When games are approached as a pedagogical methodology, the homologies between games and technical communication are highlighted: pedagogy that teaches people to play and succeed within certain confines; classroom assessment that provides meaningful feedback to encourage self-improvement; instructional design that incorporates gaming theory and game design principles; and usability to ensure optimum success. This article provides an overview of these topics for instructors to consider when designing a technical writing course as a game.

This article establishes traits of adaptable communicators in the 21st century, explains why adaptability should be a goal of technical communication educators, and shows how multimodal pedagogy supports adaptability. Three examples of scalable, multimodal assignments (infographics, research interviews, and software demonstrations) that evidence this philosophy are discussed in detail. Asking students to communicate multimodally drives them to effectively filter information, remix modes, and remake practices that are core characteristics of adaptable communicators. Beyond teaching students how to teach themselves as an essential part of living in an information society, contending with new and unfamiliar tools also prepares students for their roles as empathic mediators in the workplace.

This article examines the historical professional project that created the Institute of Radio Engineers’ Professional Group on Engineering Writing an Speech (IRE PGEWS)—now called the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Professional Communication Society (IEEE PCS)—and recounts the group’s early history in detail. It also traces the career and recovers the professional contributions of the main organizer of PGEWS: Eleanor M. McElwee (1924–2008). The formation of PGEWS in 1957 was an intraoccupational strategy of inclusionary usurpation by “publications people” seeking to elevate their status within the engineering profession rather than attempting to build a separate profession of technical communication.

Building on work by Dubinsky, Haskins, and Simmons and Grabill, this article explains how a technical communication instructor used Isocrates and informal usability testing to help guide a service-learning project involving the One Laptop Per Child XO-1 notebook. For the project, engineering students received feedback from peers and elementary school teachers to determine the feasibility of using the XO-1 with at-risk children aged 6 to 9. Despite initial positive impressions, the service-learning students discovered that the XO-1 was not suitable in this situation. This article discusses Isocratean theory and how his ideas can inform a pedagogy of civic engagement in technical communication.

This article analyzes literature on university–workplace partnerships and professional writing pedagogy to suggest best practices for workplace mentors to mentor new employees and their writing. The article suggests that new employees often experience cultural confusion due to (a) the transfer of education-based writing strategies and (b) the employees' lack of cultural knowledge of the new workplace. The article then outlines implied mentoring strategies based upon this transfer and lack of cultural knowledge. The article also analyzes the literature on discourse community theory, activity theory, service learning, and internships, each of which also imply potential mentoring practices. These comprehensive best practices are also contextualized through social cognitive, community–cultural, and motivational–attitudinal components that writing mentors should consider when mentoring writing in the workplace.

Although storytelling research is rarely applied to technical communication, I approach it as one way of technical communication practitioners and teachers might account for the social, creative, knowledge-intensive ways technical service work gets done. In particular, I look to the technical service work of automotive technicians at a repair shop in the Northwest. These technicians not only tell each other stories, but they also write stories about their diagnostic practices, or what they do to determine problems, and about their processes for addressing those problems—their actual repair work. But writing stories is more than instrumental. I argue that acts of storytelling are inseparably entangled with acts of accessing technical breakdowns, determining possible problems, and then producing acceptable solutions. For these technicians, writing stories and fixing cars intertwine. My central question, then, is how can technical communication researchers and teachers approach acts of storytelling in ways that offer us richer, more precise articulations of the relationship between writing and technical service work like that of fixing cars?

In a society in which expertise becomes increasingly specialized, we need to understand how to manage gaps in knowledge between experts in various fields and between experts and the public in general. That need is especially great in the public sphere, where technical understanding and lived experience do not always align. This study attempts to model the process by which discipline-specific topoi filter into common knowledge and general topoi are acknowledged by experts. It first addresses the issue of expertise in complex rhetorical places, then employs Michel Meyer's reinterpretation of ethos, pathos, and logos to show how experts and non-experts in such places negotiate rhetorical relationships. The study then explores the social and rhetorical mechanisms by which ideas become commonplaces, building on the established theory of symbolic convergence. Finally, the study demonstrates proof in principle with a brief analysis of one topos in the Reports of the Immigration Commission (1911).

Nowadays there is a huge volume of financial information available on the web. There is also considerable debate about the impact, if any, that this information has on share prices and overall market sentiment. Fundamental and technical analysts believe that there is some value in financial information and that it can be exploited for predictive purposes. This article provides a commentary on various studies that involved the analysis of financial content for various goals using various methods. This article includes a discussion of their main findings and recurrent themes and concludes with some possible future directions for research.

