Sociotechnical communication in engineering: an exploration and unveiling of common myths

Introduction

As an area of scholarly interest, engineering communication has begun to come into its own. Its emergence as a dynamic area is not new, but recent efforts have greatly promoted the importance of engineering communication in multiple contexts.

Historical accounts accentuate the degree to which the development of engineering communication is linked to technical communication.1 Indeed, from its inception in the US ‘until the 1950s technical writing and engineering writing weresynonymous.’2 At different junctures over the past 40 years, US engineering communication has been buffeted by several factors, including

the institutionalization of WAC/WID [writing across the curriculum/writing in the disciplines] programs, the growth of technical communications as an academic discipline, increasing uses of technologies in the field of composition, a renewed emphasis on the quality of undergraduate education in engineering, and criteria and procedures for accrediting engineering programs.3

Although the evolution of engineering communication has followed diverse trajectories in other countries, many countries have experienced solid connections between technical and engineering communication.4

Engineering communication has also been bolstered by engineers and those who hire them. For instance, in a survey of over 1600 individuals in organizations who have extensive experience hiring US engineers, respondents were asked to rank all of the student outcome Criterion 3 competencies (a–k) of the Accreditation Board ofEngineering and Technology. Of all the competencies, the one they ranked the highest – even above highly technical ones – was the ability ‘to communicate effectively.’5 Such calls for engineers to communicate effectively are common. For example, in the US National Academy of Engineering publication, The Engineer of 2020, communication is among the top 10 traits for the next generation of engineers.6

Despite such growing interest in and importance placed on engineering communication, scholars and instructors in departments, programs, or institutions focused on engineering education still struggle to garner space for communication in the curriculum. Of course, this problem is far from novel. Over a century ago, at meetings of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, leaders called for the elimination of communication and other humanities/social science courses due to the crowded nature of the engineering curriculum.7 Understanding of the value of communication has grown in recent decades. Yet the quantity and complexity of technical courses in the engineering curriculum have grown exponentially since the early 1900s, making the engineering curriculum only more crowded and curricular real estate even more highly prized.

Fortunately, increased legitimacy for engineering communication has been accompanied by a crescendo of scholarly interest in this area over the past two decades. That interest has been manifested in many forms. For example, in 1999, Youra served as a guest editor for a special issue on communication across the engineering curriculum in Language and Learning Across the Disciplines (now Across the Disciplines).8 That same year, Bazerman guest edited a special issue on engineering genre in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Transactions on Professional Communication (T-PC).9 In T-PC in 2008, a special issue appeared on engineering communication, guest edited by Paretti and McNair.10 According to a survey reported in 2007, T-PC is the top technical communication journal in Australia/Asia and Europe and among the top five in the US.11 From 1958 to 1971, the journal that is now T-PC was called Transactions on Engineering Writing and Speech.

Engineering communication has also continued to evolve in part because it remains an interdisciplinary pedagogical and research area, of interest to many but owned by no single discipline. Although interdisciplinary status may hamper the ability of engineering communication to receive more widespread academic recognition in still silo-laden academia, scholars and instructors from multiple backgrounds animate engineering communication, including technical communication, composition and rhetoric/writing studies, rhetorical studies, rhetoric of science studies, science and technology studies, communication studies, and others. That this theme issue on engineering communication is situated in an interdisciplinary journal for engineering studies scholars is yet another sign of growing interest.

Exciting challenges to traditional notions of communication often arise from this rich variety of perspectives. In addition to the aforementioned controversy over curricular real estate for communication initiatives, controversy also surrounds whatit means to communicate effectively. In this vein, recent trends in engineering communication programs have been identified, such as the expanded array of foci under the broad communication umbrella: these reflect the reality that written communication does not occur in a vacuum and is generally embedded in contexts involving oral, visual, and electronic communication.12 Others have examined theimportance of nonverbal13 and listening communication.14 Also, engineering communication has played an emerging role in research on engineering and sustainable community development15 as well as engineering and social justice.16

More recently, such educational and empirical scholarship has been a defining characteristic of engineering communication. If engineering communication appears poised to reach new levels, it may be in part due to two factors. One of those is seminal, foundational texts such as Winsor's Writing Like an Engineer: A Rhetorical Education and works by Bazerman, Giesler, and others.17 A second factor is more recent pedagogical, theoretical, and research innovations, which are being showcased in multiple venues. For instance, in addition to novel ideas appearing regularly in T-PC, Technical Communication Quarterly, and other journals, new research and pedagogical innovations have appeared in several recent books focused on engineering communication, such as Learning to Communicate in Science and Engineering: Case Studies from MIT and Engineering Communication: From Principles to Practice, and others.18 A forthcoming series from Wiley and IEEE will also feature several books devoted to a range of engineering communication topics.19 Engineering communication research, theory, and practice are also well represented at multiple conference venues.20 From this emerging body of research onengineering communication, several recurring themes have surfaced. In many cases, these themes have overturned previous misconceptions or myths, and a few of these myths are presented here.21

