#28873
Subject matter experts, under the influence of modernist notions of authorship, often view technical writers as mere grammar and punctuation specialists and marginalize them as their ignorant 'other.' Technical writers, on the other hand, as rhetoricians occupying a liminal space between different disciplines, can understand different disciplinary rhetorics. If subject matter experts, instead of marginalizing technical writers, would view them as liminal subjects who are knowledgeable in different disciplinary rhetorics, then technical writers, through liminal practice, may be able to use their knowledge of audience and rhetoric to improve the quality of documentation.
Jeyeraj, Joseph. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2004). Articles>TC>Theory>Collaboration
#28874
Writing is a culturally situated activity. When writing is outsourced to other cultures, because of a lack of knowledge of the users' culture and also because of influences from the writer's local culture, those doing the writing and designing, despite various strategies adopted for overcoming the disadvantage of not knowing the users' culture, may not know how to culturally situate writing. It is, therefore, important that bicultural people, who know the users' culture, as well as the culture of those doing the outsourced work, give writing teams feedback about the users' culture. Doing so can make outsourced writing more culturally situated.
Jeyeraj, Joseph. IEEE PCS (2005). Articles>Language>Localization>Offshoring
