Annual reports produced today increasingly include elaborate photographs and graphics in the narrative section. Financial analysts and many scholars have judged these reports on their clarity, accuracy, and honesty. Because the narrative invites interpretations, such criteria are not sufficient, and additional standards need to be constructed. A semiological analysis of the textual and visual elements allows for the discovery of the techniques used by document designers to promote their companies’ values. Artistic images may encourage positive readings of annual reports, which, combined with similar messages in other media and repeated over time, invoke cultural myths. By definition, myths are broadly accepted commonplaces that conceal details of their subject, and communicators must expose the missing details and judge the myths within a specific context. This kind of analysis, acknowledging the constraints of the rhetorical situation of a single report, can identify effective criteria for judging the narrative's ethics.

Although usability testing and research have become critical tasks for technical communicators in the workplace, little discussion in technical communication focuses on teaching usability in technical communication programs. This article asserts that technical communication programs are particularly well positioned to adopt usability testing and research in their curricula because of inherent connections between usability and technical communication, such as their mutual emphases on audience analysis, technology, and information design. Approaches to implementation of usability courses at three universities are described, and the authors share suggestions for adopting usability in the areas of curriculum, equipment, and facilities needed for conducting usability.

Often, new technologies are seen as artifacts whose use is obvious. This study, which builds on Weick's notion that all technologies are equivocal, challenges that assumption. Using a case approach, this research examines how various groups at Far West, a professional school, interpret the implementation of a two-way video and audio videoteleducation (VTE) distance learning system and analyzes why different groups interpreted the technology in fundamentally different ways. From this case data, a model is created that examines the effects that dominant organizational groups’ interpretation and thus conceptualization of VTE have on its system design, support, training, and rewards; measures of effectiveness; and rule generation.

Many companies have entered a new era of human resources management—one based on transaction cost economics and one in which downsizing has become a permanent part of the corporate landscape. But their insistence on communicating decisions to downsize solely in economic terms is creating serious problems among employees who survive the layoffs. Disloyalty, disaffection, increased absenteeism, and even acts of sabotage are growing among workers who view downsizing as a social, not economic, issue. This article discusses the new era of human resources management and reviews survivor literature in an effort to provide guidance to companies about how to communicate downsizing, specifically, and how to communicate with the postdownsized workforce, generally.

Within work sites that engage in knowledge work, newcomers have particular difficulty acquiring knowledge because knowledge keeps changing. Newcomers have to assimilate currently accepted knowledge while remaining open to learning and even generating new knowledge. Such acquisition and generation of communal knowledge are examples of distributed cognition. In workplaces engaging in knowledge work (where knowledge is the primary product), distributed cognition aims at a less stable goal than the one that Hutchins describes for ship navigation. A study of six summer interns in an engineering development center shows that, for them and their more experienced colleagues, learning did not precede activity but rather was the means by which they remained attuned to activity and able to function. Cognition was distributed not only among people but also among people and their tools. Communication tools were particularly important because communication was the means by which the system functioned as a unified whole.

Finding a method to determine terrestrial longitude was critical in the early seventeenth century as countries attempted to establish territorial boundaries. The magistrate and natural philosopher Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637) spent much of his life working on a solution to this problem. As an early technical communicator, he was concerned with the criteria of acceptable observations, the standardization of materials and methods, and the communication of results. He refined a variety of strategies to obtain these observations and ensure their accuracy. He persuaded missionary priests to make observations throughout the Levant by promising patronage and gifts or stressing practical applications in the solution to the problem of longitude and church calendar reform. Although Peiresc did not resolve the issue of determining longitude, his efforts did provide the basis for work by later astronomers.

This review identifies technical communication programs outside the United States and comments on such features as their location in the university structure, links with public relations, the inclusion of internships or practicums, the balance of theory and practice, and typical course offerings. It also provides a listing (including Web addresses) of a dozen major programs in seven countries. The review concludes that programs abroad share many features and goals with programs in the United States and suggests how international programs can illustrate the value of technical communication in the global marketplace.

