Nancy Roundy Blyler

The Social Perspective and Pedagogy in Technical Communication.

As teachers integrate social theory into the technical communication classroom, it is clear that they interpret the connection between writing and culture in different ways. The result is a range of socially based pedagogies rather than a single paradigm for writing instruction. This essay describes four of these social pedagogies—the social constructionist, the ideologic, the social cognitive, and the paralogic hermeneutic—distinguishing them by their pedagogic aims and classroom practices. The essay closes by discussing the implications of the differences among socially based pedagogies for both _ teachers and programs in technical communication.

Taking a Political Turn: The Critical Perspective and Research in Professional Communication.

This article examines the critical perspective as an alternative to our current descriptive, explanatory research focus. The critical perspective aims at empowerment and emancipation. It reinterprets the relationship between researcher and participants as one of collaboration, where participants define research questions that matter to them and where social action is the desired goal. Examples of critical research include feminist, radical educational, and participatory action research. Adopting the critical perspective would require that scholars in professional communication rethink their choices of research questions and sites, their views of the ownership of research results, and the types of funding they seek for research initiatives.

Research as Ideology in Professional Communication.

This article claims that the debate over research in professional communication is grounded in ideology. The article discusses the ideologies of two research perspectives: a functionalist perspective, common in much social scientific research, and a critical interpretive perspective, currently emerging in disciplines other than our own. The article sets recent discussions of research in professional communication within a functionalist framework, then posits that a critical interpretive ideology provides an alternative. The interests advanced by both perspectives are discussed, and the viability of critical interpretive research in professional communication is supported.

Pedagogy and Social Action A Role for Narrative in Professional Communication

Scholars in professional communication have called for a reexamination of pedagogy, asking that it instruct students not simply in the forms of workplace discourse but also in the connections between that discourse and socially responsible communicative action. This article posits that narrative can provide a basis for a pedagogy of social action—for a pedagogy, that is, that enables students to understand the workings of power and cultural reproduction in professional settings and that fosters reflection, critique, and dialogue. The article first reviews narrative theory supporting this claim, then discusses ways that teachers can use narrative to help students critique examples of professional discourse and their own composing choices. The article closes by discussing both the concerns about and the possibilities for such a pedagogy.

Narrative and Research in Professional Communication

This article explores narrative theory and research in fields closely allied with professional communication to clarify the value of narrative to our discipline. It addresses the move in many fields to reconceptualize research as narrative. Placing narrative within a postmodernist frame, it examines the centrality of ethnography within a postmodernist view. The importance of ethnography in research is related to two key narrative questions that ethnographic theorists in other disciplines are addressing: Who is telling the ethnographic story? For what purposes is the story told? This article supports the importance of taking a critical stance toward these questions and discusses the implications of postmodernist ethnographic theory for research in professional communication.

Theory and Curriculum: Reexamining the Curricular Separation of Business and Technical Communication.

Business and technical communication have conventionally been separated in academe—a separation that formalist rhetorical theory has supported. Epistemic rhetorical theory, however, suggests that this separation does not reflect the professions current understanding of workplace discourse. This article demonstrates that the labels business and technical communication are not helpful in understanding two workplace documents: a memorandum and a report. The article then explores the increased explanatory power in two epistemic theoretical approaches, social construction and paralogic hermeneutics, after which the article discusses the radical implications of these approaches for a curricular dialogue concerning workplace writing. Finally, the article describes interests inside and outside academe that preserve the status quo and thus mitigate against curricular change, positing that such change would be difficult, but not impossible, to achieve.

Narration and knowledge in direct solicitations

Although narration has been recognized as a complex mode of discourse, its role in professional communication has not been widely studied. This article examines narration in one form of professional communication—direct solicitations— and links narration to an important research issue: the social construction of knowledge, or the social justification of belief, through language. The direct solicitations are described, and the role of narration in justifying belief socially, for direct solicitations, is then discussed by examining narration and analysis as two means for organizing and expressing experience. The interweaving of these two means in direct solicitations is illustrated, but finally the importance of the narrational over the analytic in giving shape and significance to experience is asserted. Thus, the central role narratives play in justifying belief socially, for direct solicitations is described. Three sample narratives from three direct _ solicitations illustrate this discussion.

Guest Editors' Introduction: Culture and the Power of Narrative

Before the printing press and the spread of the written word, we know, of course, that cultures were almost entirely oral. They relied on spoken stories, repeated ritualistically, to create a history, a sense of being, and an identity. In these cultures, storytellers preserved important knowledge, telling and retelling narratives as they helped form and reproduce a common culture. The concept of culture, then, has always been intimately connected to the concept of narrative. Today, the technology exists to record information in more permanent forms. Indeed, far more information can be recorded than people can assimilate, organize, or use meaningfully and—because of technological advances—people’s ability to experience the world has also grown exponentially. Given this information overload, we speculate that the growing interest in narrative—specifically, narratives in and about professional and public life—is, in part, a response to a human need to make meaning and to forge connections between seemingly disparate bits of knowledge and experience. Like those spoken stories in oral cultures, narratives in professional and public life bind people to one another in social groups, enabling people to continuously produce and reproduce the cultures they hold in common. Making connections for understanding and helping to create common cultures are not new objectives for scholars in professional communication and for professional communicators in the workplace. The documents they write—journal articles, organizational mission and vision statements, specifications and user manuals, newsletters— all aim to shape culture. Increasingly, however, scholars and professional communicators are becoming unabashed storytellers, listeners and supporters of others’ stories, and cultural analysts. Using ethnographic and case study methodologies, for example, scholars and professional communicators join with their participants in generating and telling stories relevant to professional communication— influencing, no doubt, the cultures studied and, potentially, the researchers’ cultures and those of their readers. In addition, exploring narrative within organizational settings, scholars and professional communicators examine the important roles it plays in the discourse

The Components of Purpose and Professional-Communication Pedagogy

A review of the current literature suggests that the concept of purpose has not received sufficient theoretical or pedagogical attention. In this article, theoretical depth is provided by a discussion of four components of purpose: purpose as associated with discourse types, purpose from the writers viewpoint, purpose as it relates to situation, and purpose from the readers viewpoint. Research is cited, and examples from computer documentation are used to illustrate each component. Cooperation and conflict among components are examined in a sample document, and classroom applications are discussed.

Process-Based Pedagogy in Professional Writing.

This article examines the theoretical background for a process-based pedagogy and describes a possible course based on process. Process pedagogy is founded on the premise that knowing how to compose results in better writers than simply knowing what to compose. Theoretical background on process is presented. A sample progression for a semester-long course includes a description of the writing process with an overview and the phases in the process, and an application of the description to various assignments. Phases in the process are discussed, with an extended example (an instructional brochure).