Epistemological Considerations in Technical Communication

I believe that by attempting to clarify or define our epistemology we could make strides towards a more satisfactory and possibly more universally acceptable definition of our field. For that to happen, all students and teachers of TC need to concern themselves deeply with how knowledge in our field is created and also with the ever evolving/changing epistemic processes that underlie knowledge accumulation/gathering/owning.

In my humble opinion, I see large potential for TC in the latter aspect, from two perspectives: 1. understanding our epistemology and the evolution of epistemic processes in phases of major transition in the way we communicate (and I believe we are in one now, as we were during, for example, the transition from primary to secondary orality), and 2. embracing TC’s role and genuine value to guide these transitions and to make them successful.

Brave New World (6): Now What?

This review of the literature, while limited in scope, does point out the general need for continued review and revision of rhetorical concepts based on new constellations of communication afforded by interactive, participatory, customizable Web 2.0 technologies. Careful examination of the rhetorical situation for each emerging new online communication medium is needed to determine applicable rhetorical concepts. Students have to be prepared for operating in the new communication media with adequate pedagogical strategies.

Brave New World (5): The Medium Matters

Throughout my review of the literature and my own daily experience, one theme has emerged as an umbrella over all the three aforementioned foci of research: the technology used to communicate plays a fundamental role when considering the rhetorical concept or theory to be applied.

Barbara Warnik (2005) calls for researchers in the field of new media rhetoric to propose new methods of study for the examination of electronic text rather than focus on methods that can be characterized as printcentric.

Brave New World (3): New Rhetorical Concepts

Throughout the history of rhetoric, traditional theories and concepts have been examined and reexamined many times to adapt to new communication media and technologies. With the strong emergence of Web 2.0 communication technologies and the immense popularity of social media the reexamination of traditional concepts naturally continues. This relatively small review of the literature strongly suggests the general agreement among theorists that traditional concepts have to be revisited, revised, and reconceptualized in light of the participatory Web 2.0 communication technologies and the associated rhetorical situations that make them sustainable.

The micro-blog: Fitting response to rhetorical exigence of virtual, social bonding

Organizations harbor a specific rhetorical context, rhetorical situations based on organizational culture, expectations, norms, processes, rules, and social environment. According to Bitzer (1986) a situation is rhetorical if rhetoric can at least in part mitigate the situation’s exigence by provoking action from the audience. Bitzer assumes the rhetorical situation to be one that is objective and real and calls for rhetorical solution, i.e. the situation precedes the rhetorical response. Vatz (1973), on the other hand, contends that there is no situation before rhetoric gives rise to one, i.e. rhetoric, by making it salient in a particular way, creates a situation. The fundamental difference between these views is the interpretation of rhetoric as a response to reality versus rhetoric as the creator of reality.

At this point, I will introduce an additional view regarding the birth of a rhetorical situation:

Bib: Rice, Jeff. (2008) “Urban Mappings: Rhetoric of the Network.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 38.2 (Spring 2008): 198-218.

Rice, Jeff. (2008) “Urban Mappings: Rhetoric of the Network.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 38.2 (Spring 2008): 198-218.

Jeff Rice proposes rhetoric of database-driven online mapping of spaces and names it the rhetoric of the network. Using an SNL skit about the quality of online mapping services, such as Google Maps and MapQuest, as a starting point, Rice outlines how these services use particular “types of informational arrangement for the purpose of invention.”

Praxis, practice, practical, pragmatism

Being ‘practical’ can mean to get s.th. done in an efficient and effective manner. Aims can be ‘practical’ (as opposed to ritualistic/artistic). One can be practical about a practical action, such as baking bread or building a chair, i.e. do this action that is practical in and of itself in an efficient way. Being practical, according to Carolyn Miller in What’s Practical about Technical Writing? entails an efficiency or goal-orientedness “that relies on rules proved through use rather than on theory, history, experience, or general appreciation.”

