This research aimed to determine whether employees’ digital leadership perceptions were related to their attitude toward using AI-powered business communication tools, whether their AI awareness had a mediating role, and whether their motivation to learn had a moderating role in this process. This cross-sectional research collected data from 354 white-collar employees from a telecommunication company through a questionnaire survey. Results indicated that participants’ digital leadership perceptions resulted in a positive attitude toward using AI-powered business communication tools. Participants’ AI awareness mediated this relationship, and their motivation to learn moderated the relationship between digital leadership perceptions and AI awareness.

The concept of speaker credibility is proposed as mitigation to address two issues of confidence and anxiety, and gender differences, gathered from anecdotal feedback of business communication students. This article reviews the definition of speaker credibility and draws on two components—presentation skills and power—from Kenton’s source credibility model. It then discusses the two issues of confidence and anxiety, and gender differences. A speaker credibility framework is outlined from reviewing research on three specific presentation skills and proposing power from Janks’s critical literacy. Limitations and future research include testing the framework’s validity discussed at the end.

In this article, I study how a Deaf-owned company, Convo Communications, builds on accessibility as the baseline from which members contribute to more inclusive workspaces through innovative technologies and communication practices. I analyze the company’s website, blog posts, and videos to demonstrate how this organization embodies the value of accessible communication and a collective vision, how the members design more accessible ways to connect and use their expertise to educate other businesses and professionals, and the organizational commitment to communication diversity and accessible conversations. The findings lead to implications for even more inclusive business and professional communication practices.

What characterizes the language choices of untrained student peer reviewers? Undergraduate students ( N = 83) were randomly assigned to provide peer feedback on persuasive presentation manuscripts to three peers from their same and/or different course section. A total of 233 peer reviews were analyzed in terms of politeness, quality, and valence. Content and statistical analyses revealed similar politeness levels and quality regardless of the assessors’ identified gender or section of the assessee. However, students produced significantly more positively valenced reviews for same-section classmates, suggesting that students soften feedback through warmer language for peers with whom they have frequent interaction.

This study explores how prompting techniques, especially those integrated with rhetorical analysis results, may improve the effectiveness of artificial intelligence (AI)-generated business communication messages. I conducted an experiment to assess the effectiveness of these prompting techniques in the context of crafting a negative message generated with ChatGPT 3.5 ( n = 85). A multiple regression was calculated to explore prompting techniques’ impact on the negative message grades and how each technique influences the message grade. The results ( F(4, 80) = 31.84, p < .001), with an adjusted R2 = .595, indicate a positive relationship between prompting techniques and the effectiveness of AI-generated messages. This study also identified challenges related to students’ AI literacy. I conclude the study by recommending practical measures on how to incorporate AI into business and professional writing classrooms.

This study conducts a multimodal discourse analysis of the live streaming of Jiaqi Li, a well-known Chinese streamer. Integrating systemic functional grammar and systemic visual grammar to explore the construction of interpersonal meanings in Li's live streams, the authors found that Li uses verbal semiotics to convey information and feelings and, more important, to create his different interactive roles as an authoritative opinion leader, a protector of consumers’ benefits, and a friend who shares his experiences and recommends products. This study offers insight into e-commerce discourse and communication, adding to the literature on live streaming in commerce and business communication.

