CRITICAL & ETHICAL LITERACY

Kourtney Moore, Manuel Piña, & Hugh Pressley

Introduction
In response to an apparent lack of a pedagogical center in the increasingly diverse field of technical
communication, Kelli Cargile Cook (2002) articulated a loose but unifying theoretical framework she
termed “Layered Literacies.” There were, Cargile Cook contended, six interlocking literacies—basic,
rhetorical, social, technological, ethical, and critical—which would provide a sufficiently malleable but
nevertheless sturdy approach for the teaching of fundamental technical communication principles across a
variety of contexts. Given how heavily referenced “Layered Literacies” has been since its initial
articulation, 134 citations, it seems safe to say that the framework presented therein has been foundational
to the development of a consensus around a pedagogical identity. However, this is not to suggest that the
final word on the teaching of technical communication has already been authoritatively spoken, quite the
contrary. In the nearly twenty years since “Layered Literacies” was first published, much has changed
within technical communication, both as a field of academic study and as a matter of professional
practice. Despite calls by some within the field to continue to understand our disciplinarity identity
according to the maxim “What...technical communication will be what it is and what it was” (Pringle &
Williams, 2005, p. 362), we respectfully believe that what technical communication is and will be is
vastly different than what it has been. In fact, we believe that the technical communication landscape may
indeed be on the precipice of yet another paradigm shift with recent scholarship increasingly turning
toward the post-human and the emergence of interest in the reshaping potential of new materialist
rhetorics (Mara & Hawk, 2009). Therefore, the timing is quite apropos to take honest reevaluation of
where we have been and where we are.

In this chapter, we focus our attention specifically on the evolution and transformation of critical and
ethical literacy from “Layered Literacies” to 2018. We take it as a given that critical and ethical literacy
has, is, and will continue to be of utmost relevance to the field of technical communication, an assumption
we argue for and establish when we discuss the foundations of critical and ethical literacy. We also offer
an argument for why critical and ethical literacy likely should always have been considered as a single,
unified literacy. So we believe that this literacy still bears pedagogical and professional relevance. What
is at question, though, is the ways in which critical and ethical literacy is now understood and enacted in
the classroom and the workplace. In our tracing of the scholarship related to this pedagogical framework,
we find that as the perceived distance between theory and practice continues to shrink the centrality and
import of critical and ethical literacy continues to grow.

That is, even though Cargile Cook admitted that critical and ethical literacy was difficult to isolate from
the other literacies (p. 16), she could not have at the time predicted just how pervasive and distributed
critical and ethical literacy would continue to become. Yes, all of the literacies are tightly integrated and
overlap, and any discussion of one necessarily invokes another; it is simply a matter of which literacy is
being foregrounded at a given time. Yet this interconnectedness takes on a special quality with critical
and ethical literacy. Our review of the literature unequivocally shows just how ubiquitous this literacy in
particular has become across technical communication; so much so that we are distinctly reminded of
Jenny Edbauer-Rice’s claim regarding the fallacy of trying to isolate elements of a rhetorical situation,
“The elements of rhetorical situations simply bleed [emphasis in original]” (2005, p. 9). The more closely
we look the more abundantly apparent it becomes: critical and ethical literacy “simply bleeds.” We find
that critical and ethical literacy’s significance and import has continued to accelerate across academic and
professional locations as well as across academic and pedagogical frameworks. Moreover, what separates
this framework is not just its ubiquity across the rest of the literacies, but also what it means to teach for
critical and ethical literacy and how that teaching is enacted have also undergone substantial revisions.

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This literacy has grown to encompass action, not just awareness, social justice, not just inclusion. These
are nuanced changes to be sure, but their subtlety should not be equated with insignificance. These
changes in critical and ethical literacy have reshaped the ways in which technical communication and the
other layered literacies are taught and practiced.

In short, in the following chapter, we argue for the transformative power of critical and ethical literacy.
As a framework for teaching, as a primary concern for practitioners— and even as a matter of disciplinary
identity—we advocate for positioning critical and ethical literacy as a driving force which has itself
experienced substantial transformation and concomitantly significantly altered the field of technical
communication as a teaching and professional practice alike.

The Foundations of Critical and Ethical Literacy

Before discussing the evolution of critical and ethical literacy from 2002 to 2018 and the disciplinary
implications thereof, we feel it is important and instructive to first outline the historical roots which lead
up their formulation in the first place. Therefore, in the following section, we briefly trace a disciplinary
history of technical communication leading up to critical and ethical literacy as they were initially
articulated in “Layered Literacies” and unpack the defining characteristics of each. We conclude with a
justification for dissolving the original distinction and instead considering critical and ethical as two
mutually informing halves of a unified literacy.

As an academic discipline proper, technical writing’s genesis can arguably be traced back to early
twentieth century “engineering English” courses and the publication of T.A. Rickard’s textbook,
Technical Writing; but certainly the field had reached true professionalization as a result of boom in
technological advances necessitated by World War II (Conner; Longo). These early years of technical
communication adhered closely to a positivist view of language and concerns of efficiency and
expediency held court in disciplinary and professional circles. However, with the proliferation of social
constructivist models for understanding language and writing came new ways of interpreting the work of
technical communication, both in the classroom and the workplace. Disciplinary metaphors which
depicted language functioning as a “clear tube of transmission” gave way to an epistemology that was
more socially and rhetorically minded; in other words, technical communication became increasingly
interested and invested in its identity as a human enterprise (Miller; Rutter). The disciplinary
transformations that resulted from this ideological shifting manifested themselves in a variety of
important ways.

Pedagogically speaking, the move away from positivist assumptions was key to the restructuring of
technical communication as something more than a skills course which operated under the purview and
for the benefit of the sciences. Instead, the technical communication classroom could be a place where
mechanics and rules could be interrogated and questioned, a place which valued students’ understanding
“of the social implications of the roles a writer casts for himself or herself and the reader, and of the
ethical [emphasis added]repercussions of one’s words” (Miller, 1979, p. 617). No longer tethered and
subsumed to engineering or the sciences, technical communication was able to pursue new lines of
teaching and research opportunities. In decade leading up to “Layered Literacies,” technical
communication experienced a literal barrage of critically-minded scholarship related to ethics and cultural
power structures (Barton & Barton; Dragga & Voss; Herndl; Katz; Sullivan), gender issues (Brasseur;
Durack; Lay), and rhetorical perspectives (Bosley; Johnson; Johnson-Eilola; Paradis; Slack, Miller, &
Doak; Winsor). The breadth and depth of this new corpus of scholarship was consolidated by Cargile
Cook into two distinct, but related, literacies central to the teaching of technical communication—ethical
and critical literacy.

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Ethical literacy, as originally articulated, was defined as “both technical communicators’ knowledge of
professional ethical standards as well as their abilities to consider all stakeholders involved in a writing
situation” (Cargile Cook, 2002, p. 15). Important to this definition of ethical literacy are (1) its centrality
to disciplinary conversations and (2) the concept of awareness coupled with action. As a matter of both
instruction and practice, a careful attention to ethics should play a central role in technical
communication. That is, ethics is pervasive; it saturates the entirety of technical communication. Cargile
Cook suggests that “ethical considerations touch many areas in our curricula and influence how we act
[emphasis added] and make decisions about our documents’ purposes, audience, contents (both textual
and visual), development, and delivery methods” (p. 15). Top to bottom, then, technical communication is
(or should be) concerned with questions of ethics as they exists beyond a text itself. Moreover, it is not
enough to simply know about these ethical issues, Cargile Cook’s articulation of this literacy implies that
students and practitioners of technical communication ought to also act on those ethical deliberations,
keeping in mind the ramifications they hold for the complex network of stakeholders surrounding any
piece of technical documentation or interaction. Ethical literacy, then, could reasonably be understood as
a set of guiding principles meant to inform action at every level of technical communication.

