Rhetorically Sensitive Mediators and the Future of Technical Communication

By Brad Mehlenbacher

When asked to describe the future of technical communication, researchers and practitioners frequently respond by listing emerging technologies (and specific products) that are influencing communication practices today—they tell us about tablet computing, mobile information design, the gamification of content, wearable technologies, analytics, DITA, Twitter, YouTube, Web 2.0 or 3.0 or 4.0. Unfortunately, focusing on the “technical” in technical communication de-emphasizes the profound changes facing communication professionals in our global information age. The greatest challenge facing future technical communicators is largely a communication challenge. As well, technical communicators can benefit considerably from focusing on their problem-solving capacities and learning processes; on their specialized capacities as researchers, organizers, and synthesizers; and on their role as rhetorically sensitive mediators. The development and cultivation of conceptual artifacts (that is, “texts”) that support rather than undermine human understanding and activity continues to be central to technical communication.

To this end, I was delighted to be invited by Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber to write a chapter entitled “What is the future of technical communication?” for their edited collection, Solving Problems in Technical Communication (2013). In the chapter, I invented a scenario of technical communication work informed by research on geographically and temporally distributed projects that characterize contemporary work. Janine, my archetypal technical communicator, allowed me to explore how twenty-first-century work practices differ from twentieth-century practices. Future communication professionals will contend more with wicked problems, limited access to expertise, fragmented work practices, multidisciplinary teams and collaboration, and increasing time pressures.

Our Problems Are Wicked

Our problems are governed by uncertainty, require immediate attention, and frequently invite numerous solutions. Many of our problems necessitate ongoing sensitivity to socio-technical mediation. Further, there are numerous technologies and multiple audiences that must be mediated. Wicked problems also demand learning during an ever-increasing time famine (even while we enjoy unprecedented freedom from the traditional constraints of space and time in our virtual work lives). To complicate things further, we now understand that no one person can have all the knowledge required to solve most complex workplace problems and that primary sources are no longer easy to identify and contain.

Expertise Is Contingent

No single person is likely to have all required expertise due to limited time, memory constraints, or incomplete access to learning materials. It is exceedingly difficult to locate “expertise,” that is, if we are defining an expert as someone who knows “everything” about a software application, database, particular corporate policy, etc. Early cognitive science research was driven by the assumption that, if we know how experts behave and think, novices can learn how to behave and think the way experts do. We now understand that expertise is dynamic and socially constructed and often changes from one problem setting to another. Expertise may look different in different experts, where some will be highly effective at analyzing new situations and others will be creative inventors or excellent at implementing ideas or reflective about the ethical or social implications of technical decisions. The same person might be an expert in one area and a complete novice in another. And that means that even experts need to learn and, unfortunately, ill-structured situations increase how frequently these learning moments occur.

Our Work Is Fragmented

Our work contexts are frequently unstable and demand flexibility and a creative ability to organize across similar but always different problems. Many of our challenges involve understanding, arguing, and evaluating our work both conceptually and pragmatically. Moreover, our range of documentation solutions has grown exponentially. Rainey, Turner, and Dayton (2005), in their survey of 67 technical communication managers, report that their technical communicators work with an extraordinarily diverse range of media and genres, including, for example, PDF and hardcopy documentation, online help, style guides, reference and training materials, books, newsletters, annual reports, magazines, proposals, performances evaluations, video scripts, usability reports, and so on.

As solutions to documentation have increased, so too has the complexity of our modern organizations. Globalization, downsizing (or the euphemistic “sizing”), outsourcing, increased automation, and rapid product cycles have produced lean businesses that employ contingent laborers to take advantage of high-speed opportunities. Within these contexts, technical communicators collect, analyze, interpret, internationalize, design, and report data, and collaborate, communicate, interact, and negotiate with other professional problem solvers. Stinson (2004) characterizes our knowledge age as a time where employees are expected to have greater competencies, to manage complex projects, to work harder across more hours of the day, and to juggle both long-term goals and day-to-day organizational needs. These challenges are further complicated by the growing divide between upper- and middle-management, business-to-business interdependencies, increasing consumer expectations, and fragile global-economic infrastructures. Wicked knowledge work demands that technical communicators generate more in less time more efficiently.

Our Teams Are Multidisciplinary

Our projects and teams are multidisciplinary, multilingual, and multicultural whereas, historically, technical writers worked autonomously producing documentation for hardware or software and received limited input from subject matter experts who understood the software or hardware at a technical level. With increasingly complex technical systems and documentation support environments, integration across multiple work teams becomes crucial. For example, one media application (e.g., music and video) may require input from developers working on hardware systems as well as software application developers to fully describe the limitations of the system. Within the technical communicator’s own work, knowledge of multiple strategies, including writing, video, and even graphic representations, are increasingly important and may be developed by a team of communicators rather than individuals working alone. Contemporary technical communicators rarely work in isolation and, therefore, spend a considerable amount of time and energy communicating their contributions for others. Colleagues may be located within the same geographical space or across the country or perhaps in another country. While communicating with these colleagues there may be language barriers or cultural diversities to negotiate.