ABSTRACTThis project investigates how the goals of microenterprise entrepreneurs affect their use of communication genres. Although slide-based business pitches are key for traditional entrepreneurs, microenterprise entrepreneurs have little interest in investment. Therefore, acquiring customers through short elevator pitches takes this central position. This article also explores the social justice dimensions of microenterprise acceleration, finding that such organizations can provide important services in combating inequality. This project uses writing, activity, and genre research as a theoretical framework, and the research site is a microenterprise accelerator in Tacoma, Washington called Spaceworks Tacoma, which supports both lower-income and Black owners of small businesses.KEYWORDS: Workplace studiesprofessional practice, social justiceethicsentrepreneurshipWriting, activity, and genre research (WAGR)microenterprises AcknowledgementsFirst, I would like to thank the entrepreneurs and the director of Spaceworks who very graciously gave me their time to talk about their organizations. I would also like to thank my dissertation committee, Richard Johnson-Sheehan, Jennifer Bay, Bradley Dilger, and Clay Spinuzzi who provided guidance on both the research process and the writing and revising of the manuscript. And finally, I would like to thank Rebecca Walton and this article's anonymous reviewers, who helped me to strengthen and sharpen the article.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis project was not supported by any funding.Notes on contributorsMason T. PellegriniMason Pellegrini is an assistant professor in technical communication and rhetoric at Texas Tech University. His main research areas are entrepreneurial communication, workplace writing, academic publishing, and qualitative research methods. In 2022, Mason received a Fulbright Open Research Grant to Chile, which he used to study entrepreneurship communication at the famous Chilean business accelerator Start-Up Chile.

ABSTRACTAs immersive technology grows in popularity, universities are developing academic innovation labs (AIL) that often introduce students to virtual reality (VR) and other emerging cross reality applications. Although these labs help educate students on emerging technology, a more critical eye is needed to examine user experience (UX). This article reports on a qualitative, multimethod study that employed a talk-aloud UX protocol to gather data on VR users' experience at the University of Connecticut's OPIM Research Lab. To fully define and contrast this data, we juxtapose these individual narratives with rhetorical analysis of marketing discourse, as presented by VR platform HTC Vive, Google's VR application Tilt Brush, and the Research Lab's promotional material. Based on our findings, we assert that sociotechnical imaginaries as constructed by promotional material often reduce the complexities of immersion in user experience. Such marketing rhetoric creates "top-down" imaginaries that contrast with "bottom-up" imaginaries generated in user experience, reinforcing the complex and fluid definitions of immersion. The resulting study has practical implications for stakeholders across higher education, especially in the context of innovation labs, as well as for technical and professional communication educators and practitioners.KEYWORDS: Immersive technologyinnovation labsvirtual realityimmersionuser experienceemerging technologyfuture imaginariessociotechnical imaginaries Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsBrent LuciaBrent Lucia is an Assistant Professor In-Residence at the University of Connecticut School of Business. He has a PhD in Composition and Applied Linguistics from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His current research explores the rhetorics of technology and its relationship to the production of space. His recent scholarship can be found in Rhetoric Review, Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, and Enculturation.Matthew A. VetterMatthew A. Vetter is an Associate Professor of English and affiliate faculty in the Composition and Applied Linguistics PhD program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His research, which asks questions related to technology, rhetoric, and writing, has been published widely in venues such as Social Media and Society, Rhetoric Review, Studies in Higher Education, and Computers and Composition. His co-authored book, Wikipedia and the Representation of Reality, was published by Routledge in 2021.David A. SolbergDavid A. Solberg is a teaching assistant at the Holy Family Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received his MA degree in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His master's thesis was entitled The Use of Parallelism in Poetry Writing for the Acquisition of English Grammar (available from ProQuest).