Likewise, critical literacy was initially articulated as an action-oriented framework within technical
communication. Admittedly, critical theories originated well beyond the disciplinary boundaries of
technical communication proper and have since been imported and adapted for our field, but nevertheless
the theoretical center of these theories still holds true. Thus, critical literacy can be understood as “the
ability to recognize and consider ideological stances and power structures and the willingness to take
action to assist those in need” (Cargile Cook, 2002, p. 16). Deeply embedded in this definition are still the
Frierian notions of critical consciousness, emancipatory and transformative pedagogy, and praxis —
theory in reflection and action. Therefore, a pivotal aspect of critical literacy is the requisite call to action.
It is not enough to simply bear witness to the structures of power and privilege which shape and inform
technical communication; there is also a not-so-tacit imperative to actively work to resolve those socio-
cultural inequities, to break down the barriers of access so as to cultivate a culture of inclusion. Important
also to note is that, in addition to being focused on action, critical considerations are difficult, if not
impossible, to be made in isolation from the other layered literacies. Much like ethical literacy, the
practice and application of critical literacy is “enmeshed in situations requiring other forms of literacy”
(Cargile Cook, 2002, p. 16). Here again, we see that this literacy is perhaps best fully understood and
appreciated in its relationship to the other original literacies: basic, rhetorical, social, and technological.
Through these other literacies systems of power and privilege are executed; concomitantly, critical and
ethical literacy is a framework that creeps into every aspect of technical communication.

Given the striking number of similarities and overlap in their initial articulations, it seems odd to us that
these two literacies weren’t originally formulated as one. When we consider the deep structures that
inform each of these literacies, we see an undeniable symmetry that binds ethical and critical literacies to
each other at a fundamental level. First, and perhaps most obviously, both critical and ethical literacies are
frames that can only be considered in their relationship to the other literacies. This is not to imply that
these two literacies are parasitic, but rather that they are both manifested in others. We can see, for
example, how a text’s choice of grammatical structures (basic literacy) could potentially be exclusionary
toward a particular audience (critical literacy). So both ethical and critical literacies exist in each of the
other layered literacies.

In addition, both literacies embody an ideological commitment to “others.” Meaning, both critical and
ethical literacies are predicated on an identification of and fidelity to stakeholders beyond those
immediately obvious in a given instance of technical communication. Whereas positivist assumptions
effectively erased any discussion of outside stakeholders and their positionality within technical
communication, critical and ethical literacies take the inverse position and invite us to embrace and attend
to these same considerations. The power, privilege, and positionality (or lack thereof) of a multitude of

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stakeholders is a central concern for both critical and ethical literacies. Furthermore, both literacies take
as their charge a duty to act on behalf of those stakeholders cut off and cut out by hegemonic structures.
Their shared action orientation evinces an attempt to be more than just mindful but also actively engaged
in a drive to make technical communication more equitable and inclusive.

Finally, and perhaps most telling, is the actual language used to illustrate both critical and ethical literacy
as they were originally articulated in “Layered Literacies.” Cargile Cook’s description of each reveals a
shared vocabulary; concepts both unique and common to these specific literacies include: stakeholder,
action, and, not coincidentally, ethics. This descriptive connection between ethical and critical literacy is
made complete and exceedingly explicit when, in issuing an imperative for critical literacy, Cargile Cook
writes, “Technical communicators should also reflect upon their own roles as facilitators and act ethically
upon this reflection” (p. 17). It comes as no surprise that acting critically involves acting ethically. This is
not to say that these two ideas are synonymous, but that they are mutually informing and inextricably
bound to one another in ways more meaningful than any other given set of layered literacies. For these
reasons, we suggest that these literacies have heretofore always been a unified literacy, even if not in
name then certainly in practice; in the remainder of the chapter, we will discuss them as such.

Methods
We have to this point endeavored to elucidate our belief that critical and ethical literacy is still not only a
viable but indeed a vital aspect of any technical communication pedagogical framework. It is our
contention that critical and ethical literacy has been and will continue to be a central and driving force in
the shaping of our disciplinary identity. However, much remains unsettled. Just as the social turn
fundamentally altered the ways in which technical communication was understood and enacted, we
believe that advances in disciplinary scholarship warrant a renewed examination and revision of the basic
tenets of critical and ethical literacy as they were articulated in “Layered Literacies.” We therefore now
turn our attention to the following research questions:

● How has the understanding and enactment of critical and ethical literacy evolved since its initial
description in 2002?
● What strategies and pedagogical methods are currently being used to effectively teach critical and
ethical literacy?
● How might a technical communicator demonstrate critical and ethical literacy in today’s
workplace?

We acknowledge that responding to these questions, no matter how extensively, would not provide an
exhaustive account of the state of critical and ethical literacy as it currently exists. A thorough
investigation of these questions would, however, provide reasonable insight into some of the more
pertinent disciplinary trends in technical communication and might even conceivably forecast aspects of
impending shifts.

Following Lauren and Schreiber (2018), we approached our investigation of these research questions
using an integrative literature review. The primary benefit of this method is that it “helps to generate new
knowledge about a topic studied because mature topics have more room for critique, whereas the goal for
emerging areas is simply to capture the conversation” (Lauren & Schreiber, p. 89). As we have previously
established, critical and ethical literacy has a well-documented history within the field of technical
communication that spans at minimum three decades. So rather than capture a budding disciplinary
conversation, our research is intended to chronicle the ways in which critical and ethical literacy has since
undergone substantial revision; subsequently, we also endeavor to offer a rearticulation of its current
position and import in technical communication, both as an academic discipline and a professional
practice.

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 Data Collection
Our research began with the identification of the major publishing and knowledge-making platforms for
technical communication. Since we were primarily concerned with the ways in which critical and ethical
literacy have evolved since their initial articulation in “Layered Literacies,” we restricted our research to
include only dates between 2002 and the present. And in order to accurately capture the multiplicity of
diverse conversations associated with technical communication, we identified peer-reviewed journals that
would represent voices and perspectives from both academic and professional circles. The disciplinary
discussions being held within academic were captured in journals including: Technical Communication
Quarterly, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, and Technical Communication. To balance
the academic with the professional, we also searched the following journals, intended primarily for
practitioners: Journal of Business and Technical Communication, IEEE Transactions on Professional
Communication, and Business Communication Quarterly.

As expected, our research revealed significant overlap in the communities of discourse associated with
these journals. In other words, while we initially identified Technical Communication Quarterly as a
space that would house academic conversations, we found that it also encompassed scholarship related to
technical communication as it was being enacted in the business world. This overlap was important to
identify because it confirmed the wide disciplinary coverage that we were attempting construct.
Therefore, our data collection presented us with a representative sample of how critical and ethical
literacy was being treated and discussed across time and in a variety of contexts throughout the field of
technical communication.

Once we had identified our data collection pool, we then conducted keyword, Boolean, and proximity
searches within each of the aforementioned publications. Because our data collection pool was already
discipline specific and sufficiently narrow, we did not need to worry about cross-pollination from
different fields of study in our search. The initial search terms we applied came from the language used to
describe critical and ethical literacy in “Layered Literacies” and included the following words along with
any subtle but applicable variations: “ethics,” “culture,” “intercultural,” “power,” “privilege,”
“stakeholder,” “awareness,” “emancipatory,” “justice,” “critical,” and “critical consciousness.”

