Decolonial Work Outside of the Technical Communication Classroom

Abstract

The field of technical and professional communication (TPC) has historically upheld white, patriarchal language practices without interrogation. While we are now in the time beyond what many scholars call the social justice turn in the field, which includes prioritizing oppressed voices and working from a decolonial framework, early-career scholars like myself are still left wondering how we go from the classroom to the field. As a TPC scholar and technical writer who often feels out of place in academia, I offer this narrative for future scholars and rhetoricians struggling to transition these ideas from the classroom to their professional industries. By describing my experiences as a technical writer in academia and beyond, I hope to inspire others (especially those newer to the field) to interrogate their own understanding of language and practices—and my own as a white, cisgender, able-bodied academic. It should not fall to oppressed voices to provide step-by-step guides for white folks to get it right, but the guides must especially be read and followed when they are written, and there is an ever-growing body of work from which we can draw. By relying on scholarship that calls out the need for both the expansion of the social justice turn in TPC and a deeper understanding of what it actually means to utilize decolonial methods, as well as describing my own sites of intervention at the professional services firm I work for, I hope to show readers how social justice-oriented academic practices can be incorporated into industry, even when that industry doesn’t allow for a full overhaul of the status quo.