ABSTRACTWe asked 15 editors about their perceptions of five sentences using singular they in different contexts and about the style guides that inform their work. Editors appreciated the inclusivity of indefinite and definite singular they and recognized APA for its leading-edge stance. Our findings indicate the need for editors to develop a heuristic for determining when to deviate from style guide advice and to develop their own system for mitigating ambiguity in relation to they.KEYWORDS: Editingsocial justice / ethics Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1. We explained to editors that, in each sentence, the capitalized pronoun referred to the capitalized noun phrase.2. When we refer to a "comprehensive style guide," we mean a manual that provides standards for writing, editing, and publishing texts. A comprehensive style guide may be written by a publisher or discourse community but adopted widely. For example, University of Chicago Press's Chicago Manual of Style is used by other publishers and the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association is used in disciplines outside of psychology.Companies may create their own style guides for internal use. Such guides may or may not be as detailed or complete as comprehensive style guides and may, in fact, be based on or direct users to a comprehensive style guide for any gaps in content. For example, ACES: The Society for Editing "Style Guide and Proofreading Checklist" (Filippini, Citation2021) is for ACES communications and based on the AP Stylebook.Some editors in this study referred to style sheets. A copyeditor creates and uses a style sheet to note a running list of grammar and usage that are specific to a manuscript and which may be different from house style or a comprehensive style guide (CMOS, Section 2.55).Despite attempting to define these terms, we recognize there are overlaps among the categories and across fields. For example, the Microsoft Writing Style Guide began as an in-house style guide and is now used by other software companies. Further, there exist other contexts of the terms "style guide" and "style sheet," such as brand style guides, programming style guides, and web design style sheets.3. Of the remaining two editors, one said that they would revise the sentence to avoid using singular they, and the other said that they would use the name Pat again instead of a pronoun.4. Only three editors (4%) said they would edit the sentence.5. The two remaining editors differed in their responses. One said that they would avoid using singular they by revising the sentence; the other said that they would change the pronoun to her.6. Ten editors said that they would edit this sentence.7. As of August 16, 2022, AP Stylebook Online advice under "accent marks" reads: "Use accent marks or other diacritical marks with names of people who request them or are widely known to use them, or if quoting directly in a language that uses them: An officer spotted him and asked a question: "Cómo estás?" How are you? Otherwise, do not use these marks in English-language stories. Note: Many AP customers' computer systems ingest via the ANPA standard and will not receive diacritical marks published by the AP."Additional informationNotes on contributorsJo MackiewiczJo Mackiewicz is a professor of rhetoric and professional communication at Iowa State University. She studies the communication of pedagogical and workplace interactions. Her book, Welding Technical Communication: Teaching and Learning Embodied Knowledge was published by SUNY Press in 2022.Shaya KrautShaya Kraut is a PhD student in the Rhetoric and Professional Communication program at Iowa State University, where she teaches first-year writing. She has also worked as an ESL teacher, a writing center tutor, and a teacher/tutor for adult basic education. Her research interests include composition pedagogy and critical literacy.Allison DurazziAllison Durazzi is a communication professional with experience in industry settings including law, the arts, and freelance editing. She is a Ph.D. student in Rhetoric and Professional Communication at Iowa State University where she researches and teaches technical editing and teaches business, technical, and speech communication courses.

Employee disclosure refers to the process of revealing personal information about oneself with others in a workplace setting. This type of disclosure also greatly influences organizational culture, policies, and workplace interactions. Modeling such disclosure scenarios using an organizational economics approach addresses communication challenges faced by businesses dealing with the respective disclosure(s). Further, it allows for uncovering the most effective ways to communicate disclosure procedures and policies to employees and employers. This, in turn, will lead to (a) improved corporate training practices for employee disclosure in business communication settings and (b) increased overall productivity measures for organizational members.

Research problem: In our increasingly globalized world, the fields of technical and professional communication (TPC) and translation studies (TS) share many points of contact, especially among practitioners. However, within academia, the fields remain largely siloed. To help bridge the gaps between TPC and TS, to advance interdisciplinary research in the two fields, and understand how technical communication and translation can be discursively integrated, this article offers an integrative literature review of research in TPC and TS that focuses on intersections between the two fields. Research questions: 1. What are the research questions, purposes, and objectives in the research under study? 2. Who is represented in the literature, and what languages do they speak? Methodology: To understand how the fields are converging, we conducted a staged integrative literature review of peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters in TPC and TS. Next, we performed a thematic analysis to investigate patterns across the collected literature. Results and conclusions: Our analysis suggests five themes that help connect research and practice in TPC and TS, including pedagogical approaches for training students for careers in international technical communication and translation; collaborations among practitioners in both fields; questions of social justice, language diversity, and language access; available resources and tools; and the role of culture in translation. We conclude by advocating for a stronger integration of the two fields and by suggesting how to build on the foundations of research work conducted in the five identified themes.

