1/14 Annotation notes
- Daniel Gao
- Jan 14, 2019
- 2 min read
Annotation Notes
Mapping the Research Questions in Technical Communication
I find it interesting that the article mentions that “Mapping of a field’s research questions is a Political Act.”
问什么问题就是什么领域
The identity of any academic field is based in part on the research it conducts.
Well-established fields are identified even in dictionary definitions as areas of study.
Technical communication is commonly defined as a practice, not as an area of research.
It overlaps 重叠
build gaps between concept
4 areas of related questions for technical communication
- Disciplinarity: How shall we know ourselves? What are our definitions, history, status, possible future, and research methods?
Who are we?
- Pedagogy: What should be the content of our courses and curriculum? How shall we teach students best practices, history, and possibilities? How shall we negotiate competing claims for content and pedagogical methods and compete for academic resources?
How should we teach?
- Practice: How should texts be constructed to work effectively and ethically? What design practices include international users and users with disabilities? What are best practices of text development and design? How can content be managed for reuse?
How should we use text?
- Social change: How do texts function as agents of knowledge making, action, and change?
What is text?
"As intruders, we are threats to the established order; as newcomers, we are sometimes presumptuous."
Should we use methods beyond textual analysis? Pictures, Videos?
Why use a Map:
- show relationships
- provide directions. Paths through geographies, systems
- encourage movement and exploration and the breaking down of boundaries
- identify spaces and call for attention: emphasize an issue, idea
Composition Studies: Dappled Discipline:
We shall be trained to ask questions.
If we learn about writing, does that mean we can write about anything we want or are we just a "typing machine?"
Other area of studies seem to have a clear goal, but not compositional studies.
Definition of Multimodality: a theory of communication and social semiotics. Multimodality describes communication practices in terms of the textual, aural, linguistic, spatial, and visual resources - or modes - used to compose messages.
There is a strong cultural shadow casting upon writing studies that how we write are mostly how we inherit from our ancestor.
This article asks that how idea should be pass on if there are no text. If ideas are passed down via non-textual method, are these idea still valuable?
What is a secondary validation?
What does it mean that: social fields like composition studies depend on attributions of consensus that act as preconditions for arguing the validity of any theory.
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