Technical communication scholars have tended to treat uncertainty as a lack of certainty rather than as a diverse range of strategies for talking about risk. This review employs Goodnight’s argument spheres to comprehend treatments of uncertainty in technical communication and closely related fields. The advantages of such an approach are demonstrated via a reanalysis of a recent risk communication study. The review finishes by identifying hybrid forums as productive sites for future research.

This study of ozone-hole controversy demonstrates an approach to translation that captures material-discursive elements of environmental risk. By adapting actor–network theory's notion of translation with Goodnight's spheres of argument model, the author's results reveal how uncertainties created sites for scientists and their images to perform in ways that visualized risk in public forums. Citizens then responded to these risks through amplified uncertainties and counterimages that envisioned a hole in the skin of the body public.