Background: This article argues for the intersection of intercultural technical and professional communication (TPC), contrastive rhetoric, and corpus linguistics as a powerful alliance to perform application-oriented genre analysis. Literature review: Research into technical and professional communication has long been interested in genre analysis from an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) approach. Genres are a frequent form of professional communication; reports, in particular, have received great attention in the field of English for Business Purposes (EBP). Nevertheless, existing research has criticized that many ESP/EBP coursebooks are not really tailored to the trade, let alone contain the language used in real-life professional settings. Consequently, specialized corpora for genre description pertain. Aim: This study analyzes the audit report business genre to develop applications of language use for EBP learners. Research questions: 1. What characterizes the audit report (AuR) genre macrostructure in English (EN) and Spanish (ES)? 2. Are there noticeable differences between EN and ES in terms of genre realization? 3. How can the findings of descriptive research be applied in professional contexts? Method: An ad-hoc comparable corpus of authentic AuRs was compiled, tagged at the rhetorical level and browsed following a top-down procedure. First, the macrostructure of the AuR was pinned down and then compared cross-linguistically in search of similarities and differences. Then auditors’ self-mention markers and verbs referring to their tasks were examined. Results: Minor differences were observed at the rhetorical level, as opposed to the findings at the level of grammatical realization. A two-fold proposal is made to transfer descriptive knowledge to an ESP educational setting and to the workplace.

Background: The bulk of international trade has led to increasing demand for specialized professional communication texts in multilingual contexts. Persuasive language is required in promotional discourse to sell products. When transactions are carried out with foreign countries, translation becomes essential for successful commercial exchange. Literature review: Persuasion requires the use of positive evaluation to describe products. This article addresses the need to contrast the expression of positive evaluation in English and Spanish online promotional cheese descriptions. Research questions: 1. What are the linguistic resources used to express positive evaluation in English and Spanish in online promotional texts of the cheese industry? 2. What is the distribution across parts of speech and semantic categories and subcategories between these two languages? 3. How can semantic tags in bilingual comparable corpora provide useful information for translation practice? Methodology: Empirical data have been extracted from Online Cheese Descriptions (OCD), a semantically tagged English-Spanish corpus, and classified using the Appraisal Framework into the subcategories of appreciation, judgment, affect, and graduation. Results and discussion: Tests of statistical significance have revealed cross-linguistic differences, mainly in appreciation, thus leading to a qualitative analysis. The findings also include a large inventory of all evaluative items that express appreciation for cheeses in both languages and general guidelines for translators. Conclusions: This multilayer corpus-based analysis has yielded relevant data that can be used to enhance the second-language writing and translation processes required for marketing cheese in English and Spanish, thus supporting international professionals in their communication in multilingual contexts.

About the case: This case study examines how students, instructors, and industry partners in university and industry collaborative translation projects perceive and respond to their experiences with these projects. It reports on collaborative translation projects at Xi'an International Studies University, involving the active participation of three stakeholders. Situating the case: Translation and technical and professional communication (TPC) education both prioritize cultivating students’ practical skills of producing audience-centered content. They both value collaborative approaches as effective methods for bridging the gap between academia and industry. Although TPC education aims to foster students’ technical and professional writing competence and prepare them for industry demands, translation education focuses on developing students’ translation competence through context-dependent learning. Various models have been proposed to define translation competence, with the multicomponent model being the most prominent. This model emphasizes multiple skills and attributes that translators need, reflecting the influence of market demands and technological advancements. Collaborative approaches like project-based learning (PjBL) have been advocated to bridge the gap between academia and industry. However, research at the program level and from stakeholders’ perspectives remains limited. Methods: We adopted a mixed-method strategy and employed surveys and one-on-one interviews to examine the responses from the stakeholders about their experiences and the impacts of the collaborative translation projects. Results: Statistical analysis of the surveys and thematic analysis of interviews and open-ended questions indicate that all stakeholders concur with the projects’ benefits in enhancing students’ translation competence and shortening the gap between classroom translation education and market demands. Despite these benefits, all stakeholders face various challenges that should be addressed by expanding the scalability and sustainability of collaborative projects, fostering closer and direct collaboration between instructors and industry partners, and enhancing the ethics of professional code and strategic competence of students. Conclusion: Based on the research results, we suggest further research directed at the sustainability of these projects and the scalability of their benefits toward a bigger population of students.

