Journal of Business and Technical Communication

6 articles
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April 2025

  1. Korean Professionals’ Experience With Using Business English as a Lingua Franca (BELF): A Grounded Theory Approach
    Abstract

    This study uses grounded theory to explore Korean professionals' experience with communication in Business English as a lingua franca (BELF). The author collected data for the study by conducting semistructured interviews with 12 Korean professionals, resulting in 120 concepts, 33 categories, and 14 main categories in the coding process. The findings highlight the significance of accommodation, which affects the success of BELF communication and serves as a major action for resolving problems. The study emphasizes that BELF dynamics should be understood as a multifaceted and interactive process in which various factors are intricately interconnected, giving rise to fluid and complex BELF phenomena.

    doi:10.1177/10506519241307789

July 2022

  1. Transforming the Rights-Based Encounter: Disability Rights, Disability Justice, and the Ethics of Access
    Abstract

    Technical and professional communication (TPC) has recently turned to social justice to interrogate seemingly neutral documents’ impacts on marginalized populations, including disabled individuals. In workplace contexts, such efforts are often impeded by rights-based discourse that maintains ableist institutional spaces and impedes efforts toward broader institutional change. Recognizing that TPC practitioners likely will encounter rights-based discourse, this article offers an ethical decision-making framework that couples the field's previous disability studies work with disability justice. We offer guidelines and a critical vocabulary for bridging legal rights and social justice concerns to inspire ethical articulations of disability access needed for transformative change.

    doi:10.1177/10506519221087960

April 2016

  1. Book Review: Rhetorical AccessAbility: At the Intersection of Technical Communication and Disability Studies
    doi:10.1177/1050651915620362

July 2014

  1. Paying Attention to Accessibility When Designing Online Courses in Technical and Professional Communication
    Abstract

    Roughly 1 out of 10 students in our classrooms has some form of disability, and now that a growing number of technical and professional communication (TPC) courses and programs are offered online, scholars need to adequately address accessibility in online course design. Calling on the field to “pay attention” to this issue, the authors report the results of a national survey of online writing instructors and use Selfe’s landmark essay as a way to theoretically frame the results. They conclude by offering strategies for TPC instructors to design more accessible online courses.

    doi:10.1177/1050651914524780

January 2008

  1. Assessing a Hybrid Format
    Abstract

    As college instructors endeavor to integrate technology into their classrooms, the crucial question is, “How does this integration affect learning?” This article reports an assessment of a series of online modules the author designed and piloted for a business communication course that she presented in a hybrid format (a combination of computer classroom sessions and independent online work). The modules allowed the author to use classroom time for observation of and individualized attention to the composing process. Although anecdotal evidence suggested that this system was highly effective, other assessment tools provided varying results. An anonymous survey of the students who took this course confirmed that the modules were effective in teaching important concepts; however, a blind review of student work produced mixed results.

    doi:10.1177/1050651907307710

April 1991

  1. Forming Constructs of Audience: Convention, Conflict, and Conversation
    Abstract

    This research report examines the roles of convention, conflict, and conversation in the formation of audience constructs. One group of construction engineers and another group of design architects and engineers, both working in a bureaucratic setting, relied on disciplinary and institutional conventions while constructing, addressing, and invoking audiences. Incongruities among contextual conventions restricting audience analysis resulted in inappropriate textual features and necessitated conversation during corporate training. This conversation focused on redefining problems of audience analysis and accommodation. The problem solving associated with analyzing situational audiences during the composing process was possible only when writers understood the problem-posing conventions of their discourse communities.

    doi:10.1177/1050651991005002002