Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Making Culture Relevant In Technical Translation With Dynamic Equivalence: The Case Of Bilingual Instructions, Massimo Verzella

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

One of the central tenets of technical communication research and pedagogy is user-analysis (Redish, 2010; Barnum & Redish, 2011). Technical documents conceived to be used by individuals from different backgrounds should be the product of cycles of negotiations between authors and audiences. Similarly, the idea of participatory design (Ehn, 1993; Courage & Baxter, 2005; Simonsen & Robertson, 2012) revolves around a rhetoric of collaboration and shared-authoring that involves users at all stages of product or content development. User-centered and user-participatory approaches emphasize the importance of user feedback to identify not only problems, but also possibilities that writers and designers might …

What Can Asian Eyelids Teach Us About User Experience Design? A Culturally Reflexive Framework For Ux/I Design, Jennifer Sano-Franchini

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

The proliferation of web applications in recent years has brought about conversations among technology designers about user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design’s role in propagating and reaffirming cultural bias, and in facilitating race-based discrimination. At times, such conversations have demonstrated how taking stock of racialized and cultural bias during the design process can challenge widely held design assumptions. For example, in 2015, Nextdoor, a neighborhood-based social network, was reported to have facilitated racial profiling when users began posting to the application’s Crime and Safety section reports of “suspicious” persons on the basis of racialized appearance, as opposed to …

Testing In Translation: Conducting Usability Studies With Transnational Users, Emma J. Rose, Robert Racadio

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

What do we mean by usability in everyday life? For us, everyday life implies the series of choices and decisions that happen each day as people are trying to get things done. These things are often taken for granted, they might seem mundane, they may be overlooked. Usability inhabits everyday life in the documents used by a Vietnamese mother of two young children, having recently moved to the United States, and navigating the healthcare system in a new country for the first time. Usability shows up again as a Chinese couple considers whether or not to move out of their …

Designing For Everyday Life In Global Contexts, Guiseppe Getto, Huatong Sun

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

This special issue is a situated response in this discourse context, to investigate research issues surrounding the mundaneness and messiness of “Designing for Everyday Life in Global Contexts.” For the past two decades, a steadily growing body of work on the intersections of intercultural communication and information design has been developing within the field of Technical and Professional Communication (e.g., Kostelnick,1995; Chu, 1999; Fukuoka, 1999; Honold, 1999; Thatcher, 1999; Zahed, Van Pelt, & Song, 2001; St. Amant, 2002, 2005; Sun, 2006, 2012; Agboka, 2013; Breuch, 2015; Gustav, 2015; St. Amant & Rice, 2015; Maher & Getto, 2016; Sun & Getto, …

Digitally Mapping The Buddhist Holy Land: Intercultural Communication, Religious History, And Networked Rhetoric, Derek F. Maher, Guiseppe Getto

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Intercultural communication presents an array of well-known and much-discussed challenges, including the difficulties of engaging in productive dialogues regarding cultural assumptions, the problems of translation, tensions between macro-level value systems and the uniqueness of individual cultures, and challenges to developing communication technologies that are culturally appropriate (Kostelnick, 1995; Maylath, 1997; Thatcher, 2006; Sun, 2012). When addressing the diverse dimensions of religious culture, there is the added obstacle that understanding another’s religion can sometimes become entwined with how people feel about their own deeply held religious values and assumptions (Jackson, 2004). Special obstacles to understanding can arise in relation to religion …

Beyond Biography: Using Technical And Professional Documentation To Historically Contextualize Women’S Agency, Emily January Petersen

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

1908, Harriet Barraclough—Relief Society president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS; a.k.a. “Mormon”) Halifax Ward, Leeds, England—taught the women in her religious community to be “lifters and not leaners” (Halifax Ward, Folder 1, p. 58). This communication, documented in a handwritten minute book, falls within various definitions of technical and professional communication (TPC), as the practice of TPC “creates both knowledge and value [which]...comprehends the good of the community in which the practice has a history” (Miller, 1989, p. 69). TPC occurs within communities, and “forges connections between new and existing knowledge” (Durack, 1998, p. 181). …

