Technical Communication and Social Justice

Technical and Professional Communicators as Advocates of Linguistic Justice in the Design of Speech Technologies

Halcyon Lawrence — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Despite claims of being a revolutionary technology, research demonstrates that speech technologies, broadly, and automatic speech recognition systems, specifically continue to demonstrate listening (recognition) bias against languages and dialects spoken by people of color, foreign speakers of English, and marginalized communities. Yet despite evidence of bias, listening devices are increasingly being used in US schools, prisons, courts of law, and workplaces such as call centers in India and the Philippines: spaces all disproportionately represented by people of color and foreign English speakers. The paper reframes the on-going conversation around linguistic representation in speech technologies as an urgent linguistic justice issue by highlighting the sociopolitical contexts in which these devices are used. I argue that technical communicators—both researchers and practitioners—are in an ideal position to advocate for a more socially just design of speech devices and to assess and mitigate potential harms to marginalized communities with varying language backgrounds.

BIPOC Graduate Students’ Coalitional Healing in Writing Programs and Colonial Institutions

Ruby Mendoza, Constance Haywood, Floyd Pouncil, Stephie Minjung Kang — Sun, 28 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In 2020, 31 graduate students in Michigan State University’s (MSU) Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures department published their Graduate Student List of Demands in response to violence on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) lives both within and outside the institution. More than three years after the statement was published, we find that the department’s response(s) to graduate student intellectual knowledge and lived experiences have been performative at best—revealing an on-going dilemma of the conflicts that arise when anti-racist and pro-Black initiatives ( Jones, Gonzales, & Haas, 2021) are presented within white organizations (Ray, 2019). Thus, this article addresses the need to support BIPOC graduate scholars—particularly those who exist within a multitude of intersectional and marginalized identities—in relation to graduate program development, curriculum, and writing program administration. We employ a narrative approach to 1) show folks why we need to be attentive to collegiate sponsored oppression against multi-marginalized graduate students; 2) forefront graduate student knowledges as intellectually viable (Browdy et al., 2021; Prasad, 2022); and 3) understand that even as graduate students ask writing programs to engage in anti-racist practices, those same students must be mindful of the resistance in contemporary academic writing programs and the impacts therein to their well-being (Carter-Tod & Sano-Franchini, 2021; Perryman-Clark & Craig, 2019). We conclude by considering a Black feminist approach to healing (Carey, 2016; Ohito, 2021) given the material and social impacts of institutional violence on graduate students and we forward a need for writing program administrators to contend and reckon with white resistance at white colleges and universities.

Co-creating Collages to Visualize Interpretations about Language Access in North Central Florida

Valentina Sierra Niño — Sun, 28 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This case study presents how collages can be used as a participatory tool and a design outcome when working with multilingual and multicultural community members, technical communicators, and designers. In conversation with multilingual community members of North Central Florida, a series of collages was designed to visually represent the experiences and obstacles multilingual community members faced concerning language access and language justice. Discussing the collages with the participants facilitated meaning-making processes to explore and visualize stories at the intersections between language, migration, personal experiences, and cultural backgrounds.

Role of Translation in Disaster Response

Sweta Baniya, Liza Potts — Sun, 28 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In this article, we highlight and discuss in detail the role of translation transnational during and in response to a crisis. Translation practices and readiness are critical for multilingual and transnational communities to survive during and respond to disasters (Marlowe, 2020). The translation of information is crucial to the survival of the communities that are marginalized within their own countries due to their linguistic diversity. And yet, this is not an area often studied or considered, even though we understand its importance (O’Brien, 2019; Gonzales, 2018; Agboka, 2013). Hence, we present an analysis of the work of “knowledge workers” (Baniya & Potts, 2021) during the current Russia-Ukraine war to showcase how translation work happens at an intersection of digital platforms, multilingualism, and social justice.

Honoring “Technical and Professional Communicators as Advocates of Linguistic Justice in the Design of Speech Technologies” by Dr. Halcyon Lawrence

Laura Gonzales, Suban Nur Cooley — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This special issue is led by Dr. Halcyon Lawrence’s brilliant article, “Technical and Professional Communicators as Advocates of Linguistic Justice in the Design of Speech Technologies.”

Introduction to Volume 2: Special Issue on Social Justice and Translation in Technical Communication

Laura Gonzales, Suban Nur Cooley — Sun, 28 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is the second volume of the special issue on Social Justice and Translation in Technical Communication. We are reprinting our introduction here, and summarizing the new articles included in this second volume.