Isabelle Thompson

Women and Feminism in Technical Communication: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Journal Articles Published in 1989 through 1997.

This qualitative content analysis identifies 40 articles about women and feminism published in five technical communication journals in a period of nine years, beginning with the publication of Mary Lays award-winning “Interpersonal Conflict in Collaborative Writing” in 1989. Along with numeric trends about the frequency of articles about women and feminism in technical communication journals, this study also identifies major themes, all of which concern inclusion: through eliminating sexist language, providing equal opportunity in the workplace, valuing gender differences, recovering womens historical contributions to technical communication, and critiquing previously uncontested terms and concepts. The study concludes that although research about women and feminism has been accepted as part of the scholarly purview of technical communication, the ways in which this research has influenced workplace or classroom practice are unclear.

Mapping Technical and Professional Communication: A Summary and Survey of Academic Locations for Programs

This article provides an account of the academic location of 142 technical communication programs as reported on program Web sites as well as in an online survey sent to technical communication program coordinators. According to the findings, most technical communication programs are located in departments of English, but programs outside of English are more likely to offer graduate degrees and a more technically oriented program focus.

Feminist Theory in Technical Communication Making Knowledge Claims Visible

This study extends the corpus of an earlier qualitative content analysis about women and feminism and identifies the knowledge claims and themes in the 20 articles that discuss gender differences. Knowledge claims are reflected in expressions such as androgyny; natural collaborators; hierarchical, dialogic, and asymmetrical modes; web; connected knowers; different voice; ethic of care; ethic of objectivity; continuous with others; connected to the world; the cultural divide; visual metaphor; andgender-free science. Built from knowledge claims, the themes in the 20 articles include gender differences in language use, learning, and knowledge construction; gender differences in collaboration; and reviews of research about gender differences and political calls for action. Although the 20 articles provide little support for the existence of gender differences, by introducing, discussing, testing, and revising new ideas about women and feminism, they serve as an example of the process of knowledge accumulation and remodeling in technical communication.

Women and Feminism in Technical Communication—An Update

The purposes of this study are to determine the current status of scholarship published in five major technical communication journals about women and feminism and to identify changes in focus that may have occurred over the last five years. We begin with a discussion of the frequency of publication for articles whose titles have keywords relating to women and feminism. After identifying 21 articles, we consider the thematic patterns in the narrowed corpus. We conclude that scholarly publication about women and feminism in technical communication has moved from a moderate or radical concern for inclusion to a postmodern concern for critique of visual, verbal, and mechanical “technologies,” which previously were not considered political.

Competence and Critique in Technical Communication A Qualitative Content Analysis of Journal Articles

This study uses qualitative content analysis to discuss current perspectives in technical communication pedagogy. It examines the 1990-94 issues of five major scholarly journals—a collection of 563 articles—to identify 98 articles mentioning teaching in undergraduate technical communication courses. Influenced by differing theoretical and practical approaches, the 98 articles were classified according to four pedagogical perspectives: (1) the functional perspective, based on empirical research and workplace experience; (2) the rhetorical perspective, based on scholarship in the humanities and influenced by rhetorical theory; (3) the ideological perspective, also based on scholarship in the humanities but influenced by critical theory; and (4) the intercultural and feminist perspective, a bridging perspective based on both empirical research and critical theory. This article discusses the four perspectives in terms of the educational goals of communicative competence (the ability to use language to succeed in the workplace) and social critique (the ability to question existing social structures and to envision cultural change).

Sex Differences in Technical Communication: A Perspective from Social Role Theory.

This article interprets technical communication research about sex differences according to social role theory, which argues that sex differences are enculturated through experiences associated with social positions in the family and the workplace. It reevaluates technical communication research about sex differences in communicative and collaborative styles in the classroom and the workplace and about the effects of the double bind that women experience in the workplace. The article concludes with a recommendation that theoretical frameworks explaining sex differences remain flexible and able to account for social change.

Stories of Three Editors: A Qualitative Study of Editing in the Workplace.

This study describes the roles and responsibilities of three editors employed in the publications unit of a large government agency. Along with the story of each editor, the article presents generalizations about the editing process in this particular organization. The description suggests that editing is a complex, meaning-making process. The three editors seem to make changes in the documents they edit based on their expert knowledge of writing, their empathy for readers, and their assumption of authority over a document. Although they all make rule-based changes that rely on external authorities, such as style manuals, they vary greatly in their readiness to use their personal authority in interpreting the needs of an audience. The editors gain the authority they need to make reader-based changes by assuming the role of language specialists and by enhancing the teaching role important in their organization.

An educational philosophy of technical writing

This article discusses John Deweys transactional epistemology and Louise Rosenblatts transactional view of reading and writing as they apply to teaching technical writing. A mental merger of the private and public aspects of both knowledge and communication, transaction is a meaning‐making process, variable and unique, although similar situations lead to similar transactions. Because English classrooms do not encourage transaction, they are not the best places to teach technical writing. However, four maxims bring the spirit of transaction to our teaching.

Readability beyond the Sentence: Global Coherence and Ease of Comprehension

This article interprets research in linguistics and psychology in order to revise and enlarge existing definitions of readability. It suggests instructional methods for teaching students to compose more coherent—and, hence, more readable—technical writing. For a text to be readable, it must be coherent. However, like readability, coherence is variable, depending on the writer and the reader as well as the text itself. The reader is able to understand a message by relying on his shared knowledge with the writer. A starting place for comprehension, cultural and professional knowledge and linguistic knowledge allow readers to set up expectations about a text and to read efficiently. Because accommodating shared knowledge is vital to readable writing, we should teach students how to assess typical audiences and compose in forms routinely used for technical documents. With practice in audience analysis, students learn to accommodate a readers professional and cultural knowledge. With practice in traditional organizational patterns, stylistic imitation of readable writing, they learn to accommodate common expectations about language and form.