The Social Formation of Technical Communication Studies
http://archive.ncte.org/pdfs/members-only/ccc/0502-dec98/CO0502Review.PDF
  peer-reviewed

Selber, Stuart A.
CCC
1998

Abstract:

As a species of rhetoric and composition, technical communication studies is wrestling with issues of identity, professionalization, and status that help to define an academic discipline. Recent scholarly work has debated the research methods that might be productive for an applied field in a postmodern age, the theoretical and pedagogical connections between composition and technical communication in an electronic age, and the tensions between training and education in a global age that requires new models of work.