During the data collection process, we were able to vette and winnow down our search terms in some
areas and expand them in others. For example, initial searches using the keyword “critical” resulted in
search returns that were related to the notion of critical thinking as opposed to critical literacy. This
distinction was important to make as the former term is commonly associated with cognitive function
whereas the latter relates to social structures of power. We therefore were required to isolate our research
by refining the search term to “critical” and “NOT thinking.” Likewise, we found that we also needed to
expand our search terms in some areas since the vocabulary used to describe and understand critical and
ethical literacy has expanded since its initial articulation almost twenty years ago. Most notably, we found
quickly that our search results would be greatly enriched by searching not just for “justice” but “social
justice.” At the completion of our data collection phase we had assembled a total of 78 relevant peer-
reviewed articles from six different disciplinary journals and books; however, after coding was complete,
not all of which were included in this chapter.

Data Coding
The initial codes we used to begin sorting our data were developed during the data collection process.
Since we were utilizing electronic data collection technology, the majority of the articles that we collected
came preloaded with “keywords” relating to the article’s content identified by the publisher. These initial
keywords served as temporary placeholders during the data collection phase. After we completed our
searches in all six journals for the specified time-period, we then proceeded to read through the data and
assign our own, locally-generated codes for the content in each article. Each contributing author was

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assigned to read through the collected data in two journals: one directed at a primarily academic audience
and one which targeted a professional audience. We first generated codes for our assigned data set
individually. By beginning the coding process independently, we created an intellectual space which
encouraged each author to consider and develop a multiplicity of coding possibilities as opposed to
curtailing intellectual creativity by coding in a collective setting wherein we might latch on to each
other’s coding language. Following the development of our own codes, we transitioned to a collaborative
setting in which we shared the codes we had generated; the primary focus of this collective coding
activity was to (1) condense down the number of codes we were able to identify, (2) develop a common
coding language, and, most importantly, (3) identify interconnected disciplinary trends. Through this
process, we were able to identify four major trends for critical and ethical literacy within technical
communication:

● a variety of workplace exigencies for change,

● the development of service-learning pedagogies,
● new understandings of what “inclusion” means, and
● the adoption of social justice missions.

In the following section, we trace the developmental trajectory of each of these disciplinary trends from
2002 to 2018. We endeavor to show how these trends should not be read as isolated and random instances
of unrelated change but instead as mutually informative pattern of disciplinary growth.

Disciplinary Trends — Exigencies for Change in the Workplace

Since 2002, technical communication scholars have addressed the paucity of workplace research on
ethical decision-making by focusing on the bevy of rhetorical situations that demand ethical literacy.
From an examination of the ethical ramifications of the 2010 U.S. Census form (Pimentel & Balzhiser,
2012), to an analysis of the influence of legal and cultural contexts on participant-directed informed
consent documentation in international clinical trials (Batova, 2010), technical communicators now have
a range of researchable exigencies they can use as models for their own work. The increased focus on
ethical literacy in research over the past 15 years has had a twofold effect: it has positioned ethics as the
centripetal literacy around which all others revolve (Sanders, 1997), and it has given technical
communication educators more innovative ways to integrate ethics into curricula and pedagogy.

Ethical situations in the workplace arise—in part—from the need to address the expectations of
stakeholders. In these situations, there will always exist at least one controlling exigence which specifies
the audience to be addressed and the change to be effected (Bitzer, 1968). In order for technical
communicators to make ethical decisions as a result of these exigencies, they must keep the inclusion,
diversity, and humanity of all potential audiences at the forefront of their decision-making process.
Workers’ abilities to apply ethical literacies on the job have far-reaching effects in a variety of workplace
environments, exigencies, and genres.

Visual Design
Graphic and visual designers, user interface and experience designers, and web designers all face ethical
dilemmas when trying to decide the best way to present information to audiences. These dilemmas all
manifest themselves in different ways. In visual design, three ethical typologies tend to exist: 1) rhetorical
goals, 2) provoking action, and 3) promoting understanding by making conceptual relationships visible
(Manning & Amare, 2006, p. 195). The typologies are subtle, and—when handled ethically—many go
unnoticed by the reader. However, when technical communicators fail to keep ethics at the forefront of
their visual design choices, the results can have drastic effects. Font choices (or decoratives), for example,
generally convey a certain feeling in a document and so correspond with the first goal of evoking feelings
(Manning & Amare, 2006, p. 195), which is why a bolder, bigger font size tends to carry with it an aura

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of importance. Bulleted lists (or indicatives), meanwhile, move audiences to the actions of separating,
dividing, and contrasting otherwise undivided information in a document, thus making them an example
of the second typology of provoking action (Manning & Amare, 2006, p. 195). Although overuse of
bullets can be counterproductive, they tend to signal to the reader that the bulleted parts make up a whole
concept. Charts, graphs, diagrams, and tables (i.e. informatives) all fall under the third typology in that
they have an informative component that can be distinguished from whatever decorative and indicative
properties they also have (Manning & Amare, 2006, p. 195). Because they tend to contain elements of all
three typologies, these graphics which promote understanding have the most significant ethical
implications. Thus, In order to avoid ethical pitfalls, technical communicators must decide when to
promote the accurate portrayal of information over other decorative and indicative elements in visual
design (see figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1. The visual-rhetorical goals of philosopher C. S. Pierce, with a focus on font

and color (decorative), & a numbered list (indicative) (Manning & Amare, 2006, p. 195).

Figure 2. The visual-rhetorical goals of philosopher C. S. Pierce, sacrificing the

decorative typology of Figure 1 for the sake of strictly informing the audience.
(Manning & Amare, 2006, p. 195).

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Visual designers, however, must do more than just present accurate information in order to do their job
ethically. Technical communicators who use visuals in their work must also ensure that they avoid using
deliverables that could harm the agency of an audience. An examination of Katz’s (1992) analysis of a
Nazi technical proposal on the killing efficiency of gas vans and Ward’s (2010) scholarship on a 1935
Nuremberg Laws poster—although extreme in content—can help visual designers pay closer attention to
the effects their graphics can have on audiences (see Figure 3). Individuals can cultivate the power to
denaturalize and subvert institutionalized influences on the job by asking themselves these four types of
questions when faced with an ethical dilemma in design:

● Ethical substance : Which part of myself or my behavior is influenced or concerned with

moral conduct? What do I do because I want to be ethical?
● Mode of subjection : How am I being told to act morally? Who is asking? To whose
values am I being subjected?
● Ethical work : How must I change my self or my actions in order to become ethical in
this situation?
● Ethical goal : Do I agree with this definition of morality? Do I consent to becoming this
character in this situation? To what am I aspiring to when I behave ethically? (Foucalt,
1984, p. 352-355, adapted in Ward, 2010, p. 83)
Although they provide excellent examples for critique in technical communication, visual design
elements that persecute, discriminate, or otherwise denigrate intended or unintended audiences have no
place in a technical workplace, and scholars have increasingly emphasized this point in their research
since the inception of our discussion of layered literacies.

Figure 3. The official Nuremberg Laws poster from 1935, form the U.S. Holocaust Museum. The poster,
while an excellent display of technical information, fails ethically. It shows “Wer ist Deutschbl€utiger”
[Who is German blooded], “Wer ist Jude” [Who is a Jew], and Welche Eheschließungen sind verboten”
[Which marriages are forbidden] in Germany at that time (Ward, 2010, p. 61).

