Drawing on pandemic flu metaphor research and building on previous metaphor theory, this article uses rhetorical analysis to examine and move toward understanding the metaphors surrounding H1N1 and swine flu. To understand these metaphors, I created two Google Alerts for the terms “H1N1” and “swine flu” and collected data using these Google Alerts from November 10, 2009 to December 10, 2009. I then examined the headlines and content found in the news articles, blogs, and websites from the Google Alerts, and grouped the metaphors used in these headlines and content thematically. These themes work toward providing a rhetoric of pandemic flu, a rhetoric that might assist health care recipients in being more aware of how metaphors used in electronic media create meaning for health concerns.

How writers can adapt to their readers is an important issue in effective communication strategies, and certainly crucial in the case of functional texts. Therefore, it is necessary to look at how readers are constructed as partners in a communication co-production. This article explores the concept of the “active reader,” which is getting more and more attention nowadays. Its main aim is to present a typology of what this active readership means, in the phases before actual reading, in the reading phase, and in the after-reading phase. The elements of this typology are subsequently explicated. The article concludes with recommendations for writers who wish to use the concept of the active reader as a guideline.

Service-learning projects and traditional internships both prepare the student of technical communication for the workforce in many ways. What is lacking in the scholarship is a discussion of how to successfully link these two ideas. To help teachers implement courses that bridge the gap between service-learning projects and internships, I discuss how to design a course in technical communication that actively prepares students for subsequent internships with nonprofit agencies. In specific, I outline social development and social learning theories, service-learning pedagogies, and lesson plans and assignments that integrate these theories into practice. This project serves as a model that insists that the teacher first instructs students regarding not only rhetorical aspects of document design, including audience awareness and style, but also in placing the students in internships and designing assignments to be fulfilled in internship roles. The combination of classroom practices with an internship supports the idea that students learn the value of the process of writing, including the social embeddedness that can often influence their writing.

This study examines the controversy over alleged cannibalism in the prehistoric American Southwest as it played out in scholarly journals. It also examines the lessons those controversies provide technical communication. Data painstakingly collected from human remains at ancestral Pueblo sites have been interpreted as representing cannibalism and, alternatively, as indicating witchcraft, mutilation of the dead, and warfare. Three focal points of this study are the circular process of developing criteria for analysis in archaeology, the role of analogy in building hypotheses, and the role of gestalt in interpretation of the findings. This study also looks at the ways narratives contribute to knowledge building.

Community-based projects immerse technical writing students in intercultural communication, addressing local needs and shaping documents in human terms. Students at a South Texas university work to establish communication with clients in a city-county health department to create effective documents and disseminate family health legislation. To prepare students for interactions in multicultural settings, the teacher provides an instructional framework that highlights the concepts and values of intercultural communication and the principles for effective problem-solving. Students engaged in the Baby Moses ( el niño Moisés) project encounter misunderstandings, rhetorical challenges within the process of document creation, and cultural tensions that thwart their goal to disseminate information to the community. Students and the teacher learn that the classroom, like the city-county health department, is a fertile site for cultural disequilibrium, tensions, and potential cultural awareness. To insure a viable Technical and Professional Writing Program in a culturally diverse university and surrounding community, the teacher identifies opportunities that help students develop and enhance their identities as culturally-sensitive communicators and effective problem solvers.

To build upon user-centered design methods, we used a collaborative and multi-modal approach to involve users early in the design process for a website. This article presents our methods and results and addresses the benefits and limitations of the Collaborative Prototype Design Process (CPDP), including ways in which this new method can be implemented. The CPDP is an innovative approach to user-centered website design that emphasizes collaboration, iterative testing, and data-driven design. The CPDP balances the power and needs of users with those of designers and, thus, enables design teams to test more tasks and involve more users. We divided our initial team into three independent design teams to separately profile users, test usability of low-fidelity paper prototypes, and then create and test usability of resulting wireframes. After completing the user-centered design and usability testing, the three teams merged to analyze their diverse findings and create a final prototype.

