Technical communicators perform an important role in society, relaying complex messages in a clear and concise manner to people who would otherwise have to spend an inordinate amount of time tracking down this information for themselves. Among other things, technical communicators are responsible for writing software manuals and computer help systems, instruction manuals for everything from appliances to airplanes, and health-related pamphlets and warnings. If this information is misunderstood--either through the shortcomings of the writer or reader--the consequences can be devastating. Deaths can result from the miscommunication or misunderstanding of written instructions regarding drug dosage or chemical technologies (Moore 110, 115). When documents are too difficult to comprehend or use, people may lose money or benefits, and companies may lose customers and sales (Redish 2).

Traditionally, communication was explained as a static process in which a writer uses the text to pass information to the reader (Redish 7). This model failed to take into consideration the “social context, goals, knowledge, language, conventions, and awareness” of both readers and writers (Redish 8).

The notion that meaning lies in the text itself is no longer accepted as truth. In recent decades, the concept of the static communication model has been superceded by the realization that social factors play an important role in how writers write and how readers interpret a text. Mary B. Coney provides an example of this point of view:

No longer can one assume that meaning is something developed by independent researchers, encoded into messages, packed into containers, and sent off to readers who are isolated from these processes, or that language is simply the common, if sometimes unreliable, vehicle for conveying those messages. What was thought to be separate and stable has become contingent and dynamic (58).

This notion that meaning is contingent on social context appears to be at odds with the argument that empirically-applied, instrumental uses of discourse will best help writers achieve the greatest textual clarity. Does social constructionist theory detract from the aims of technical writers who wish to convey information as clearly as possible? Before considering this question in more detail, it might be helpful to elucidate what is meant by “social construction.”

The social construction of meaning

Thomas S. Kuhn’s seminal work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions contained the notion that different people could interpret the same words in different ways (Kuhn 200). In addition, “normal science and revolutions are…community-based activities” (Kuhn 179). Members of a scientific discourse community--for example, the “community” of molecular biologists, or physicists – share the same experiences and values and this ensures that most of the members of that community will agree with the same arguments (Kuhn 200).

Social constructionist thought, which now spans many disciplines including philosophy and anthropology, was in some ways fathered by these ideas (Bruffee 774). Kenneth Bruffee states, “a social constructionist position in any discipline assumes that entities we normally call reality, knowledge, thought, facts, texts, selves, and so on are constructs generated by communities of like-minded peers” (774). According to Linda Flower, “the meaning of a text is not an immutable feature residing in splendid isolation in the text itself. Instead it is a private construct created by a writer influenced by both text and the context in which he or she is reading” (538).

It may be helpful to understand social constructivist thought by comparing it with the opposite view, which could be referred to as “the cognitive theory of knowledge” (Bruffee 774) or the “cognitive process model” (Cooper).

One of the important assumptions of cognitive thought is that there must be a universal foundation, a ground, a base, a framework, a structure of some sort behind knowledge or beneath it, upon which what we know is built, assuring its certainty of truth… The social constructionist alternative to this foundational cognitive assumption is nonfoundational. It assumes that there is no such thing as a universal foundation, ground, framework, or structure of knowledge. There is only an agreement, a consensus arrived at for the time being by communities of knowledgeable peers. Concepts, ideas, theories, the world, reality, and facts are all language constructs generated by knowledge communities and used by them to maintain community coherence (Bruffee 766-777).

Because accurate conveyance of information is so important, and because technical communicators, along with their audience, are part of society, it would be helpful to examine the ways in which social constructionist theory shapes both writers and readers of technical documents. Since this theory is complex, I have broken it down into four components. These four approaches will help us to understand social construction in more detail, and assist us in discovering whether social construction is a useful concept for technical communicators, or a hindrance, as its detractors claim.

Four approaches

The four approaches can be summarized as follows: (1) The author is informed by his or her own history, background knowledge, discourse community, and current social context, and these factors influence the resulting text. (2) The reader is informed by his or her own history, background knowledge, and current social context--as well as by the discourse community of which he or she is a member – and this affects the way he or she reads and interprets a written work. (3) The author shapes his or her writing to fit the reading audience based on what he or she knows about the potential readers. (4) The reader’s notion of the author and his or her intentions shapes how the reader interprets the writing.