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Law & Medicine
Faced with hierarchical pressures from prevailing domestic and international institutions and
organization, technical communicators who work in legal and medical fields often times place the
demands of their jobs over advocacy for vulnerable clients and patients. In August 2010, the Journal of
the Society of Technical Communication devoted an entire issue to global legal and medical contexts and
the ramifications of ethics in these fields. Additionally, it provided practical workplace ethical models for
technical communicators to follow. For example, technical communicators who work in the medical field
should ensure that they create documents that are accessible to all patients, including the disabled and
those who are limited English proficient. By using the following strategies, medical practitioners can
ensure that they are adhering to both domestic and international equal opportunity laws as well as the
ethical principles of the Society for Technical Communication:

● Text Matching: Make the textual style of the information match that of the culture’s
expectations (St. Germaine-McDaniel, 2010, p. 262).

Stylistic preferences for text can differ widely across cultures in terms of indirectness,
nonlinearity, formality, emphasis of relationships, and tone of uncertainty (St. Germaine-
McDaniel, 2010, p. 258). Technical communicators should research the audience of their
documentation in order to ethically disseminate and translate esoteric medical and legal
terminology.

● Cultural Color Graphics: Research the preferences for graphics and color in medical
documents for the target culture and use the preferred style (St. Germaine-McDaniel, 2010,
p. 262).

Researchers have found that, for example, in some Latino and Hispanic cultures, women prefer
photographs of groups of people of similar heritage over photographs of individuals or line
drawings (Forslund, 1996; Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, 2005, adapted in St. Germaine-
McDaniel, 2010, p. 260). Additionally, technical communicators who wish to localize to Latino
populations should use more vibrant color in the design of their documents to appeal to the ethos
and pathos of their audience (Yunker, 2003, adapted in St. Germaine-McDaniel, 2010, p. 260).

• Cultural Agency: Respect the notion of privacy and agency in different cultures (Batova,
2010, p. 274).

Technical writers who are writing for medical patients need to be aware of the differences in the
culture and mindsets of their target audience and the possibility that their customs and traditions
are at odds with those of the United States (Batova, 2010, p. 274).

● Inclusive Research: Use focus groups (St. Germaine-McDaniel, 2010. P. 262).

When research is not available for a particular audience, focus groups can provide valuable
information about preferences for text and graphics (St. Germaine-McDaniel, 2010. P. 262).

● Apparent Research: Research and provide access to medical laws and terminology (Batova,
2010, p. 274).

In certain medical genres (e.g. informed consent documentation for medical trials), technical
communicators’ lack of knowledge and inclusion of international medical laws leave the
participants of these trials vulnerable to being left out crucial conversations about proper medical
care. To best serve the interests of participants, technical writers need to stay up-to-date on

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 clinical trial legislation in the United States and on international research regulations (Batova,
2010, p. 274). The ambiguities in laws on clinical trials make it extremely hard for participants to
find information about trials, which means that technical writers need to help orient them in this
legal ocean. (Batova, 2010, p. 274).

● Cultural Symbolism: Use widely recognized symbols (St. Germaine-McDaniel, 2010, p. 262).

Technical communicators should consider the use of wayfinding symbols (see figure 4 below) in
the genres of medical brochures and information sheets in order to promote a universal system of
signage recognizable to an international audience of legal clients and medical patients (St.
Germaine-McDaniel, 2010, p.9-260).

Figure 4: Examples of wayfinding symbols from segd.com

● Informative Typology: Consider the content, not just the style and format (St. Germaine-
McDaniel, 2010, p. 262).

Technical communicators should recognize that the localization of textual health care information
is a sensitive undertaking, with much at stake for both the patient and the hospitals and clinics
involved (St. Germaine-McDaniel, 2010, p. 262). Localizing information goes beyond a simple
consideration of language, style, and graphics; the information must match the culture’s
expectations for topics that can be covered and its perceptions about health and healthcare in
general (St. Germaine-McDaniel, 2010, p. 262). The consequences for not connecting with an
LEP population are profound—from expensive and time-consuming lawsuits for the hospital or
clinic to patient injury and even death (St. Germaine-McDaniel, 2010, p. 262).

The emphasis on ethics in technical communication research about legal and medical fields highlights the
development and pervasiveness of ethical literacy in a variety of exigencies and genres.

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Environmental Ethics
Environmental issues such as climate change and clean energy have swelled during the last 15 years,
putting pressure on technical communicators to address stakeholders in innovative and ethical ways.
Recent efforts—including the Sierra Club’s 2011 video entitled “Chopper,”
(https://youtu.be/gmUm6U01PPM) which features an animated talking coal plant that could be ineffective
for some audiences—illuminate the need for environmental organizations to perform deeper analysis of
their intended audiences in order to produce ethical information (Ross, 2013).

Technical communicators can use models like the Deep Audience Analysis Instrument to obtain
replicable, reliable, audience profiles designed for direct application (Ross, 2103). By carefully
interviewing potential audience members, coding interviews, and developing profiles, technical
communicators can iteratively shape messages to emphasize the dissemination of ethical information and
more effectively reach diverse users (Ross, 2013).

Data Analysis
No matter the field, technical communicators must practice ethical and critical data analysis in order to
produce ethical information. For example, although the technical writers tasked with crafting and
evaluating the data from the 2010 U.S. Census placed audience representation at the forefront of their
concerns, a critical analysis of the document reveals ethical deficiencies in its overall implementation
(Pimental & Balzhiser, 2012). On the 2010 census, Hispanic participants must choose to both identify
themselves as ethnically Hispanic but racially as either white or black (Pimental & Balzhiser, 2012).
These ways of categorizing Hispanics do not account for how they self-identify or how identity is
ascribed to Hispanics in a racialized U.S. society (Pimental & Balzhiser, 2012). As a result, media outlets
—failing to analyze data ethically—produced the following headlines in response to this census data:

● ‘‘Hispanics Declared Largest Minority; Blacks Overtaken in Census Update’’ (D’Vera, 2003)
● ‘‘Number of Hispanics, Whites Equal’’ (Spivack, 2011)
● ‘‘Minority Kids Grow to a Majority; They Outnumber Young Whites in 1 of 6 Counties’’
(Nasser, 2009)
● ‘‘Census: Hispanics Account for Two-Thirds of Texas Growth, Likely to Surpass Whites Next
● Decade’’ (Root, 2011)
● ‘‘City Grayer, More Hispanic: Blacks, Whites Make Up Smaller Slice of Population’’ (Golab,
2006)
● ‘‘Diversity Leads Region’s Growth: Census: Black, Hispanic, Asian Populations Soar Amid 10-
Year Expansion’’ (Stafford & Schneider, 2011)
● ‘‘Hispanics Surpass Blacks in Metro Area Census Shift’’ (Yen, 2011).

To ensure that technical communicators do not perpetuate domination, oppression, or other unethical
ideals in their work, they must consider the racial logic that they employ within their own documents, to
consider the motivations for and ethic of their choices (Pimental & Balzhiser, 2012, p. 334).

Reports
The genre of reports appears in virtually every discipline. The ubiquity of information reports,
recommendation reports, feasibility reports, and empirical research reports places a significant onus on
technical communicators to enhance their ethical literacy in terms of legality, honesty, confidentiality,
quality, fairness, and professionalism in producing these documents. Whenever possible, technical writers
should strike a balance between completing occupational goals and promoting the humanity of their
audience in drafting reports.