A corpus of current editions of statistics textbooks was assessed to compare aspects and levels of readability for the topics of measures of center, line of fit, regression analysis, and regression inference. Analysis with lexical software of these text selections revealed that the large corpus can be described well by three index variables that summarize the lexical and grammatical complexity of the textbook excerpts. Assessment of those three variables indicates that substantial differences exist in the readability of the topics within textbooks with respect to lexical and grammatical complexity. This analysis suggests that general readability of introductory statistics topics within textbooks varies substantially and it is a recommendation that instructors: (1) be prepared to provide additional support for topics that are more grammatically and lexically complex, and (2) be aware that they can input their instructional materials into LexTutor VP or Coh-metrix as a quick screen for possible readability issues.

The Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) offers treatment to sex offenders civilly confined after they complete their prison sentences. In this article, we enhance the notion of kairos in rhetorical situations with the perceptions of risk and the sociological concept of moral panic by tracing three kairotic moments involving MSOP: the 1992 Dennis Linehan civil commitment case; the 2003 murder of college student Dru Sjodin; and the 2012 provisional discharge of Clarence Opheim. We examine the political, public, and media response to these events and provide the results of 21 interviews with stakeholders. In doing so, we hope to illustrate how moral panic and risk perception can so influence what seems the right choice at the right time that stakeholders may get caught in what we call kairotic cycles, where solutions to a problem are stymied by competing perceptions and by entrenched positions that reoccur over time and without resolution.

This article describes protocological rhetoric as a conceptual tool for exploring and changing institutions. Protocological rhetoric is an extension of two lines of thought: Porter, Sullivan, Blythe, Grabill, and Miles's institutional critique and Science & Technology Studies's (STS) concept of information infrastructure. As a result, protocological rhetoric imagines institutions as networked information infrastructures. This article describes the method and provides an example through historical case study. I suggest that the approach provides methods for actively transforming institutions.

In hospitals around the world it is common to find clinician researchers who play the dual roles of clinician and researcher. In major Chinese hospitals, the young generation of clinical doctors, especially those who hold a doctoral degree, is commonly expected to stay research-active. The study reported in this article was conducted at a major hospital in East China, featuring a group of orthopedic surgeons for whom there is an SCI-publication requirement. The study draws upon cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) to illuminate the medical doctors' boundary crossing between clinical and research activity systems. Based on analyses of observations, interviews with 11 research-active doctors, and 2 weeks of activity logs kept by three of the doctors, the article demonstrates how the doctors take the advantage of rich clinical data for research purposes and how they “squeeze time” for research.

Visual sign systems have become an essential means of communication in places where large numbers of people of different nationalities gather, such as at international airports and the Olympic Games. That they can effectively increase accessibility among users not necessarily sharing a common language speaks to their potential usefulness in other situations. A homeless shelter in a western North Carolina community received funding to build a new facility. With the clientele's widely diverse communication abilities, including those who are illiterate or have limited reading skills, those who are non-native speakers knowing little to no English, and those who are coming from different cultural contexts, a visual sign system was designed to facilitate navigation for all visitors. Using Peirce's theory of signs, Neurath's ISOTYPE, and the least action principle borrowed from physics as a framework, this case study shows how the signs were designed and usability tested to ensure increased accessibility.

Technical communication's attempt to prioritize theories of scholarship and pedagogy has resulted in several authors contributing a three-dimensional framework to approach technology: the instrumental perspective, the critical humanist perspective, and the user-centered perspective [1–3]. This article traces connections between this framework for technical communication and the philosophies of Michel de Certeau [4] and Andrew Feenberg [5], suggesting that the primary connection is a turn toward “rhetoric” as a mediator between scientific and philosophical communication. The article concludes that the current paradigm for understanding technology can be best understood by exploring three conjoined, yet competing, mentalities between a scientific, philosophical, and rhetorical worldview. While this three-dimensional approach provides a strong foundation for technical communication pedagogy and scholarship, it should continue to be re-examined for potential anomalies as the field continues to develop an identity.

The plaintiff suing for injuries arising from a product with allegedly defective instructions or warnings has the burden of proving each of the elements for every cause of action asserted, while the defendant prevails by defeating just one element for each cause of action. Technical communicators can increase their legal literacy by learning the elements that are most easily defeated and thereby avoid subjecting their product instructions and warnings to litigation. This article surveys the existing scholarship to show the need for more attention to legal terms, theory, and practice before explaining how lawyers approach litigation. The article then turns to each of the main causes of action—the functional approach of the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability , negligence, and breach of express warranty and misrepresentation—with an emphasis upon the elements that are most within the control of the technical communicator.

This article argues that many methodological approaches used in intercultural technical communication research are limited in addressing emerging social justice challenges in many post-colonial, developing, and unenfranchised/disenfranchised cultural sites, where professional communicators have begun conducting research. It offers decolonial approaches as an alternative by highlighting how these approaches are used in an intercultural research that investigates attempts to localize communication that accompanies sexuo-pharmaceuticals from one cultural context to another. The article also discusses some the challenges and benefits of such approaches. The ways in which scientific research is implicated in the worst excesses of colonialism remain a powerfully remembered history for many of the world's colonized peoples. It is a history that still offends the deepest sense of our humanity [1, p. 1]. Global research raises many methodological and ethical challenges for technical communicators … because of the cross-cultural, international, and transnational nature of the work [2, p. 283].

