Tactical Approaches to Technical Communication

Delves into how individuals tactically exist within communicative systems, carving out spaces for themselves in places they don't necessarily fit.

In 1984, Michel de Certeau described the terms "strategies" as how institutions communicate their wants/demands/desires and "tactics" as how individuals navigate these potentially hostile, unwelcoming systems. A little over two decades later, Miles A. Kimball solidified the idea of tactical technical communication, laying the foundations for a new area of inquiry and scholarship. Today, many academics and researchers have imbued the concept of tactical technical communication with their own ideas and perspectives. This essay collection spotlights a meaningful diversity of tactical technical communication scholarship, exploring topics like the feminist punk magazine BIKINI KILL, the phenomenon of copwatching, the usage of fictional narratives in technical writing courses, and the challenges of LBGTQ+ visibility in local libraries. In many ways, the contributors are partaking in their own forms of tactical communication as they carve out spaces for themselves and their ideas within the academic discourse.

Hayley McCullough is Assistant Professor of Technical Communication and Digital Media at New Mexico Tech. Hilary A. Sarat-St. Peter is Associate Professor of Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Columbia College in Chicago. Miles A. Kimball is a recently retired Professor from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is the coauthor, with Derek G. Ross, of Document Design, Second Edition: From Process to Product in Professional Communication, also published by SUNY Press.

"This book offers many thoughtful illustrations of the value of tactical technical communication. I can see using this book in undergraduate and graduate technical communication courses." — Derek Van Ittersum, coauthor of Writing Workflows: Beyond Word Processing

"Tactical Approaches to Technical Communication is long overdue. It's great to see such a wide array of tactical technical communication perspectives on display here." — Derek M. Sparby, author of Memetic Rhetorics: Toward a Toolkit for Ethical Meming