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An analysis of accident reports highlights the difficulties that can arise in reaching an ethical medium in
this genre. A 2016 report by the National Transportation Safety Board, for example, describes an accident
involving a tractor-trailer overtaking an SUV at 2:15 am on US Interstate 70 in Kansas. Although the
report examines the crash, highway information, vehicle damage, and human performance in sufficient
detail, it fails to provide names or thumbnail photographs of the six people who died in the crash. This
action of hiding human beings, especially the killed or injured, is consistent with the dominant practice of
accident and other reports in technical communication (Dragga & Voss, 2005, p. 78). However the
victims of accidents deserve better from us as technical writers, because we have “the rhetorical ability,
editorial and graphic skills, and moral and ethical responsibility to bring humanity to the verbal and visual
display of information” (Dragga & Voss, 2005, p. 78-79). Some techniques communicators can use to
achieve these goals include:

● Tables that include names of victims, portrait photographs, and humanizing biographical details
● Human icons, stick figures, or outlines of human forms to depict victims in maps of accident sites
● Photographs of human beings in simulations of the accidents
● Drawings of human beings to display the sequence of events leading to accidents
● Drawings or pictographs of human beings to depict the number and nature of injuries and
fatalities
● Captions that add humanizing details to illustrations of damaged vehicles, buildings, and
equipment (Dragga & Voss, p. 79).

The constraints of privacy laws and family consent makes employing these techniques extremely difficult.
However, examining reports with critical and ethical lenses results in information that better resonates
with varied and diverse audiences.

User-generated documentation
The advent of social media has drastically changed the landscape of ethics in technical communication
since our first conversation about layered literacies in 2002. Users now have the power to create
documents and disseminate them to the masses in much the same ways as institutions and organizations.
With all this power but fewer checks and balances, users who create their own documents have a weak
line of defense to protect themselves from ethical mishaps.

In recent research about technical communication blogs, practitioners agreed that although almost anyone,
anywhere can publish and access information, much content is shoddily produced and unprofessional,
leading to a phenomenon of amateurism and crowdsourcing (Keen, 2007, adapted in Cleary, 2012, p. 35).
Methods employed by corporations to take advantage of this trend by garnering free labor diminish the
ethos of both the institutions and users and create ethical conundrums for technical communicators who
must compete with these sources of information (Rushkoff, 2009, adapted in Cleary, 2012, p. 35-36).

Despite these shifts in content generation, however, technical communicators can learn valuable ethical
lessons from the various wikis, vlogs, podcasts, and other digital media that have inundated the field over
the past two decades. For example, an examination of the role of communication in the video game
Minecraft shows that user-generated content often displays characteristics not often found in professional
technical communication: the explicit acknowledgment of the ideological values and praxis infused in the
document itself (Beale, McKittrick, & Richards, 2016, p. 199).

These exigencies represent a microcosm of the ethical and critical situations technical communicators
face on a daily basis. Nevertheless, the burgeoning number of articles that appear in technical
communication journals pertaining to ethics strengthen its importance in the field and in academic
disciplines. The practical ethical and critical lessons learned in recent scholarship are reflected in the

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pedagogical methods typically assigned to technical communication in academia, as educators hustle to
prepare students for a volatile technical communication marketplace.

Disciplinary Trends—Service-learning Pedagogies

Given technical communication’s deeply rooted historical ties to industry, it should come as no great
revelation that disciplinary pedagogies have likewise traditionally displayed a tendency to hedge slightly
toward matters of practicality and workplace applicability over high-minded theory. Put differently, as an
academic field of study, technical communication has, at least in part, typically located some of its value
in contexts exterior to the university, in nonacademic settings. This external locus of value, while
understandable, has been vexing for technical communication’s disciplinary, and by extension
instructional, identity. Are teachers of technical communication beholden to industry desires? Or should
the classroom be an instructional space that operates independent from the pressures of the business
community? This crisis of identity is, of course, a false dichotomy, and the reality of the power dynamic
between academics and practitioners has always been reciprocal, a two-way street. Carolyn Miller
articulated as much early as 1989, arguing that:

“...academics should indeed know about non-academic practices. But the academy
does not need to be just a receptacle for practices and knowledge created elsewhere.
The academy itself is also a set of practices, including those of of observation,
conceptualization, and instruction — practices that create their own kind of
knowledge” (p. 69).

In fact, technical communication’s positionality between these two related-but-distinct worlds has enabled
it to occupy a unique “both/and” pedagogical space, wherein instruction can, as Miller intimates, work to
serve, inform, and transform both the academy and industry at once. Since the teaching of technical
communication has historically existed in this state of liminality between these mutually informing
worlds, service-learning instructional methodologies natural were a pedagogical fit to bridge this
bifurcated disciplinary identity. Moreover, the fundamental design of service-learning necessarily
expands the potential instructional space outside of academe proper and into the surrounding community,
which enables students to investigate and grapple with critical and ethical literacy across a multiplicity of
contexts.

However, despite the long-standing ideological match between technical communication as a discipline
and service-learning as an instructional methodology, our survey of the pedagogies used to teach critical
and ethical literacy revealed that service-learning has only recently gained disciplinary traction. Even as
late as the turn of the century when “Layered Literacies” was initially published, the instructional norm
was to locate discussions of ethics, ideology, and privilege interior to the classroom (Salvo, 2002). In
other words, while students were being pushed to develop a sense of critical and ethical literacy, the sites
available to conduct these investigations were quite limited and truncated. The notion that “the
identification and questioning of assumptions can be put to good use in the professional communication
classroom, where hypothetical situations for analysis abound” (Kienzler, 2001, p. 320) is telling. Critical
and ethical literacy was primarily an exercise in “hypotheticals” and abstractions. Technical
communication pedagogy had yet to realize how and why to generate opportunities to develop critical and
ethical literacy beyond the realm of the hypothetical and outside the walls of the academy. Subsequently,
this inability to perceive the practical application of ethical and critical literacy likely was a contributing
factor to the framing of this literacy as primarily the facilitation of “self-awareness” in students (Salvo,
2002, p. 323) and not action-oriented. Students would ostensibly learn about power and privilege inside
the technical communication classroom but not necessarily do anything with it therein. It was only once
they went out into the world that they would, presumably, apply this this new knowledge.

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Yet critical and ethical literacy’s apparent relegation to the realm of academia would not last long. Soon
after “Layered Literacies,” the field began to experience calls to more closely align pedagogy with
disciplinary identity — that is, to find ways to engage and enact both the academic and practical aspects
of technical communication. Service-learning methodologies quickly found a home in the technical
communication classroom. Not only was service-learning a solid ideological match for technical
communication, as Blake Scott (2004) posits, it “provides students opportunities to develop, reflect about,
and enact [emphasis added] civic responsibility” (p. 289). Explicit in Scott’s articulation of the value-
added through service-learning pedagogies are a few paradigmatic shifts in the ways in which critical and
ethical literacy is understood. First, this new framing moved ethical and critical literacy out of the
squarely hypothetical and into the actual. It enabled instructors to look for real instances of critical and
ethical literacy to present to students — and concreteness necessarily brings students closer to the thing
under examination. In this way critical and ethical literacies gained real-world potency for students
(Scott). Furthermore, not only did service-learning opportunities provide students a chance to become
more “self-aware,” but they also encouraged the productive “enactment” and application of that
awareness.

