of paralogic hermeneutics and its “major departure from the social constructionist and ideologic approaches” (140). I, like the authors and the paralogic theorists they focused on, tend to agree that “the idea that collaboration can be used to teach communicative interactions is based on the mistaken notion that communication is a codifiable system” (Thralls and Blyler 139). Too much “hermeneutic guessing” is involved in communicative interactions in order to codify communication and teach it in a classroom, but I liked the concept that “knowledge is an agreement reached with other communicants through the process of interacting” (Thralls and Blyler 137). The authors’ defined the three approaches for us: social constructionist, ideologic, and paralogic hermeneutic, and I found the social constructionist approach had me scrawling the most in the margins. I found our class discussion last week being echoed in some ways: “knowledge results from a community’s consensus about what it will call true” (Thralls and Blyler 128), and questioned a number of times whether I agreed with the constructionists: can “giving students collaborative tasks that require them to use the normal discourse of groups…further enable [them] to learn the conversational values that will effect their transition into professional communities” (Thralls and Blyler 130)? And are teachers and professors actuall reading “studies of workplace collaboration…that can then be used to prepare students to function effectively in their jobs” (Thralls and Blyler 131)?

As I continued into Lay’s article, I, first, appreciated her own recognition that she “simplified the complex thoughts of feminist scholars too greatly” (146). I only read that after I had finished reading the article in its entirety and thought for such a large topic, Lay had covered it so quickly in a mere 10 pages. But as with most gender theory articles I’ve ever read, it takes few words to bring to light serious issues. Until the final couple of pages, I struggled to connect how Lay’s article really had anything to do with technical communication. Workplace and organization communication? Sure. The relationships between and experiences of men and women in the workplace surely differ greatly. But what did that have to do with technical writing? And I guess what I really took away from Lay’s piece is that what a woman brings to a collaborative writing project or a technical document will vary drastically from what a man brings to the same project or document because of her experiences and because of her attitude born from coming into this world and our society as a female, rather than a male. If technical writing and communication are more than just translating language into usable documents, if technical communication is actually also collaboration, invention, and the ability to work well with others, among other things, then studying gender within technical communication is certainly enlightening.

Slack, Miller, and Doak’s discussion of technical communicator as author was very fascinating. I’m hoping I understood it correctly in that the transmission view is a dated view of technical communicators as those with no authority. Technical communicators are transparent, clear channels—simply transmitters of knowledge, a linear movement of info from sender to receiver. The authors, however, did say at one point that the “clarity and brevity” technical communicators strive for “suggests a transparency that belies what they really do” (my emphasis, Slack et al. 165). This course is challenging me, much like we ended up discussin in class last week or even the week before, I think, to think of technical communicators in a bigger picture, not just as these transmitters of info, but as authors of text with meaning that are part of a larger interaction between technical writer, sender of info, and receiver of info. I though Slack et al. did a good job of drawing this out for us, illustrating the movement from tech writer as authorless to tech writer as still authorless but as part of the negotiation between sender and receiver to tech writer as fully part of the articulation and rearticulation of power and meaning.

Finally, with Johnson-Eilola, what I appreciated most was his call for technical communicators to “take action to change their current situation” in order to avoid finding “their work increasingly contingent, devalued, outsourced, and automated” (187). It seems that in many cases, the way technical communicators think of themselves and the work that they do, in such a devalued sort of way, is what perpetuates popular culture’s understanding of the role of technical communication and creates the struggle scholars and even employers have to define the role of technical communicator.

WORKS CITED

Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. “Relocating the Value of Work.” Central Works in Technical Communication. Eds. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 175-192. Print.

Lay, Mary M. “Feminist Theory and The Redefinition of Technical Communication.” Central Works in Technical Communication. Eds. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 146-159. Print.

Slack, Jennifer Daryl, David James Miller, and Jeffrey Doak. “The Technical Communicator as Author.” Central Works in Technical Communication. Eds. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 160-174. Print.

Thralls, Charlotte and Nancy Roundy Blyler. “The Social Perspective and Professional Communication.” Central Works in Technical Communication. Eds. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 124-145. Print.