Reassembling Technical Communication: A Framework for Studying Multilingual and Multimodal Practices in Global Contexts

Abstract

Drawing on a case study of an Israeli start-up company, this article maps out a theoretical and methodological framework for linking local multilingual and multimodal literacy practices to wider institutional, cultural, and global contexts. Central to this framework is attention to the linking of tools, texts, and people distributed across space-time. This process foregrounds the complex mediation of activity and the dynamic pathways shaping the ways English is being reassembled in local-global ecologies.

Keywords:

• cultural-historical activity theory
• globalization
• multilingualism
• multimodality
• workplace writing

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Stuart Blythe and Paul Prior for their review of this manuscript. I am also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their comments.

Notes

Within this view, monolingual English workplace activities might be seen as multilingual in the Bakhtinian sense that they are deeply hybrid or heteroglossic (e.g., remixing various institutional and disciplinary discourses).

As a participant-observer, I spent half my time doing work at the company (i.e., creating online polls) and another half recording audio and video activity. Interviews were conducted during lunchtime or on rides together home from the company (so as not to interfere with the activity).

This argument is grounded in Prior, Hengst, Roozen, & Shipka's (2006) extension of Voloshinov's reported speech (see also Prior & Hengst, 2010).

This framework attends to power structures, as the framework deals with the manner in which texts, tools, and objects shape and are shaped by everyday mundane and routine practices. Central to this move is Bourdieu's (1977) habitus or what Blommaert (2005, 2008) refers to as a literacy regime.

This study received IRB approval; the names of the participants have been changed.

I point to this issue to further note a limitation in some of the data presented, as some of the richest examples of multilingual and multimodal activity are not included due to the sometimes controversial nature of the polls themselves. The politically incorrect polls and creation of false personas further created a dilemma about how to represent the workers and the company and what types of polls and data to use in the article. Although a full discussion is beyond the scope of this article, I would argue that such tensions index wider cultural, political, economic, and global tensions. The construction of false online identities also raises complex questions about the ethics of representation. However, discussion of these questions is beyond the scope of this manuscript.

Johnson-Eilola and Selber (2007) argued that such templates not only mediate the reassembly of texts but are themselves complex assemblages.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Steven Fraiberg

Steven Fraiberg is an assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State University.