Technical communication: Technician Vs Professional

Just like in other occupations, technical communication has levels of practice. Many employers -and even practitioners!- unfortunately have little or absolutely no idea of this differentiation and therefore, assume all technical communicators are same.

However, one can tell where they belong by assessing their fixation as tabulated 

Technical Communications’ Role in National Development

Given its rather subtle nature, technical communications is seemingly overshadowed by marketing communication, mass communication, and corporate communication. This is unarguably because the three draw heavily on mass media to facilitate delivery of output while the former mostly delivers passively through instructional leaflets, manuals, and online help guides.  

However, the practice has a vital part to play in industrialisation goals of any country.  This is even truer in the technology driven development grounded on constant innovations and scientific inventions. Incidentally, the practice goes beyond advancing new age necessities and enriches traditional needs. This is evident in promoting proper, valuable, and quality documentation and information.

It again, comes out to bring positive change in the society through providing tactics and ideas for civil advocacy.  Great speeches are products of technical communications; and so are well written constitutions, white and green papers; alongside petitions for policy and lawmaking. It enhances governance through endorsing transparency and accountability culture. 

Under the industrial sphere this practice plays the most exceptional role. No other branch in communication can produce quality user-instructions, installation and assembly manuals and specifications better than this specialisation. The profession helps engineers and technologists produce higher value productivity. The deliverables of this being that equipment and technology developed is used well by ensuring dangers and vulnerabilities are minimised, wastage is reduced, and maximum utility is realised.

In the administrative space, the practice is responsible for developing of contracts and documentation. Professionals in the legal, accounting, and human resources fraternity are assisted. Writing of company and job profiles; drafting of employment and supply contracts; producing service charters and strategic plans; as well as business reports presented as annual financial or economic reports are evidence of output. 

There is a clear contribution under commercial realm. For example, when communication is used in marketing pharmaceuticals, marketers will not use pure marketing communication strategies that employ popular inducements such as “Buy -one -get one -free” unless they are dealing with non-prescription products. They instead use technical communication approaches since the motive is not to sell large quantities but rather right and accurate dosage.  

Last but not least, it is useful in the academia world. The writing of first-rate research papers, topnotch articles and quality tutorials utilises the resource. All these play a role in building a country economically, socially, and politically.  

The specialisation is decidedly professional in two ways. The first is that it is a language for all experts communicating their work to non-members. This means professionals in their specific jurisdictions must remove jargon from conversations for the sake of clarity and comprehension.  The second is that communication practitioners are capably trained and employed to bridge hurdles in the flow of information from technical experts to lay people.

ROGERIAN ARGUMENT

Rogerian argument is considered persuasive because it employs a rhetorical strategy which emphasises communicating from the other person's point of view. Its strength lies in the demonstration that the writer not only understands the reader's position, but also that the writer's position is importantly informed by that understanding. It further shows constant respect for the reader's point of view.  It is persuasive because the writer emphasizes cooperation over conflict and shows the need to build or discover links to encourage trust.

SIGNIFICANCE OF ROGERIAN ARGUMENT TO TPC

Technical prose can be and is overtly persuasive.  The reality is that writers of technical prose write all kinds of persuasive documents: proposals for grants, employment letters, feasibility reports, general reports, user guides and site assessments among others. These documents are directly or indirectly persuasive. It is useful for writers of technical prose do more than just inform and explain issues, they need to persuade the reader to agree with their point of view or to perform the instructions in the sequence they think they should be performed. By doing this they are not being entirely objective.

 Whether as a technical writer you are writing a grant proposal, scientific journal article, lab reports, or user manuals you are representing a point of view, advocating a position, arguing for one way of understanding information or doing something rather than another way. David Locke is of the opinion that there is nothing like an impersonal person- even a scientist- and, consequently, no such thing as purely objective discourse.

Whereas Rogerian argument is not the only persuasive argument since there are others for instance, the Aristotle (also called the traditional argument), which exploits the language's capacity for arousing emotion in order to strengthen position and the Toulim logic which helps shape the content, style and organization of the document; however Rogerian is unique in that it emphasizes the descriptive, dispassionate use of language and is mutually supportive and cooperative. It proves to be successful on highly resistant audiences.