The Death List Of Sandarmokh: Mayme Sevander's Work As Emancipatory International And Intercultural Professional Communication, Kyle Mattson

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Professional communicators work on international and intercultural projects in dynamic assemblages. Recent scholarship has defined assemblages as powerful institutional, cultural, and material configurations that affect life and work in diverse situational contexts or geographies. For example, Stephen J. Collier (2006) described global assemblages as "actual configurations through which global forms of techno-science, economic rationalism, and other expert systems gain significance" (p. 400). Likewise, about the instrumentalist logic behind such systems, Dale L. Sullivan (1990) asked us to critique "the technological mindset" and allow critical action to inform technical and professional communication practice (pp. 375-377). In international and intercultural professional communication …

Religion And The Professional Ethos: The Ymca, Dale Carnegie, And The “Business Man”, Lance Cummings

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Despite predictions of religion’s demise in the first decade of this century (Krattenmaker 2010; Meacham 2009), religion and spirituality have come front and center in many public arenas like pop culture, health and well-being, and politics. Whether it be the power of the religious right and left in politics, anxiety over Islamic terrorism, or simply the use of meditation within large corporations, religious issues play an important role in how we view and participate in secular society. This is no less true in the world of business and professional communication. Considering the role religion has played in rhetorical thought and …

World Religions And Professional Communication: Theories And Practices Of The Discipline, David Alan Sapp, Carroll Ferguson Nardone, Barry Thatcher

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Scholarly conversations about the influence of religion on professional communication have largely been absent in our discipline’s published literature, yet religion often intersects with the work of teachers, researchers, and practitioners. It intersects with rhetorical patterns at many levels and contexts, including the organizations in which we work and volunteer, the sites where we conduct research and solve problems, and our teaching/training practices with students, clients, co-workers, community partners, and the many other populations we regularly serve in our professional lives. To explore the intersections of religion, globalization, and professional communication, this special edition of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization …

Understanding International And Domestic Student Expectations Of Peers, Faculty, And University: Implications For Professional Communication Pedagogy, Linda R. Macdonald, Binod Sundararajan

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Increasing populations of international students are entering Canadian universities, and instructors of Professional Communication must rapidly adapt to a changing student population. At the studied Maritime Canadian university, numbers of international students increased by 300% between 2009 and 2013. These numbers necessitate a review of our pedagogical approach to ensure student learning, success, and satisfaction in Professional Communication classrooms. Student expectations are linked to their satisfaction and, therefore, retention. We know little about the expectations incoming international students have of the university, their Canadian peers, and their instructors. We also know little about the reciprocal expectations held by domestic students …

Intercultural Connectivism And Personal Learning Networks In Course Redesign, Joseph Moses, Ann Hill Duin

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

As the call for proposals to this special issue states, “the need to share our pedagogical knowledge is paramount.” We agree that “the assumptions underlying much of contemporary communication pedagogy are oversimplified and fraught with groundless stereotypes” and that pedagogical change amid the increasingly globalized and networked classroom has been too slow. Participants need multiple means to understand and increase their capacity for working interculturally and in global virtual teams. One such means is through the pedagogical deployment of personal learning networks.

Teaching Professional Communication In A Global Context: Using A Three-Phase Approach Of Theory Exploration, Self-Assessment, And Virtual Simulation, Kelly A. Grant, Timo Lainema, Elizabeth A. Tuleja, Jeffrey Younger

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

In today's globally diverse society, standard theoretical instruction is not able to expose our students to the realities of international communication, multicultural collaboration, and dispersed global work. Abstract text-based cases are limited in delivering a realistic view of the challenges of working virtually and globally within international teams. In addition to cases, we believe that hands-on experiential, collaborative exercises – combined with the metacognitive exercise of reflective practice – offer greater learning potential. While international collaboration and exercises may take extra time, effort, and cost, the benefits to students can be substantial.

