reading notes

Notes on Miller, "A humanistic rationale for tech writing".

The easy questions:

When was it written and published?

1979 in College English -- but is anthologized and cited all over the place.

What group of scholars is the author addressing?

Technical communication teachers as well as a wider audience of general people (especially comp. people) in college English departments.

What is the genre and what kind of research is the author doing?

The genre is prescriptive : Miller wants to trade a positivist perspective on tech writing for an overt consensualist one. It's also critical -- the tech comm view of science and technology doesn't match the science and technology view of science and technology.

The hard questions

What was taking place in the field when the author wrote it, and how does Miller's essay reflect the conversation that was taking place in the field?

Miller grounds her essay in a local event -- an English dept. debate about whether tech. writing satisfies a humanities requirement. But surely this debate was not isolated. By 1979, technical writing had moved from engineering departments to the English departments in which tech writing programs are now most often housed. English departments were struggling to figure out how tech writing fit in and to determine its value. Likewise, tech writing was aspiring to "disciplinary respectability" (Miller -- I would call it legitimacy) and aimed to move beyond its status as a skills course.

What aspects of knowledge does the author focus on and why does the author focus on these aspects of knowledge?

Miller focuses on aspects of technical communication that have humanistic value and aligns these aspects of tech comm with the New Rhetoric. This helps tech comm claim legitimacy w/in English departments and social centrality as a field -- tech writing is equivalent to, and participates in, the work of technology and science.

What is the epistemological background?

Spanning the ancient Greek philosophers to the extremely logical positivism of the early 20th century, scientists held a positivist view of science (Aristotle, Whitehead and Russell, Korzybski). Now scientists hold a consensualist view of science (Kuhn, etc -- Miller calls this the "new epistemology"). So it would be cool for tech. writing to adopt the consentualist perspective.

What is the argument?

Tech writing has humanistic value, and pedagogy can throw this value into sharp releif by trading the positivist perspective for a consensualist one.

What evidence does the author bring?

The positivist view has put some holes in tech. writing as a discipline, leaving only "self-deprecation" at the center:

Unsystematized definitions of tech writing, emphasis on form and style at the expense of invention, insistence on certain characteristics of tone and analysis of audience in terms of "level".

Each of these holes creates problems that can be redressed with the consensualist view. I'm too tired to explain.

What perspective does the author take?

A consensualist view of tech writing.

What perspective is under-represented or missing?

Miller notes that the positivist view of tech writing is still held by scientists and technology people in industry. If tech writing teachers adopt a consensualist perspective, what conflicts might arise as tech writers enter the workforce -- and what are some strategies for reconciling these 2 perspectives so that people can write their documents in peace?

Interesting notes:

According to Miller, scientific and technical writing are different because they're associated with different and differently-structured communities: overlapping disciplinary (science) and i/o beaurocratic (technology).

I seem to remember that some other guy takes issue with this idea-- but who? And why?