Although contemporary writers on culture have argued for more dynamic approaches to culture in intercultural technical communication scholarship, much of the theoretical position on culture is still heavily based on “large culture” ideologies. Yet, not only do these ideologies fail to account for cultural practices and values within less comprehensive groups within culture, but they do not accommodate the inputs individuals make in specific communication contexts. This article draws from the existing body of work and the critical cultural perspectives on culture advocated by contemporary anthropologists and sociologists, mainly Arjun Appadurai (1996), to argue that we construct culture discursively to address cultural issues in intercultural technical communication. A discursive paradigm of culture sees culture as “socially constructed” in which culture is under construction and reconstruction by active cultural actors, who construct their identities and negotiate systems of knowledge and meaning that come to play during intercultural contacts.

The International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, recently established by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is an alleged attempt at public outreach. The NSF encourages scientists to submit visualizations that would appeal to non-expert audiences by displaying their work in an annual “special feature” in Science magazine, and each year they present the winning image on the cover of Science as the ultimate reward. Although the NSF advertizes the competition as an attempt to educate non-scientists, the visualizations lack sufficient textual explanation in the Science special feature articles and do not demonstrate clear significance for current issues in science. This article assesses the actual motivations behind the NSF's “Visualization Challenge,” given the lack of accompanying textual information, and it explores the consequences of allowing “scientific” visualizations to float into the public sphere unexplained. It will be shown that the spirit of this competition exemplifies the current shift from “public understanding of science” to “public appreciation of science” in the growing field of Science Communication, particularly through the technique of “framing” devices. This shift in objective, accentuated in the realm of visual communication, reinforces the public's view of science as a mythic authority.

This article traces the influences of hypertext theory throughout the various genres of online publication in technical communication. It begins with a look back at some of the important concepts and theorists writing about hypertext theory from the post-World War II era, to the early years of the World Wide Web 2.0, and the very differing notions of its potential. A significant challenge during this formative period was the fact that limitations in technology and infrastructure placed limitations on the potential envisioned by these scholars. The ways in which we look at early scholarship differ even a decade or more later, in terms of some of the information technologies and tools we use today. In the Web 2.0 era, we see a trend of blending and extension beyond principles found within hypertext theory in the tools we use and user experiences we create with them.

A study of the oral communication experiences and training of obstetric sonographers can provide insight into the complex expectations these medical professionals face as they complete their technical tasks and communicate with patients. Unlike other diagnostic medical professionals, obstetric sonographers are expected to provide detailed information to patients during the exam, a practice not typically found in the work of other types of medical diagnostic professionals. This study presents the results of interviews with 23 obstetric sonographers who described their communication experiences and their views on sonographer training in communication. Results suggest that sonographers experience complex communication challenges in the workplace that are not typically addressed in their education, nor are they officially recognized in the official discourse of their profession.

This study examines the visual rhetoric used in Chinese and American promotional business communication. Comparing banking and financial product brochures published in the two countries, the study finds similar as well as different visual strategies. Most importantly, the Chinese samples frequently use visual metaphors, whereas the American samples hardly do. Prompted by this finding, I review relevant literature on visual metaphors and examine their structures and rhetorical functions. In addition, the study suggests that buyer images and cartoon images are used differently in the two countries, whereas product-related images are used similarly. I explore the contextual and cultural roots of these findings and offer suggestions on how to visually communicate with the Chinese audience and other international audiences.

The software for a military command and control (C2) system presents an information space in which the C2 operator must manipulate a complex set of information in order to maintain the common tactical picture. A usability test of C2PC, a C2 system currently used by the U.S. Marine Corps, was performed with 13 Marines as participants. They were given problems designed to require actions similar to what they would encounter during real-world Combat Operations Center (COC) operation. The observations revealed an interesting disconnect between the underlying design assumptions and how beginner C2 operators interacted with the system. They were able to perform simple tasks, but could not combine those simple tasks into realistic tasks. These differences highlight the need for using complex scenarios when testing complex systems.