We will examine each of these aspects in turn.

(1) The social forces that shape writers

The cognitive process model describes the process of writing as one individual transcribing his or her own thoughts for a lone reader (Cooper 4). The writer in this model is isolated from the social world, and sees his or her goals “as originating primarily within himself and directed at an unknown and largely hostile other” (Cooper 4). The writer’s function is to discover the truth and communicate it (Cooper 4).

In contrast, the social constructionist view is that the writer is informed by his or her own history, background knowledge, discourse community, and current social context, and these factors influence the resulting text. Writers are influenced by the community in which they live and work (Cooper ix, 6-7). An author’s thoughts are not his or her own, original thoughts, but derive from the social interactions he or she has with peers, family or the media (Cooper ix). “A writer’s language originates with the community to which he or she belongs” (Bruffee 784). Thoughts come not from the individual but from the “vernacular language of that community” of which the author is a part (Bruffee 777).

How useful is this notion for technical communicators? As a writer, knowing that the language you use is derived from your own background and discourse community will remind you to adjust that language appropriately when you are writing for a different audience. For example, some of the words and phrases I am using to write this paper are derived from the technical communication discourse community, which enables me to communicate better with my peers in that community. Those outside the technical communication discourse community might have a difficult time understanding the paper because of this language. Knowing that this is so enables me to adjust my language--perhaps defining certain terms or elaborating on specific concepts--when I know that my audience will not be familiar with the vernacular of technical communication.

At the same time, the social constructionist notion of the discourse community can also assist a writer who is writing for his or her peers inside the community. Writers working within the boundaries of a discourse community may come to an agreement on certain terms, procedures or measurements--a process known as standardization (Moore 108-109). For example, medical professionals agree that the word “invalid” refers to a “disabled person,” while programmers agree that the word “invalid” means “erroneous” (Moore 109). Standardization is important because it leads to improved understanding and communication (Moore 109). In addition, “the process of standardization fits well into the theories of the social construction of knowledge” (Moore 109). Kuhn suggests another way in which this notion can be beneficial to members of a discourse community: a scientist will have more freedom to do more esoteric, groundbreaking research if he or she is not obliged to recapitulate terms and concepts with which members of the community are already familiar (19-20). By being aware of this, scientists--as well as members of other types of discourse communities--are able to write more concisely and clearly for their peers.

In this way, social constructionist theory can further the goal of accurately conveying a message, because if technical writers can tailor their language, subject and style to the needs of the people for whom they are writing, there is a greater likelihood that the message will be understood as it was intended.

(2) The social forces that shape readers

Like writers, readers are not immune to the influence of social factors. Flower suggests that, “the reader’s own goals, assumptions, and context play an enormous role in meaning making” (540). The reader is informed by his or her own history, background knowledge, and current social context--as well as by the discourse community of which he or she is a member--and this affects the way he or she reads and interprets a written work.

In his article, “Challenger and the Social Contingency of Meaning: Two Lessons for the Technical Communication Classroom,” Paul Dombrowski explains how the Challenger space shuttle disaster came about partly because of social forces that compelled certain individuals to interpret statements about the flight-readiness of the Challenger in a manner that suited themselves. In other words, management at Morton Thiokol Industries (MTI) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) heard what they wanted to hear from the engineers, and twisted the facts to suit their needs, resulting in a disastrous in-air explosion and the death of seven people. “The crucial question of whether the shuttle was flightworthy or not at a given time was ultimately answered less by hard data or even by the interpretation advanced by engineers but more by the conceptualization advanced by another, more powerful social group” (Dombrowski 81). Dombrowski suggests that it is crucial for technical communicators to recognize that meaning is derived more from social interpretations, than from facts, data and objects (81).

Stanley Fish holds the view that community members who tend to agree on the nature of reality will also tend to agree on the meaning of a text (141). Interpretation of a text’s meaning occurs in the context of the discourse community of which the reader is a part (Fish 141-142). His view places the locus of interpretive authority on the community, rather than within the individual reader, or the text itself (141-142). “It is perhaps not surprising that we structure information around our own purposes in reading and that we recall the ‘text’ we ourselves construct” (Flower 538).

