Connecting analysis, cultural competency, and technical writing in a computing context

Abstract

In a 2020 study of how computing professionals use writing in the workplace, participants reported struggling to meet audience expectations when writing as experts to people within their organization, but outside their immediate team or department. This feeling of under-preparedness extended to technical writing produced for unknown or outside audiences, and it correlated with reports of professionals feeling anxiety about their workplace writing. We hypothesized that the anxieties around writing to new audiences expressed by study participants results from a combination of weaknesses in the following areas: cultural competency and rhetorical or ‘text’ analysis. In this case, the workplace itself operates as a type of cultural text. Acting on this hypothesis, this paper presents a suite of classroom activities designed to help students practice recognizing and responding effectively to audience expectations in disciplinary contexts, such as tech workplaces. In addition, we share two writing assignments that assess students’ understanding of how cultural competency informs audience awareness in writing.