Common myths about engineering communication

Myth: communication can be purely technical and neutral

In a 1965 article, an author maintained that technical writing is clear, precise, and not open to interpretation.22 However, today we realize that the phrase technical communication may be a misnomer; such communication is never purely technical. Engineering communication (as one form of technical communication) is always embedded in organizational and social contexts that shape (and are shaped by) its intertwined form and content. That is, in communication, the technical cannot be wholly separated from the social. Hence, a better descriptor would be sociotechnical engineering communication. That term remains flexible enough to extend to multiple contexts: about engineering communication generally, among multiple stakeholders of engineering communication (including engineers and non-engineers), within engineering education and engineering practice, and more.

The technical and neutral myth also overlooks the fact that engineering communication is produced by human agents, frequently engineers, who might aspire to neutrality but cannot be entirely neutral since they occupy positions and perspectives within an organization, culture, nation, and more. These positions and perspectives shape their communication. Stone's work on how data shapes policy also reinforces why engineering communicators cannot be entirely neutral. Stone points out that numbers generally involve assumptions that can be explicit or masked (intentionally or otherwise) from those interpreting the data; also, much ambiguity can exist in what to measure, what not to measure, and how to classify or weigh certain measures.23 Thus, engineering communication cannot be purely technical or neutral because it is produced by humans situated in particular places in time, shaped by their local, historical, sociological, and other contexts.

Myth: data speak for themselves

The myth that engineering communication was purely technical and neutral relates to another myth: engineering communication involves data that speak for themselves. Much research has revealed the limits of such thinking, accentuating why data require spokespersons to manage potential ranges of interpretations. For instance, research on the Space Shuttle Challenger underscores why engineering data need interpretive guides. Engineers at Morton Thiokol, the firm that designed the solid-rocket boosters, had test data indicating that the joint sealing the O-ring (that eventually failed) was sensitive to cold. However, they assumed that the data spoke for themselves, so they merely sent the data to their managers and NASA colleagues, expecting them to arrive at the same interpretation. They provided no clear indication of how they interpreted that data nor of what it implied. However, NASA managers were factoring in many other data points, one of which was that they had had 24 successful launches with the O-ring, and some of those on cold mornings. Bycommunicating only data, those engineers failed to communicate effectively.24 Areport by the (Space Shuttle) Columbia Accident Investigation Board also unveils the ways in which critical information can become obscured or lost by conveying data only via unclear PowerPoint slides.25 Other research has confirmed the importance of engineers serving as interpretive data guides.26

These myths serve as background for the research in this issue, as the studies here directly or indirectly address both myths. They also link to some familiar themes among engineering studies scholars, who are keenly aware of the myth of neutrality of engineering discourse and engineers’ penchant for seeking protection in a positivist realm of ‘objectivity’ or ‘neutrality.’27

Engineering communication through multiple cases and lenses

The articles in this theme issue provide diverse lenses on a common phenomenon: sociotechnical engineering communication. In ‘Winds of Change: communication and wind power technology development in Denmark and Germany from 1973 to ca. 1985,’ Kristian H. Nielsen and Matthias Heymann present an engaging case study in contrasts. From the early 1970s to the mid-1980s, several countries embarked on wind power technological development, but some were more successful than others. What differences led to greater success for those in Denmark than in Germany? Among other contributing factors, the styles, types, and means of sociotechnical communication played a pivotal role in the evolution of wind power technology development in the two countries. Neilsen and Heymann's richly detailed, well-researched account delineates how and why. They also indicate the role played by other factors that can facilitate – or, when absent, hinder – effective communication, which in turn shapes wind power technology development. Those other factors included innovation approaches, social institutions, shared identity and goals, and awillingness to engage in open communication, and fostered (in Denmark's case) or hampered (in Germany's case) effective sociotechnical communication among heterogeneous networks of engineers and other actors. This captivating historical case addresses an important question: in what ways does effective sociotechnical communication hinge on favorable social conditions?