This article proposes a postmodern reconceptualization of technical communication pedagogy to make student and professional agency a major concern, especially because technical communicators must compete in a global economy that rewards flexibility and penalizes inflexibility. Postmodern mapping metaphors and Robert Reich's methodology for training “symbolic-analytic” workers are used to suggest ways in which a postmodern approach to technical communication could be taught.

Scant research exists about explanation in negative messages. An important cause of this is the lack in extant literature of theory or conceptualization of explanation. This commentary provides two conceptual frameworks for thinking about explanation in negative messages: opportunity cost, from economic theory, and attribution, from marketing theory. Both frameworks help define the situations in which explanations for rejection should be provided to the targets of bad news. When applications are solicited, for instance, opportunity costs incurred by targets of bad news should be offset by senders with an offer to provide explanation. The construct of attribution is adapted here to suggest that senders of negative messages can benefit by supplying reasons for their denial of requests because, in the absence of the reasons, the rejectees will attribute motives and create reasons, thus depriving the senders of their control over the explanation portion of the messages.

Discourse theories frequently emphasize the importance of understanding audience but seldom delve into how writers form conceptions of their audiences, especially in organizations. This study examines computer documentation writers’ tactics for conceiving of their audiences. Based on two ethnographic case studies and insights from activity theory, the author describes and evaluates technical communicators’ tactics for understanding audiences, constrained and supported by their organizations. She discusses the advantages and limitations of each tactic, looking at how each tactic might answer questions about audience. This research should be useful to technical communication educators as they expand students’ options for audience research in nonacademic settings. In addition, the findings of this study can enhance theories about the ways writers create images of their audiences.

This limited case study examines the situated-language practices associated with the production of negative letters in an insurance company. Using genre and sociocultural theories, the study combines textual analyses of a set of negative letters together with writers’ accounts of producing these letters to identify effective (as defined by the company) strategies for composing this correspondence. These letters are examples of generic action, and they demonstrate that genres function as constellations of regulated, improvisational strategies triggered by the interaction between individual socialization and an organization. Moreover, these constellations of resources express a particular chronotopic relation to space and time, and this relation is always axiological or value oriented. In other words, genres express space/time relations that reflect current social beliefs regarding the placement and actions of human individuals in space and time. The article identifies some of the strategies that characterize effective negative messages in this organization. It also critiques this text type for enacting a set of practices and related chronotopic orientation that are against the interests of its readers and writers.

This article explores the design choices for Network Earth, a museum exhibit that introduced the general public to computer networks and related issues. The exhibit was one of three studied in a larger research project to develop a grounded model of design for learn-ing in museums. Network Earth was developed by a team that had neither formal train-ing nor academic credentials usually associated with museum exhibits. Although the design process and some of the general goals were similar to those at other sites studied and in the literature, certain practices differed. The team excluded historical objects, let donors influence content, and used different terminology. These differences appear to be cultural. With a limited affiliation with the occupational culture of museum exhibit design, the Network Earth team made choices that were more consistent with the culture of high technology—the subject of the museum and the industry that provided most of its financial support.

A brief examination of the evolution of virtual reality devices illustrates how the development of this new medium is influenced not only by emerging technologies but also by marketing pressures. In a situation parallel to that of the earliest computers, both military and game applications seem to be the driving forces in virtual reality development. Understanding these influences may help us prepare for the role of technical communica-tors in building virtual reality applications for education and industry and aid us in pre-dicting and influencing both the technology and the ways we prepare communicators for the future.

This article looks at how two offices changed their informal work relationships and patterns in response to a major technological innovation in their field. This inductive study involves a cross-case analysis with field studies covering a two-year period. The research applies the models suggested by social action theory to help explain outcomes. By the end of this study, one office had lost its funding and was eliminated, while the other has survived and grown. The article examines whether the differing organizational responses to new core technology were related to each office's ability to survive.

