Challenging the Definition of Technical Communication
The majority of the essays this week advocated challenging the notion of technical communication as merely “the objective transfer of information,” as Lay phrases it in her essay, “Feminist Theory and the Redefinition of Technical Communication” (146). Jennifer Daryl Slack, David James Miller, and Jeffrey Doak also challenge the idea of technical communication as merely the accurate transmission of a message from sender to receiver in their essay, “The Technical Communicator as Author: Meaning, Power, and Authority.” Finally, in Johndan Johnson-Eilola’s “Relocating the Value of Work: Technical Communication in a Post-Industrial Age,” the author argues that a more complex view of technical communication should be adopted: “Because of the political, economic, and social aspects of all technologies, technical communication should not limit itself to simple functionalism, but must also include broader and more complicated concerns” (185). The underlying theme that ties each of these three essays together is the suggestion that technical communication is not a simple, reductive task; rather, it is much more than the accurate transfer of information from producer to user.
Although each of these pieces focuses on challenging the definition of technical communication as simple information transfer, they use different terms and different frameworks to address the issue. Lay emphasizes the connections between feminist studies and technical writing, working to demonstrate that women may have a unique skill set especially suitable for collaborative technical writing. Lay recognizes that technical communication should be dialogic in nature; that technical communicators should seek to identify with their audiences, and “must seek the many voices of those who witness and experience the culture they investigate.” Lay points out that Ede and Lunsford found that women technical writers use this dialogic model the most often, and suggests that this skill should be adopted in a widespread manner by both men and women collaborators.
In “The Technical Communicator as Author: Meaning, Power, Authority,” the authors also contest the view that technical communication is merely the accurate transfer of information from sender to receiver. The authors give this view a label: they call it the transmission view. In the transmission view, knowledge is encoded by the sender and is decoded by the receiver. The power rests with the sender, who can influence the receiver to act in a certain, predictable way, so long as his or her instructions are clear. Slack, Miller, and Doak offer two alternative views of communication in place of the transmission view, ultimately advocating what they call the articulation view of communication. The articulation view of communication holds that “technical communicators are theoretically situated in the process of articulating meaning just as prominently as are the sender and the receiver” (172). In other words, the technical communication process is dialogic: meanings are negotiated between engineer, technical writer, and receiver. The power of the receiver (audience) is elevated, because they can interpret a message in various ways from within the arena of meaning that the technical communicator has created. In a similar way, the power of the technical communicator is also extended.
Johnson-Eilola’s essay is also concerned with the power that the technical communicator possesses (or more accurately, lacks). Johnson-Eilola claims that as long as technical communicators are seen in a supporting role, their work will be disregarded as secondary to the product being sold. Johnson-Eilola offers a solution, however. He suggests that technical communicators get involved in the actual design of products, and consider the broad, often complicated ways that customers use the products while designing instruction manuals. Although I do believe that this model will help elevate the role of technical writers, the practical implications are extensive. Technical communicators would have to have a relatively extensive background in the technical field that they were planning to work with, and would perhaps have to take additional courses to learn more about engineering processes.
Works Cited
1. Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. “Relocating the Value of Work: Technical Communication in a Post-Industrial Age.” Central Works in Technical Communication. Eds. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 175-192. Print.
2. 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.
3. Slack, Jennifer Daryl, David James Miller, and Jeffrey Doak. “The Technical Communicator as Author: Meaning, Power, Authority.” Central Works in Technical Communication. Eds. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 160-174. Print.