This article considers why users of popular software packages choose to find answers to their task problems on user forums rather than in official documentation. The author concludes that traditional documentation is developed around an antiquated notion of “task,” which leads to restrictive ways of thinking about problems that users encounter and the solutions that might be appropriate. The author argues, instead, that tasks and problems arise from networked rhetorical situations and networked contexts for rhetorical action. The influence of networks requires a redefinition of rhetorical situation and context, from which we derive a networked picture of tasks and problems as emergent and uncertain phenomenon, best addressed in the uncertain and sometimes-chaotic setting of user forums. Forum threads are studied using discourse analytic techniques to determine what they can reveal about qualities making tasks and problems uncertain.

The we-form has been analyzed in different theoretical frameworks and domains. Researchers point to the complexity of first person plural pronouns: not only can they refer to different participants in a communicative situation, but they can also be used to avoid other referential forms. In organizational discourse, however, transparency is of the utmost importance to ensure efficient communication. Based on the minute analysis of 3700 we-forms in a corpus of internal communications documents, we developed a framework for the interpretation of the we-form. Thirteen (con)textual and situational identifiers of different kinds are discussed and illustrated. In some cases the interpretation of the we-form is indicated by a single identifying element, in other cases a combination of identifying elements strengthens the interpretation.

Large institutions, like hospitals and juvenile mental health facilities, are often places where members from several different professions come to interact and negotiate ideological differences. This study explores the authorial identities of some of these members in the electronic charts of a large juvenile mental health facility. These charts portray their authors' ethos as that which is fluid and variable, craftily moving between the neutral observer status of scientific rhetoric and the expert blame-shifter of social work rhetoric. I argue that these multi-disciplinary identities are best understood when using a rhetorical frame of métis, a rarely studied rhetorical strategy.

Professional identity is oft explored in the field, but such identities usually reside institutionally and may exclude women who engage in professional communication from the workplace of the home. One instantiation of this extra-institutional professionalism is mom blogs, the authors of which create content, find sponsors, and address issues important to mothers. Yet the women lack legitimacy as professionals because of the title “mommy blogger” and because of the notion that blogging is a hobby. My qualitative study explores how mom bloggers claim a professional space in communication. I interviewed 22 mom bloggers, using Faber's (2002, [18]) theory of professionalism and Durack's (1997, [17]) ideas of redefining terms, such as “workplace,” to include women. My findings show that mom bloggers engage in the characteristics of professional communicators, model egalitarian professionalism, employ an ethic of care that combats elitism, and challenge the field to include their work, from the home and through new media, as professional.

The facts bear out that the odds are against most scientific researchers and scholars—especially those just starting out—in their attempts to win funding for their research projects through their grant proposals. In this article, the author takes a close look at some of the proposal-related problems and pitfalls that have historically challenged scholarly grant seekers. The intellectual prowess and specialized training of academics can sometimes be their downfall, when it comes to persuading government agencies and foundations to fund their well conceived, but unconvincingly presented projects. In examining numerous studies, surveys, and insightful articles of experts in the genre of the research grant proposal, it becomes evident that technical communicators could quickly become the best friends of scholars, when the former harness the rhetorical and stylistic skills that are almost instinctive to them, and apply them to writing grant proposals, a task which is all too often a disappointing exercise for the latter.

This article argues for developing linked courses in technical communication where the instructor facilitates a service-learning curriculum and then serves as faculty advisor within subsequent internships. In these linked courses, students write technical documents before moving into internships where they write similar documents. Specifically, the article examines the results from one such class and offers both theoretical and practical advice for collaborating with nonprofit and creating internships that are beneficial for both the students and the nonprofit. In addition, the discussion highlights students' preparedness to enter the field of technical communication, as evidenced through their internship work and their final reflections. Through careful consideration of the nonprofit' responses, I suggest making changes to professional and technical communication curricula for linked courses and internships, including the addition of an objective of professionalism that teaches students to not only write in a professional manner, but to also consider their actions and responsibilities within the context of an organizational culture.

