This thesis explores how metaphors can humanize a technical document and more effectively facilitate user comprehension. The frequent use of metaphor in technical communication reminds us that the discipline is highly creative and rhetorical. Theory demonstrates that a technical text involves interpretation and subjectivity during both its creation by the technical communicator and its application by the user. If employed carefully and skillfully, metaphor can be a powerful tool to ensure users' needs are met during this process. The primary goal of technical communication is to convey information to an audience as clearly and efficiently as possible. Because of the often complex nature of technical content, users are likely to feel alienated, overwhelmed, or simply uninterested if the information presented seems exceedingly unfamiliar or complicated. If users experience any of these reactions, they are inclined to abandon the document, automatically rendering it unsuccessful. I identify metaphor as a means to curtail such an occurrence. Using examples from a variety of technical communication genres, I illustrate how metaphors can humanize a technical document by establishing a strong link between the document and its users.

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This paper investigates the most effective ways of handling cultural differences in the Japanese-to-English game localization process. The thesis advocates for applying the Skopos theory of translation to game localization; analyzes how topics such as social issues, humor, fan translation, transcreation, and censorship have been handled in the past; and explores how international players react to developers' localization choices. It also includes interviews with three Japanese-to-English translators who have worked with major Japanese game companies to gain insight into how the industry operates today. Through the deconstruction of different aspects of Japanese-to-English localization, this analysis aims to help the game industry better fine-tune Japanese media to Western audiences while still sharing valuable aspects of Japanese culture. The thesis concludes that if Japanese game companies work to improve the localization process by considering more diverse international perspectives, hiring native speakers as translators, and approaching the English script as a creative endeavor in itself, they will be able to both broaden the minds of their global audiences and more effectively capitalize on the worldwide fervor for Japanese video games.

<p dir="ltr">I'm most interested in the aspects of self-confession and focusing on the small moments of life. My project will be about piecing together small moments that together tell a larger narrative.</p>

ClinicalTrials.gov is a database designed to help clinical researchers make their research publicly available. The clinical trials registered on the database each include a brief summary, which is meant to be a short description that the public can easily understand. In September 2022, ClinicalTrials.gov published a "Plain Language Checklist for Lay Brief Summaries" on their website, which identifies plain language best practices intended to help investigators craft summaries that can be readily understood by the public. This thesis assesses the impact of the checklist on the language use in the brief summaries in the year following the checklist's publication. The analysis examines 62 brief summaries for Phase III and IV clinical trials posted on ClinicalTrials.gov between September 26, 2022, and September 26, 2023. It focuses particularly on summaries associated with rheumatoid arthritis, knee replacement, and conjunctivitis to gauge how well they complied with 4 of the 19 criteria on the Plain Language Checklist: keeping sentences and paragraphs short, aiming for a 6th to 8th grade reading level, writing out acronyms on the first use, and providing both percentages and natural frequencies. It also examines rhetorical moves made in the summaries to address the use of jargon, key term definitions, headings, formatted lists, direct research questions, descriptions of study type, sentence fragments, and the placement of the purpose statement to see how these moves affected the plain language. Although the summaries tended to comply with the paragraph length guidelines, they did not comply with the sentence length, reading level, or acronym guidelines. The variation in compliance could be attributed to researchers' lack of awareness of the guidelines, lack of time to devote to creating brief summaries, or being too immersed in the field to imagine the needs of a lay audience. It could also be attributed to the National Institute of Health not enforcing the guidelines or to researchers not viewing the guidelines as being relevant.

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary work that explores the intersection of humanities and technical communication by focusing on the presence and impact of software company workplace bias in technical professional communication. It focuses on workplace bias in technical communication because, when present, bias can impact the experiences that technical communicators and end-users (people who use the software) have with the software. This mixed-methods study consists of a survey, an interview, and a new diagram designed to help technical communicators mitigate biases in technical documentation. To understand better the presence and impact of bias in these workplace contexts, this study surveys and interviews technical communication professionals (TCPs) with software industry work experience. First, I introduce key relationships and terms that connect the software industry to technical communication, discuss the significance of workplace bias in technical communication, and provide an overview of the study, including its research questions, research methods, and design. Next, I present background based on a literature review, including defining and presenting workplace bias issues in the software industry and technical communication field. I also present intersectional feminism as the theoretical framework. Thereafter, I detail research methods, which include the mixed-methods design, strategies for a feminist research approach, and a detailed explanation of the survey and interview design. Next, I present survey and interview results and discuss implications from professional and scholarly technical communication lenses. Finally, I draw conclusions about workplace biases based not only on survey and interview data but also by discussing new intersectional themes that offer new bias-based perspectives and legitimize issues of intersectional feminism and social justice in technical communication.

