Carliner

After several weeks of articles about the nature of professionalization, and whether technical communication is a profession, I feel like the Carliner article clarified the conversation for me. Until now, we've mostly been considering the question of whether technical communication is a profession, or not. It seemed like you had to fall on one side of the question or the other. I think Carliner makes the point that it's not so clear.

The issue can't be so clearly black and white because, as Carliner notes, different stakeholders hold a spectrum of views. It's just not correct to say that everyone is either fully on board with professionalization, or totally opposed to it. I have a feeling the position of quasiprofessionalism fits many people's perspectives, and these views aren't fully pro- or anti-professionalization. 

Many employers may fit into the position of contraprofessionalism. Why insist on external standards when your only concern is finding someone who can do the job you want? Likewise, many organization members (especially active ones) may champion formal professionalism, and the certification it encourages. This leaves a lot of practicing communicators whose own feelings may fall somewhere in between.

On a side note, I found Carliner's definitions to occupation and profession to be baffling. They're not only different from the uses we've read so far; they're practically inverted from what I'd expect. He even notes that what he calls an occupation is referred to as a profession in other articles in the same issue. While he notes that his terminology is different, he doesn't, in my opinion, justify it.

Hallier & Malone

I didn't appreciate the historical context of Light's essay when I first read it last week. I was able to read it in a contemporary context. That speaks to both the continuing challenges in the technical communication field, and Light's foresight in articulating them. As I'd expect from an accomplished technical writer, he explains his topic clearly and concisely. Hallier and Malone add context by shedding light (sorry) on the author's own life.

I wonder how much Light's extraordinary credentials played into his suggestions for professionalization. Five degrees is remarkable in any fields, and in any era. His career-long focus on health sciences may speak to the importance he places on a scientific background for technical writers. Focus on subject matter knowledge, as opposed to some general standards, has been mentioned as one of the challenges to professionalization of technical communication that we've read about.

Reading Light's suggestions in a 21st-century context, I think that a scientific background is just as important as he claimed in 1960. However, I see it as less of a preparation for writing in some specific field, and more as training in critically analyzing and translating scientific information in general. Clearly explaining some of the world's most opaque and esoteric knowledge speaks seriously to a technical writer's merits.

Light & Malone

I took away from the previous articles by Faber and Savage that there was no easy way to define professionalization, and that technical communication strove for that status, but hadn’t quite reached it. The articles by Light and Malone expand on these topics. Light makes a point of emphasizing how important status—specifically “professional” status—is to practitioners. I understand how both an inner drive for success and the desire to be recognized by others’ standards can increase satisfaction. It’s not unusual that technical communicators would want a status that improves how they feel about their work.

Malone’s article elaborates on how, not just why, technical communication organizations have strived for just such a status. I take from this extensive history the lesson that the effort to attain professional recognition itself can raise the very standards expected of professionals. While I’m as much a fan of Robert Hamlett’s term “publications engineer” as Light is (which is to say, not at all), I appreciate his Code of Ethics for Technical Writers. Such an effort is hardly trivial. It forces practitioners to think seriously about the value of their work, regardless of context, client, or company. All technical communicators adhering to such standards, no matter how basic, would undeniably be a step toward professional status.

I still can’t say that technical communication has achieved professional status. There is still a serious disparity between the expectations of technical communication societies and most employers of technical communicators. While I agree with Malone that the efforts of those societies to push for professional standards has yielded achievements, the fact that the effort is still unfolding tells me that some crucial piece has yet to fall into place.

Job ad analysis

I analyzed five job ads for how their language, format, and content convey the expectations and requirements for applicants. These insights will help applicants write resumes and cover letters, and prepare for interviews appropriately for each position.

Attachment: Job Ad Analysis

Technically professional communicators? (Savage)

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.

Professional communication (Faber)

The notion of “the professions” that Faber uses in his article is interesting, but also comes across as very quaint. This probably has some relation to the issue (as he considers it) of increasing de-professionalization of the fields he considers. It’s a seductive quality to have for a job, to be able to trace it back to the medieval notion of guilds of practitioners jealously guarding their secrets. But I think the era of doctors, lawyers, and academics being separate and elite has long since passed. I’m not entirely sold on Faber’s position that this is largely, or even partly, due to the use of “professional communication” as a “catchall term,” divorced from his definition of the professions.

I’m glad Faber brings up information availability as a factor in de-professionalization. I can’t tell if Faber views this as more negative than positive. It’s true that a professional message can be “immediately subject to ridicule or challenge” (326), but is this uniformly bad? When it leads to children not being vaccinated because their parents simply refuse to heed the advice of doctors, it’s probably detrimental. But do we really want to go back to a time when access to “elite knowledge” was privileged? This doesn’t need to coexist with disrespect of professionals’ pronouncements. Isn’t it possible that greater access to knowledge can make a general audience more receptive and understanding of professionals, as opposed to “priests” passing down mystical knowledge?

As we enter an era of wider access to knowledge, it is also an era of greater specialization of knowledge. It takes a higher degree of precision and a narrower focus to make discoveries or expand human understanding. This is a natural product of centuries of invention and expansion of knowledge. If anything, we need professionals more than ever to explain what they do to audiences. A century ago, a medical doctor probably could have understood the broad strokes of the average physics journal article. Not likely today. What happens when the average person theoretically has access to the sum of human knowledge, but can’t understand most of it? Some space must always exist for professional communication.

Faber, B. (2002). Professional Identities: What is Professional about Professional Communication? Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 16, 306-337.

Industry Report

Abstract
The scientific technology industry creates software for use by scientists and engineers. Drawing on the examples of National Instruments and a practicing scientist-turned-software-developer, an overview of the the industry's professionals, their skills, and duties, is presented. An examination is then given of how technical communicators work within the industry.

Full report