2011 Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Conference

On 8 October 2011, I was fortunate enough to present a paper at the 2011 Rocky Mountain Modern Languages Association in Scottsdale Arizona. I had never been to Scottsdale but I found it beautiful. The weather was perfect and I had a great time wondering around the Old Town district. Unfortunately, I did not get to visit The Poisoned Pen; an independent bookstore that specializes in crime fiction, carrying British and Canadian as well as American titles. I love mysteries and I would have spent way too much time and money there. Still, I would that I could have visited; next time!

At least the conference was great! Here is my proposal:

Mining YouTube to Research “Real-World” Intercultural Communication Contexts for the Service-Level Technical Writing Classroom

Abstract

Analyzing and articulating different audiences is a significant challenge for students of technical communication. Teaching intercultural writing to beginning technical communication students can often seem manufactured and artificial. By exploring cultural expectations in “real-world” contexts, instructors of technical communication can provide these future practitioners of technical writing the tools necessary to identify and articulate specific targeted audiences within a global environment.

This paper/presentation examines how to best use YouTube, a popular video sharing website on which both companies and consumers can upload and view videos, to study and identify differing intercultural “real-world” communication contexts. To do so, I will first explore Edward Hall’s heuristic of High- and Low-context cultures and how culture is manifested in his “situation frame”, the smallest identifiable unit of culture. Next, I will demonstrate where to find and how to use videos posted on YouTube to provide insight to technical writing students into the cultural norms and expectations of a given, targeted, cross-cultural audience. Finally, I will explore how to synthesize the cultural research conducted by students on YouTube with Hall’s heuristic of High- and Low-context into explicit writing strategies to a targeted, “real-world” audience.

Essentially, I introduce Edward T. Hall's heuristic of High/Low Context and demonstrate how students can collect data from cultures by analyzing primary sources: TV commercials. Using Hall's model, students can conduct analysis on these commercials and construct rhetorical strategies--based on Hall's model--to reach their targeted audience. For instance, this commercial is targeted to Americans:

Here you can see how the authors demonstrate the features, explain the rationale behind everything, and privilege the technology--all signs of a Low Context culture. Now look at this commercial for French consumers:

This commercial is different in that it focuses on human relations, unspoken rules of behavior, and the technology is not privileged--all signs of a High Context culture. Although this is a simplistic example, students can learn more by searching more commercials or focusing on one product and researching how this product is marketed to different cultures.

Here are my slides:

If you are so inclined, or if you suffer from insomnia, you can read more about my conference presentations at Academia.edu.

-Safari Bob

2010 Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Conference

On 14 October 2010, I was fortunate to present a paper at the 2010 Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association (RMMLA) conference in Albuquerque, NM. Now I love Albuquerque and I have attended some conference there every year since 2006 (5 total) so I was really hoping to get to participate. Once I got there, however, I could little believe how friendly and open the other conference attendees were both at my presentation and out by the coffee/tea bar. In addition, I listened to some fine papers in both Technical communication and literature. I hope that I will be able to attend next year in Scottsdale, AZ and, if you study literature, writing, or technical communication, you should too. Here is a snapshot of my presentation:

Multi-dimensional Audience Analysis: Synthesizing Technical Expertise and Cultural Dimensions as Audience Heuristic

Abstract
Analyzing and articulating different audiences is a significant challenge for students of technical communication. Instructors of technical communication can provide these future practitioners with the tools to accurately identify and profile specific audiences by introducing heuristics that synthesize dimensions of technical expertise and culture. By practicing how to use this heuristic in ‘real-world’ contexts, instructors can provide students the tools necessary to identify and articulate specific targeted audiences within a global environment.

In this presentation, I first briefly examine two common audience analysis heuristics: technical expertise and dimensions of culture. Both approaches can provide valuable guidelines for practitioners of technical communication to assemble effective audience analyses for their writing projects.

Next, I articulate how technical communicators can benefit from incorporating these heuristics into the classroom. Specifically, technical communication students can function as symbolic-analytic workers and information architects as they synthesize technical expertise with cultural dimensions in order to analyze a specific audience for a deliverable such as technical instructions.

Finally, I offer a pedagogical approach to introducing heuristics of technical expertise and cultural dimensions into the service-level technical communication classroom. Specifically, I introduce my heuristic approach to audience analysis in the classroom: The Technical Frame.

Presentation Slides





















If you are so inclined, or if you suffer from insomnia, you can read more about my conference presentations at Academia.edu.

-Safari Bob

Science 2.0: Open Science via Web 2.0 Technologies (Intro)

Last week I presented a paper at the College English Association 2010 Conference in San Antonio Texas. For some strange reason, I actually received three or four requests for copies of the paper I presented. Although I decided to not offer the full text in this forum, I have decided to publish the introduction here on the blog. If you would like to read it, I will be happy to send you a copy via the eerie power of the Internets. So if you are suffering from insomnia, here is your treatment. Enjoy!