Micro-blogging: knowledge in the cloud

What makes some of us spend an inordinate amount of time checking and re-checking Twitter updates, composing tweets, mounting searches for hashtagged acronyms or keywords, or exploring long lists of @-symbol preceded usernames? Why do we carefully watch our follower to followee ratio and look disdainfully upon those who do not follow us back (might even consider to remove them swiftly.) Why do we proudly acknowledge if one of our brainy tweets got RT’d or better yet, retweeted multiple times by multiple followers? What motivates us? Motivation is associated with some kind of reward. This reward could be monetary but for the average tweep that is not it. Is it somehow connected to our ego? Hm, very possible.

Recognition, even mere acknowledgement of our existence in the twittverse, social standing as validated by @Replies and retweets motivate us to keep micro-blogging. But there must be s.th. else. There must be another value we feel we get out of this high investment of time. The answer might be information or even knowledge. Knowledge that others possess, explicitly and tacitly. Knowledge that we now have access to via our tweet feed, the search functionality, our followers’ followers and the tweeps that they follow.

A giant repository of unstructured data, information, and knowledge coded in 140-character long bursts of self important wisdom.  Wisdom speckled with links providing free-fall elevator shafts into the black hole of more of the same, not seldomly the tweeter’s own musings on whatever he or she feels qualified to talk about. But hold it – there is more to this than the mere display of exhibitionistic ego manifestation coupled with voyeuristic exploitation of others’ coveted follower lists.

I truly believe in the immense value of tappable, filterable, searchable, minable, collective knowledge. The wisdom of the crowd in palpable chunks and never before available proximity and immediacy offering itself to me in all of its glory. Who am I to deny? Well, I am not! I take this offering with open arms and worry not about the potentiality of time wasted.

Personally, I (@Konstanze) connect with ppl, follow promising links, find specific information about an upcoming conference in a distant city, raid s.o.’s followers list, dispense droplets of my life, pour pinches of my quirks, reveal small doses of me, pose questions in the hope to get at least one answer, and I look for information I simply cannot find elsewhere.  The result? Unpredictably satisfying. But, more than anything right now, this incredible phenomenon offers itself to me for rhetorical study.

What is it for you? Why do you tweet?

Alertness as a semaphore on the tracks of social (in)justice

Clearly, our relationship with information has changed fundamentally since/with the introduction of electronic information sources and systems. It has changed and it continues to do so as new technologies and systems become available. The current explosion of social media and Web 2.0 communication technologies is the best example of how each new wave of technologies and systems is accompanied by new epistemic, communication, and behavioral patterns and applications. Epistemic processes undergo changes, epistemes, in the Foucauldian sense, shift, especially now due to the super-sized(!) network of knowledge available to us. Natural knowledge boundaries are shifting. New rhetorical and communicative needs emerge and are given a fitting response by electronic knowledge systems. The semiotic web is a potentiality rather than pure science fiction. Tools like Ubiquity are small beginnings that uncloud the fogginess of what it could be.

Values

What effects do you see from the debate on ethics in technical communication in the past decade? Where do you think the profession/discipline will go next, as far as ethical issues are concerned? What are the responsibilities of technical communicators as to the ethics of the documents they help create?

If we look at Katz’s Ethic of Expediency, I clearly see the need for careful evaluation of any text written, specifically when involving humans. This article serves as an excellent reminder of what humans are capable of when humaness gets stripped out of language, out of communication, out of rhetoric. It does take conscious and deliberate effort in the planing and writing process of any document to remember the impact on the audience, the affected, the persons written about. Humaness has to be a fundamental pillar of all of our thinking, and technical writing cannot be excluded from it because it contains the term ‘technical’. I am not sure that I would go as far as Dragga and Voss, in some of the illustrations they adapted for more humaness (e.g. the lumberjack cartoon character seems more trivializing to me than humaninzing) but the point is well taken. And this is what I draw from both articles, a strong and valid reminder advocating a basic humaness in all of our writings. There will naturally be variations among all of us, but a vigilance against the dehumanizing that happened in the Nazi culture must be maintained at all times.