Important also to note is that service-learning pedagogies, while admittedly well-suited for the teaching of
technical communication, are not, and never have been, a stable monolith. The development of
instructional designs that extend beyond the classroom and into the community is a highly variable
practice, one that has continuously been refined and revised so as to better promote student engagement
with critical and ethical literacy. For example, in an effort to guard against service-learnings co-option by
hyper pragmatism, Scott (2004) argues for linking service-learning to cultural studies (p. 290). This
connection would presumably prevent the pedagogical pendulum from fully swinging to the practical at
the expense of the ethical; however, marrying service-learning uncritically to cultural studies also comes
packed with its own critical and ethical issues. If the notions of “culture” and “cultural” are conflated, as
they often are, an essentializing pedagogy results which “describes individuals in terms of [a] typified
cultural profile” (Hunsinger, 2006, p. 35). Therefore, a service-learning methodology would need to be
structured so as to engage students with actual intercultural communication differences without flattening
these sites of cultural negotiation into an us-them dichotomy. So already we can see how even as quickly
as service-learning was adopted into technical communication teaching so too was it adapted and
restructured in order to more effectively foster students’ critical-ethical deliberation as well as action.

Another important development in the trajectory of critical and ethical literacy is the the ways in which it
was enacted through service-learning. In its initial iterations, critical and ethical literacy was discussed in
terms perhaps obvious to technical communication, such as technical documentation (Katz) and document
design (Dragga & Voss; Barton & Barton). However, as the disciplinary purview of technical
communication expanded, so too did the sites available for critical and ethical critique. What it meant to
teach critical and ethical literacy grew to incorporate considerations of disability studies (Palmeri, 2006)
and technology (Turnley, 2007). As aforementioned, as an instructional framework, ethical and critical
literacy is, or should be, always tied to other literacies. Turnley’s invocation to approach technology not
as a separate entity, but as a “constitutive aspect of textuality, organizational structures, and larger
professional and rhetorical contexts” (p. 105) within service-learning speaks to this tethering.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, service-learning pedagogies within technical communication have
recently evolved to represent not just awareness and engagement with the local community, but now
encourage the concepts inclusion and active participation by all involved parties — academic and
community-based alike (Agboka, 2013; Blythe, Grabill, & Riley, 2008). The importance of this
development cannot be overstated. Initial enactments of critical and ethical literacy through service-
learning still implied somewhat of a power imbalance between university and world: yes, students were
going out into the community, but the locus of privilege remained with the academy as students might
discuss a community partner’s need, develop a solution, and in the end provide some service or

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deliverable to the partner. There was consultation, but not necessarily active inclusion, as community
partners were largely silenced and/or backgrounded in the service-learning interaction (Kimme Hea &
Wendler Shah, 2106). Moreover, there remained a distinct separateness between the academy and the
community. However, current iterations of service-learning effectively dissolve these boundaries by
giving voice to community partners as active participants, not passive consultants. From the construction
of critically-minded resumes (Randazzo, 2016) to document localization considerations (Agboka, 2013),
service-learning pedagogies within technical communication seem to now understand that in order to
actually and effectively teach for critical and ethical literacy they must be predicated on community-
partner participation and inclusion. That being said, our review of the scholarship on critical and ethical
literacy reveals that the meaning of “inclusion” itself has undergone a substantial evolution within
technical communication.

Disciplinary Trends—The Evolution of “Inclusion”

To accurately and comprehensively capture just how dynamic the shift in meaning tied to “inclusion” has
been for technical communication, we need to slightly pre-date the publication of “Layered Literacies.” In
1997, Katherine Durack published her seminal article, “Gender, Technology, and the History of Technical
Communication;” in it she argues convincingly for a gendered reading of “the meaning and significance
of work, workplace, and technology [emphasis in original]” (p. 257). Although Durack’s reasoning was
indeed seismic for its feminist critique of technical communication’s history and practice, her work also
bears special relevance for its rendering of what it means to be “inclusive.” To explain further, the
concept of “inclusion” has always been a consistent element in the shaping of ethical and critical literacy.
Many the earliest iterations of ethical and critical literacy, like Durack’s, center on this idea of inclusion.
In fact, it could be reasonably argued that Durack’s entire purpose in “Gender, Technology, and the
History of Technical Communication” was to defend the position that women’s work should be included
in the disciplinary canon. But the language used to communicate this objective is altogether instructive.
When we examine closely the way in which inclusion is presented, we find that inclusion is patently
understood as an act of merely addition: “adding women to our disciplinary history” (p. 250), “including
women and women’s work in a history of technical writing” (p. 251), “if we are to include the
accomplishment of women” (p. 257), and finally “reason to include associated writing within [emphasis
added] the corpus history of technical writing [emphasis in original]” (p. 258). The trend is subtle to be
sure but present all the same: to be inclusive originally meant to add on to an existing structure, to bring
in the “other” while effectively maintaining the dominant discourse. It is a definition and enactment of
“inclusion” that is decidedly “us” (meaning dominant) focused as opposed to “other” oriented.

However, in the mid-2000’s the research and scholarship within the field of technical communication
began to evince a change in the prevailing meaning associated with “inclusion.” Researchers and
practitioners began to critique the various ways in which critical and ethical literacy both portrayed and
enacted inclusive rhetorics (Hunsinger, 2006; Palmeri, 2006; Skinner, 2012; Williams, 2006). From
governmental regulatory writing to medical rhetorics, what it meant to be inclusive in technical
communication — both as a practical and academic matter — was beginning to be more carefully
scrutinized. For example, rather than being an add-on, as was the case previously, research began to
suggest that “gender is a crucial aspect of the technical communicator’s rhetorical situation” (Skinner,
2012, p. 307). This is not to diminish earlier iterations of inclusion, but rather to illuminate the changing
ways in which it was being understood and embodied throughout the discipline. The shift was a move
away from an additive orientation to inclusion and toward a transformative understanding. That is,
inclusion was no longer positioned as a gratuitous allowance by the dominant discourse which simply
retrofit a new part to its old self, but instead a dramatic and wholesale revisioning and redefining of the
discipline itself as a whole.

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The most recent years have witnessed perhaps the height of this new, transformative understanding of
ethical and critical literacy’s inclusiveness. Instead of thinking about how technical communication
practitioners and teachers could make space for the “other,” current conversations are concerned with
“how users...are creating and adapting [technical] experiences for themselves” (Gonzales & Baca, 2017,
p. 276). If previous iterations of critical and ethical literacy were predicated on a model of technical
communication that was rather fixed in nature, we now are starting to embrace and make allowances for a
much more fluid mode. In other words, critical and ethical literacy may have previously asked students
“How can we make room for this specific demographic and make ourselves more accountable to them?”
(Notice the “us” focus). Now, however, the question has shifted to be something akin to “How are others
going to remake us and/or take our knowledge and remake it for themselves?” Critical and ethical literacy
now paints inclusion as troubling, transformative, and active act of re-visioning of dominant disciplinary
discourses and narratives (Moeller & Frost, 2016).

The culmination of this new spirit of disruptive and transformative inclusivity is best captured in Jones,
Moore, and Walton’s (2016) highly influential article, “Disrupting the Past to Disrupt the Future: An
Antenarrative of Technical Communication.” In it, Jones et al. work to establish a bridge between the
dual notions of inclusion and diversity. Their argument is worth quoting at length:

“Inclusion means that there is respect for everyone’s voices, stories, and knowledges.
Diversity, which addresses representation in its most basic form, is a necessary
precondition of inclusion: We have to get everyone to the table to be able to do the
messy work of promoting and enacting social justice to create a more inclusive
environment. The antenarrative threads...collective invite reinterpretation of the past
and allow us to make these movements visible” (p. 219).

