This article explores the transfer of U.S. technologies to three maquilas, or joint U.S.–Mexican manufacturing facilities in northern Mexico. Drawing on case study methods, it focuses on the rhetorical strategies that Mexican engineers and manufacturing personnel used to translate U.S. technologies and corresponding documentation for their Mexican contexts. It also suggests ways U.S. technical communicators can adapt their documentation to be more effective for these U.S.–Mexican intercultural rhetorical contexts.

This article explores three ways to design US empirical methods to be more valid and ethical in cross-cultural studies. First, intercultural researchers need to distinguish broad rhetorical and cultural patterns from regional, organizational, and personal patterns, a process that requires balancing the fact of difference with the need for generalization. Second, US researchers need to distinguish not only the differences in rhetorical patterns in a form of communication but also in the ways that form is used rhetorically. Third, researchers need to construct researcher-participant relationships that are sensitive to the values of organizational relationships in both cultures.