After finishing up this week’s readings, I think it’s safe to say that technical communication, or technical writing, or whatever we feel like calling the field or profession, was chock full of some very unhappy people in the 1990s.

The author of one of the readings, Mary M. Lay, puts technical communication in the same position of power as other supposedly “objective” fields like science and engineering. The people working in these fields, as Lay mentions, hold views that are positivist by nature, and they consider their findings and meanings “objective” (151). They also view certain scientific disciplines as more objective and, therefore, worthy of greater esteem (152). They even go so far, Lay tells us, as to claim that sex plays a role in this; some in those objective fields have argued that the concept of objectivity is anything but womanly, and that women are not scientific by nature (152). Science, though, has its own failings. Since technical communication is associated with these seemingly objective, but flawed, disciplines, Lay posits that while it “ranks higher than other supposedly subjective types of writing” (152), technical communication needs to be redefined (148).

The articles by Slack et al and Johnson-Eilola go in an entirely different direction. In their studies, they situate technical communicators, and the field of technical communication, not in a position of power, but in a tier below that occupied by the scientists and engineers who develop technology. The two studies vary slightly by how they explain this lack of power. Slack et al places the blame on a cultural conception of “author” (161). The power such a term as “author” connotes is great; much of the power of an “author” is derived from the privileged position some modes of discourse hold in society, since “author[s are] produced by [their] discourse[s]” (161). Some discourses, then, are just higher on the social ladder, and technical communication is not on the top rung. The reason technical communicators are not authors, then, is because their discourse lacks esteem.

But, as Thralls and Blyler point out in their discussion of ideologic social approaches to communication, some scholars “[associate] a hierarchical mode with dominance and oppression” (135). If a discourse is not well esteemed, then it is that way because someone has to be doing the esteeming. Some of the oppressors of technical communicators and their field, according to Slack et al, are the theorists who developed mathematical models of communication (163). The theorists doled all of the potential power of communication to “sender[s]” (165), aka engineers who find “meaning” through empirical studies (164). Some of the other oppressors are the employers who want technical communicators who are unnoticeable in their works (168).

Johnson-Eilola, on the other hand, blames a culture that, due to an industrial economic history, overvalues technology. Industrial economics (I know that I’m making a very simplistic statement here) thrived through the accumulation of capital through the selling of physical products and technologies. Technical writing, Johnson-Eilola explains, is meant, by businesses who still hold industrial ideas of economics, to “be added on to a primary product” and is therefore of less value than a business’s product (178). Technical communicators, then need to stress, amongst other things, that they not only add to a product, but that they carry out symbolic-analytic work (181).

Slack et al don’t focus all of their attention on the technical communicator’s position as an author, though. They unexpectedly decided that they wanted to worry almost as much about readers as they did about authors. As I was reading Slack et al’s article, I assumed that, since they mentioned they’d cover three concepts of communication, and they explicitly wrote that one of them (“articulation”) would play the role of good guy for technical communication (163), Slack et al would discuss how oppressive the other concept that wasn’t “articulation” – the “translation” concept (165) – is for technical communicators. This did not really happen, though, to the extent I was expecting. The only group the translation concept oppresses is readers, as it privileges anyone, even those pesky technical communicators, who encode messages (167). Translation, then, like articulation, can empower technical writers and put them on the high rung of the ladder Lay puts them on.

To tell you the truth, I really appreciated Slack et al’s recognition of audience. This seemed to place their article within an ideologic mode of discourse, as they “encourage alternative and more heterogeneous discourse” for everyone involved in communication processes (Thralls and Blyler 134). This is not to say that I did not appreciate Lay’s article for also being ideologic. Lay’s article discusses a major issue within the technical communication field, the need to redefine its values and accept the findings of feminists; it also questions the “mission” of many in technical communication of preparing practitioners for fitting into the industry (157). I just enjoyed watching Slack et al’s work take a different turn than I was expecting.

I may also have appreciated Slack et al’s work because its concentration on the responsibility of technical communicators, and the article’s overall consideration of audience power, differed from the focus of the Johnson-Eilola article with which I associate it. I noticed that a word Johnson-Eilola is fond of using is “value” (176, 185). This term “value” already has a capitalistic connotation; furthermore, it’s used in the context of redefining the role of technical communication in the workplace (Johnson-Eilola 181). It’s not a good idea for anyone to eschew the practical application of anything, but I was still frustrated by the Johnson-Eilola article’s emphasis on a technical communicator’s “work” (189), and not on their search for, or construction of, “meaning” (Slack et al 163).

References

Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. “Relocating the Value of Work: Technical Communication in a Post-Industrial Age.” Central Works in Technical Communication. Ed. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. pp. 176-192. 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: Meaning, Power Authority.” Central Works in Technical Communication. Ed. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. pp. 161-174. Print.

Thralls, Charlotte and Nancy Roundy Blyler. “The Social Perspective and Professional Communication: Diversity and Directions in Research.” Central Works in Technical Communication. Ed. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. pp. 125-145. Print.