I’m thinking about my tech writing books for the past five years, and I’ve been noticing this lack of intercultural awareness. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t completely absentee, but the depth of the components leave something to be desired. In my first tech writing handbook, there were a few sentences at the end of select chapters reminding readers to be inclusive and not to discriminate against others. Now, in the tech writing textbook I teach with, there is usually a paragraph to a page giving very simplistic and minimalistic advice. For example, on the chapter about letters, memos, and e-mails, the author makes these claims about sending international e-mails: avoid humor, use plain text, use attachments only when needed, talk about the weather, focus on the facts, use titles and last names, and create a simple signature file with your contact information. For most of these suggestions, they are technical writing principles that apply to any email. For the rest of the suggestions, they are fluff that doesn’t really add anything to the conversation.
When I think of writing international emails, I think about being conscious of time-zone differences, using plain language (not just plain text), and avoid using colloquialisms. Additionally, while international emails are under the umbrella of intercultural, it still doesn’t address other intercultural components that no one seems to discussing. Even looking at the United States, there are several subcultures that could be addressed.
I’m not sure if we will see new intercultural components added to textbooks in the next few years with the current climate, and I think part of the climate is what has spurred my interest in this topic. When we look at our own culture with a vehement disregard of all others, we are setting ourselves up for a major disservice for both parties (to say the least). When I’m thinking about the current tech comm class I’m teaching, I’m wondering how this could be incorporated into the tech writing curriculum, and I wonder if this is where community engagement could come into play? If students were able to engage with a culture other than their own to find out about not only a different culture but also learn about the nuances that change how they approach writing technical documents or the job hunt. I think this shouldn’t necessarily be separate from the curriculum but intertwined into the outcomes of the course.
Currently in my tech writing classroom we are incorporating some cultural awareness because of a recent issue(s) that occurred on our campus. Both of the incidents were students using social media and posting very similar racist pictures. We are currently working on the job-seeking process, so this topic worked itself fairly organically into the conversation. We talked about personal branding, being mindful of what you post on social media, and employees Googling students names. We discussed how employees use job search engine optimization to vet prospective employees, and how something you post on social media can seriously affect your chances of getting hired in the future. For this example, I didn’t use the students at our school, but a student from Michigan State, who posted something similar on her social media account. We talked about all the words that came up using Google and how her chances of going to dental school were probably nullified after this coverage. While this was a deep topic (deeper than we usually get to have in tech comm), I think the students were also able to gain a better grasp on what a personal brand was and how pertinent it is to keep their social media clean — even if they think they are sending a snap to just one friend. While this topic lended itself very easily to our conversation, I’m wondering what other aspects could be lent to tech comm.
For the next blog, I’m going to see what the current literature has to say about intercultural components or just the service-mindset being incorporated into the tech writing classroom.
Katie Rieger, Portfolio 