Busting the Myth of the Communication Metaphor: How Technical Writing Conventions Perpetuate Injustice...

— —

Sarah Read

Busting the Myth of the Communication Metaphor

How Technical Writing Conventions Perpetuate Injustice

Sarah Read

$320.95 $256.89

Hardback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English

State University of New York Press
01 July 2025

Technical writing; Business communication & presentation; Publishing industry; Science: general issues; Technology: general issues

Series: SUNY series, Studies in Technical Communication

Traces the linguistic, rhetorical, historical, cultural, and economic origins of our most basic beliefs and practices for successful technical writing to initiate a reckoning about who they serve and who they harm.

Busting the Myth of the Communication Metaphor is a transdisciplinary approach to making visible and explaining the multiple origins of why our most basic beliefs about what makes scientific and technical writing successful are wrong, ineffective, and harmful. These tacitly held beliefs and practices, collectively called the Communication Metaphor, stand in as symbolic for a messier, more reality-based understanding of how writing and communication works. By starting from conventional statements made by scientists, technical professionals, and standard textbooks that ""successful technical writing is short and to the point, with the facts only, no opinions,"" the book traces the histories and structures of the multiple elements of the Communication Metaphor. The text synthesizes survey results, multiple strands of scholarship, personal experience, and original illustrations into a powerful argument for imagining a more just approach to scientific and technical writing.

By: Sarah Read
Imprint: State University of New York Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 476g
ISBN: 9798855802894
Series: SUNY series, Studies in Technical Communication
Pages: 250
Publication Date: 01 July 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Preface 1. Harm Is Being Done 2. Making the Communication Metaphor Visible 3. What Does the Communication Metaphor Mean? 4. Where Does the Communication Metaphor Come From? 5. How Is the Communication Metaphor Perpetuated and Maintained? 6. Experiments in Imagining a Post–Communication Metaphor World Notes References Index

Sarah Read is Associate Professor of English and Director of Professional and Technical Writing at Portland State University.

Reviews for Busting the Myth of the Communication Metaphor: How Technical Writing Conventions Perpetuate Injustice

""Busting the Myth of the Communication Metaphor brings into sharp focus the various critiques of technical communication that scholars have had over the years, but with a lot more oomph. Read is clearly grappling with the field's role in (dis)organizing society, people, relations, allocating services, etc. and how facing up to that role can compel the field to do differently."" — Josephine Walwema, Coordinator, Technical and Professional Communication, University of Washington ""An excellent contribution to what is a new and very important aspect to our teaching and scholarly lives. This manuscript stuck with me and had me considering the ways I perpetuate in my own teaching the problems she discusses."" — Carla Kungl, Shippensburg University