Science 2.0: Open Science via Web 2.0 Technologies

In his article, “Science 2.0: Great New Tool, or Great Risk?” for Scientific American, M. Mitchell Waldrop (2008, January 9) experiments with ‘networked journalism’ by allowing the readers of this article to contribute to his understanding of Science 2.0. He describes this article as a “particularly apt candidate” for this kind of collaborative journalism due to the subject of Science 2.0, which he describes as “how researchers are beginning to harness wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 technologies as a potentially transformative way of doing science” (p. 1). This iteration of his article is a draft and the contributions of readers were assimilated into the final product published in the following April edition. In other words, Waldrop (2008) is using the platforms that allow Science 2.0 to exist to inform his future article about Science 2.0.

Certainly, the World Wide Web (WWW) has transformed the ways many people today approach business, conduct journalism, connect with friends, and receive education. Web 2.0 technologies are reinventing the identity of educational institutions across the world. Social web tools, such as Weblogs, wikis, and podcasts, are changing the ways businesses, libraries and universities conduct commerce, define education and information literacy (Richardson, 2007, p. 62; Kraft, 2007, p. 34). Real Simple Syndication (RSS) tools allow users to create and subscribe to every kind of information (and misinformation) imaginable (Marsh, 2006, p. 340). As Richard Berry (2006) describes it, Web 2.0 tools “allow anyone—individual or corporate—to produce content for audiences who do not particularly care where it comes from” (p. 158).

Science, and specifically how research is conducted, has also noticed the potential and the pitfalls associated with the appropriation of Web 2.0 technologies into its processes of inquiry and publication. Advocates of incorporating these technologies into scientific research argue for “openness as cooperation” while opponents warn that this openness is dangerous: “using blogs and social networks for your serious work feels like an open invitation to have your online lab notebooks vandalized--or worse, have your best ideas stolen and published by a rival” (Waldrop, 2008, p. 2). Although these reservations in the scientific community are often understood as the conflict between “public science” and corporate “industrial profit-goals” (David, 1998, p. 15), Daryl E. Chubin (1985) warns against this over simplification of the ‘scientific community’ as ignoring “the subtleties that characterize [scientific] practice and defy ideal-types” (p. 74).

This paper seeks to examine these subtleties that characterize the practices of the scientific community by exploring this one question: How have the tools of Web 2.0 changed or influenced the way scientists conduct their research? In order to understand how these tools are used in science today, this paper will first examine the concept of Open Science and how it relates to Science 2.0. After examining the context in which Open Science operates, a set of criteria will be offered in order to describe the practice of Science 2.0. Next, this paper will examine how some practitioners of science use Science 2.0 tools to conduct research. Specifically, this paper will contain a cursory rhetorical analysis of The Mimulus Community, a discussion group in OpenWetWare—a wiki dedicated to open research using Science 2.0 tools—in order to understand how some scientific researchers are using Science 2.0 to cooperate with each other’s research and to publish their results. Ultimately, this paper seeks to provide a more complete understanding of how some scientists are shaping research through the new software technologies that enable the practice of Science 2.0.

(Copies of complete text is available upon request)

-Safari Bob

References for this Post

• Berry, R. (2006). Will the iPod kill the radio star? Profiling podcasting as radio. The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 12 (2), 143-162.



• Chubin, D. E. (1985). Open science and closed science: Tradeoffs in a democracy. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 10 (2), 79-81.



• David, P. A. (1998). CLIO and the economic organization of science: Common agency
  contracting and the emergence of “open science” institutions. AEA Papers and Proceedings, 88 (2), 15-21.



• Kraft, M. (2007). Integrating and promoting medical podcasts into the library collection. Medical Reference Services Quarterly, 26 (1), 27-35.



• Marsh, C. (2006). Aristotelian ethos and the new orality: Implications for media literacy and media ethics. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 21 (4), 338-352.



• Richardson, W. (2007). The online edge: Online-powered school libraries. District Administration, 43 (1), 62-63.



• Waldrop, M. M. (2008, January 9). Science 2.0: Great new tool, or great new risk? Scientific American. Retrieved April 19, 2008, from http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=science-2-point-0-great-new-tool-or-great-risk



• Waldrop, M. M. (2008, April 21). Science 2.0—Is open Access Science the Future? Scientific American. Retrieved April 23, 2008, from http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=science-2-point-0

CEA 2010 and The Alamo

I attended the College English Association 41st Annual Conference in San Antonio, Texas this weekend. This is the first time I attended the CEA conference but I hope that it is not the last time. The conference theme was "Voices" and I presented on Science 2.0 and how Web 2.0 tools are being used to open science to public scrutiny and enable the voices of science technicians. I met many wonderful English scholars from all across the USA who were nothing but kind to me and the panel discussions were truly engrossing.

I was last in San Antonio in 1998 for an RTDA show and I have always regretted not going to the Alamo so this time I made time to find it (and I was not alone!). That is one busy tourist destination!



Of course on trip to San Antonio is complete without a trip to the River Walk. The last time I visited, the River Walk was not so impressive. I think that half of Texas was looking for a place to eat along the waterway.



I ended up at an English pub that allowed pipe smoking and offered free WiFi. The food was not especially great and they did not offer free Diet Coke refills, but the evening was cool, the servers were friendly, and everyone was having a good time.



Good times. Now I have to finish the dissertation.

-Safari Bob