We Operate Under Increasing Time Pressures

Because learning requires reflection, technical communicators need to value the time they spend developing understandings of new information, collecting, reviewing, and synthesizing existing resources, and coordinating with others who can help them accomplish their documentation goals. This requires that they acknowledge and rise above widespread perceptions of increased busyness, information overload, and the necessity of polychronicity and multitasking (Turner and Reinsch 2207). Some of their communication processes will call on experiential knowledge and can be carried out quickly, but other—social, technical, audience-oriented issues—may be new to them with every new project. These latter processes will require time. Thus, it is telling that Eraut (2004), describing workplace learning and performance, asserts that “references to the pace and pressure of the workplace … raise the question of when and how workers find the time to think” (p. 259).

Conclusions

Given the pressures to solve problems quickly while working in ill-structured environments, the technical communicator’s ability to achieve what Bazerman (1988) describes as “rhetorical self-consciousness” is very difficult. Technical communicators who are rhetorically self-consciousness consider their assumptions, goals, and projects; their place in the research and community; their rhetorical situation and tasks; their investigative and symbolic tools; processes of knowledge production; and the dialectics of emergent knowledge (pp. 323–329).

Bazerman’s call for rhetorical self-consciousness parallels Selber’s (2004) recommendation that “rhetorically literate” learners be versed in persuasion (interpreting and applying both implicit and explicit arguments), deliberation (acknowledging that ill-defined problems demand thoughtful representation and time), reflection (demanding both articulation and critical assessment), and social action (defining all technical action as social action) (p. 147). And Fleming (2003), as well, advocates the preparation of rhetorically sensitive professionals, maintaining that such individuals would have an understanding of circumstantial knowledge (people, places, events, history of the situation at hand), verbal formulae (discourse patterns of a particular community and situation), common sense (community truths, norms, and values), models of textual development (patterns of argumentative thinking in the community), and logical norms (knowledge, warrants, argumentative rules) (pp. 105–106). Finally, Thomas and McShane (2007) offer the most ambitious view of the literacies required by future technical communicators, including basic, rhetorical, social, technological, ethical, and critical literacies (p. 415).

So future technical communicators will need to develop themselves as rhetorically sensitive socio-technical mediators, operating on the borders between communities, balancing their knowledge of technologies and technological processes with numerous audiences in different situations facing complex problems. They will need to understand their audiences’ contexts, needs, better and baser emotional and cognitive states. They will need to be sensitive to the human action and activities that surround them. And they will need to act, learn, reflect, and revise their actions in context. In particular, they will need to learn how to manage the complex and wicked problem situations they face and anticipate the distributed and diffused nature of expertise in technological and scientific settings. As well, strategic technical communicators will respond flexibly to the technically sophisticated devices and genres that characterize their products and processes. And all these activities will be accomplished while negotiating the accelerated workplaces, timelines, and learning worlds that comprise their everyday professional lives (Mehlenbacher 2010). Deep involvement, understanding, and commitment to their role as learners, designers, problem solvers, and communicators will only increase as economic, social, technological, and cultural structures continue to reconfigure themselves in unpredictable, dramatic, and exciting ways. γi

Brad Mehlenbacher is associate professor in the department of leadership, policy, adult and higher education, affiliated with psychology and computer science at NC State, and author of the award-winning Instruction and Technology: Designs for Everyday Learning (MIT Press, 2010). He has published extensively on human-computer interaction, communication design, and online instruction.

References

Bazerman, C. 1988. Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Eraut, M. 2004. Informal Learning in the Workplace. Studies in Continuing Education, 26.2: 247–273.

Fleming, D. 2003. Becoming Rhetorical: An Education in the Topics. In J. Petraglia and D. Bahri, eds. The Realms of Rhetoric: The Prospects for Rhetoric Education (pp. 93–116). Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Mehlenbacher, B. 2013. What Is the Future of Technical Communication? In J. Johnson-Eilola and S. A. Selber, eds. Solving Problems in Technical Communication (pp. 187–208). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Mehlenbacher, B. 2010. Instruction and Technology: Designs for Everyday Learning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Rainey, K. T., R. K. Turner, and D. Dayton. 2005. Do Curricula Correspond to Managerial Expectations? Core Competencies for Technical Communicators. Technical Communication, 52.3: 323–352.

Selber, S. A. 2004. Multiliteracies for a Digital Age. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Stinson, J. 2004. A Continuing Learning Community for Graduates of an MBA Program: The Experiment At Ohio University. In T. M. Duffy and J. R. Kirkley (Eds.), Learner-Centered Theory and Practice in Distance Education: Cases from Higher Education (pp. 167-182). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Thomas, S., and B. McShane. 2007. Skills And Literacies for the 21st Century: Assessing an Undergraduate Professional and Technical Writing Program. Technical Communication 54.4: 412–423.

Turner, J. W., and N. L. Reinsch Jr. 2007. The Business Communicator as Presence Allocator: Multicommunicating, Equivocality, and Status at Work. Journal of Business Communication 44.1: 36–58.

Walther, J. B., and U. Bunz. 2005. The Rules of Virtual Groups: Trust, Liking, and Performance in Computer-Mediated Communication. Journal of Communication 55.4: 828–846.