Introduction: Many technical and professional communication (TPC) students, practitioners, and instructors are not trained translators or localizers. However, translation and localization competencies are important in today's interconnected world and should be part of international TPC instruction. To meet this need, TPC instruction may incorporate exposure to translation issues into coursework and explore the growing use of technologies in the translation process. About the case: Recognizing the need to incorporate translation and localization (T&L) into a graduate seminar on “Global Technical Communication” (GTC), the course's instructor and students co-constructed a unique translation assignment that embraced the limitations created by most instructors’ and students’ lack of exposure to or experience with the translation process. Situating the case: TPC education has been criticized for focusing increasingly on TPC and writing classrooms as the object of study rather than sites where students eventually work and apply their knowledge. While study abroad programs or globally connected learning communities are ideal for teaching “real-world” T&L skills, substantial material limitations can impede their widespread adoption. Methods/approach: This experience report was co-authored by the instructor and TPC students from the 2020 and 2022 iterations of the GTC graduate seminar. We describe the translation assignment, its development, and the groups’ final submissions and reflections. Results/discussion: Students’ group and instructor reflections suggest the assignment's potential to facilitate closer engagement with real-world global TPC processes, deeper consideration of language and culture's relationship in TPC, and developing appropriate levels of confidence in working on similar projects as TPC researchers or practitioners. Conclusions: Our experience report provides proof of concept for how we might begin introducing T&L practices to TPC students in low-stakes but meaningful assignments.

This study reports an investigative study with 55 English-major participants in a Chinese university about using simulation in business English correspondence teaching. The study found that participants had strong needs in practical skills development and learning business English correspondence writing. The simulation approach was perceived to be effective and had positive learning outcomes in business communication skills development, motivation, confidence and vocabulary growth, business and language knowledge improvement, and more understanding about the business practice. The constraint factors in simulation included lack of business knowledge and vocabulary, ineffective group cooperation, and lack of understanding about the real-world business background.

Through the guidance of social presence theory, this study sought to understand how instructors’ affirming messages and social presence behaviors affect students’ writing apprehension in online business communication courses. The data were consistent with two models, both of which indicate that instructor affirming messages indirectly affect students’ writing apprehension in the business communication classroom. Both models also indicate that students’ burnout mediates that indirect effect. The results show how important it is for instructors to take the time to leave affirming message feedback when teaching business communication online.

Innovative classroom-tested approaches to cross-cultural communication—diversity, equity, and inclusion—and personal and professional development are featured. Readers can explore 10 teaching creations debuted at the 2023 My Favorite Assignment sessions at the Association for Business Communication Annual International Conference held in Denver, Colorado, USA.

This article presents a conceptual framework for integrating AI-enabled business communication in higher education. Drawing on established theories from business communication and educational technology, the framework provides comprehensive guidance for designing engaging learning experiences. It emphasizes the significance of social presence, cognitive load management, and constructivist learning principles. The framework is exemplified through various tasks, including role-playing with AI chatbots, analyzing nonverbal cues, communication simulations, interactive presentation assessments, and collaborative AI-supported projects. Practical considerations for implementation, including technological infrastructure, faculty training, ethics, curriculum integration, and assessment strategies, are discussed. Future directions and implications for business communication education are also explored.