Sociotechnical engineering communication also comes to the fore in April A. Kedrowicz and Katie Sullivan's article, ‘Professional identity on the Web: Engineering blogs and public engagement.’ An examination of engineers’ blog communication unveils insights into their communicative choices and professional identity constructions. Although blogs hold the potential for a heightened level of engagement between engineers and the public, according to the authors’ content analysis of top engineering blogs, many engagement opportunities are missed, and engineers’ communication choices exacerbate the top-down deficit model of science communication. The deficit model is exemplified by situations in which engineers or scientists view the public as holding certain information deficits, with the underlying assumption that once those are corrected via communication, any controversy about engineering or science research will simply disappear. Findings particularly underscore how engineers present themselves online in ways that restrict or facilitate a publicly engaging persona by looking at how engineers substantiate their claims and the degree to which they explore the social relevance of technology. The authors suggest that the way in which engineers are socialized and expected to communicate in engineering contexts carries over into the blog genre, where they continue to maintain ‘objective’ or ‘neutral’ personae, accentuate technical facts over their social relevance, generally avoid appeals to ethos, rely greatly on appeals to logos and external authority, and eschew controversy. Collectively, these communication norms and choices can decrease public interest in engineering issues discussed on the blogs.

The next article, like the one by Nielsen and Heymann, is a study in contrasts, and like the one by Kedrowicz and Sullivan, explores salient issues of engineering identity. Marie C. Paretti and Lisa D. McNair, as their article title indicates, focus on ‘Analyzing the intersections of institutional and discourse identities in engineering work at the local level.’ As revealed through interviews and field notes from participant observations, those contrasting local levels involve engineers who are part of a new product development team in a manufacturing company and engineering students in an interdisciplinary senior design course, involving students and one instructor from each discipline – industrial design, marketing, and computer engineering. Contrasting how the institutional and discourse identities intersect in these two contexts allows Paretti and McNair to address important questions. How do engineers’ or engineering students’ everyday worksite language practices shape their identities as engineers? In these particular local contexts, how do the multiple dimensions of identity – social, institutional, discursive, etc. – interact? For those identities or aspects of identities restricted by local contexts, inwhat ways can engineers accept, resist, or subvert those identity dimensions through language? By exploring such questions, the authors suggest that – in these instances – placing engineers in narrow technical roles, as in the case of the manufacturing company, may not only constrain engineers’ identities but also contribute to constraining their designs, innovation capacities, and more. By contrast, in the design course, the presence of more holistic, flexible institutional spaces led to less constrictive identity boundaries, which facilitated more collaborative, robust interdisciplinary communication and teamwork and perhaps also design and innovation. Although that contrast is clear, the article deftly leaves readers wanting to know more about the complex interactions of multidimensional engineering identities.

Finally, Mary Pilotte and Demetra Evangelou explore how to foster effective sociotechnical communication across generations of engineers in ‘Building bridges: identifying generational communication characteristics to facilitate engineering collaboration and knowledge transfer across field-practicing engineers.’ Such communication is vital both financially and for the health of engineering as a field since engineering knowledge can be technical, contextual, and related to engineering organizational cultures; as engineers from the Baby Boom generation continue to retire en masse over the coming years, they will take with them valuable, accumulated knowledge gleaned from decades of engineering practice. A brief window of time exists in which they can impart that knowledge on a new generation of engineers. Using quantitative action research, Pilotte and Evangelou examine how survey data reveals communication preferences of experienced, retiring engineers and younger Millennial engineers; an understanding of that data can facilitate more effective corporate knowledge transfer. Findings indicate that although some communication differences exist among these two generations, ample commonalities connect them. Differences emerged on issues of culture, benefits, and the number ofcommunication channels, while similarities centered on communication competency, comfort, and channel preferences for face-to-face conversations and computer-mediated communication devices such as email. The study both addresses and raises new questions about the role of communication preferences in generational knowledge transfer among engineers.

Together, the articles in this issue reinforce why the aforementioned myths persist and are still rich constructs to unveil or explore in engineering communication. Take the myth that engineering communication is purely technical or neutral, not influenced by social factors. Readers of the article by Neilsen and Heymann see the role of the knowledge-sharing craftsman approach of the Danish engineers, who were embedded within a heterogeneous communication network strengthened by particular interfaces of social organizations with shared goals. In this case, engineering communication was successful in part because it was open to a variety of technical and social influences. Similarly, in Pilotte and Evangelou’s study, one underpinning assumption is that the communication between Baby Boom and Millennial engineers has been shaped by both their technical education as engineers as well as by the social milieu in which each generation was raised and the socialization within mostly for-profit corporate settings.

