This article argues that fact sheets produced by environmental activists in response to proposed nuclear waste repositories constitute a new genre of scientific rhetoric. By analyzing the rhetorical features of these texts, including the simultaneous reliance on and distrust of scientific evidence, this article demonstrates how effective environmental activists' texts can be, in spite of the constraints and pressures of their rhetorical situation.

(2001). Guest Editor's Column. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 245-249.

Abstract of the original article Robert R. Johnson's “Complicating Technology: Interdesciplinary Method, the Burden of Comprehension, and the Ethical Space of the Technical Communicator,” published in the Winter 1998 issue of TCQ, points out that there is much for technical communicators to learn from the burgeoning field of technology studies. Technical communicators, however, have an obligation to exercise patience as they enter this arena of study. Using interdisciplinary theory, this article argues that technical communication must assume the “burden of comprehension”: the responsibility of understanding the ideologies, contexts, values, and histories of those disciplines from which we borrow before we begin using their methods and research findings. Three disciplines of technology study—history, sociology, and philosophy—are examined to investigate how these disciplines approach technology. The article concludes with speculation on how technical communicators, by virtue of their entrance into this interdisciplinary arena, might refashion both their practical roles and the scope of their ethical responsibilities.

A case study of an experienced professor's comments on a design report in a first‐year engineering class was conducted over the period of an academic year. When compared with the commenting styles of technical writing teachers, the engineering professor's comments were found to be highly directive, and thus at odds with the preference for facilitative comments that prevails in composition studies. However, differences in genre conventions explain much of the discrepancy.

Despite being raised in a culture that denied her access to formal education and employment, Flora Annie Steel became an Inspector of Female Schools in the Punjab, India, in 1884. Her inspection reports for the occupying British government of India are the focus of this study, which examines texts within the context of British imperialism and late‐nineteenth century report conventions. The study concludes 1) that cultural expectations for women in imperialism influenced Steel's response to the genre and 2) that the report genre may have been fluid within imperialism, crossing boundaries between professional and government writing pertaining today. The study suggests that, historically, we need to study these genres of writing from the perspective of economic and political expansion as genres of imperialism.

The feminist approaches to technical communication that have emerged recently are largely liberal feminist or radical feminist in orientation. Liberal feminism arises out of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and emphasizes equality and rights. It sees that women's opportunities to develop their intellects and talents and participate freely in the world of men have been thwarted by discriminatory practices. Radical feminism, in contrast, emphasizes differences between women and men, the limitations of patriarchal culture, and the characteristics of women's ways of communicating and knowing. The essays included in this issue, while multidimensional, primarily exhibit characteristics of both liberal and radical feminism.