What is currently known about the history of the paragraph has relied on the work of the first English and American compositionists, humanists, and philologists of the late nineteenth century. Alexander Bain and his followers defined the requirements for the English paragraph and believed it had not existed prior to the eighteenth century. Their sole focus, on humanist and historical writing, yielded a distorted, if not an incorrect history of the paragraph. This article begins to correct that view, prevalent since 1866, by examining paragraphs of practical works, such as printed how-to books of the early English Renaissance until 1700. The variety and quantity of how-to documents increased with the growth of knowledge, advent of printing, and emergence and expansion of middle-class English readers eager for books written in an accessible, non-Latinate style. When we examine paragraphs from technical books printed as early as 1490, we find paragraphs that exemplify the qualities stipulated by Bain nearly 400 years later. The existence of well defined and formulated paragraphs throughout the English Renaissance and the seventeenth century in a wide variety of technical book—works ignored by literary scholars pursuing the history of English—suggests that the paragraph is clearly indigenous to the English composition, much more so than modern composition theory has acknowledged. This article explores example paragraphs of these first English printed technical works and begins to expand the history of the English paragraph. Further studies of later Middle English paragraphs in incunabula of practical, liturgical, and historical works will likely show the indigenous nature of the paragraph to English composition and allow scholars to see how the formation of the paragraph helped English writers over 500–700 years ago create complete texts.

The nuclear power industry is undergoing a renaissance, led by initiatives from the Obama administration and several states. In light of this development and the growing information economy, it is crucial that the public be well-informed, effective, and responsible regarding important technological issues. For this reason, undergraduate education, whether for technical or non-technical majors, must include an awareness of the complexity, ambiguity, and interestedness of the use of technical language and information. This is particularly important in communication involving public discourse and perceptions. I discuss here how I foster such awareness in my junior-level technical writing course for non-majors. We focus on the concept “safe” in relation to radiation and nuclear power. This is done in the overall context of making a recommendation for nuclear power as an energy source for the state of Florida for the next two decades, a realistic and urgent technical communication situation. Students see that standards and even the definitions of crucial terms shift depending on context and social circumstances, and that real-world choices involve trade-offs and balances between advantages and disadvantages.

This article presents follow-up information to a previous publication regarding ways to increase emphasis on research skills in undergraduate Technical Communication curricula. We detail the ways our undergraduate program highlights research by requiring majors to complete senior thesis projects that culminate in submission to an online peer-reviewed journal housed at our institution. This article also describes the roles our undergraduate students play in helping to manage the publication of that academic journal, an activity that further increases students' awareness of the research process and the value of writing for an academic audience beyond the classroom.

Professionals in the workplace are rarely asked to write autobiographical essays. Such essays, however, are an excellent tool for helping students explore their growth as professionals. This article explores the use of such essays in a technical writing class.

Recent studies suggest that verbal abuse and harassment are relatively common in the workplace. These same studies show that such abuse decreases worker satisfaction, undermines relationships, and distracts workers from functioning as team members committed to common goals. This study examines a classic example of verbal abuse and harassment in the workplace—that of Union Civil War General William Rosecrans toward his subordinates during a campaign conducted in Tennessee during 1863. It can, in fact, be argued that Rosecrans' abusive language was a major factor in the Union defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga in September of 1863.

Driving research questions from the prevailing issues and interests and developing from them new theories, formulas, algorithms, methods, and designs, and linking them to the interests of the larger audience is a vital component of scientific research papers. The present article discusses outlining purposes or stating the nature of the present research, and listing research questions or hypotheses in the introduction of academic papers. This corpus-based genre study focuses particularly on Move 3 of the model “occupying the niche.” The results indicating disciplinary variation show that the writers of Computer Science (CS) research articles, over the years have developed an increased use of outlining purpose/stating the nature of the present research, having the characteristics of purposive, descriptive, extension of the previous work, contrast to the existing work, brevity, complexity, and a description of methodology. It also shows that listing research questions or hypothesis may have distinctively different functions in developing genres as compared to the established ones such as physics.