As an educational medium, interactive television (ITV) is shaped by perceptions that all participants bring into the ITV classroom. Many articles, handbooks, and other support material already deal with standard operating advice for leading courses using ITV; here, the authors focus on the physical and mental spaces produced by ITV and explore the expectations created by the presence of such technological artifacts as television screens, microphones, and lighting banks. They explain the roles that teachers and students may assume in the ITV classroom and discuss how lack of familiarity with the technology's purpose and potential tends to reify those roles and the interactions they proscribe. Finally, they offer suggestions for responding to these issues by concentrating on students’ crucial first impressions with the technology—impressions that instructors can help negotiate so they and their students can engage in pedagogically sound, education-ally rich interactions in the ITV classroom.

Technology is commonly described in magical terms, not only in advertising but also in journalism and technical communication. This article provides some background on the use of magical language in technical contexts, gives examples of magical discourse in technology advertisements and newsmagazine articles, and proposes a technical communication pedagogy of media analysis. The proposed pedagogy involves students in conducting diagnostic critiques of media texts and affords them the opportunity to examine critically their own unwitting use of magical language in technical discourse.

Research on citations has generally examined citations as part of a system of rewards or as a rhetorical tool for strengthening arguments. This study examines the role of citations both as reward and as rhetoric. The reward system was examined by tracing over time the citation patterns of 13 research articles by two groups of scientists in chaos theory. The rhetorical practices were examined by determining how these articles were cited, by reviewing 609 citations of the 13 research articles. The analysis revealed that scientists consistently used five rhetorical practices: (1) using citations in the introduction, (2) using authors' names in the citation, (3) using the citation in a statement that asserts a high level of certainty, (4) using citations to create a research space, and (5) combining the use of the authors' names with placement in the introduction. These features indicated the articles' centrality in scientific discourse.

Research activity is an integral component in the formation of professions. Evidence shows that business and technical communication specialists conduct research in both academic and practitioner career fields. In other disciplines, course work has been recognized as the primary means for preparing students to conduct and consume research. Yet, no publications document the status of research methods course work for U.S. students specializing in business and technical communication. This study provides a descriptive basis for assessing three areas in those courses: research methods topics, required readings, and teaching or assessment methods. An analysis of the results leads to a proposed agenda for preparing students specializing in business and technical communication for their future work roles in both academe and industry.

More than 1,600 serials from across the disciplines were identified as sources for technical communication scholars. The 99 most frequently cited serials are described. This citation analysis is distinguished from others by the size of the database (25,000+ citations), the 10-year review of articles published in five technical communication journals between 1988 and 1997, the number of serials cited and reviewed, and the focus on technical communication as a discipline. The analysis yielded two observations. First, five technical communication journals have grown in strength as forums for discussions of technical communication. Second, the serials cited illustrate the diversity of resources referred to from business, education, psychology, science, and technology-related sources. As a discipline, technical communication has developed depth and rigor through building the base of its research and theory while integrating the research and theory gathered from a number of disciplines.

Instruction in the technical and scientific disciplines often provides students with the technical skills necessary to succeed in industry. However, these disciplines also focus on socializing students into professional identities. This study examines one exemplar discipline, mechanical engineering, to see how classroom discourse and practice construct professional identities for students (as future engineers) and their customers. Results suggest that although students' conceptions of the customer provided glimpses of professional identity, design processes in these classrooms were ultimately driven and shaped by academic communicative practices, audiences, and goals. Given this, instructional interventions are provided to integrate professionalization processes within classrooms where situated learning is apparent.

Teaching business communication in Russia involves operating in a high-context, oral culture where few documents are created. However, this article analyzes two Russian teaching contracts, rhetorically comparing purpose and audience, culture, gender, and the role of the individual versus the state. For historical, political, and economic reasons, less documentation is used in business transactions in Russia than is used in the United States. Subsequently, communication scholars have been afforded little opportunity to analyze Russian business documents. This study uses anecdotal episodes as a framework for examining Russian culture and analyzing university teaching contracts, concluding that the contracts are not only brief and factual but also reflect a more oral, less litigious environment than Western countries like the United States.