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Summary:

"Bringing together thirty-two landmark essays, Central Works in Technical Communication provides a broad and representative overview of the field. It introduces students, new teachers, and new practitioners to the community of technical communication as an intellectual and communal endeavor that encompasses such complex theoretical topics as research methods, social issues, and ethics. Central Works in Technical Communication is organized around eight major conceptual categories: histories, rhetorical perspectives, philosophies and theories, ethical and power issues, research methods, workplace studies, online environments, and pedagogical directions. An alternative table of contents groups the essays into additional categories including collaboration, gender, genre, usability, and visual theory and practice. Ideal for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in technical communication, this collection is also a compact and convenient resource for practicing professionals and academics new to the field."--Publisher supplied.

Table of Contents:

• The rise of technical writing instruction in America / Robert Connors
• History, rhetoric, and humanism: toward a more comprehensive definition of technical communication / Russell Rutter
• Gender, technology, and the history of technical communication / Katherine T. Durack
• A humanistic rationale for technical writing/ Carolyn R. Miller
• Understanding the writing context in organizations / Linda Driskill
• The report for decision making: genre and inquiry / Carolyn D. Rude
• Audience involved: toward a participatory model of writing / Robert R. Johnson
• What's technical about technical writing? / David N. Dobrin
• The social perspective and professional communication: diversity and directions in research / Charlotte Thralls and Nancy Roundy Blyler
• Feminist theory and the redefinition of technical communication / Mary M. Lay
• The technical communicator as author: meaning, power, authority / Jennifer Daryl Slack, David James Miller, and Jeffrey Doak - -Relocating the value of work: technical communication in a post-industrial age / Johndan Johnson-Eilola
• The ethic of expediency: classical rhetoric, technology, and the Holocaust / Steven B. Katz
• Political-ethical implications of defining technical communication as a practice / Dale L. Sullivan
• Teaching discourse and reproducing culture: a critique of research and pedagogy in professional and non-academic writing / Carl G. Herndl
• Ideology and the map: toward a postmodern visual design practice / Ben F. Barton and Marthalee S. Barton
• Frameworks for the study of writing in organizational contexts / Teresa M. Harrison
• Taking a political turn: the critical perspective and research in professional communication / Nancy Roundy Blyler
• Empiricism is not a four-letter word / Davida Charney
• On theory, practice, and method: toward a heuristic research methodology for professional writing / Patricia Sullivan and James E. Porter
• The composing processes of an engineer / Jack Selzer

• Writing in an emerging organization: an ethnographic study / Stephen Doheny-Farina
• Engineering writing/writing engineering / Dorothy A. Winsor
• What experienced collaborators say about collaborative writing / Nancy Allen, Dianne Atkinson, Meg Morgan, Teresa Moore, and Craig Snow
• Text and action: the operator's manual in context and in court / James Paradis
• Writing and database technology: extending the definition of writing in the workplace / Barbara Mirel
• Who 'owns' electronic texts? / Tharon W. Howard
• The shape of text to come: the texture of print on screens / Stephen A. Bernhardt
• The politics of the interface: power and its exercise in electronic contact zones / Cynthia L. Selfe and Richard J. Selfe, Jr.
• Beyond skill building: challenges facing technical communication teachers in the computer age / Stuart A. Selber
• Cross-cultural collaboration: whose culture is it, anyway? / Deborah S. Bosley
• Contesting the objectivist paradigm: gender issues in the technical and professional communication curriculum / Lee E. Brasseur.

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Contributors:

Johnson-Eilola, Johndan , editor

Selber, Stuart A. , editor

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Subjects:

Technical writing

General Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Physical Description:

xxvii, 512 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Call Numbers:

T11 .C43 2004

ISBNs:

0195157052 (pbk.)
9780195157055 (pbk.)

Library of Congress Control Numbers:

2003053653

OCLC Numbers:

52765882