Of chief importance are the notions of “reinterpretation” and “social justice.” In arguing for a
reinterpretation of our disciplinary past and identity, Jones et al. highlight just how far understanding of
inclusion have come since the genesis of critical and ethical literacy. Furthermore, the rather recent
introduction of “social justice” concerns to technical communication speaks to how critical and ethical
literacy are continuing to grow and embrace concepts like advocacy, empowerment, and liberation.

Disciplinary Trends—The Adoption of Social Justice

Technical Communication is highly associated with activism in regard to stereotypical tasks of the
technical communicator—assuring that the language that is in question is being communicated in a clear,
simple, precise, and honest manner—in order to prevent injustice (Colton & Holmes, 2018, p. 5).
Although the technical communicator cannot actively create justice, through critical and ethical literacy
they can ensure that the delivery of justice as seen through policies and laws, are presented in a way that a
community would fully understand. Scholar Natasha Jones states, “A critical approach to diversity and
social justice helps to legitimize TPC [Technical and Professional Communication] by providing scholars
with a way to acknowledge the impact of communication as a way of mediating the human experience”
(Jones, 2016, p. 343). It is imperative for communication scholars to focus more on ethics in the TPC
field, investigate and question ethical problems, embrace an activist orientation, and put forth an effort to
identify with others (Colton & Holmes, 2018, 6). The integration of social justice is achievable as seen
through the history of ethics in TPC; ethics in technical communication pedagogy and research received
prominent support from scholars to be embedded and recognized as a commonplace in the TPC field.
Some scholars have incorporated social justice into TPC studies and instruction which illuminates the
change from earlier scholarship and acknowledges the social impacts of communication. With the
continuing implantation of social justice context, TPC will become a field that completely recognizes,
understands, and addresses the social context in which it operates (Jones, 2016, p. 344).

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In order for technical communication to be considered an inclusive field, scholars must be open to
multiplicity, and social justice is the connection between multiplicity and inclusion since social justice is
associated with action. According to Jones and Rebecca Walton, “Social justice research in technical
communication investigates how communication broadly defined can amplify the agency of oppressed
people—those who are materially, socially, politically, and/or economically under-resourced.” (p. 337)
Many people see the word oppression as being too strong of a word, but this term addresses power and
privilege and acknowledges the fact that oppressed people can come from any ethnic group, age group,
religious background, demographic, or culture (Jones, 2016, p. 347). Since oppression assumes a
deficiency of power and devalues experiences of specific groups, oppression is not a singular concept and
can occur in many different forms and on diverse levels. With the many types of oppression, such as
marginalization, cultural imperialism, powerlessness, violence, and exploitation, oppression is
intersectional, thus social justice incorporates various approaches to seek change through action (Jones,
2016, p. 348).

Jones and Walton note that it is extremely important to understand that the definition of social justice in
the field of technical communication is collaborative, in the sense of progressing past simply speaking of
descriptions, to actually taking actions (p. 337). Other than Jones, Moore, and Walton’s antenarrative,
other methods of social justice in critical and ethical literacy include feminist, decolonial, and
participatory approaches.

Feminist Approach
Scholar Erin Frost, in her article, “Apparent Feminism as a Methodology for Technical Communication
and Rhetoric” explains apparent feminism pursues to make the relationship between diversity, efficiency,
and feminism more apparent that social justice is the “ultimate goal” of apparent feminism (Frost, 2016,
p. 16). According to Jones:

Feminist research can provide the technical communicator with a way of interrogating
and investigating the human experience from the point of view of those oppressed. In
addition, feminist research can inform action and potential ways to redress miscarriages
of justice and equality by privileging silenced voices and marginalized points of view
(352).

Jones concludes that several scholars have used the feminist approach to study feminism and technology,
mentoring, pedagogy, and now, social justice. Feminist are concerned with people other than those who
identify themselves as a woman, and acknowledges race, class, and culture (Frost, 2016, p. 17).

Decolonial Approach
Decolonial approaches of social justice recognizes equality for everyone regardless of societal models of
difference(Agboka 2014, 303). Decolonial approaches addresses the colonial influences and benefits both
participants and researchers, attempting to free participants from sources of domination, treating them as
collaborators (Agboka 2014, 299). Godwin Agboka states:

“... for a social justice agenda, decolonial approaches offer a nuanced, active, and
conscious heuristic that acknowledges that we are not only beyond the past, but it is
only the active agency of the colonized that will complete the process of liberating
participants in specific research sites from the legacies of the past” (Agboka, 2014, 304).

When scholars participate in decolonial approaches, they are also partaking in participatory research by
means of the actions being piloted. Participatory approaches can include service learning and community-
based research (Jones, 354).

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Participatory Approaches
Participatory approaches are very similar to decolonial approaches, in the context of focusing on the
participants as well as the researcher, and this approach can also be within the community or academia.
One example mentioned previously, comes from participatory localization that used practical and
theoretical goals of social justice to accomplish successful localization. Localization helps to
communicate important issues such as usability, design, and information technology in the discussion of
intercultural technical communication (Agboka 2013, 29).

Social justice within critical and ethical literacy has become a recognized and much needed topic of
discussion. Technical communication history tells a story of how these two literacies have changed and
evolved into a theme that is connected to everything that both literacies are concerning. From power to
change and feminism to stakeholders, social justice is the beginning of an implication that forces technical
communication into the advancing field that it is today. Social justice not only focuses on creating
disruption, but it lays the foundation for what is yet to come in the technical communication field. Jones
poses the question, “How can we, as technical communication educators and scholars, not concern
ourselves with ‘the unquestioned norms, habits, and symbols’ in communication that impacts the human
experience on a daily basis?” (p. 348) Through the critical and ethical lens, this cannot be accomplished
and with social justice being a major factor in answering this question, it proves how far technical
communication has come and where it is headed.

Disciplinary Implications
Critical and ethical literacy has developed into one of the most vital, commonly used literacies throughout
the field of technical communication. Since these literacies seek to acknowledge and respond to critical
and ethical practices, it is important to note that the implications are embedded within the deep
understanding of inclusion in technical communication. Through the implications, the following research
questions are answered and imply that critical and ethical literacies are still significant and practicable, as
a part of the technical communication academic structure.

To illustrate how extensively pedagogy played throughout the study, Figure 5 shows the relationship
between the types of journals that all of the articles used in this study derived from. More than 60% the
articles were retrieved from academia journal sources which suggest that critical and ethical literacy still
resides closely with pedagogy and academic communities of discourse.

Figure 5: Academia vs Professional Journals

Of the 3 journals, Technical Communication Quarterly was the top academia journal in which the largest
percentage of articles appeared. Although the professional (business) journals only accounted for 39% of

18
the original years 2002-2018 article database, they did provide great implications for workplace practices.
It must be noted that several of the articles that were more closely correlated to ethics did come from the
professional journals. In the below sections, we will individually answer each research question, in order
to recapitulate main discoveries. We also provide an example for each of the implications, to present an
enhanced understanding of both critical and ethical literacy, while offering our conclusive deliberations.

How has the understanding and enactment of critical and ethical literacy evolved since its initial
description in 2002?

