Audience Awareness of Minority Groups

I would like to focus on Angela M. Haas’ article, “Race, Rhetoric, and Technology: A Case Study of Decolonial Communication Theory, Methodology, and Pedagogy” for this blog post. Haas’ article addressed an important topic that our class hasn’t yet discussed comprehensively: how issues of race intersect with rhetoric and technology in technical communication.

One of the most salient points that the article made was that “cultural studies approaches to technical communication research, practice, and pedagogy can guide and support us in creating more culturally responsive and responsible texts that accommodate their users” (281). In other words, cultural studies address one of the most central features of rhetoric: audience awareness. Technical communicators will be better equipped to connect effectively with their intended audience if they are well-grounded in their audience’s cultural background(s). But I wondered: what would this process look like on a practical level? Would technical communicators begin to create multiple versions of instruction manuals for different cultural backgrounds? And if so, which cultural backgrounds would be included, and which would be omitted? Or would technical communicators try to create documents that emphasize “universal” cultural values? Finally, would technical communicators attempt to synthesize seemingly paradoxical cultural values into one document?

Although Haas does not attempt to answer these particular questions in her article, she does make the point that technical communication has been “saturated in white male culture” and that whiteness has been privileged in the field. She discusses Johnson et. al’s work on early technical communication in New Mexico, which reveals whiteness “vis- à –vis ‘color blindness’ (refusal to see color), selective attribution (specific application of race), whitewashing (the removal of race for whites), and privileged language (the valuation of one knowledge or ideology over another’ (Johnson et al 215).”

One of the interesting points that Haas makes in connection to the field’s (technical communication’s) alignment with whiteness is that “whiteness often goes underexamined, as many in U.S. society think that only people of color have racial identity” (284) and that “critiquing racism often proves to be limited and shallow without integrating a deep critique of whiteness” (285).  In other words, in order to more fully understand the framework within which technical communication operates, Haas argues that whiteness as a cultural construct must be critically examined, and that whiteness as the absence of culture is a type of a “lie.” Haas cites Roediger in Racial Classification and History, who specifically makes that very point: “But such specific ethnic cultures [Irish American, Italian, Slavic American, and German American] always stand in danger of being swallowed by the lie of whiteness. Whiteness describes, from Little Big Horn to Simi Valley, not a culture but precisely the absence of culture” (13).

If technical communication is grounded in the lie of whiteness as “the absence of culture,” what does this mean for the field as a whole? Haas suggests that critically examining whiteness will be an important first step in understanding on what assumptions technical communication currently operates, and how to expand considerations to include audience awareness of minority groups.

 

 

Haas, Angela M. “Race, Rhetoric, and Technology: A Case Study of Decolonial Technical Communication Theory, Methodology, and Pedagogy.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication. 26.3 (2012): 277-309. PDF.

Johnson, J. R., Pimentel, O., & Pimentel, C. “Writing New Mexico White: A Critical Analysis of Early Representations of New Mexico in Technical Writing.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication. 22 (2008): 211–236. PDF.

Roediger, D. R. Introduction. Racial Classification and History. By E. N. Gates (Ed.) New York, NY: Routledge, 1997. 345–363. Print.