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.

Using a dissertation research project at a transnational site, this pedagogical process piece explores the experience from both the student and mentor perspectives. We discuss challenges gaining access to the research site and navigating frequently-acknowledged-but-rarely-described affective, relational dynamics that disrupt qualitative research in everyday technical and professional communication. To assist students’ and their mentors’ engagement with these dynamics, we suggest heuristics derived from critical reflection on our own tactical responses to these research and pedagogical challenges.

In Rhetoric, Technology, and the Virtues, Jared Colton and Steve Holmes wrestle with a core question facing digital rhetoricians: how might any example of digital communication technology or practi...

At a multinational company, daily written communication between staff, supervisors, customers, and suppliers is frequently conducted using digital tools (e.g., emails, smartphones, and texting applications) often across multiple nationally, linguistically, and conceptually defined borders. Determining digital tools’ impact on intercultural encounters in professional environments like these is difficult but important given the sheer volume of digital contact in technical and professional environments and the ongoing global struggle to broker peace and productivity amid communities’ many perceived differences. Using examples drawn from a case study of binational manufacturing sister companies, I build on recent work in professional, networked written communication to analyze two WhatsApp exchanges, one between a central study participant and his customer, another between the participant and an employee. This study shows how asynchronous digital communication tools created complex “silences” in writing between participants. In these silences (e.g., a lack of or delayed response to a text) individuals try to explain others’ actions for themselves. Drawing on a combination of third-generation activity theory and Latourian actor-network theory, I show that while explaining others’ actions in writing with whatever cultural shorthand is available may remain a common part of everyday life and research, it can be a poor guide for explaining others’ actions, especially in digital writing. My study shows how research of, and instruction in, digital tool use in intercultural writing contexts requires attention to the material conditions and objectives potentially shaping one’s own as well as others’ composition choices.