I think we all know the answer to that.

This dissertation project, then, is designed to broaden the scope of technical writingresearch (Dobrin, 1985) by describing the underlife of technical writing in a software development organization. While Geisler’s analysis describes the ways in which information technologies facilitates “the migration of the documentary reality of the workplace” into social life (2001, p.1), my research investigates how information technologies facilitate the complimentary migration of social life into the organization. A pre-existing tradition of social science research has already explored the underlife of writing in complex organizations (Goffman, 1961; Brooke, 1988; Turnow, 1999; Larson and Gatto, 2004). My research extends that line of inquiry by describing the transfer of writing about technology across social networks to address the overarching research question “What happens when technical writing becomes unprofessional”?