The purpose of this thesis is to aid in qualitative improvements to technical support documents on the Internet. By using a generic criticism this analysis will make substantive suggestions towards the improvement of this type of document by engaging the rhetoric employed by their authors. It will discuss the history of technical documentation, hypermedia, and the Internet. Using a generic criticism, the analysis will explore the strengths and weaknesses of representative documents in order to define a rhetorical genre. With a genre defined, the analysis will offer suggestions to the authors of instructional documents on the Internet regarding ways to improve the qualitative features of the documents. The analysis will conclude with suggestions for further research. / Graduation date: 2006 / Best scan available for Appendix. Original has a photocopy of black and white screen shots.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 286-294).

This dissertation explores the ongoing division between technical communication practitioners and academics by examining the conceptual metaphors that underlie their discourse in professional journals and textbooks. Beginning with a demonstration that conceptual metaphor theory as formulated by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson is a viable lens through which to engage in rhetorical (in addition to linguistic) analysis, the dissertation shows that academics and practitioners engage in radically different linguistic behaviors that result from the complex and often conflicting interplay of conceptual metaphors that guide their work. These metaphors carry assumptions about writers, texts, and communication that create covert tensions with the ethical value systems overtly embraced by both practitioners and academics. Chapter II looks at two professional publications written primarily by technical communicators for an audience of colleagues, and demonstrates that practitioners tend to use metaphors primarily centered around machines and money, objectifying both documents and people and reducing the processes of communication to a series of abstract mathematical influences. Chapter III looks at two technical communication journals with a more scholarly audience, and argues that academics participate in a much more convoluted conceptual system, embracing “humanist” language about communication that favors metaphors of human agency, physical presence, and complex social interaction; however, academics also participate in the abstracted, object-oriented metaphors favored by practitioners, leading to a particularly convoluted discourse both advocating and at odds with humanist social values. Chapter IV shows the practical consequences of these conflicting conceptual systems in several widely-used technical communication textbooks, arguing that academics inadvertently perpetuate the division between industry and academy with their tendency to use conceptual metaphors that contradict their social and ethical imperatives. This research suggests that a more detailed linguistic analysis may be a fruitful way of understanding and perhaps addressing the long-standing tensions between academics and practitioners in the field of technical communication.

Thesis (EdD)--Open University.

Thesis--PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--University of Toronto. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliography: p. 122-123.

Thesis--PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2003. / Field problem. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1971. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 199-204). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.