Journal of Business and Technical Communication Jul 2022

Everyday Ethics at the Border: Normative Ethics for the 21st Century

Beau Pihlaja Texas Tech University

Abstract

This study uses examples from a case of everyday technical and professional communication (TPC) at a small multinational company on the Mexico–U.S. border to illustrate how coordinating analytical frameworks commonly used in TPC analyses—activity theory (AT) and actor-network theory (ANT)—can help TPC scholars and practitioners negotiate interpreting others’ asynchronous communication fairly and justly, even in complex, intercultural contexts. The examples illustrate why developing normative ethics for the 21st century requires attention to the ways that goal-oriented activity and the flat, networked interaction of the human, nonhuman, and black-boxed forces intersect in everyday TPC practitioners’ lives and work.

Journal
Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Published
2022-07-01
DOI
10.1177/10506519221087937
Open Access
Closed
Topics
genre theory online writing instruction professional writing

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (4)

  1. Gray (2026)
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  3. Halley et al. (2026)
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  2. Rajan (2021)
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CrossRef global citation count: 4 View in citation network →

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