Beyond Skill Building

Notes on Stuart A. Selber's "Beyond Skill Building":

Too many courses decontextualize computer skills

Trying to characterize the kind of student we should be trying to develop

Literacies = Functional, critical, rhetorical

Humanistic goals call for critical and rhetorical as well as technical skills

Feminist Theory and the Redefinition of Technical Communications

Reflections on Mary M. Lay's "Feminist Theory and the Redefinition of Technical Communications":

Characteristics of Feminist Theory:
1. Celebration of difference
2. Theory activating social change
3. Acknowledgement of scholars' backgrounds and values
4. Inclusion of women's experiences
5. Study of gaps and silences in traditional scholarship
6. New sources of knowledge

Issues in Feminist Theory:
1. Emphasize similarities or differences?
2. Differences located in cultural or biological traits?
3. Should these issues promote or displace binary opposite?

In affiliating with scientific positivism and objectivey, traditional technical communication ranks higher than subjective types of writing, engages in dualistic thinking and maintains closeness with patriarchy -- and resists redefinition

Interdisciplinary, collaborative nature of technical communication will lead field in direction of feminist theory

Gender, Technology, and the History of Technical Communication

Reflections on Katherine T. Durack's "Gender, Technology, and the History of Technical Communication"

Women largely absent from history due to cultural blinders

What is technical writing?
1. Close relationship with technology (as either subject or function)
2. Associated with work and workplace

David Dobrin - writing that accommodates technology to the user

Killingsworth - technical writing exists to help readers achieve work-related goals -- to perform work, to solve problems in a work context

Inclusive definitions challenge dualistic thinking
- public vs. private
- household vs. industry
- masculine vs. feminine

Technical writing is social action, exists to accomplish something

Technical writing's close relationship to technology (knowledge, action, tools) -- not just inventions but innovations and implementations

Technical writing makes tacit knowledge explicitly

History, Rhetoric, and Humanism

My reflections on Russell Rutter's "History, Rhetoric, and Humanism":

Points out technical communication is most known for its emphasis on workplace practicality

Quotes a project manager who says technical writing
- 1/3 writing proficiency
- 1/3 problem solving
- 1/3 ability to work with people

TC more than profiency in writing, more than facts

TC training should not simulate corporate training but produce competent communicators and effective problem solvers

Bruffee -- Civilization, society, conversation place people and knowledge ahead of systems and activities

Quintilian - being precedes doing

Humanist tradition - What a person knows and is determines what that person will do and how well he or she will do it

TC rhetorical above all

Writing creates its own reality then convinces readers to accept its version of reality

TC not a closed system but dynamic

Its task not to serve technology in abstract but to produce writing that can accommodate technology to the user

Technical communicators are rhetoricians

People in professional and technical occupations spend more than one day in five writing

Technical communicators must know how to do more than write
- adapt to changing demands
- function in collaborative context of workplace

Discourse community knowledge is key

Technical communicators are not channels of information but senders, not just shape medium but also matter of message

Can accommodate technology to user and see technology in broad social perspective

The Rise of Technical Writing Instruction in America

My reflections on Robert J. Connors "The Rise of Technical Writing Instruction in America":

While the Civil War and the two Morrill Acts changed the status of the technical fields, it was World War II that gave birth to the field of technical writing. For the first time it was more than an adjunct function of some other activity. The focus moved from engineering to technology.

Mills and Walter 1954 survey of 300 technical writing situations yielded two important assumptions:

1. Rhetorical approach (rather than types of reports) was a better approach to technical writing instruction

2. The only good criterion -- does it work -- the writer-reader relationship is the most important aspect

1965 Britton - technical writing defined by effort of the author to convey one meaning and only one meaning in what he says

A Humanistic Rationale For Technical Writing

My reflections and take-aways for Carolyn R. Miller's "A Humanistic Rationale For Technical Writing":

Positivist view of science puts science (objective facts) and rhetoric (emotional language/symbols) at opposition. The old stuff vs. fluff dichotomy. This relegates technical writing to a skills course which causes a myriad of problems for both instructors and students as well as field in general. I see this as a problem that not only holds true for technical writing but all writing courses (with the exception of creative writing).

The new (well in 1979 anyway) epistemology makes human knowledge thoroughly relative and science fundamentally rhetorical -- what we know of reality is created by individual action and communal assent.

Miller asserts that good technical writing becomes, rather than the revelation of absolute reality, a persuasive version of experience.

Sociological and rhetorical truism -- communication takes place in communities.

Technical writing should not be taught as a set of techniques but as a way to participate in a community; not just a set of skills but also an understanding of one's own activity within that community.

I agree with this wholeheartedly but I also happen to believe this is the way to teach writing in general -- so what separates a general writing course from a technical writing course then?