This research examines the communication styles of five different generations: the Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y, and the Millennials. The study investigates how current events influence the attitudes of each generation. It explores workplace trends, the effects of new communication platforms, and the evolution of technology. The purpose of the study is to identify the unique approach to communication of each of these groups. The objective is to help organizations create a more efficient working environment by embracing the diverse qualities of the different generations. The study finds that Generation X, Generation Y, and the Millennials prefer to correspond via online forms of communication such as email and social networking sites while the Traditionalist and Baby Boomer generations typically prefer to in• person correspondence. Additionally, the study finds that the people of Generation X prefer to work individually while Baby Boomers, Generation Y, and the Millennials thrive in team environments. It concludes that organizations should strive to accommodate the different generations by assigning them to tasks that focus on their strengths.

Corporations work to create, define, and refine their corporate images through many means including logos, slogans, advertising campaigns, community involvement, products, and philanthropic activity. As a composite or individually, these elements can be used to identify things associated with the corporation, the corporation itself, or distinguish it from other corporations. In addition to these prevalent corporate "identifiers," every corporation has its own voice, comprised of numerous facets of style and design that combine to create an identity. This voice is present in the written word of a corporation-correspondence with clients and customers, reports to shareholders, internal memorandums to employees, and website content that reaches worldwide. The voice may vary somewhat between audiences, but it is unilaterally present. While the subtleties of voice may not be recognized by the general public, the resulting rhetorical effects are-giving significance to corporate voice. The research involves an in-depth study of the voice of Lockheed Martin Corporation. With permission, a variety of non-proprietary LMCO documents have been analyzed using a rubric based on Thomas Gibson's "Style Machine," presented in his 1966 book, Tough, Sweet, and Stuffy: A Study of Modern American Prose. The analysis has resulted in conclusions regarding LMCO's corporate voice.

Communication builds the foundation for the law in the United States, as it involves ample verbal and written communication. Legal documents, such as legislation and case transcripts, enter the "public domain," so the public at large can freely access these documents. However, the complexity of the legal language and style severely limits the average citizen's ability to understand the contents. The same anomalies confront laypeople on juries. In the case of the law, intelligibility is a serious issue. Problems arise for laypeople when legal professionals do not consider the public. Legalese, the exceptionally abstruse legal vocabulary; Latin terms, which abound in legal language; and other legal writing style issues create serious difficulties for a lay audience. Effective technical communication conveys field-specific information with a level of technicality appropriate for the needs and experience of the target audience. Topics commonly studied in technical communication-such as audience analysis, a plain style, and usability testing-offer solutions to the problems that legal language causes. This study includes an examination of certain sections of the Florida Statutes and various case transcripts to identify deficiencies in making legal matters clear to the lay public. It also demonstrates the application of technical communication principles to improve public access to the law and advocates the involvement of technical communicators in the legal arena.

The subject of this study is engineers’ activities, writing and texts in their profession and education. Fieldwork for the study was conducted in three professional workplaces and a major technical university (called Tekniska Institutet in the study). The aim of the study is to explore what kind of writing the engineers are supposed to handle and practice, situated in their professional environment, and to compare this with the writing practices and texts engineering students are prepared for in their higher education. The theoretical framework is a sociocultural approach inspired by Lave &amp; Wenger (1991), Wenger (1998), Wertsch (1998) and Engeström (1987). The theoretical concepts of activity systems, mediational means or cultural tools and trajectory of practice are applied, partly on a linguistic level, to the writing and the work that engineers carry out in their professional community and the university. The engineers in the study write every day in their profession, in different roles, something they are not quite prepared for in their higher education. The study examines whether there are cultural tools that are typical for engineers and their work. One central construction is the list, which can be seen as a cultural tool on both a cognitive and a social or communicative level: the study shows that the list is used both to structure or construct content and to instruct readers, for example, or show them how a soft ware system or a computer programme is structured. The list is also used within the education community, in teachers’ instructions and course material as well as in the students’ texts, such as lab reports and different types of essays.