The Technical Communicator as Artist: Rhetoric, Aesthetics, and Form in the Workplace

Purpose: This article describes how the specialized, rhetorical aesthetic theory of form, posited by Kenneth Burke, highlights humanistic and artistic elements of technical communication exemplified in the technical workplace. A specialized way of understanding how types of communication build relationships between author and audience, the theory of form offers a unique way to contextualize how an artist-rhetor creates and fulfills audience desires, expectations, and appetites. Method: The authors first contextualize technical communication as a field of artistic and creative practice; they then expand that context using Burke???s rhetorical aesthetic theory of form as a framework for application and examine that application in the context of the technical workplace, using a self-reported case study from industry as an example. Results: The rhetorical aesthetic theory of form provides a way of rethinking technical communication practice, emphasizing the humanistic and artistic elements of technical communication in the workplace. Conclusion: Looking at technical communication with an interrelated view of rhetoric and aesthetics can provide scholars, teachers, and practitioners with new insights for how technical communicators can see themselves and their audiences as complex people who have the capacities for arguing, influencing, and persuading–and also with capacities for drama, story, feeling, creating, and being moved by art.