Culture and Rhetorical Expectations: A Perspective for Technical Communicators
In this article, I discuss how individuals who communicate about technical and scientific topics (i.e., technical communicators) can apply ideas from the theory of rhetoric to communicate more effectively with individuals from other cultures. In so doing, I present a question-based strategy technical communicators can use for planning how they will develop different communication products (e.g., written reports, instructions, websites, etc.) for audiences from cultures other than their own.
Translating the culture of technical documents : some experimental evidence
The approach common in U.S. technical documents, especially the emphasis on user friendliness, is becoming the standard for international communication. In user manuals, industrial proposals, and business plans, that approach strikes a chord among audiences who speak English or other Anglo-Germanic languages. But people whose native language does not fall into that tradition may find the approach inappropriate. American-biased documents may need more than a simple language translation to accommodate such audiences. The documents need to be translated culturally as well. This chapter reports on two experiments conducted at the Eindhoven University of Technology to test techniques of cultural translation: one focused on the writers of such a text, the other on the readers.
Exploring interculturally competent teaching in social sciences classrooms
Abstract This paper explores a grounded research-based framework for intercultural competence and discusses the implications of interculturally competent teaching in the classroom and beyond. Given the importance of teachers being interculturally competent in today’s diverse classrooms, a number of questions, based on the framework, are presented, which guide teachers in reflecting upon their own teaching practice and the ways in which they integrate aspects of intercultural competence into their classrooms. The paper also provides some examples from the USA of ways in which intercultural competence development is being addressed in teacher training.