Technical Communication Quarterly Mar 1995

A semiotic perspective on the technical and professional writing assignment

Kay Westmoreland Division of Undergraduate Education

Abstract

One of the reasons students in technical and professional writing classes are often unable to make judgments about the ethical worth of a piece of writing is that they lack an understanding of how connotative meanings are constructed. Socially oriented semiotic theories offer models of how language works symbolically in this way. A productive means of introducing these is to have students evaluate advertisements as forms of technical and professional writing. This study uses central ideas from Roland Barthes's essays on connotative semiotics as a rationale for directing writers to develop the critical reflex to analyze and then make judgments about the values implied by connotative systems.

Journal
Technical Communication Quarterly
Published
1995-03-01
DOI
10.1080/10572259509364593
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Topics
writing pedagogy professional writing multimodality
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (3)

  1. Faber (2002)
    Professional Identities: What Is Professional about Professional Communication?
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  2. SMITH (1997)
    Intertextual Connections to “A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing”
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  3. Markel (1997)
    Ethics and technical communication: a case for foundational approaches
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication

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