Paper 1, revised: Summary: a short history of Technical Communications as English Studies (ODU 810)

Paper 1, revised: Summary: a short history of Technical Communications as English Studies (ODU 810)

NYC Middle Schoolers online

Selfe and Hawisher consider how Technical Communicators “acquired” electronic literacy, what influenced that gain, and identify similarities to help “Technical Communicators instructors, program directors, and workplace supervisors” effectively teach electronic literacy  The inclusion of Technical Communications in the English Studies curriculum leads to a commitment to digital rhetoric in the college curriculum. Technical Communications is closely related to Digital Rhetoric. Both skills require digital literacy, which include the “practices of reading, writing, and exchanging information online, with the values associated with such practices—social, cultural, political, [and] educational”[1]. For these reasons, the study and teaching of Technical Communications and Digital Rhetoric should remain in the English Studies department, not in the growing number of more technically-oriented Communications departments.

The computer explosion took place from 1978 through 1993, which is no secret. In 1984 Gilbert Storms noted that technical communications courses be added to the curriculum, showing “how they are used in communication, particularly word processing, information storage and retrieval, and information management”[2].  Jessica Lambertson recently praised technical communication in the digital age for expanding storytelling, simplifying the documentation of teachers’ notes, encouraging a global sharing of academic findings from the highest levels of academia and government to neighborhood schools and kitchen tables. “These instances are also contextualized as signifiers of the culture’s general adoption of personal computers in writing and the office environ”[3]. Of course, we know this. But this paper covers these questions:

1. When did the subdiscipline of Technical Communication emerge?
2. What universities did it emerge from?
3. What were the exigencies for its emergence?
4. What was its relationship to the university system as a whole?

Technical Communication Subdiscipline Emerges

As early as 1980, two years into the personal computer revolution, Jacques G. Richardson of UNESCO announced the global value of the interdisciplinary responsibility of Technical

Walter J. Ong

Communicators[4]. Then in 1982, Walter J. Ong, S.J., of Saint Louis University, in “Orality and Literacy,” stated that we are born with capability for speech (what Ong calls “orality”), but that writing is a learned “consciousness-raising” activity. He foresaw a growth of what we now call eBooks and audio texts replacing books and newspapers, which can affect how we communicate orally, in electronic writing (using the technology), and digitally (changing how we think, produce text, and exchange ideas)[5]. In 2008, five years after his death, his Saint Louis University established the Walter J. Ong, S. J., Center for Language, Culture, and Media Studies, to study what he saw as the interdisciplinary departments of English, Communication, History, Theology, Modern and Classical Languages, and Philosophy[6].

The Golden Age

President Clintion

The discipline of Technical Communications in the university’s English Studies department came out of President Bill Clinton’s 1993 Technology Literacy Challenge validated teaching technology literacy to K-12 students[7]. Digitally literate high school grads were joining the entry-level workforce just when PCs were cheap and ubiquitous in all businesses. That socio-economic reality required adding Technical Communications to the college curriculum[8].  Digital rhetoric takes us a step further into a world where we structure “content for a future that’s unfixed, fluid and ever changing. Miles Kimbal, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, contends that after thousands of years of oratory and rhetoric, the early 21^st century is “the Golden Age of technical communication. [… and we] should spread it as a set of skills valuable for everyone to learn”[9]

Today’s Golden Age of Technical Communication will lead to new level of digital rhetoric, expanded on by Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch, University of Minnesota, when she explained that “issues of technological literacy related to performance, contextual factors, and linguistic activities […] provide […] a mechanism to identify and analyze a range of perspectives associated with technology and communication”[10]. This pedagogical philosophy will support the view that the study and teaching of Technical Communication as it evolves into Digital Rhetoric should remain in the English Studies department.

Bibliography

Fromm, Harold. "The rhetoric and politics of environmentalism." College English.. 59, no. 8 (Dec 1997): 946-950.

Kastman Breuch, Lee-Ann. "Thinking critically about technological literacy: Developing a framework to guide computer pedagogy in technical communication." Technical Communication Quarterly 11, no. 3 (2002): 267.

Kimball, Miles A. "The Golden Age of Technical Communication." Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Apr 2016: 1-29.

Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. Track Chaanges. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2016.

Lambertson, Jessica A. "Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing." Library Journal, 2016: 91.

Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy. New York: Routledge, 1982, 2002.

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

Richardson, Jacques G. "Science and Technology as Integral Parts of Our Culture: Interdisciplinary Responsibilities of the Scientific Communicator." Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, April 1980: 141-147.

Saint Louis University. "The Ong Center Home." slu.edu. 2016. http://www.slu.edu/the-ong-center (accessed Sep 23, 2016).

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

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[1] (Selfe 2002)

[2] (Selfe 2002)

[3] (Lambertson 2016)

[4] (Richardson 1980)

[5] (Ong 1982, 2002)

[6] (Saint Louis University 2016)

[7] (Selfe 2002), p. 233

[8] (Selfe 2002), p. 234

[9] (Kimball 2016)

[10] (Kastman Breuch 2002)