Annotated Bibliography, Epistemological Alignment (PAB3b, ODU810, H. Gold)

Rhetoric > Technical Communication

Annotated Bibliography of:

Price, Tiffany E., and Chambers, Mary-Lynn. "Globalization and the Cultural Impact on Technical Communication." European Scientific Journal (2016): 93+. Academic OneFile. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.

This week’s second annotated bibliography on epistemological alignment looks at the 2016 article by Tiffany Price and Mary-Lynn Chamber, “Globalization and the Cultural Impact on Technical Communication." They open the essay by saying that, “Technology has thrown open the academic doors to new learning strategies that will positively impact the global communication experience.” In an era of increasing dystopian writing (fiction and non-fiction), I find this refreshing view placing our technical communication discipline as a force performing worldwide good.

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) defines epistemology as a science identifying the learner’s perspective of what they know, how they know it, why they know it, and if they care why they have the knowledge (Kong). As an aside, NLP is also a growing commercial market serving corporate training needs (Vansson). To simplify the issue of NLP for most non-academics, then-Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld summed it up best (Graham):

Donald Rumsfeld's book

As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. 

This brings us to our two epistemological issues: (1) teaching technical communicators to effectively work and to train new global communicators, and (2) fulfill international learners’ gaps in knowledge.

Global Competence

Measuring the ability for intercultural instructors and students to communicate has been defined by Han Yu as the ability for each to:

Hu's Book

·         communicate effectively and appropriately in across cultures based on one’s intercultural knowledge, silks, and attitudes;

·         suitably shift point of view and adapt to cultural context;

·         identify mannerisms guided by culture, then engage in new, unfamiliar behaviors from other cultures.

Multilayered Literacies

Kelli Cargile Cook (whose paper I annotated in PAB3) acknowledges the urgency of making technical communication “multilayered, possessing a variety of literacies that encompass the multiple ways people use language in producing information, solving problems, and critiquing practice.” Towards that end, she offers “six layered literacies” for technical communicators (Cook):

1.      Basic literacy is the ability to read and write, and now extends to business writing and “codified skills and forms.”

2.      Rhetorical literacy is audience-facing needs; analytical skills to respond to the audience through specific communication purpose; choosing applicable strategies based on audience, purpose, and writing; and an awareness of your cultural point of view and that of the audience.

3.      Social literacy is used to reach learners in a classroom or workplace practice environment.

4.      Technological literacy is a newcomer to the pedagogy, but includes knowledge of technology to produce content; awareness of how to use technology for collaboration; research using technologies; and to critique, make decisions, and produce audience-facing content

5.      Ethical literacy combines the “communicators’ knowledge of professional ethical standards [and] their abilities for all stakeholders…”

6.      Critical Literacy is an “isolated” literacy, “deeply embedded in situations requiring other forms of literacy.” It promotes reflection, critique, and action.

Next Steps

Global and cultural implications of creating online content, as separately defined by Kong and Han, can be applied to Cook's literacies for preparing new curricula to clearly teach the discipline to new technical communicators. As described in PAB3a, this may further help me identify and perhaps contribute to a growing integrative pedagogical frame for technical communication.

Works Cited

Cook, Kelli Cargile. "Layered Literacies: A Theoretical Frame for Technical Communication Pedagogy." Technical Communication Quarterly 11.1 (2002): 5-29. OmniFile Full Text Mega (H.W. Wilson). Web. 10 Oct. 2016.

Graham, David A. (27 Mar 2014). "Rumsfeld's Knowns and Unknowns: The Intellectual History of a Quip." The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/rumsfelds-knowns-and-unknowns-the-intellectual-history-of-a-quip/359719/ (11 Oct 2016)

Kong, Eric. "The Potential of Neuro-Linguistic Programming In Human Capital Development." Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management 10.2 (2012): 131-141. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text. Web. (11 Oct. 2016).

Price, Tiffany E., and Chambers, Mary-Lynn. "Globalization and the Cultural Impact on Technical Communication." European Scientific Journal (2016): 93+. Academic OneFile. Web. 11 Oct. 2016. http://www.eujournal.org/index.php/esj/article/view/7669/7409

Yu, Han. "Intercultural Competence in Technical Communication: A Working Definition and Review Of Assessment Methods." Technical Communication Quarterly 21.2 (2012): 168-186. Education Source. Web. (11 Oct. 2016).

Vanson, Sally. (22 Aug 2014). "What on earth are Ontology and Epistemology?" The Performance Solution. http://theperformancesolution.com/earth-ontology-epistemology/ (11 Oct 2016)

Annotated Bibliography, Epistemological Alignment (PAB3a, ODU810, H. Gold)

Rhetoric > Technical Communication > Epistemological Alignment > Technical Communication 

Annotated Bibliography of:

Cook, Kelli Cargile. "Layered Literacies: A Theoretical Frame for Technical Communication Pedagogy." Technical Communication Quarterly 11.1 (2002): 5-29. OmniFile Full Text Mega (H.W. Wilson). Accessed Web. 10 Oct. 2016.