So the social constructionist view is that meaning is constructed by the reader and/or the interpretive community. This is a rather difficult notion for some writers to accept, because it appears to remove the meaning-making authority from the writer, and give it to the reading audience. How might this concept be useful for technical communicators? When an author is aware that readers might not interpret the work as intended, he or she can take steps to increase the likelihood that the writing will be understood. This leads us to the next point.

(3) How writers conceive of readers

An author typically shapes his or her writing to fit the reading audience based on what he or she knows about the potential readers, in order to make it more likely that the text will be understood in the manner intended.

Since writing is primarily about communicating to a reading audience, the author must have some idea in mind about whom he or she is writing for (Ong 10-12). A writer can do this by: (a) mentally imagining or inventing the audience, based on possible reader roles from recent history, as Walter Ong suggests, (b) studying and analyzing the ways that typical readers generally understand or perceive certain kinds of writing, or (c) going directly to specific readers who will be a part of the actual, intended reading audience, and asking them for input. The first two methods – which are derived from the cognitive process model--are generally considered inadequate from the pure social constructionist point of view, because the reader is better thought of as real human being, not a mental construct. Cooper and Holzman criticize this aspect of the cognitive process model: “Whether the writer is urged to analyze or invent the audience, the audience is always considered to be a construct in the writer’s mind” (9). In keeping with the notion that writing is a social act, Cooper suggests that authors should communicate with real readers in the process of writing the text, ask for feedback, and revise accordingly (10-11).

Ann M. Blakeslee describes one such collaboration between readers and authors in her article “Readers and Authors: Fictionalized Constructs or Dynamic Collaborations?” She examines the writing process used by three physicists who were preparing an article to convince their colleagues in the fields of biology and chemistry that a variation of the Monte Carlo method was superior to the molecular dynamics method (24). The physicists obtained information about their audience by sharing drafts of their paper with real people working in the fields of biology and chemistry--the same people whom they wished to address in the final paper. They solicited comments and suggestions from these readers, anticipating only minor challenges and “requests for clarifications” (25). Instead, the feedback they received led them to realize they needed to make major changes to the paper in order to make it credible (27-31). The physicists ended up forming collaborations with the readers “which influenced the direction and shape of their work and arguments” (26). Ironically, this harkens back to an earlier point, that authors are influenced by their peers, and that these influences can change the course of a text.

It is not always feasible for a technical writer to share drafts of his or her work with actual readers. The process can be time-consuming, and the feedback received may not always be useful. However, in some cases, the time may be well spent, and the feedback is invaluable to the writer who is striving to ensure that his or her message will be conveyed to the reading audience.

(4) How readers conceive of writers

Social constructionist theorists would say that the reader’s notion of the “author” and the author’s intentions can shape how the reader interprets the writing. Regarding the notion of the “author”: if the reader believes that the author is credible, he or she is more likely to accept the author’s work (Blakeslee 26, 28; Foucault 6). The reverse is also true: as Solomon Asch observed in a study cited by Flower, readers interpreted the same sentences in different ways depending on who they thought authored the texts (Flower 538).

The reader’s view of the author’s intentions also influences the reader’s perceived meaning of the work. “Inferences about the writer’s intentions appear to be an essential building block--one that readers actively use to construct a meaningful text” (Flower 539). Flower demonstrates that readers construct scenarios to help them understand the text, and that these scenarios are very helpful in helping readers construct meaning, but that the meaning is not always what the author intended (545-546).

Some readers simply refused to give up their image of what the text should mean (based on their inferences about the author’s intentions), in the face of conflicting information in the text itself. Other readers gaily read through statements that directly contradicted their interpretation and seemed not to notice. (Flower 547-548, Emphasis in original.)

Janice C. Redish makes a similar point when discussing a study by John Carroll, in which readers “acted on the basis of their interpretations rather than on what the writer meant the text to say” (Redish 9).

