Annotation by Harrison Ownbey
Miller, C. (1979). A Humanistic rationale for technical writing. College English, 40(6), 610-617.
This article arose from a debate about whether or not students should be allowed to take technical writing to fulfill a humanities course requirement. In this article, Carolyn Miller argues that technical writing is connected to the humanities, and therefore is not just a skills course. She argues against a positivist epistemology of science, stating instead that science, like the humanities, is deeply connected to human activity, community, and consciousness. Miller also tries to debunk the “transmission” model of technical writing, although she doesn’t use Slack et al.’s terminology as cited in Thayer. If science were purely empirical, then language and writing’s primary goal would be to simply stay out of science’s way. But this model of technical writing is inadequate, as it ignores the reader/user’s needs, and it assumes absolute scientific, objective truth exists. This is compatible with Dobrin’s claim that scientific writing claims truth, while technical writing does not. Miller and Dobrin and Thayer all agree that technical writing/communication must be defined by the field itself. They also agree that it’s more complicated than transmission of data, as science is rooted inseparably in human communities and thus the findings must be interpreted.
Hello Harrison,
ReplyDeleteLooks like this is an interesting article. I think there is a lot of literature about attempts, I hope they end up desperate, to humanize Technical Communication/Writing.
Having been through the challenge of having to write for humanities with a background in social sciences, I think it is just useless and a waste of resources to humanize Technical Writing especially that the need for latter is increasing. However, writing for humanities can be a subsection of technical communication
I took classes in writing for humanities and for social sciences. From my experience, it is challenging to transfer skills from one to the other (especially if one is, like me, not that much into humanities).
My article deals pretty much with the same idea. It feels like this is a major issue in the field and there are more academics than one can think of in denial of the changes.
While the humanistic component exists in technical communication, my experience tells me that it is far less of an emphasis than is the less "human-oriented" element of precision in writing form (when taught in an introductory-level Technical Communication course on a typical collegiate campus).
ReplyDeleteIt is my opinion that Technical Writing is uniquely humanistic as the author must be so deliberately focused on her audience in order to maximize the clarity and overall understanding of the information being communicated.
Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavor. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.
Albert Einstein
US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)