Savage wonders whether technical communication has reached the level of a profession. Although he notes that progress has been made, and continues, he sounds skeptical. I have to agree. Technical communication can't be explained as distinctly as law, medicine, or teaching. Those are professions that, while one may follow a circuitous route to, have fairly distinct requirements to practice. The common practice of technical communicators entering the occupation from other fields doesn't strike me as inherently nonsensical, much less wrong.
Maybe it's useful to question why an occupation develops into a distinct profession, in addition to how. Lawyers, doctors, and teachers have responsibilities to a wider public, at least theoretically, as Faber argued. This is why we have strict licensing standards for them. It wasn't always so. Go back a century, and a degree or two may be dropped. Two centuries ago, a practitioner may have needed nothing more than an apprenticeship, or membership in the educated gentry class. The standards that we now associate with professionalization developed because society demanded it of these people, with whom we trust our legal representation, health, and education, respectively.
Is the same demand there for technical communicators? I'm not so sure. This in no way diminishes the importance of good technical documentation. As Savage notes, the dismissive attitude of simply shipping cheap, quickly-written documents can seriously damage an organization's products and reputation. But this doesn't quite meet the measure of licensing and certification that the recognized professions use. As I said in my response to Faber, knowledge is becoming increasingly specialized. If the specialists themselves don't have the time or ability to communicate as well or as receptively as they used to, society should demand that our communicators be credentialed.
I think that your point about knowledge being increasingly specialized is at the heart of the issue of technical communication reaching the level of a profession. The need for skilled technical writers is obvious in all disciplines (and interdisciplinary) but it seems unlikely that there will be credentials that are universally accepted.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your assertion about why occupations develop into professions: that there are responsibilities to a wider public. That notion is what I appreciated about Faber's article as well. That idea seems conspicuously absent in Savage's discussion.
ReplyDeleteAs for a possible lack of demand from the public for professional technical communicators, I would agree as well, but I also think a profession could be created without demand. I think this is partially what Savage is advocating for in his extensive list of actions that technical communicators should take.
I completely agree with your point that there must be a public demand for requiring members of a profession to become certified. Because of the level of trust people must place in doctors, lawyers, and educators, they demanded that professionals in those fields meet certain criteria. However, companies seem to be content with hiring professional communicators either internally or from other backgrounds. Until the organizations that hire them demand that professional communicators meet certain credentials, I don't think that we will see widespread demand for professional communication certification.
ReplyDeleteI think you have hit on why Savage's chapter is so important. The question of why Tech Comm wants to be a profession. My best answer is because the members want it to be a profession.
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