Technical Communication Quarterly
12 articlesJuly 2025
April 2025
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Social Problems and Racial Agendas: Analyzing the Structural Racism of Historical Urban Planning Documents ↗
Abstract
I argue that historical urban planning documents are important technical communication documents because of the ways they have shaped the lived world in ways harmful to marginalized communities. I illustrate this through analysis of a document from the first federal housing project in the US My analysis shows that, despite the document's attempted neutrality, it uses language to racialize the city's population and move agendas of structural racism into material spaces.
February 2025
September 2024
July 2023
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Abstract
Knowledge about the use of the term “Indigenous science” (IS) is valuable to technical and scientific communication in the larger goal of exposing colonial, appropriative legacies. Using rhetorical content analysis, we analyze 61 instances of IS in US-based news articles and find that IS is often represented as an ongoing activity, connected to food production, and related to higher education activities. However, IS is rarely defined and Indigenous people are not always cited/quoted.
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(Re)locating the Decision Makers in Ecotourism: Emphasizing “Place” and “Grace” in a Global Industry’s DEI Efforts ↗
Abstract
This article examines the role that reformed hiring practices and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives within the global industry of ecotourism may (or may not) play in bringing multiply marginalized or underrepresented (MMU) voices to the forefront of environmental risk communication and sustainability efforts worldwide. Ultimately, the article argues that ecotourism companies should promote grace-based hiring practices to include marginalized knowledges of threatened ecosystems (places) in a company’s decisions regarding sustainability.
January 2022
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(Re) Framing Multilingual Technical Communication with Indigenous Language Interpreters and Translators ↗
Abstract
Through an ethnographic study conducted with an Indigenous language rights organization, this article illustrates how translation and interpretation can be further considered in global technical communication research. By providing examples of how Indigenous language translators and interpreters approach their work, this article advocates for a reframing of multilingualism in technical communication through a deliberate attunement to the relationships between language, land, and positionality. The author argues that as technical communicators continue conducting research in multilingual contexts, researchers should acknowledge how translation and interpretation impact the results and methodologies of contemporary global research.
July 2021
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Abstract
The recent uptick in TPC scholarship related to decolonial methods, methodologies, and praxis warrants careful consideration about how this framework is used in TPC scholarship. Using a critique of decolonial scholars, the authors reconsider their use of “decolonial” to describe their experience with urban foraging as a practice that subverts modern Euro-Western foodways. This article uses experiential narrative as a way to theorize about technology as it relates to decolonial perspectives on bodies and nutrition.
January 2019
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Abstract
This case examines how functionalist approaches manifest culturally based on users’ contexts. The authors conduct a critical visual semiotic analysis of the race and Hispanic origin questions on the 2010 U.S. Census form, demonstrating how incongruities in design potentially harm people. This demonstrates a need for adding critical analyses to design and research and it refocuses the Society for Technical Communication’s value of promoting the public good on to design and documentation in order to fight injustice.
June 2009
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Abstract
During the aftermath of recent disasters (both natural and human made), people have communicated by cobbling together available social software resources—relying on the capabilities of Internet tools such as blogs, news sites, and Flickr. Examining the use of social software taking place after the London bombings of July 7, 2005, I propose a method by which we can study users' literate appropriations to shape the development of more accommodating communication systems.