Burkean Invention in Technical Communication    

This article supplements existing rhetorical scholarship by returning to the notion of invention as general preparation of the communicator. Although much scholarship about invention in technical communication exists, it consists mainly of heuristics, checklists, ethical considerations, and audience awareness. Part of invention is using basic strategies to prepare the communicator to assess any communication situation and its context and to generate the appropriate discourse. Rhetorician Kenneth Burke s theories of dialectic and rhetoric are a twentieth-century version of this; this article explains important Burkean strategies such as etymological extension, limits of agreement with the thesis, finding the complex in the simple, expanding the circumference, translation or alembication, the four master tropes, and the pentad, and it shows how to apply these in technical communication. The article closes with a classroom assignment that uses Burkean invention strategies.

Todd, Jeff. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2000). Articles>TC>Rhetoric

A Longinian Concept and Methodology for Technical Communication      

The rhetorician Longinus advises writers to 'transport' their readers by aligning the readers' perspective with the writer's.  The methods for transport are five 'fountains': high thought, emotional appeals, figures of speech, notable language, and arrangement.  This essay develops a Longinian concept and methodology for technical communication by comparing his ideas to current  scholarship and then applying them to two technical texts.  It shows how and why technical writers employ stylistic elements to achieve transport.

Todd, Jeff. Technical Communication Quarterly (1998). Articles>Rhetoric>TC

Teaching the History of Technical Communication: A Lesson With Franklin and Hoover    

The first part of this article shows that research in the history of technical communication has increased in quantity and sophistication over the last 20 years. Scholarship that describes how to teach with that information, however, has not followed, even though teaching the history of the field is a need recognized by several scholars. The article provides and defends four guidelines as a foundation to study ways to incorporate history into classroom lessons: 1) maintain a continued research interest in teaching history; 2) limit to technical rather than scientific discourse; 3) focus on English-language texts; and 4) focus on American texts, authors, and practices. The second part of the essay works within the guidelines to show a lesson that contrasts technical texts by Benjamin Franklin and Herbert Hoover. The lesson can help students see the difference in technical writing before and after the Industrial Revolution, a difference that mirrors their own transition from the university to the workforce.

Todd, Jeff. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2003). Articles>TC>History>Education