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.

While Engineering values direct communication, indirect communication produces a kind of literacy salient for engineers that direct communication may not offer in the way indirect communication does. This article emphasizes the inadequacies of overly emphasizing direct communication for Engineering majors and explains how teaching indirect communication in the form of literature has the potential to cover some of the inadequacies one can encounter if one were to overly emphasize direct communication.Engineering as a field tends to emphasize direct communication, and teaching engineering majors direct communication can in many ways prepare them to do the writing tasks that they could encounter as engineers. However, despite what engineering majors could benefit from learning direct communication, indirect communication produces a kind of literacy salient for engineers that direct communication may not easily offer in the way indirect communication does. For this reason, the argument that one address the issue of literacy for engineering majors by teaching them technical writing (Kynell, 1996, pp. 75-88), a course that tends to emphasize direct communication as well, does not fully address this issue. This article examines the inadequacies of overly emphasizing direct communication for engineering majors and explains how teaching indirect communication in the form of literature has the potential to cover some of the inadequacies 191 Ó 2014, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.

No abstract

No abstract

Engineers communicate multimodally using written and visual communication, but there is not much theorizing on why they do so and how. This essay, therefore, examines why engineers communicate multimodally, what, in the context of representing engineering realities, are the strengths and weaknesses of written and visual communication, and how, based on an understanding of these strengths and weaknesses, one can consider using the strengths of each form of communication to address weaknesses in the other. Doing so can possibly enable one to demonstrate for engineering majors how they can, with greater effectiveness, communicate multimodally for representing well engineering realities.