This issue blends into the second approach, which dealt with how readers construct meaning based on what they already know. How can technical communicators expect to communicate a message successfully if readers are creating their own meaning from what they read, based on preconceived ideas about the author, the author’s intention, and the text itself? At first it seems that there is no way out of this morass. Yet accepting that meaning is socially constructed, and that people’s interpretations vary does not mean that a writer should give up hope of ever successfully communicating his or her intended message (Coney 61). Instead, a writer can accept this plurality and then find ways to improve the likelihood that his or her message will be communicated as intended.

Janice Redish concedes that “meaning does not reside in the text of a document; it exists only in the minds of communicators who produce documents and readers who use documents…a text can have as many meanings as it has readers” (7). But by studying the ways that readers use, read and interpret documents, Redish explains how technical communicators can “improve the chances that readers will understand their messages by taking into account readers’ knowledge, expectations, and styles and by using techniques that have been shown to match the way that readers approach documents” (19).

Conclusions

Social constructionist theory, much like the field of technical communication itself, is interdisciplinary and takes interdependent relationships into account (Bratchell 209). “The technical writer will seek to refine the language and control the plurality of interpretation, but an awareness of the possibilities of linguistic complexity in the communication situation can be a valuable corrective to over-optimistic formulations” (Bratchell 205). The recognition that both writers and readers control the text by means of their interpretation compels technical writers to consider the social and cultural context in which a text is produced and consumed (Bratchell 209).

Writers can increase the likelihood that their text will be comprehended by knowing the people for whom they are writing, and understanding how and why those readers interpret texts the way they do. There are a number of methodologies available for studying readers’ interpretations: an in depth analysis of these methods goes beyond the scope of this paper. I would suggest that researchers sympathetic to social constructionist theory should use the method of peer review described by Blakeslee more often. Perhaps a future article in the field could analyze the effectiveness of the three methods of studying readers’ responses (discussed in section 3) to determine which is most conducive to optimal communication.

In addition, writers interested in optimal communication should take an honest look at themselves and how their own background influences their writing. A writer can ask him- or herself: Why have I chosen to write about this particular topic? Do I have enough knowledge on this subject? Do I have enough interest in this topic to make it interesting to the reader? Why have I chosen to be a writer in this discipline instead of another? In doing this kind of self-analysis, a writer might discover that there is much to learn, or that he or she would be a more effective writer within the context of a different community, or by tackling a different subject matter. Acting on this awareness can help ensure that the writer is well equipped to be handling the task of conveying the message.

Clear communication can exist without social constructionist theory, but understanding how the social construction of meaning affects discourse and text comprehension gives writers another tool with which to enhance that communication. It is this understanding, endowed upon us by social constructionist theory, which is most valuable for technical communicators.

Works cited

Blakeslee, Ann M. “Readers and Authors: Fictionalized Constructs or Dynamic Collaborations?” Technical Communication Quarterly. 2.1 (1993): 23-35.

Bratchell, Dennis F. “Communication and Criticism.” Journal of Technical Writing and Communication.12.3 (1982): 201-211.

Bruffee, Kenneth A. “Social Construction, Language, and the Authority of Knowledge: A Bibliographic Essay.” College English. 48.8 (1986): 773-790.

Coney, Mary B. “Technical Readers and Their Rhetorical Roles.” IEEE Transactionson Professional Communication. 35.2 (1992): 58-63.

Cooper, Marilyn M. and Michael Holzman. Writing As Social Action. Boynton/Cook Publishers, 1986.

Dombrowski, Paul M. “Challenger and the Social Contingency of Meaning: Two Lessons for the Technical Communication Classroom.” Technical Communication Quarterly. 1.3 (1992): 73-86.

Fish, Stanley. “Change.” Doing What Comes Naturally. Durham and London: Duke University Press,1989. 141-160.

Flower, Linda. “The Construction of Purpose in Writing and Reading.” College English. 50.5 (1988):528-550.

Foucault, Michel. “What is an Author?” Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism. Ed. Josué V. Harai. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979. 141-160.

Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962.

Ong, Walter J., S.J. “The Writer’s Audience is Always Fiction.” Publication of the Modern Language Association. 90 (1975): 9-21.

Redish, Janice C. “Understanding Readers.” Techniques for Technical Communicators. Eds. Carol M. Barnum and Saul Carliner. New York: Macmillian, 1993. 1-23. [15-41 in original]