When we first started our data collection process, we made sure to collect critical and ethical articles
previous to 2002 in order for us to gain a sense of the history of both literacies. When researching those
particular articles, we observed that terms such as inclusion, social justice, and active participation were
not in existence, however, with the articles that were produced after 2002, there was a prodigious increase
in the presence of those said terms. Critical and ethical literacy has evolved by means of making the field
of technical communication one that supports and is concerned with such terms as inclusion and social
justice. Even with the increase of those specific terms, scholars still call for more usage and research
regarding the terms. Scholars Jones, Moore, and Walton attest that in order for social justice to be seen
throughout technical communication, an antenarrative approach must be used to discuss past work, to
improve diversity and support social justice (Jones, Moore, & Walton, p. 219). They rightly claim that
“[a]n antenarrative allows the work of the field to be reseen, forges new paths forward, and emboldens the
field’s objectives to unabashedly embrace social justice and inclusivity as part of its core (rather than
marginal or optional) narrative” (Jones, Moore, & Walton, p. 212). Antenarrative helps to make sense of
the past, which is necessary to move beyond diversity, through social justice, which will help to create
inclusiveness in our field (Jones, Moore, & Walton, p. 219). Since we now know how technical
communication has evolved as a field through critical and ethical literacy, other than the antenarrative
approach, listed below are some other methods to teach these literacies.

What strategies and pedagogical methods are currently being used to effectively teach critical and
ethical literacy?

Integrating social justice and inclusion, workplace exigencies for change, and service learning are some of
the most current trends to teach critical and ethical literacy. Technical communicators who work in fields
such as visual design, law, and medicine are confronted with ethical problems on a day to day basis, when
trying to provide their patients and clients with the technical information that is needed to accomplish
their daily tasks. Environmental ethics also teach technical communicators to distribute and relate
technical information to large bodies of audiences, while focusing on ethics. Carolyn Rude states, “The
social issues that attract the attention of researchers in technical communication are diverse: the
environment, health care, intellectual property and access to information, transportation, safety of
workers, access to technology, science as it serves social goals, literacy, organizational change, ethics,
and more” (Rude, 2009, p. 205). A critical and ethical rhetoric of risk communication and the role of the
technical communicator within that rhetoric, can help mitigate conflict and dilemmas through the support
of more effective assessment/communication processes.

How might a technical communicator demonstrate critical and ethical literacy in today’s
workplace?

Critical and ethical literacy is seen through the implementation of data analysis, reports, and user
generated documentation, in the workplace. In order to construct ethical information, technical
communicators use their critical and ethical lens to analyze ethical data. One example of how technical
communicators use critical and ethical literacy is through accident reports that may not humanize
individuals. In their article, “Cruel Pies,” Dragga and Voss argue that when scholars/technical

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communicators provide informational charts on data that relates to human events such as deaths, injuries,
or diseases, in certain rhetorical situations, "conventional technical illustration offers inhumanity as
though it were objectivity” (Dragga & Voss, 2001, p. 265). Technical communicators are encouraged to
replace text with illustrations or at least have both. Doing so can help erase the issue of distortion (graphic
lies). Coupling visuals with text can appeal to ethos, which can strengthen the form of communication
between the technical communicator and their client. One of the main purposes of being a technical
communicator is explaining and decoding technical information so that people can understand, and
sometimes, words alone do not get the job done. Dragga and Voss recognized that visuals can be there to
back up the text, when text alone does not get the point across.

User generated documentation is becoming a dynamic theme in the workplace. Various companies are
now using social media to build, advertise, and communicate with their customers. Companies are able to
spread mass communication through social media, across various social media platforms, with simply one
click of a button. Customers can now gather informational resources from vlogs, video tutorials, and other
digital media. Overall, these implications prove that critical and ethical literacy still thrives, has evolved,
teaches, and are implemented in the workplace.

Limitations
Although we aimed to provide a comprehensive review of literature pertaining to ethical and critical
literacies, our research parameters constrained the amount of scholarship our group could analyze for this
chapter. For example, a search of technical communication sources outside of the six journals we used
(e.g. Spilka’s (2010) Digital Literacy for Technical Communication) could have yielded more
disciplinary trends for discussion. However, we believe that our examination of the most fundamental
scholarly journals in technical communication yields substantive insight on critical and ethical literacies,
notwithstanding further constraints on scope, longitude, and word count. The emergence of these
literacies in the workplace and in academia suggests that opportunities to address these limitations will
continue to materialize in the field.

Additionally, our reliance on a limited number of internet databases as a primary vehicle for obtaining
data for the literature review put us at the mercy of those search engines to produce viable results.
Gaining access to more libraries and databases – although financially cumbersome – would have allowed
us to more thoroughly dissect the literature available on ethical and critical literacies. Much of the
literature we ended up reviewing appeared as a result of judgement calls we made based on the scope and
constraints of our research (Lauren & Schreiber, 2018). Nevertheless, we mitigated subjectivity in our
work by supplementing our chapter with sources from beyond our search parameters, and subjecting our
drafts to multiple peer edits.

The limitations of this chapter, however, create expansive possibilities for future research. For example,
technical communication scholars now have ample disciplinary fodder to write entire books on specific
workplace and pedagogical trends (e.g. Bowdon & Scott’s (2003) Service-learning in Technical and
Professional Communication). Moreover, a qualitative review of these literacies, through ethnographic
interviews and case studies, could further illuminate the exigencies that exist ubiquitously across
disciplines. Much like Cargile Cook’s (2002) was a harbinger for the groundwork laid in this chapter, our
analysis offers substantive opportunities for expansion despite its narrow scope.

Conclusion
With the field of technical communication taking a trajectory toward the interconnectivity of language,
power, and social construction with biological systems, organizational structures, and technology (Mara
& Hawk, 2009), our review of critical and ethical literacy leaves us with the following question: How will
these literacies continue to change the field given the rise of posthuman rhetorics? A closer

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examination of this new combined literacy reveals that the issues of inclusion, social justice, service-
learning, and ethical exigence—all human phenomena—are at the core of more mechanical, non-human
concepts involving systems and economies (Mara & Hawk, 2009). In other words, we believe that an
understanding of critical and ethical literacy serves as a conduit between technical communication’s
humanist past and its posthuman future.

The plethora of exigencies involving critical and ethical literacy serve as a harbinger of that future. The
last two decades have created more situations which require critical and ethical dexterity, and our review
of the literature surrounding this movement suggests that there is no end in sight. This pervasiveness has
served to neutralize rigid hierarchical power structures, both in the workplace where technical
communicators face these exigencies and in the classroom where students and faculty are now bridging
gaps between community and academia. Ultimately, being critically and ethically literate demands action.
Gone are the days where technical communicators can sit idly by merely pontificating and critiquing the
status quo. Today’s volatile workplace rewards results, and a communicator that can harness the power
that critical and ethical literacy brings—and thus effectively reach as large an audience as possible—wins.

21
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 Appendix A: Sample lesson plans for teaching critical and ethical literacy

*Note: We include the following lesson plans for teaching critical and ethical literacy as a way to
demonstrate how this literacy could be approached in the technical communication classroom. We believe
that all teaching should be attuned to local particularities and fitted to the instructional methodology of the
instructor actually developing and delivering the lesson. Moreover, we feel these sample lessons well
exemplify our findings from this chapter. In each, we see various nuanced manifestations of how teaching
critical and ethical literacy necessarily involves (1) navigating the relationship between industry and
academy, (2) service-learning opportunities, (3) elements of inclusion, and (4) social justice
considerations.

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