Published on March 1, 2018

The March 2018 issue of the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication has recently been published online. If you are a paper subscriber, you will receive the issue, printed together with the June issue, in early June.

Volume 61, Number 1, March 2018

The content of this issue is listed in the post below.

Research Article—Communication Between Government Agencies and Local Communities: Rhetorical Analyses of Primary Documents in Three Environmental Risk Situations, by C. Boiarsky

This study examines letters responding to three environmental situations, the discovery of high levels of lead in school water in two cities and the need to flood lands to divert floodwaters from population centers. In the first two cases, the letters were ignored, but in the third, the letters’ instructions were followed. Rhetorical analysis revealed that in the first two cases, the letters were writer-based. The letters in the third case, however, were reader-based, providing the necessary information at the beginning and including sufficient details to enable readers to take the actions required.

Research Article—A Matter of Perspective: A Discursive Analysis of the Perceptions of Three Stakeholders of the Mutianyu Great Wall, by J. Feng, L. Dai, J. Jiang, R. Wei

This article investigates the different and competing perspectives of stakeholders of cultural heritage sites by examining the Mutianyu Great Wall in China. Findings indicate that the business operator perceived the site as a scenic spot for modern rural tourism, UNESCO emphasized its historical and cultural significance, and international tourists perceived a hybrid image. The study suggests practical implications for heritage management and professional communication.

Research Article— Quantification of Engineering Disciplinary Discourse in Résumés: A Novel Genre Analysis with Teaching Implications, by G. M. Fillenwarth, M. McCall, and C. Berdanier

Undergraduate engineering students often fail to receive instruction that is disciplinary-specific and emphasizes the persuasive function of résumés. This study investigates a way to quantify the quality of engineering résumés, focusing on the use of disciplinary discourse. It found significant differences in the use of disciplinary discourse among strong, moderate, and weak résumés. Though these results are not generalizable due to the small corpus size, they indicate that disciplinary discourse may be a fruitful area for future research on résumés and the development of pedagogical materials.

Research Article—Rhetorical Differences in Research Article Discussion Sections of High- and Low-Impact Articles in the Field of Chemical Engineering, by B. Jin

This study delineates the rhetorical organization of chemical engineering research article (RA) discussion sections and explores the variations that distinguish discussion sections of high- and low-impact RAs. The findings indicate that discussion sections of highly cited articles tend to make use of the “Comment on results” move and the “Strengths/limitations of the study” move. The article explains the similarities and differences in the employment of moves and steps, and discusses the implications of the findings.

Case Study—Negotiating Multilingual Quality in Component Content Management Environments, by T. Batova

This case study examines the impacts of component content management (CCM) on the ways technical communicators, translators, and bilingual reviewers practice multilingual quality. It pinpoints contradictions in how stakeholders understand and approach quality, and finds that those contradictions became more dramatic after the transition to CCM. The article concludes that developing strategies for negotiating their understandings of and approaches to multilingual quality in the new paradigm is necessary for effective cross-functional and cross-cultural collaboration. Technical communicators are well-positioned to take on leadership roles in developing such strategies.

Teaching Case—The Effect of Active Learning Strategies on Communication Apprehension in Information Systems Students in Taiwan, by T. Lie

Information technology (IT) professionals need both technical and communication skills to be effective. However, developing communication competence does not receive enough attention in IT higher education, especially since communication apprehension is a key obstacle in achieving communication effectiveness. This study implemented active learning strategies to develop students’ communication competence and decrease their communication apprehension. These strategies increased students’ willingness to communicate, which is the prerequisite for developing effective communication.

Book Review— Wade L. Robison, Ethics Within Engineering: An Introduction, Reviewed by C. Hyde

Book Review—Jonathan Buehl, Assembling Arguments, Reviewed by S. J McElroy

The issue is available online at: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=47. Note that a user ID and password are required to view individual articles.