Patricia Sullivan

Institutional Critique: A Rhetorical Methodology for Change

We offer institutional critique as an activist methodology for changing institutions. Since institutions are rhetorical entities, rhetoric can be deployed to change them. In its effort to counter oppressive institutional structures, the field of rhetoric and composition has focused its attention chiefly on the composition classroom, on the department of English, and on disciplinary forms of critique. Our focus shifts the scene of action and argument to professional writing and to public discourse, using spatial methods adapted from postmodern geography and critical theory.

Methods and Methodology in Composition Research

In original essays, fourteen nationally known scholars examine the practical, philosophical, and epistemological implications of a variety of research traditions. Included are discussions of historical, theoretical, and feminist scholarship; case-study and ethnographic research; text and conversation analysis; and cognitive, experimental, and descriptive research. Issues that cross methodological boundaries, such as the nature of collaborative research and writing, methodological pluralism, the classification and coding of research data, and the politics of composition research, are also examined. Contributors reflect on their own research practices, and so reflect the current state of composition research itself.

Remapping Curricular Geography: Professional Writing in/and English

Most discussions of disciplinarity start by claiming an emerging group as constituting a discipline or a profession and authorizing that group by locating appropriate research foci, programs for graduate education and undergraduate certification, professional societies, and central professional meetings. Our discussion examines the field of professional writing, focusing not so much on defining it as a discipline as on working out its curricular geography, an activity that will affect its status in both academy and industry. To that end, we explore the status of professional writing within the department of English by (a) briefly examining the problem of defining professional writing; (b) reviewing several theoretical positions within English that have provided a status for professional writing—literature, rhetoric/composition, business and technical writing—to expose the competition for control of the term and to surface the implications of accepting these various groups on their own terms; and (c) considering the curricular status to which professional writing might aspire by sketching a geography that positions professional writing in a new space within English.

Practicing safe visual rhetoric on the World Wide Web

Abstract I examine when and why a “safe” approach to visual design for Web pages is attractive to writers and writing teachers. I consider typical reasons for choosing a “safe” approach to designing the visual dimensions of Web pages, traditional sources in print graphics and writing for safe advice about visual design, and design challenges posed by issues of a Web design’s stability and navigation. I then turn to the fact that the additional media included in a Web site bring more design traditions into consideration. I discuss the differing concerns and aims that arise from visual design traditions that focus on prose graphics versus those that focus on theatrical graphics. Keeping these differences in mind, I end with a consideration of the forces shaping visual rhetoric on the Web.

“Remapping Curricular Geography”: A Retrospection

We are honored and gratified that Tom Kent has se “Remapping Curricular Geography” (1993) as h exemplary article published during his tenure as editor of ciate Tom’s support now, and we certainly appreciated it in hard to believe now, but back then Tom was taking a risk article because it collapsed business communication and t nication into professional writing, a concept that was not w the time. The article also regretted that professional writin by English studies and rhetoric/composition studies, a critic article the potential to alienate most of our traditional dis and, thus, to get us and the field into a bunch of trouble. W risk Tom took then, and we appreciate the opportunity now on the ideas of professional writing within the Department tutional structure and interdisciplinarity, professional writin nication department or college, and mapping as methodolo

Intentionally recursive: a participatory model for mentoring

Technical Communication as an academic field is complex and in need of well-mentored faculty. This article reports on an initiative to improve mentoring of faculty and practitioners that has been underway for three years. We have focused on listening to needs expressed by women in Technical Communication (#womeninTC), comparing what they expressed about their experiences and needs to literature on mentoring models, and developing resources that do a more comprehensive job of addressing their experiences and needs. Our goals are to improve mentoring in ways that are sustainable for faculty and working technical communicators at the same time as we grow a sturdier field.

Multiple methods and the usability of interface prototypes: the complementarity of laboratory observation and focus groups

Recently, I used a focus group in a usability study of an interface prototype as a balance for a laboratory observation. The clients for this usability study wanted a sense of whether their interface was attractive to a range of users, whether the range of users understood the product, and whether the users could use the interface quickly; they also wanted user feedback on a list of potential features they could include in the next phase of development. Because of very limited resources available for the usability study, and because of the disparate questions the clients had, a focus group for some new users was used to supplement a laboratory observation and interview of other new users. This paper reports on what strengths and weaknesses these methods yielded as complementary approaches to testing the usability of interface prototypes.

Usability in the computer industry: what contribution can longitudinal field studies make?

The author examines field studies in general and longitudinal field studies in particular, their uses in technical communication and human-computer interaction, a plan for industry-university research partnerships, and the contribution that longitudinal field studies can make to usability research. It is concluded that longitudinal field studies make it possible to see the gross patterns of change in the way people use complex computer programs to do their work. Such studies make it possible to ask people similar questions about attitudes, satisfaction, and knowledge, and also to ask them far enough apart so that changes in those attitudes, satisfactions, and knowledge become visible. Longitudinal field studies anchor field studies in the idea of comparison and thus are in some ways easier to complete. Longitudinal field studies hold promise for unlocking long-term usability questions.<<ETX>>

Time Talk: On Small Changes That Enact Infrastructural Mentoring for Undergraduate Women in Technical Fields.

This article brings together the communication needs and positioning of women in technical areas, and asks “how can technical communication classes contribute to the mentoring of young women engineers at a time when many of those women want to be identified as engineers instead of being spotlighted as women in engineering?” Incorporating research into mentoring for women in engineering, and feminist approaches to mentoring in general, we adopt Heath and Heaths strategy in Switch, instituting small changes in technical communication classes (and sometimes their infrastructures) that target a mentoring problem—i.e., talk about time—with the hope of flipping a switch toward larger changes. Thus, the article demonstrates two tactics that we can use to deliver improvement in managing the discourse surrounding time and its deadlines. Our approach both mentors undergraduate women in more actively and effectively discussing and scheduling their work without singling them out as women and also integrates good mentoring practice into the infrastructure of technical communication service classes.

User protocols: tools for building an understanding of users

The author suggests two uses for user protocols: as litmus tests for document (and interface) decisions being made during development, and as agents for building a long-term understanding of users as actors. She also reviews the various history of usability studies and presents extent definitions of protocols.<<ETX>>