This article presents a case study of instructor and student perceptions of collaborative learning in multiple sections of an upper-level, online business writing course. Our goals are to understand current attitudes toward collaboration among business writing instructors and students and to examine points of dissonance regarding attitudes, frameworks, and definitions of collaborative writing. Further, we aim to understand how collaboration is valued, how it is framed and valued in terms of either process or product, and various associations between collaboration and community. Our results revealed collaboration to be a shared interest by business writing instructors and students alike but at the same time it is received differently in online versus in-person interactions. In this article, we identify these dissonances and discuss what they mean for collaborative learning.

This article is the introduction to the Communication Design Quarterly special issue on digital life. It explains the exigency for this issue and details how digital literacies in technical and professional communication are complicated by emerging technologies. It also demonstrates the potential for moving toward a model of digital life as a flexible way of foregrounding and talking about the work we are all already doing to understand and improve our post-human lives.

Asynchronous workshops have potential as a flexible and accessible tool for instructor professional development. Translating synchronous workshops into asynchronous versions represents an opportunity to expand access to training materials, but translating across modalities is a challenge. As facilitators of the Colleges Online Learning Academy summer fellowship program, we outline our process for developing asynchronous workshops focused on pedagogy and digital learning for graduate student instructors. We evaluated participant engagement and accessibility based on survey responses (n=10) and workshop artifacts. Our four asynchronous workshops consisted of multimodal modules with video clips from the synchronous sessions and engagement opportunities on Jamboard. We found low Jamboard engagement from asynchronous participants, but high engagement in multimodal modules. Potential barriers to access included mental health, Wi-Fi access, English language comprehension, and a lack of discussion, but many participants (4 of 9) reported no access barriers. We provide recommendations for developing engaging, accessible, and content-rich asynchronous workshops from synchronous workshop materials.

In this article, we propose (re)designing privacy literacy as an essential component of our digital lives in an age of Generative Artificial Intelligence (genAI). Our study emphasizes the layered digital, technical, rhetorical, and algorithmic literacies associated with design thinking and genAI to support theorizing privacy literacy. We introduce Design as an analytical element complementary to Woods and Wason's (2021) multi-pronged framework for analyzing Terms of Service (ToS) documents. Using a cluster of Adobe Generative AI ToS, we illustrate the necessity of including Design , which allows those invested in Communication Design (CD) and Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) to interrogate how or if design supports or undermines values related to user privacy, data ownership, and informed consent. We conclude by detailing how collective surveillance apathy regarding emergent data infrastructures signal a Post-Surveillance era in our global society and digital lives.

This article reports on a study about design thinking pedagogy in technical communication courses taken by engineering students. The study suggests that design thinking pedagogy can foster engineering students' empathy for users, particularly their ability to recognize the feelings, knowledge, and perspectives of others. However, its findings reinforce the difficulty faced when encouraging students' societal-level empathy and the limitations of empathy. While engineering students may struggle to transfer user empathy to courses in their major, this study found that engineering students believe design thinking has relevance to their future careers. This article offers teaching strategies and project ideas for technical and professional communication instructors to facilitate students' ability to transfer user empathy to their disciplines.

This teaching case applies design thinking to a large-scale client project in a technical and professional communication (TPC) class. Using the 5-step design thinking process ("empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test") over 8 weeks, the students in an upper-division TPC course developed social media content and strategy for a statewide public relations campaign. The two authors, the instructing faculty and a senior student who served as project manager, illuminate how iterative design thinking, as a UX pedagogical practice, can help students set boundaries around ill-defined problems; mirror workplace collaboration to contribute to professional development; and build a toolkit for exercising agency and creativity as researchers, writers, and designers.

This experience report describes a six-week unit at the intersection of technical and professional communication and user experience design (TPC-UX). Drawing on the work of Patricia Sullivan and Thomas Kent, it argues for a paralogic hermeneutic approach to TPC-UX pedagogy and illustrates how the Double Diamond design process can be used to scaffold assignments and create methodological balance. It also describes how commonplace TPC assignments---such as the technology tutorial---can be reframed according to user experience methods. Details about readings and deliverables are included.

