No abstract

This article argues that many methodological approaches used in intercultural technical communication research are limited in addressing emerging social justice challenges in many post-colonial, developing, and unenfranchised/ disenfranchised cultural sites, where professional communicators have begun conducting research. It offers decolonial approaches as an alternative by highlighting how these approaches are used in an intercultural research that investigates attempts to localize communication that accompanies sexuopharmaceuticals from one cultural context to another. The article also discusses some the challenges and benefits of such approaches.

Although contemporary writers on culture have argued for more dynamic approaches to culture in intercultural technical communication scholarship, much of the theoretical position on culture is still heavily based on “large culture” ideologies. Yet, not only do these ideologies fail to account for cultural practices and values within less comprehensive groups within culture, but they do not accommodate the inputs individuals make in specific communication contexts. This article draws from the existing body of work and the critical cultural perspectives on culture advocated by contemporary anthropologists and sociologists, mainly Arjun Appadurai (1996), to argue that we construct culture discursively to address cultural issues in intercultural technical communication. A discursive paradigm of culture sees culture as “socially constructed” in which culture is under construction and reconstruction by active cultural actors, who construct their identities and negotiate systems of knowledge and meaning that come to play during intercultural contacts.

Despite the recent surge in social justice and decolonial scholarship, technical and professional communication (TPC) research remains a potential site of oppression. This article is meant to be a call to action; it attempts to (re)ignite discussions about what we value and how we express what we value. It encourages the field of TPC to be more responsive to the experiences and struggles of research participants—those we engage during our knowledge production process. I explore what I call oppressive rhetoric in TPC research with a specific focus on the term subjects in institutional review board forms and in the reporting of some TPC research about research participants. I assert that in spite of our best efforts in advancing the goals of marginalized groups and despite the forward-looking trajectory of progressive research, more work needs to be done to address oppressive rhetoric in TPC scholarship.

In a nutshell, the "Global South"-like democracy, development, and many other concepts-is now the place of struggles between, on the one hand, the rhetoric of modernity and modernization together with the logic of coloniality and domination, and, on the other, the struggle for independent thought and decolonial freedom. From the perspective of the global north, the global south needs help. From the perspective of the inhabitants of those regions that are not aligned with the global north, the global south names the places where decolonial emancipations are taking place and where new horizons of life are emerging (Levander & Mignolo, 2011, pp. 4-5).