This article uses theories of technical communication and archives to advance a pedagogy that includes archival production in the technical communication classroom. By developing and maintaining local classroom archives, students directly engage in valuable processes of appraisal, selection, collaboration, and retention. The anticipated outcomes of this work are the critical practice of making connections, the decentering of the self, the ability to work through noise, and the ability to imagine future users of the archive. The authors conclude that local classroom archives are one new means of meaningful instruction in the technical communication classroom and the local archive concept has great potential for further development.

This article explores how the English language contributes to cross-boundary communication failure and establishes that there is an “English language problem” that has not been adequately addressed in preparing United States native English-speaking students for international technical communication tasks. For example, U.S. technical communication scholars are still grappling with the problems of using English in software internationalization and translating technical communication products across boundaries of national culture and language without privileging Western values and beliefs. The tendency is to assume American culture and American Standard English as the norm, and to identify cultural and linguistic differences as problems only when there is a communication failure or when non-native speakers of English translate product users' manuals and other documents for use by Americans. The article draws attention to the limitations of the current favored strategies for training native speakers in international audience analysis and calls for a revamping of the curriculum to allow for the integration of language-based methodologies. It suggests the incorporation of the World Englishes perspective into training programs to internationalize students' learning experiences.

In spite of a critical turn in technical communication research, discussions of software documentation continue to forward a singularly instrumental understanding of how these types of texts are composed and consumed. Using work on multiliteracies, I illustrate how analysis of the competing evangelisms of software that occur in programming culture unveils the ways in which documentation, like code, is ideologically encoded. Attention to the evangelisms of software facilitates critical literacy and, consequently, a richer rhetorical literacy. Such literacies are necessary for composing effective software documentation and identifying how the ideologies of software and its documentation intersect with the nationally-situated cultural values in which these technologies and texts are developed and used. To illustrate this complexity, I offer examples of the intersections between free and open source software evangelisms and the national-as-local contexts of the United States, Brazil, and China.

Single sourcing through a content management system (CMS) is altering technical communication practices in many organizations, including institutions of higher education. Open source software (OSS) solutions are currently among the most popular content management platforms adopted by colleges and universities in the United States and abroad. The GPL license, ease of use, customizability, and the large, global user base of mature content management systems are among the reasons these organizations choose OSS to meet their CMS needs. This article reviews the literature on the effects of single sourcing on technical communication practice. It also explores issues of OSS adoption, both generally and in international contexts. Through a case study of an OSS CMS implementation at a mid-sized public college, the article examines important contributions technical communicators can make to the rollout of an OSS-based CMS.

By offering open-source software (OSS)-based networks as an affordable technology alternative, we partnered with a nonprofit community organization. In this article, we narrate the client-based experiences of this partnership, highlighting the ways in which OSS and open-source culture (OSC) transformed our students’ and our own expectations of traditional hierarchies\nin technical writing classes and work. The integration of OSS into technical communication classes shifted our work toward distributed symbolic-analytic issues and practices. Specifically, our engagements with OSS/OSC increased student awareness of the political and cultural significance of OSS and proprietary technology systems, and flattened traditional educational and client-student hierarchies. In this way, OSS/OSC offers ways to attune local pedagogy and practice to global developments in technical writing, and provide today’s technical communication students with the experiences needed to succeed in the workplace of tomorrow.

This article initiates a discussion about the global impact of peer-to-peer (P2P) user-assistance strategies and mechanisms and looks specifically at the forums for open source software (OSS) systems. Through a brief study of the interactions among international users of the forum, this article presents ideas on how commercial organizations and technical communicators can become valuable members of these new communities that are gaining prominence in global use.