Editors' Introduction, James R. Barker, David A. Victor, Linda R. Macdonald

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Our special issue of the Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization investigates the changing character of professional communication pedagogy in an increasingly integrated world economy. To that end, the articles in this special issue explore how to adapt the teaching of professional communication in a way that meets the demands of an increasingly globalized student body. We hope, too, that this special issue promotes RPCG as a channel for future streams of research and thought for scholars to engage the interculturally-shaped pedagogical issues emerging from our present globalized classrooms.

Achieving Cultural Community Through Rhetorical Means: A Study Of Culture In The Bologna Process Documentation, Diane Martinez

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

An interesting point to consider when studying the Bologna Process, Europe’s contemporary initiative to reform the higher education systems among the 47 member countries, is how culture is represented in the official Process documentation. The official documentation contains layered definitions of culture that become problematic when determining the progress or the success or failure of this reform effort. For example, in the Sorbonne Joint Declaration (1998), the originating document of the Bologna Process, education ministers emphasized a large, overarching, definition of culture—a European culture—when they wrote that the Bologna Process is an opportunity “where national identities and common interests can …

Globalizing The Local In The Silkair Mi 185 Crash Investigation, Kyle Mattson

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

While effective definitions of culture and broader theories of intercultural complexity can help frame the work of professional communicators on worksites and projects of international importance, these definitions and theories may not fully prepare practitioners for complex motives at play in the development of some transnationally momentous documents. Moreover, even though professional communicators may benefit from working definitions of national and communal cultures, such knowledge and articulations are not enough when transnationally disparate jurisdictions intersect decision-making. These administrative assemblages (see A. Ong, 2005, 2006, 2008) function as hierarchies that complicate intercultural work in ways professional communicators have not fully considered. …

Cultural Polysemy: Exploring Cultural Codes Through Digital And Non-Digital Practices, Anirban Ray

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Culture is a coherent entity we use for describing our cooperative interests with others in political, social, and historical contexts. Culture is functional in that it is defined through individual and collective articulations in time and space. Its representations occur through macro categories of nations, race, habits, practices, and values as embodied in the following models: contexting (Hall, 1976); value orientation (Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, 1961); cultural dimension (Hofstede, 1996); Seven-Dimensions of culture (Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner, 1997); Seven Value Types (Schwartz, 1999). Culture also gets defined in terms of its situatedness based on specificity of contexts and practices: social constructionist approach …

Operationalizing Culture With Design Cards In Cross-Cultural Design: Translating Critical Knowledge Into Provocative Insights, Huatong Sun

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Operationalizing culture is “one of the most fundamental issues cross-cultural researchers face” (Matsumoto & Jones, 2009, p. 324), as stated in The Handbook of Social Research Ethics. Inconsiderate research design could “ignore the large degree of individual differences that exist in human behavior” (p. 325) and eventually “vindicate” cultural stereotypes the researchers mean to avoid.

In the field of cross-cultural design, a big challenge is how to inform and guide the design process with a sophisticated understanding of culture. This design challenge is a contextualized problem of operationalizing culture in practice. Insensitive design recommendations could end up strengthening the cultural …

Towards A Contingent Intercultural Methodology: The 2012 QuéBec Student Strikes And The Rhetorics Of Universality, Nathan Franklin

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

In the following article, I argue that speculative realism offers intercultural researchers heuristics to observe intercultural spaces without having to pay exclusive attention to the relationships present within those spaces. In other words, intercultural spaces can be considered independent of the researcher’s mind, because they are co-created by intercultural researchers (Cummings, 2014, p. 129). Following Gabriel (2014), perspectives on intercultural spaces are just as real as the spaces themselves. It is intellectually unproductive, however, to compile a list of all possible perspectives on an intercultural space to know what it truly is, which is what the local only approach to …

