NICOLE O’CONNELL

Recognizing Historical Tactical Technical Communication

What question or problem did you examine, and why?

My research project, “Recognizing Historical Tactical Technical Communication,” examined user-generated tactical technical communication from around the turn of the twentieth century and argued that these historic communications should be treated as valuable technical communication in scholarship and classrooms today.

I chose to focus on these concepts because they all greatly interest me. My initial ideas for the project involved technical communication throughout history and its connections to ethics. After reading Kimball’s “Tactical Technical Communication” and Jones, Moore, & Walton’s “Disrupting the Past to Disrupt the Future: An Antenarrative of Technical Communication,” I realized that using tactical technical communication would be a helpful tool in building a social-justice-focused antenarrative of technical communication.

What excited you most about your research?

First and foremost, I really enjoyed learning more about the topics. I love history, and a lot of my past research has focused on this turn-of-the-century timeframe. My favorite part of this project was looking at primary sources of the time. In my paper, I examine an advice column from “The Brown Book,” a women’s magazine in the early 1900s. I argue that this text could be considered tactical technical communication. In the column, readers of the magazine proposed problems and explained their solutions. These authors were not professional writers, but they still used their own expertise to communicate with others and provide assistance for certain tasks.

Other than my strong interest of these topics, I was excited to see how my findings could be applied to practice. I am a teaching fellow and teach technical communication, so it was wonderful to study concepts that I could implement into my classes. Technical communication is a required class for many students, but students may not see themselves as technical communicators. Expanding the definition of technical communication by including antenarratives and tactical technical communication is a way to show that technical communication is and has been much more prevalent than we may initially believe.

How does this research reinforce or change your work as a professional? 

This research project reinforced my interests in intersections between technical communication, social justice, and history. It was very motivating to see that I could combine my interests into a useful project that I could be proud of. My project has encouraged me to keep researching these intersections to see what lessons can be learned and what can apply to learning spaces today.