This article discusses a newly created method of UX journey mapping---User Experience as Racial Storytelling (UXRS)---designed to centralize Black user narratives in design thinking, and the teaching implications as a Black woman non-tenure track (NTT) online technical and professional communication (TPC) instructor. Revisiting an assigned group activity in a synchronous online technical writing course for engineers at a Predominantly White Institution (PWI), this essay will share pedagogical approaches of user experience as TPC pedagogy used to scaffold this method of racial storytelling as an anti-racist practice to adapt a social justice framework. This essay suggests UXRS can aid engineering students' perspective of inclusive design.

In the introduction, we describe the exigence for the special issue and discuss how technical and professional communication (TPC) instructors teach user experience (UX) in ways that are unique, divergent, and innovative. Given the interdisciplinary nature of UX, sharing teaching stories as we do in this special issue demonstrates the multivocality of UX pedagogy and highlights the unique perspectives TPC instructors have to offer.

This article focuses on a professional space that technical and professional communication with which students might not be familiar: a factory. In unionized factory workplaces, particularly, the interactions between the factory floor workers (the unionized group) and the salaried professionals can be complicated, making effective communication difficult. From the perspective of one factory floor worker, we examine some of these complications and difficulties as a way to provide insight into such workspaces.

This special issue questions current notions and practices of "professionalism" in TPC. Professionalism – whether an identity, a status, or a set of behaviors or conventions – continues to be constructed in white supremacist, ableist, heteronormative, and classist frameworks. The authors in this issue work to reimagine what professionalism means in our classrooms, workplaces, and communities by critiquing the professional practices that uphold oppressive and exploitative structures, inspiring just action and new futures.

Black mentorship is key to the professional development of Black scholars in technical and professional communication (TPC) and writing studies. Blending narrative ethnography and grounded theory, this article extends existing investigations into mentorship among Black professionals, by exploring how mentorship and rhetorical kinship among Black TPC and writing professors enrich their professional development. With implications for both academia and industry, this article highlights how Black TPC scholars develop, negotiate, and sustain Black professional ethos.

Through an auto-ethnographic critical reflection methodology, this article describes our attempts to use course documents as tactical tools of resistance within undergraduate professional writing courses. Using introspection to examine how our positionalities and values shape the choices we make when constructing course documents, we advocate for scholars and practitioners of rhetoric and technical communication to engage in a sustained practice of critical reflection as part of developing inclusive and equitable pedagogy and classroom coalition building.

The Sloyd Training School, an early twentieth-century private school for teachers in Boston, attempted to legitimize the Sloyd method of handiwork. Specifically, its Alumni Association's publication Sloyd Record brought together educators across the country to make a case for Sloyd's relevancy and impact on the academic and professional development of students, particularly students who were working poor or receiving educations in non-traditional settings. Its contributors painted Sloyd as a form of knowledge and a resource, as a literacy, and their rhetorical effectiveness was predicated upon Sloyd's ability to be painted as such in its far-reaching effects and comprehensiveness.

This article offers a content analysis of technical and professional communication articles related to user experience (TPC-UX) published between 2013 and 2022 in six TPC scholarly journals. This analysis reveals that TPC-UX primarily focuses on product and process topics and illustrates the terminological comingling of user experience and usability. Specific TPC-UX topics identified include theory, multimodality, health and medicine, localization, web design, mobile applications, accessibility, and content strategy. These topics suggest that TPC-UX's key affordances are its attunement to networked power dynamics, its theoretically rich treatment of multimodality, and its strategies for navigating contextual complexities.

In the discipline of technical/professional writing and communication, one of the strongest recruiting tools we use is the potential earning power students will have once they obtain a degree and secure a job in the industry. This article is the result of two professors learning that one of their most advanced and dedicated students accepted, in her first job out of graduate school, a salary we thought was thousands below her earning potential. Our conversations around this student's situation led us to survey other alumni from our programs. What we have learned is that students often do not know what salaries they should expect, nor do they feel comfortable negotiating a salary offer. In addition, graduates’ location (urban vs. rural) and level of education (BA or BS degree vs. MA) impact their earning potential.

