Search

Background: This article reports on survey-based research of technical and professional communication (TPC) teachers and administrators, illustrating how these participants implement social justice and intercultural communication pedagogies in service learning (SL). Literature review: We situate this research in relation to existing scholarship about SL in TPC, SL and social justice, and SL as it intersects with intercultural communication. Research question: How do technical and professional communication teachers and administrators across the US infuse their SL pedagogies with social justice and intercultural communication theories in practice? Research methodology: Using purposive sampling, we surveyed 55 TPC teachers and administrators about their experiences with and attitudes toward social justice and intercultural communication in SL. Results/discussion: We identify what courses are reported as sites of SL projects as well as participants’ self-reported perceptions about social justice in SL. In addition, we outline four themes related to the application of social justice and intercultural communication theories to SL: activities, constraints, points of resistance, and goals and outcomes. Conclusion: We conclude with recommendations for TPC administrators and programs, and by briefly discussing implications for TPC practitioners and future directions for research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: State historical commissions tend to avoid erecting historical marker texts (HMTs), memorials, or monuments that document violence towards Black and brown individuals. The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) uses a series of tactics to circumvent local historical commissions to memorialize victims of lynching. Methods: In this study, we use the EJI's Community Remembrance Project (CRP), an informational handbook for community activists, as our data set. We apply the 4Rs (Walton, Moore, & Jones, 2019) and tactical technical communication in our analysis of the Community Remembrance Project and argue that the document functions as a coalitional, truth-telling tactic to redress inequalities in public memory. Results: We found that the EJI's CRP efforts with the Historical Marker Project clearly demonstrate how coalitions can tactically intervene in racist systems--like historical commissions that reject truth-telling efforts--by creating a different path for historical markers to be erected in communities. Conclusion: We argue that public memory texts often reinforce racism by avoiding topics like racial terror lynching and that these omissions have cultural and material consequences on communities. We contend that technical communicators can intervene in public memory systems and promote truth-telling through coalitional approaches to community activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We agree with [24] that social justice and ethics are not interchangeable and that we must challenge any impoverished conceptions of ethics inside and outside of TPC. An Overview of This Issue Johanna Phelps's "Concomitant Ethics: Institutional Review Boards and Technical and Professional Communication's Social Justice Turn" places normative ethics in specific dialogue with social justice and research with participants in TPC. In the 21st century, the field of technical and professional communication (TPC) is clearly feeling the impact of the turn toward social justice. Indeed, we appreciate social justice's focus on action as a pressing need for 21st-century ethics, but we also highlight the need to see that all ethics lead toward action or result from actions and that social justice rhetorics can benefit from better articulating and understanding the ethical frameworks that they use in order to identify how to build a better world. [Extracted from the article]

Tactical technical communication research suggests its application to social justice. However, beyond a general advocacy of anti-institutional activity, de Certeau’s notion of tactics provides no detailed ethical framework for ethically justifying tactics. In acknowledgement of this gap, this article foregrounds the ethical thought of feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero, particularly her concept of vulnerability, as a supplement for those employing tactics for social justice causes. The authors examine the technical documents produced by the hacktivist collective Anonymous. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]