Bernadette Longo

An approach for applying cultural study theory to technical writing research

When the idea of culture is expanded to include institutional relationships extending beyond the walls of one organization, technical writing researchers can address relationships between our power/knowledge system and multiculturalism, postmodernism, gender, conflict, and ethics within professional communication. This article contrasts ideas of culture in social constructionist and cultural study research designs, addressing how each type of design impacts issues that can be analyzed in research studies. Implications for objectivity and validity in speculative cultural study research are also explored. Finally, since articulation of a coherent theoretical foundation is crucial to limiting a cultural study, this article suggests how technical writing can be constituted as an object of study according to five (of many possible) poststructural concepts: the object of inquiry as discursive, the object as practice within a cultural context, the object as practice within a historical context, the object as ord...

ACM established to develop communication about computing

Sixty years ago most computer scientists worked in a vacuum, unaware of the projects their peers around the U.S. were exploring. Sharing research was key to furthering the field, most agreed, but what vehicle could best serve as a conduit for communication?

Implementation of Medical Research Findings through Insulin Protocols: Initial Findings from an Ongoing Study of Document Design and Visual Display

Medical personnel in hospital intensive care units routinely rely on protocols to deliver some types of patient care. These protocol documents are developed by hospital physicians and staff to ensure that standards of care are followed. Thus, the protocol document becomes a de facto standing order, standing in for the physicians judgment in routine situations. This article reports findings from Phase I of an ongoing study exploring how insulin protocols are designed and used in intensive care units to transfer medical research findings into patient care “best practices.” We developed a taxonomy of document design elements and analyzed 29 insulin protocols to determine their use of these elements. We found that 93% of the protocols used tables to communicate procedures for measuring glucose levels and administering insulin. We further found that the protocols did not adhere well to principles for designing instructions and hypothesized that this finding reflected different purposes for instructions (training) and protocols (standardizing practice).

Toward an Informed Citizenry: Readability Formulas as Cultural Artifacts

After World War II, the United States government and citizenry were concerned with truth, propaganda, democracy, and national security as they entered the Cold War era. This was a time when technocrats, engineers, and scientists could lead our free-world government through the perils of our tense relationships with Russia, Red China, and Korea. In the early 1940s, Rudolf Flesch began developing what he termed a “scientific rhetoric” to help writers of functional documents more effectively communicate technical information to a general public. He came up with a readability formula to help writers evaluate whether their writing was effective and this readability formula has profoundly shaped notions of “clear writing” for the last 60 years. This article explores Fleschs development of this readability formula, placing his work in a historical context, as well as discussing how the readability formula fit into a larger project to make effective writing more of a science than an art.

Extending the Boundaries of Rhetoric in Legal Writing Pedagogy

In the study of law, postmodernisms interpretive turn has given rise to a wealth of scholarship analyzing the relationship of laws rhetoric to its social, cultural, and political contexts. This shift has influenced some teaching of “substantive” law school courses. At the university level, the interpretive turn has prompted composition scholars to reconsider how the teaching of writing is implicated, but no similar shift has occurred in legal writing pedagogy. Instead, those teaching legal writing largely teach as they were taught, emphasizing the use of rhetoric as a tool for successful lawyering. Legal writing professors must move beyond this narrow conception of rhetoric to help students become adept at the discourse of the legal community and capable of critically evaluating it.

What is excellence for Project Management knowledge in the context of globalization

How can technical writers understand not only excellence in Project Management knowledge, but also the effects of globalization on how project management knowledge is used in project conception and project planning when major stakeholders live in third world countries? This study focuses in particular on project conception for the use of cell phone and web 2.0 technologies with an NGO based in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We found that students were able to use knowledge management and knowledge communication concepts to shape their project titles, goals and objectives, as well as their description of the work. Implications include that shaping projects through knowledge communication and knowledge management theory offers a new focus for excellence in project conception. This focus includes diversity in perspectives and fosters respect by recognizing differences as knowledge asymmetries.

Edmund Berkeley, computers, and modern methods of thinking

Edmund Berkeley established himself as an influential force in the early development of computer science. The article examines Berkeleys work with symbolic logic and explores how this knowledge shaped his ideas about early electronic computers. It further explores how Berkeley applied symbolic logic and human reasoning to the design of relay computers, especially machines designed for the insurance industry.

The Poetics of Computers: Composing Relationships with Technology.

Abstract This article describes a course with three primary goals: (1) to help students reflect on the complex relationship between humans and technology (developed within the cultural and historical context of the twentieth century) as portrayed in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and films that focuses on technology topics; (2) to reflect—broadly, deeply, and from humanistic perspectives—on their own responsibility for shaping this relationship in contemporary contexts; and (3) to provide opportunities within which to practice composing this relationship in personal terms—expressing a personal understanding of humans and computers in language and images, poetry and prose, print and new-media contexts. In such an instructional context—while acquiring facility in making meaning within digital communication environment—students from different academic majors developed a critical perspective on the tools they used and became increasingly conscious about their power, as social agents, to shape the relationship between humans and computers.

From secrets to science : Technical writing, utility, and the hermetic tradition in agricola's De Re Metallica

Technical writing is rooted in books of Hermetic secrets and mining lore. Hermetic texts, written in the early centuries A.D., were based in experiential/experimental knowledge of illiterate people and were written as recipes for manipulating nature. Set against the legitimate, text-based academic knowledge of the time, this proto-scientific knowledge was called “secret” to give it authority through revelation. In the mid-1500s, Agricola combined the traditions of Hermetic secrets and handbooks to compile mining lore into De Re Metallica, in which he sought to write clearly and simply, illustrate information with graphics, and rationalize the use of occult knowledge based on its utility. This early technical text paved the way for philosophers, such as Francis Bacon, to legitimate scientific knowledge based on experience/experiments as being more “beneficial” for social organization than knowledge based on a priori textual authority and speculation in the then-dominant Scholastic tradition.

What kind of knowledge gets deposited in textbooks

This paper explores how technical writing participates in estimates of value, based on its historical roots in mining and metallurgy going back to T.A. Rickards first technical writing textbook published in 1908. The paper extends this exploration to include influences on Rickards understanding of technical writings social function, such as classical encyclopedic traditions, books of Hermetic secrets, and the first textbook developed by Comenius in the early 17th century. Throughout this history, the works of Francis Bacon provide a backdrop against which to understand how technical writing came to stabilize a scientific knowledge system and how this knowledge system was represented in textbooks.