This week’s annotated bibliography on epistemological alignment starts with Kelli Cargile Cook’s 2002 article, “Layered Literacies: A Theoretical Frame for Technical Communication Pedagogy.” She contends that technical communications is impaired because instructors with no experience writing commercial technical documentation have modularized and thereby underrated instruction. She calls for an “integrative pedagogical frame [to assist technical communication] instructors by defining the literacies that students need to be successful technical and professional communicators” (Cook).  In future papers, I will look at her proposal in the light of a Technical Communications Timeline from 1980-2005. I will also consider how my career as a professional tech writer, and my upcoming research as an academic, ties into the recent timeline, Philip Rubens’s definition of technical communication (which follows), and Cook’s pedagogic literacies for technical communications, among other academic milestones.

Click to enlarge

The modern timeline for technical communication spans from 1989 through 2005 and parallels my professional career as a technical writer, so I wondered how that tied into my academic work for this class so far. My first PAB referenced Eric McLuhan’s Laws of Media (McLuhan, E.), which viewed the result of media, including technical communication, based on these questions: “What does it enhance, what does it make obsolete, what does it retrieve that had [it made] obsolete, and what does it become when pushed to extremes?” My next paper (Paper #2) looked at defining this academic discipline by asking, “what is it?”  There I quoted Philip Rubens, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who in 1981 defined communication as “an empirical methodology that […] offers a way for defining audiences, purposes, and by extension, the domain of technical communication with a great deal of precision” (Rubens). Those experts provide a pathway to help study, or at least pose questions for studying, the roots of technical communication and discover its branches, methodologies, pedagogies, and scope.

Cook’s Six Literacies

Charles Babbage

Cook believes that technical communication began in the late nineteenth century, quoting Robert Connors’ observation that “early courses were developed and designed to improve engineering student’s reading and writing” (Cook). This aligns with my blog entry of 18 Sept 2016, where I noted that Charles Babbage (1791-1871) may be credited sowing the seeds of technical communication as documented in his “Passages from the Life of a Philosopher” where he details discussions with writers and thinkers of his day, or his account of the “proceedings of the Royal Society, 26^th May, 1859” (Regents of the University of Minnesota).

 

Although technical communication has been a discipline for at least a century, there remains “a lack of concise identification of literacies that technical communicators should possess.” (Cook).  There have been recent attempts to define how Western technical communicators can prepare “to meet the needs of the ever-evolving [global] technical communication field while preparing students of all national origins for the global work place” (Price). For example, there Han Yu, of Kansas State University, recently joined a growing sub-discipline to examine “verbal and visual usage in intercultural contexts” (Yu). He believes that this will help provide “different assessment methods, including their strengths, drawbacks, and potential.”

Next Steps

A clear definition of technical communication and the impact of its history will enrich my upcoming research. That, combined with my extensive professional experience in the field, may contribute to a growing integrative pedagogical frame to help clearly teach the discipline to new technical communicators.

Works Cited

Babbage, Charles. Passages from the Life of a Philosopher. London: Longman, Green, 1864.
Case, R. (Fall, 2002). Plato’s Premise: Fostering Student Autonomy. Thought & Action. NEA, Washington, DC., from http://www2.nea.org/he/heta02/images/f02p33.pdf

Cook, Kelli Cargile. "Layered Literacies: A Theoretical Frame for Technical Communication Pedagogy." Technical Communication Quarterly 11.1 (2002): 5-29. OmniFile Full Text Mega (H.W. Wilson). Web. 10 Oct. 2016.

Fulkerson, Richard (Jun., 2005). Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. College Composition and Communication, Vol. 56, No 4 (Jun., 2005). Pp. 654-687. http://www.jstor.org.stable/30037890

McLuhan, Eric and Zhang, Peter. "The Interological Turn in Media Ecology." Canadian Journal of Communication 2016: 207-225. 12 Sep 2016.

Price, Tiffany E., and Mary-Lynn Chambers. "Globalization and the cultural impact on technical communication." European Scientific Journal (2016): 93+. Academic OneFile. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.

Regents of the University of Minnesota. "Who Was Charles Babbage?" The Charles Babbage Institute. 2015. http://www.cbi.umn.edu/about/babbage.html. 24 Sep. 2016).

Rubens Philip M. (Mar., 1981). Technical Communication: Notes Toward Defining a Discipline. Department of Language, Literature and Communication, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, from nasa_techdocs. https://archive.org/details/nasa_techdoc_19810013425.

Selfe, Cynthis L., and Hawisher, Gail E. "A Historical Look at Electrroinic Literacy." Journal of Business and Technical Communication, July 2002: 231-276.

Skerrett, Allison; Bomer, Randy (Mar. 2011). Borderzones in Adolescent’s Literary Practices: Connecting Out-of-School Literacies to the Reading Curriculum. Urban Education, 2011 46: 1256. DOI: 10.1177/0042085911398920, http://uex.sagepup.com/content/46/6/1256

Yu, Han. "Intercultural Competence In Technical Communication: A Working Definition And Review Of Assessment Methods." Technical Communication Quarterly 21.2 (2012): 168-186. Education Source. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.