Taking a Political Turn: The Critical Perspective and Research in Professional Communication      

This article examines the critical perspective as an alternative to our current descriptive, explanatory research focus. The critical perspective aims at empowerment and emancipation. It reinterprets the relationship between researcher and participants as one of collaboration, where participants define research questions that matter to them and where social action is the desired goal. Examples of critical research include feminist, radical educational, and participatory action research. Adopting the critical perspective would require that scholars in professional communication rethink their choices of research questions and sites, their views of the ownership of research results, and the types of funding they seek for research initiatives.

Blyler, Nancy. Technical Communication Quarterly (1998). Articles>TC>Writing>Rhetoric

Transferable and Local Writing Skills  

One indication of the state of our profession is the discriminations that we are just getting around to making: useful, even essential, 'sortings out' that, when then, are made, seem embarrassingly obvious. One such 'sorting out' or discrimination is essential for an understanding of what any composition class can do, whether advanced composition, technical writing, feature writing, or whatever. In the writer’s repertoire, there are local and transferable skills. Local skills have to do with a given genre and involve such matters as special forms (e. g., the scientific report), footnoting, vocabularies, special styles, and even the 'tones' that particular fields demand. Transferable skills are the 'basics' of writing: syntactic fluency, control of diction, sense of audience, organizational ability, 'mechanics' such as punctuation and spelling.

Winterowd, W. Ross. JAC (1980). Articles>TC>Writing>Rhetoric