Much has been written on and about technical communication. Most of this writing focuses on specific advice for practitioners (e.g., how to write better, typographical guidelines, proposed standards, how to produce more effective manuals, and the like). Also, considerable literature deals with the field theoretically. Often, this second category of literature is difficult to find because so much is buried under the welter of pragmatically oriented material and is interwoven with literature from related fields. Assemblage of this hard-to-find material reveals that within the context of the considerably broader area of human communication, generally technical communication occupies a unique position. Schematic models of related human communication disciplines are used to construct an overall theoretical model which locates this specialized niche occupied by technical communication. Contributions to the overall model come from such areas as empirical social research, general semantics, learning theory, and modern rhetoric. The overall model represents an attempt to provide a catalogue of perspectives from which technical communication might be studied profitably. It also is intended to provide a useful guide to specific actions in various pragmatic and occupational technical communication situations.