The Technical Communicator as (Post-Postmodern) Discourse Worker

Abstract

This article reexamines Henry’s 2006 proposal for training technical communicators as “discourse workers,” as a solution within a certain postmodern problematic, in which changing economic conditions in the late 1990s and early 2000s made workers vulnerable to exploitation, outsourcing, and layoffs. Henry used postmodern and critical theory to describe discourse as a medium of leverage for enabling workers to define new workplace agencies. Even though Henry’s discourse worker is an appealing concept buttressed by solid theory, it did not become a widely implemented model for pedagogy or workplace practice. To reexamine Henry’s concept, the authors exchange late 20th-century postmodern theory for the more recent articulation of “post-postmodern” theory proposed by Nealon and explore the implications of swapping out the postmodern puzzle piece for a post-postmodern puzzle piece in Henry’s formulation of the discourse worker.

Introduction: Promoting a Sustainable Collective Identity for Technical and Professional Communication

“…Over the decades following these foundational arguments, scholars in technical communication continued to be concerned with both the status of technical communication practitioners (e.g., Hart-Davidson, 2001;Johnson-Eilola, 1996;Kynell-Hunt & Savage, 2003Wilson, 2001;Wilson & Wolford, 2017) and the legitimacy and status of technical communication as an academic discipline (Grove & Zimmerman, 1997;Johnson-Eilola & Selber, 2001Pinelli & Barclay, 1992;Smith 2000aSmith , 2000bSmith , 2004Wahlstrom, 1997). Scholars expressed concern about the identity, coherence, and institutional locations of technical communication.…”

The Primary Care Clinic as Writing Space

“…But the clinical professionals are struggling to adapt to this, largely for the reasons we have outlined in our analysis above: their workflows and schedules are not designed for writing, and their identities and training are not reflected in writing. Returning to the institutional critique, empirical-yet-activist approach to this work, we see a connection between the discussion of the technical communicator's role in the fast capitalism of the 1990s (Wilson & Wolford, 2017, citing Henry, 2006Gee, Hull, & Lankshear, 1996) and our observation of a health care organization in the early 21st century. Namely, as health care systems have become privatized and profit-driven, work conditions have changed so as to destabilize prior hierarchical, slower work processes of the clinic.…”

Chapter 7: Applied Rhetoric as Disciplinary Umbrella: Community, Connections, and Identity

“…Solving problems leads students to a greater grasp of organizational decision-making: very often, the problems for which technical communication can most effectively contribute solutions are organizational (Francis, 2018;Lawrence et al, 2017). Engaging students with problem-solving and organizational decision-making enables them to consider the roles of distributed cognition and employee agency in the post-postmodern workplace (Wilson & Wolford, 2017); the rhetorical term I use here to encompass these two activities is phronesis. As students solve problems and begin to shape organizations' decision-making, students require expertise in ethical reasoning and inclusivity.…”

“…Phronesis acts as an essential component of knowledge work-as Ancient Greeks used phronesis in warfare and rhetoric, and techne in leatherworking and pottery making. Phronesis describes how effective communicators operate in today's unstable workplaces (Wilson & Wolford, 2017), with de-contextualized texts (Swarts, 2018). Particularly when working with writing, phronesis is intuition-based, for example, when instructors judge how many comments to give on students' assignments (McMartin-Miller, 2014).…”