Writing is common skill for many whose job requires them to communicate through business documents. But there are many professionals who seemingly have difficulty with writing. Many engineers are required to write proposals and reports yet have received little formal writing instruction. The purpose of this study was to determine if writing apprehension, their composition process, or the presence of deadlines affects the production of documents. The hypothesis was that engineers have high writing apprehension, generally use a product-based approach, and tight deadlines negatively affect the end quality. The researcher conducted in-depth interviews with civil engineers to gauge their level of apprehension, learn their personal composition process and determine how deadlines affect their writing. While the hypothesis was not conclusively supported, the study revealed six key themes into how engineers structure their writing tasks and found that the writing environment of engineers significantly impacts the composition process.

Scholars have consistently claimed that rhetorical patterns are culturally bound, and indirectness is a defining characteristic of Chinese writing. Through examining how the rhetorical mechanism of directness and indirectness is presented in 29 English business communication textbooks published in China, we explore how English business communication textbook writers in China keep up with the contextual changes in the Chinese society and how the rhetorical mechanism of directness and indirectness is locally situated in the English business communication teaching practices in China. We conclude that the pedagogical strategy on directness and indirectness represented in Chinese English business communication textbooks echoes the same strategy favored by scholars in the United States.

Although books in the For Dummies series and other similar series have found commercial success, the approach to information design they use has not received much attention in technical communication journals. This article reports on readers' responses to information presented in the magazine Nursing Made Incredibly Easy! and two other nursing journals. Three groups of readers (two groups of nursing students and one group of nursing faculty members) responded to three articles they read by completing questionnaires and participating in focus groups. Nursing Made Incredibly Easy! was regarded as easy to read and as a good starting point for less-experienced readers, but its tone and style elicited some strong objections as well. The article provides observations and recommendations about using an informal approach to information design.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that 86% of Internet users living with a disability or chronic illness have looked for health information online (Fox, 2007). And while so-called e-patients often start this search for information, many find themselves led to communities that provide this and more, such as Tu Diabetes, an online social network site. This pause in what can seem like an endless search for answers may be one that health professionals can gain insight from. Such extended pauses may give insight into the values of this particular community. This article provides the results and analysis of a study using ethnographic methods and rhetorical analysis to examine the texts posted by members of the social networking site Tu Diabetes in order to discern the values held by this community.

Technical communicators are expected to work extensively with visual texts in workplaces. Fortunately, most academic curricula include courses in which the skills necessary for such tasks are introduced and sometimes developed in depth. We identify a tension between a focus on technological skill vs. a focus on principles and theory, arguing that we subvert the potential benefits of an education if we succumb to the allure of software. We recommend several classroom practices that help educate students toward greater visual literacy, based not only on recommendations from the research but also from our experience as teachers of visual communication.

This article presents the results of a study that investigated readers' perceptions of tone formality in online text passages. The study found that readers perceived text passages to be less formal when they contained personal pronouns, active voice verbs, informal punctuation, or verb contractions. The study reveals that professional communicators can impact their readers' perceptions of tone in online passages. This study provides useful guidance for writers who wish to understand the impact of their stylistic decisions on audience perceptions of passage formality.

This article argues that in spite of some attempts to expand the diversity of approaches in Technical Communication, the field remains rooted in an expedient, managerial, techno-rational discourse, where discourse is understood as the values that guide research, practice, and teaching. The article draws on approaches from Communication Studies, specifically discursive analysis and metaphor analysis, to ground this claim and to demonstrate what possible alternative discourses might be possible. The article then argues that moving toward an “interpretive” discourse will expand the values of Technical Communication, but in a way that both retains existing assumptions but also includes a new focus on the “complete person.” Interpretive discourse is theorized using Habermas' communicative rationality and User Experience Design and the article concludes with some implications about moving Technical Communication toward discursive diversity. Ultimately, the goal of the article is to encourage researchers, teachers, and professionals to embrace this discursive diversity that complicates our historical means-ends rationality.