An awareness of the myth that data speak for themselves may be one of the catalysts for the manufacturing company engineers in Paretti and McNair's study to modify their means of communication. Such an awareness comes to the fore especially when the company engineers need to convey data to non-engineers; for example, those engineers convey the viability of designs selected by coworkers in marketing not via technical data but via a stoplight chart that shows when a design is not technically viable (red), may require additional study (yellow), or is generally feasible (green). By realizing that data do not speak for themselves and adjusting accordingly, these engineers are able to gain more interpretive control over the messages they convey. In Kedrowicz and Sullivan's study, they found that engineering blogs feature little to no extensive exploration of the social relevance of technology. One potential catalyst for avoiding social relevance discourse is the myth that engineering discourse is (or should be) neutral. Thus, to align with accepted disciplinary norms, writers in such blogs chose (consciously or otherwise) to exclude discussions that appeared to veer from the ‘neutral' communication norm. Undoubtedly, readers will find other instances of the exploration or unveiling of these myths. Collectively, these four articles stand to enhance the growing interest in and interdisciplinary range of engineering communication.

Notes

³Youra, “Communication Across the Engineering Curriculum.”

¹For instance, see Russell, Writing in the Academic Disciplines; Gianniny, “A Century of ASEE and Liberal Education”; and Neeley, “To Arrive Where We Started and Know the Place for the First Time?”

²Connors, “The Rise of Technical Writing Instruction in America.”

⁴For instance, see Malone, “Historical Studies of Technical Communication in the United States and England”; Kirkman, “From Chore to Profession”; and Connor, “History and the Study of Technical Communication in Canada and the United States.”

⁵Lattuca, Terenzini, and Volkwein, Engineering Change: The Impact of EC 2000.

⁶National Academy of Engineering, The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century; see also, for example, Fortenberry, “Teaching the Practical Skills.”

⁷Gianniny, “A Century of ASEE and Liberal Education.”

⁸Youra, “Communication Across the Engineering Curriculum.”

⁹Bazerman, “Introduction.”

¹⁰Paretti and McNair, “Introduction to the Special Issue on Communication in Engineering Curricula.”

¹¹Lowry et al., “A Scientometric Study of the Perceived Quality of Business and Technical Communication Journals.”

¹²For instance, see Leydens and Schneider, “Innovations in Composition Programs that Educate Engineers”; Powell et al., “The Learning Curve”; and Payne, Warnick, and Blakely-Duffelmeyer, “Introducing Multimodal Communication into a University's Discourse.”

¹³Burnett, “Refiguring Technologies in Multimodal Communication.”

¹⁴For instance, see Leydens and Lucena, “Listening as a Missing Dimension in Engineering Education”; Reid and Reed, “The Role of Participatory Listening in Collaborative Discourse”; and National Academy of Engineering, The Engineer of 2020.

¹⁵For instance, see Lucena, Schneider, and Leydens, Engineering and Sustainable Community Development; Leydens and Lucena, “Listening as a Missing Dimension in Engineering Education”; and Hasselkorn and Walton, “The Role of Information and Communication in the Context of Humanitarian Service.”

¹⁶Leydens, Lucena, and Schneider, “Are Engineering and Social Justice (In)commensurable?”

¹⁷Winsor, Writing Like an Engineer: A Rhetorical Education; Bazerman, Shaping Written Knowledge; Geisler, “The Relationship between Language and Design in Mechanical Engineering”; Artemeva, Logie, and St. Martin, “From Page to Stage”; and Herrington, “Writing in Academic Settings.”

¹⁸Poe, Lerner, and Craig, Learning to Communicate in Science and Engineering; Irish and Weiss, Engineering Communication; and see also Hart, Introduction to Engineering Communication.

¹⁹Wiley-IEEE PCS, “Professional Engineering Communication.”

²⁰For instance, annual conferences of the American Society for Engineering Education, conference on college composition and communication, international professional communication conference, and others.

²¹These myths are drawn from work by Paretti, McNair, and Leydens, “Engineering Communication.”

²²Britton, “What Is Technical Writing?”

²³Stone, “Numbers.”

²⁴Winsor, “Communication Failures Contributing to the Challenger Accident”; Winsor, “The Construction of Knowledge in Organizations”; and Herndl, Fennell, and Miller, “Understanding Failures in Organizational Discourse.”

²⁵National Aeronautics and Space Administration, “The Accident's Organizational Causes,” 191; and Tufte, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint.

²⁶Leydens, “Novice and Insider Perspectives on Academic and Workplace Writing”; and Mathison, “‘I Don’t Have to Argue My Design – The Visual Speaks for Itself’.”

²⁷For instance, see the case studies in Collins and Pinch, The Golem at Large.