Intercultural Connectivism: Introducing Personal Learning Networks, Ann Hill Duin, Joseph Moses

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Global connectivity makes intercultural communication an increasingly common experience. Providing students with insight and practice in intercultural communication is increasingly imperative. As Thatcher (2010) stated in the inaugural issue of this journal:

"We have a large task ahead of us: to develop and operationalize models of intercultural rhetoric and professional communication in the context of globalization (p. 14)... We need to especially pay attention to how new communication and information technologies require different etic frames for common human thresholds of interaction… How do we assess communicative purpose and media selection in global contexts? How do we plan for audience-author relations, …

Translocal Pragmatics: Operationalizing Postnational Heuristics To Locate Salient Cultural Overlap, Massimo Verzella, Andrew Mara

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

The importance of creating projects that allow students enrolled in American universities to collaborate with students enrolled in foreign institutions cannot be overemphasized. However, for these projects to be effective in terms of learning outcomes, it is important that instructors identify the factors that either prevent or prompt fruitful collaboration across cultural boundaries. The power of cultural boundaries demands that research on intercultural communication conceptualize and measure cultural difference. Additionally, research on intercultural communication has been irrevocably altered by the pace of communication technology change that allows for rapid and rich cross-cultural communication across great distances. An understanding of culture …

Editor's Introduction, Guiseppe Getto

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Researchers and practitioners of technical and professional communication deal with culture on a daily basis. We are members of an increasingly complex communication infrastructure that is global in scope and that is fueled by the proliferation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) within all aspects of our lives. We are citizens of nations around the world that contain their own laws, rules, and customs. We are members of professional fields and academic disciplines that carry with them particular conceptions of knowledge-making, power, and competency. We are also members of organizations, institutions, and communities that we must navigate on a daily …

Multilingual Writers In The Mexican Sociocultural Context: Towards Improved Pedagogical Practices In The U.S., Virginia Locastro

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Currently, the education of Latina/o students in the United States for higher education and future careers comprises multiple moving parts. As the U.S. educational system, in particular the Pre-K-12 years of schooling, struggles despite efforts to address the needs of all students, both native English speakers as well as English language learners (ELLs), to better prepare them to enter institutions of tertiary education and succeed in careers, various organizations and consortiums articulate more rigorous educational standards (WIDA and the Common Core Standards as two examples). These recent proposals focus on academic literacy skills, in particular on reading and writing skills …

La Variedad Local En La EnseñAnza Del EspañOl En Eeuu: Una Propuesta PedagóGica, Rebeca Acevedo

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

La realidad sociolingüística del idioma español del siglo XXI es la de una lengua global y pluri-normativa. Se estima que el español es una lengua empleada por alrededor de 495 millones de hablantes (Instituto Cervantes, versión electrónica). Con ello el español, tras el chino mandarín, ocupa el segundo lugar dentro de las lenguas más habladas en el mundo; y se ubica en la cuarta posición en cuanto a lengua materna. Con esta concepción del español como lengua global se ha superado la posición purista que consideraba la variedad europea como la única norma estándar. Bajo este pluricentralismo del idioma español …

Metadiscourse In Book Reviews In English And Brazilian Portuguese: A Corpus-Based Analysis, Luciana Junqueiria, Viviana Cortes

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Book reviews play different roles in academia. They are used in the selection of what books to read and purchase (Carvalho, 2001) and as a vehicle for publication and visibility, especially for graduate students and novice scholars (Hyland, 2000; Motta-Roth, 2001). Scholars and graduate students must do a great amount of reading in order to stay up to date in any given field, as scientific knowledge has become more and more widespread. This task is undeniably challenging given the amount of time and resources needed for such updating (Carvalho, 2002; Suárez & Moreno, 2008). Academics need to be selective about …

