1st Edition

Signs, Genres, and Communities in Technical Communication

    272 Pages
    by Routledge

    272 Pages
    by Routledge

    This important new text invites readers to step back from their busy professional lives and look at technical communication philosophically, to ask fundamental questions such as what does it mean to communicate? and how do language and graphics - the ""signs"" or ""tools"" of the technical communicator - relate to action in a technological world? Through this excursion in the theory of technical discourse, you will discover a fresh approach to reports, manuals, and proposals produced and consumed daily in business, government, and research organizations around the world. The authors examine familiar genres in two relatively new ways.

    Foreword Joe Chew

    Acknowledgments

    List of Tables and Figures

    Introduction: A Three-Part Theory of Technical Communication

    PART I. SIGNS
     A General Theory of Signs
     Representation in Document Design

    PART II. GENRES
     Genres of Technical Communication
     Generic Audiences in Technical Communication
     Generic Authors in Technical Communication

    PART III. COMMUNITIES
     Style and Human Action in Technical Writing
     Communities of Discourse
     Management and the Writing Process
     The Range of Instrumental Discourse
     Bibliography
     Index 

     

    Biography

    M. Jimmie Killingsworth, Michael Gilbertson