The cognitive theory of multimedia learning (CTML) describes a set of empirically tested principles that technical and professional communication research largely acknowledges as important to the design of presentation slides. However, presenters often run into difficulties understanding how to apply CTML principles to contexts in which it has not been tested. We present three pilot studies that extend our knowledge of how to apply CTML principles. Pilot study one suggests that CTML principles can be effective for presenting advanced research to expert audiences. Pilot study two highlights the importance of user testing nonessential images added primarily for visual interest, specifically finding that visual organizer images such as Microsoft PowerPoint's SmartArt, can backfire by unintentionally indicating imprecise relationships while adding little in terms of visual interest. Pilot study three suggests that, when needing to present a long quotation, presenters should avoid verbatim reading and consider abridging or paraphrasing the quotation.

The ability to work with data is an important skill for students enrolled in technical and professional communication programs, but students with limited mathematical and computer programming literacies might find it difficult to do basic data analysis or customize data visualizations. This article examines the extent to which ChatGPT can make data analysis and visualization more accessible for students with limited technical proficiency. The results suggest that although the tool is poised to have a substantial impact in helping students create effective data visualizations, its efficacy as a data analysis tool is more limited.

Artificial intelligence tools are being increasingly used to do content analysis in technical and professional communication (TPC). The authors consider some of the affordances and constraints of these tools and suggest that construct validity is an underdiscussed form of validity within TPC research that will become more important as artificial intelligence research tools become increasingly prevalent. But construct validity is an important idea for graduate programming on research methods regardless of the type of method, technique, or tool used—whether qualitative or computational. Thus, training in construct validity is important for strengthening graduate research preparation in TPC.

Preparing students to communicate in business has often been an overlooked area within literacy studies. With current calls by Cardon et al. (2024) to focus on core competencies in the business communication classroom with the emergence of generative AI, it is more important than ever to remember Berkenkotter and Huckin’s (1994) explanation that students will always learn in a form of “situated cognition embedded in disciplinary activities” (p. 3). This project, as a result, provides a framework to explore student experiences with business communication before students arrive on a college campus to better inform higher education stakeholders.

Generative AI could disrupt professional writing instruction, but banning AI tools seems unproductive. This article outlines a rhetorical approach for adapting business writing instruction for the AI age: It suggests AI use cases that align with the rhetorical canons, illustrates each with real-world business examples, and ends with suggestions for using AI to build students’ critical genre awareness. This approach should prove useful for business writing instructors who want to ground their AI-related instruction in enduring pedagogical theory.

Background: With increased reliance on technology-mediated communication (TMC) minus the social cues, uncertainty management has become critical. This study investigates how usage of emojis/emoticons in professional communication contexts helps people navigate this uncertainty. Literature review: Prior works have focused on the benefits of emoji usage in TMC, particularly in enhancing message substance, emotive expressiveness, and perception. Research questions: 1. What is the attitude towards emoji usage among the upcoming generation of professionals, specifically Generation Z, as they prepare to enter the workforce? 2. What, if any, is the impact of emoji usage on how one perceives others and is perceived in formal work settings, especially for Generation Z? 3. How does emoji/emoticon use affect Generation Z's interpersonal communication at work? Methods: Three focus group discussions were conducted with a total of 29 graduate-level, business studies students with work experience ranging from zero to four years. Reflexive Thematic Analysis using Braun and Clarke's six-step process was conducted to analyze the data and generate themes. Results: Three salient themes emerged from the analysis: 1. Communicative Competence, 2. Identity Construction, 3. Socialized Patterns of Usage. Conclusion: Although emojis are helpful in specific linguistic functions, clarifying intent, and reducing uncertainty, they retain a great deal of fuzziness owing to the ambiguity in usage and interpretation. It is therefore prudent to design ways of incorporating them in instructional interventions to sensitize students around the nuances of emoji usage, to capitalize on the benefits they offer.