Writing And Rhetoric Along The U.S.-Mexico Border, Barry Thatcher, Kelly Medina-López, Omar Montoya

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Recently, our field has seen a strong surge in the interest in writing across borders, multilingual and ESL writing, and globalization and rhetoric (see, for example, the 2010 Penn State Conference on Border Rhetorics; 2014 Border Rhetorics, Rhetoric Society of America). This surge parallels, in many ways, the growing enrollment of international student populations and second-language writers in U.S. writing programs, which is widely documented (Roberge, Siegal, & Harlau, 2009; Matsuda, 2009). Given this development, it would seem appropriate or even natural that writing programs would be developing curriculum to meet the needs of these multilingual students. In fact, that …

Writing The Literature Review: Challenges Of Two Mexican Novice Writers, Hilda Hidalgo, Rosa María Funderburk Razo

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Writing a thesis or dissertation is not an easy task (Bitchener, 2009; O’Connell & Jin, 2001; Meloy, 2002); this kind of writing may also represent a particularly more difficult endeavor when it comes to novice writers who also happen to be non-native speakers of English (NNS) who can struggle not only with the linguistic demands but also with the characteristics of its discourse of this genre\sub-genre.

Non-Convergent Literacy Practices And Dominican Students In The U.S., Andrea Parmegiani, Sharon Utakis

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

This paper presents a literature review to articulate a pedagogical rationale for integrating English writing instruction with writing instruction in Spanish as a strategy for improving success rates among Spanish speaking ESL students (SS-ESL) at Hispanic serving institutions such as Bronx Community College (BCC), where we both teach ESL. This rationale underpinned the creation of a new learning community cluster that was piloted at BCC in Fall 2013. The cluster included an advanced ESL class, a Spanish composition class, and a Freshmen Year Seminar (FYS). Success indicators for the students enrolled in this cluster were very promising.

The Discourse Of First-Year Writers At Border Sites: Discerning The Transcultural, Bilinguistic Strategies Of English Language Learners In College, Beatrice Méndez-Newman

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

According to U.S. Department of Education statistics, 9.8% of students enrolled in American elementary and secondary public schools are officially classified as English Language Learners (ELL) (U.S. Department of Education, 2012). In border states and states with high numbers of immigrant populations, such as Texas, Florida, New York, California, New Mexico, and Arizona, the ELL percentage is much higher. In Texas, for example, 17% of public school students are classified as ELL (Texas Education Agency, 2012). According to U.S. Department of Education statistics, 0% of college students in public higher education institutions are English Language Learners. In truth, this is …

Review Of Information Overload: An International Challenge For Professional Engineers And Technical Communicators. Judith B. Strother, Jan M. Ulijn, And Zohra Fazal Hoboken, Nj: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2012. 279 Pp., Shawanda Stewart

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Information Overload: An International Challenge for Professional Engineers and Technical Communicators is the first text to be introduced as part of the Professional Engineering Communication book series and is committed to examining, sharing, and advancing global communication practices in technical, scientific, and engineering fields. This book, effectively organized for multiple and interdisciplinary audiences—students, industry professionals, and researchers alike—provides a consistent format for relaying multifaceted content that ties together three main concepts: forms of information overload, technology, and communication. Information Overload is organized in two sections: Section I: Causes and Costs of Information Overload and Section II: Control and Reduction of …

Comparison As A Mode Of Inquiry: Rearticulating The Contexts Of Intercultural Communication, Lance Cummings

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Comparative inquiry has a long history in the scientific, sociological, and linguistic traditions that embody much of the work being done in English studies, including technical, professional, and intercultural communication. Generally speaking, comparative methods are often used to explain variation in human behavior, often with the assumption that there is a common source from which this variation springs, whether it be historical change, cognitive structures like universal grammar, social entities, or just “human nature.” As we move into what Wendy Hesford (2006) called the “global turn” in English studies, the phenomena of globalization and shifting classroom, cultural, and communicative ecologies …