This study examines the global-local interplay of genre features in a select sample of nonprofit grant proposals from two particular sites—Nepal and the United States. Critically analyzing the carefully selected samples from both the sites on their own terms first and then in clusters (of Nepalese and American proposals) by exploiting the genre and discourse analysis theories and techniques published in genre, genre analysis, and grant proposal scholarship, this study attempts to examine the genre of nonprofit grant proposal in both comparative and non-comparative terms. While the study acknowledges that each instance of nonprofit grant proposal is unique, complex, and therefore non-generalizable, it does draw some broad generalizations about the similarities and differences in the rhetorical “moves,” organization, and/or composition strategies of grant writers from these two different geopolitical locations. The study finds that variations observed across samples and grant writers reflect the unique rhetorical situations of these writers, whereas uniformities have to do with the global circulation of Western genre forms in the rest of the world via global organizations like the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund—which are also the major donors in developing countries like Nepal. And finally, the study reaffirms the fact that constraints like funding agencies' guidelines and reviewers' preferences have a considerable influence on genre features and forms. That has been the case with both the Nepalese and American proposals sampled in this study.

While Engineering values direct communication, indirect communication produces a kind of literacy salient for engineers that direct communication may not offer in the way indirect communication does. This article emphasizes the inadequacies of overly emphasizing direct communication for Engineering majors and explains how teaching indirect communication in the form of literature has the potential to cover some of the inadequacies one can encounter if one were to overly emphasize direct communication.

Between 1884 and 1926, such publishers of technological information as Henley Publishing, Audel Publishing, John Wiley, Van Nostrand, McGraw-Hill, and Practical Publications put out dozens and dozens of technical catechisms on a wide variety of technical subjects. Then, around 1926, these publishers ceased releasing texts called catechisms. What made the genre so popular? Did it disappear? The answers to these questions provide a case study of genre adaptation, genre change, and genre persistence within technical communication.

This article presents data from a two-part study of student perceptions of research. Fifty-one research proposals are analyzed in order to understand perceptions of research, and results from a survey are analyzed to better understand how students both perceive and articulate their understanding of research. The data show that students assign multiple definitions to the concept of research, and suggest that increased attention to clarifying terminology and identifying student perceptions would facilitate better work.

Environmental scientists and science communicators working to educate the public on the science of global climate change often work to present information through an environmentalist perspective. This article uses theories of metaphoric framing to present six guidelines that climate change communicators can use to reframe climate change science in public communication. In particular, the authors argue for environmental scientists to adopt frames that the broader public will find familiar and persuasive. This reframing of environmental science is necessary to counter the framing of skepticism that special interest groups have used to dominate attempts to communicate climate change science to the public.

This article develops a framework for rhetorical inquiry that builds on the concept of wicked problems as conceptualized through social policy and design studies research. Responding to technical communication scholarship that calls for increased engagement with public issues and controversies, the author specifically discusses a writing course that used the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill as a basis for teaching problem-based rhetorical invention, document production, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional development. The framework described in this article ultimately offers a heuristic for students to research and write about ill-defined problems that must be addressed in time but that demand sustained engagement over time—activities that begin in the classroom but ideally continue to develop throughout their personal and professional lives.

In this article, the first to analyze the role of analogy in Edward Thorndike's educational vision, I argue that the feat of Thorndike's analogy-making was his ability to launch an experimental science of child learning without having had access to children. That the origin of American pedagogical science rests on Thorndike's animals stands as a palpable example of the power of analogy to serve a constitutive function in scientific invention. In Thorndike's case, the social consequences were considerable: His juxtaposition of the child and the animal, his fusing of the two in the concept of the animal-child mind, led him to reason that infants, like animals, were incapable of having ideas, and children, though fully capable, still learned best in many cases through the process of rote memorization and drill.

Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, China's first comprehensive medical book, served as the key link between Yi Jing, which initiated China's high-context culture, and the high-context style of modern Chinese technical communication. In the form of dialogues between Yellow Emperor and his minister, its 24 fascicles cover four major topics of the organs, diagnosis, diseases, and treatments. While examining the body and discussing various diseases and treatments, the book expands on Yi Jing's philosophy through integrating three interrelated concepts: Tao, Yin and Yang, and Five Elements (word, fire, soil, metal, and water). In this way, the book, for the first time in Chinese history, explicitly treated humans and their behaviors as individual events conditioned by the natural context, emphasizing context as the conditioning force. This emphasis on context is manifest in modern Chinese technical communication as two textual devices of establishing personal relationships and creating ideal physical environments.

The effects of globalization on communication products and processes have resulted in document features and interactional practices that are sometimes difficult to describe within current theoretical frameworks of inter/transcultural technical communication. Although it has been recognized in our field that the old theoretical frameworks and assumptions are no longer adequate by themselves in the global workplace, to date no comprehensive theoretical framework has been suggested that is capable of encompassing hybrid characteristics of transcultural technical communication that emerge as a result of increased contact and connectivity. This article provides an interdisciplinary overview of Cosmopolitan theory and suggests that applying the cosmopolitan framework of Ulrich Beck to our research and the Dialogical Cosmopolitanism approach of Suresh Canagarajah to our pedagogical practices can move us towards a deeper understanding of global phenomena.