Disrupting the Past to Disrupt the Future: An Antenarrative of Technical Communication

ABSTRACT

This article presents an antenarrative of the field of technical and professional communication. Part methodology and part practice, an antenarrative allows the work of the field to be reseen, forges new paths forward, and emboldens the field’s objectives to unabashedly embrace social justice and inclusivity as part of its core narrative. The authors present a heuristic that can usefully extend the pursuit of inclusivity in technical and professional communication.

KEYWORDS:

• History of technical communication
• inclusion
• methodology
• social justice

Acknowledgment

The authors’ names are listed in alphabetical order, and the manuscript was fully collaborative.

Notes

1. As the threads of our antenarrative illustrate, technical communicators have been critically engaging with inclusivity in stops and starts. It has been happening, quietly (and sometimes nearly invisibly) for quite some time. We seek inclusion as the end goal over diversity for a number of reasons.

• Inclusion, as a term itself, moves beyond “mere” diversity. We do, of course, support the move to diversify the field in philosophical and pragmatic ways. However, the term diversity comes with baggage (Savage & Mattson, 2011), and little if any evidence supports the notion that merely increasing the diversity of an organization, campus, or discipline changes the culture of the institution.

• A focus on inclusivity prompts infrastructural correctives, drawing attention to practices, policies, and processes for decision making at the macro- and mezzolevel. Inclusion is rooted in the action born out of critical work to become and encourage social justice (i.e., to redress inequities and acknowledge harm). Inclusivity allows scholars to occupy a deliberate positionality that privileges action and social change without being prescriptive and relying on only passive representation.

• The focus on inclusion allows scholars to draw together across macrolevel concerns and resources. Rather than ask, “Why aren’t you doing [insert-the-thing-I-do]?” inclusivity is an attitude of both/and that invites all scholars to work toward less exclusionary practices in TPC.

• Most importantly, inclusivity allows scholars to engage with the intersectional notions that are central to our understanding of social justice and change work: drawing upon what Freire (1996) called “praxis,” i.e., an essential, not-to-be-separated pairing of reflection and action (p. 68).

In short, we suggest that inclusion provides a series of ideals and action-oriented practices that, in keeping with our antenarrative, provides a less exclusive and more just approach (and future) for TPC.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Natasha N. Jones

Natasha N. Jones’s research interests include activism, social justice, narrative, and rhetoric in technical communication and technical communication pedagogy. Her work has been published in Technical Communication Quarterly, the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, and Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization. She is a graduate of the University of Washington’s Human Centered Design & Engineering Department (2012) and the winner of the 2014 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Outstanding Dissertation in Technical Communication Award. She is the current chair of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication’s (CPTSC) Diversity Committee.

Kristen R. Moore

Kristen R. Moore is an assistant professor of Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Texas Tech University. Her research interests include institutional rhetoric and change, cultural rhetorics, and public technical communication with a focus on making public decision-making more representative and equitable. As a founding member of Women in Technical Communication, she also researches feminist mentoring and its potential for advocacy in organizations. Her work has been published in IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, the Journal of Business and Technical Communication, and a number of other journals and edited collections.

Rebecca Walton

Rebecca Walton is an assistant professor of technical communication and rhetoric at Utah State University. She studies the role that communication can play in more equitably distributing power. Her research interests include social justice, human dignity and human rights, and qualitative methods for cross-cultural research. Her work has appeared in Technical Communication Quarterly; Journal of Business and Technical Communication; and Information Technologies and International Development, as well as other journals and edited collections.