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.

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This thesis analyzes the challenges technical writers face when designing documents for high-context cultures, such as the Japanese. When developing documents intended to cross cultural gulfs, technical writers must take into consideration cultural expectations, preferences, and practices in document design and communication. High-context cultures, such as Japan, design documents using drastically different design strategies than those used in the United States. Japanese communication habits are more ambiguous than communication in the United States. Thus, the Japanese often use visuals for their aesthetic appeal, not for their ability to complement the text that surrounds the visual. The ambiguous nature of high-context culture communication habits often pose problems when Americans try to communicate--whether through written or oral communication--with a high-context audience. Without careful analysis and research into these cultural implications, the technical writer risks developing unsuccessful documents that do not accomplish the goals of the communication. It takes years of research to understand cultural differences, especially in the case of Japanese communication habits. With the research presented in this thesis, technical writers will understand better how to address document design issues when designing for high-context cultures in general and the Japanese culture specifically. In order to effectively analyze document design strategies across cultures, I have collected documents from two cultures--from the United States and from Japan. These two cultures represent a low-context culture, the United States, and a high-context culture, Japan. The United States and Japan are opposite each other on Edward T. Hall's cultural continuum, providing ideal subjects for a cross-cultural document design analysis. Using previous research in document design and cultural studies, I have established a grid for analyzing visual elements in the documents I have collected--full color automobile sales booklets. I analyze both high- and low-context documents against this grid. The various document design grids allow for visual representation of document design decisions in both cultures. American international technical communicators can use these grids as a starting point for addressing the cultural implications of document design for high-context audiences. The research presented in this thesis shows that high- and low-context cultures use visuals much differently. Readers, in both cultures, are persuaded differently by visual elements. By exploring and analyzing the use of visuals such as photos, diagrams, line drawings, and the way both cultures use visuals to approach their audiences, this thesis attempts to present an explanation of visuals in high-context cultures that will aid American technical writers who design documents for international audiences. This thesis uses Japanese cultural analysis and Japanese design theories to explain high-context design decisions applied to Japanese documents.

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abstract: Contemporary cities are physical and virtual. This thesis describes the findings of a mixed-methods study concerning visual images of the city in the urban Northeast of the United States. I ground these approaches in existing literature concerning digital media, visual narrative, genre ecology, urban planning, and virtual places. The first part of the study analyzes the results of a survey in which 150 people responded to questions about social media use and the relationships between image type and the functions of social media in urban contexts. The second part of the study analyzes the results of coding one year of visual images tweeted by @CambMA, the municipal Twitter feed for the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts. These approaches required the development of new tools for analyzing visual communication and genre moves in specific media contexts. My research suggests that specific image types are suited for specific media functions in the context of visual communication in virtual urban environments and that some image types are especially effective in capturing and expressing the city. These findings provide potential strategies for municipal social media channels to consider in terms of how they communicate with their audiences. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Technical Communication 2019

With growing popularity of the use of social network sites/services (SNSs) throughout the world, the global dominance of SNSs designed in the western industrialized countries, especially in the United Sates, seems to have become an inevitable trend. As internationalization has become a common practice in designing SNSs in the United States, is localization still a viable practice? Does culture still matter in designing SNSs? This dissertation aims to answer these questions by comparing the user interface (UI) designs of a U.S.-based SNS, Twitter, and a China-based SNS, Sina Weibo, both of which have assumed an identity of a “microblogging” service, a sub category of SNSs. This study employs the theoretical lens of the theory of technical identity, user-centered website cultural usability studies, and communication and media studies. By comparing the UI designs, or the “form,” of the two microblogging sites/services, I illustrate how the social functions of a technological object as embedded and expressed in the interface designs are preserved or changed as the technological object that has developed a relatively stable identity (as a microblogging site/service) in one culture is transferred between the “home” culture and another. The analysis in this study focuses on design elements relevant to users as members of networks, members of audience, and publishers/broadcasters. The results suggest that the designs carry disparate biases towards modes of communication and social affordances, which indicate a shift of the identity of microblogging service/site across cultures.

abstract: As an outlet of communication between internet users, digital social media has created opinionated engagement between people that have similar and often contrasting views, just like those in face-to-face communication (Mckenna & Bargh, 2014). The problem is that these digital conversations occur in a synthetic environment, causing users to develop alternative psychological patterns of engagement (Lauren & Hsieh, 2014), that could potentially push them to inadvertently or unknowingly create and participate in negative social interaction with others. The purpose of this study was to determine and assess the needs of a writing heuristic for social media participants to use in engagement with others to increase coherency, civility, and engagement response in content. Research explored existing literature on engagement behavior in digital social media and computer-mediated communication (CMC) and was then used in qualitative sentiment analysis of business-to-consumer social media environments, aiming to recognize the needs in developing a social media writing heuristic. This research found that such heuristic should prompt and advise users to remove ambiguity within engagement practices, encouraging the implementation of salient social markers and nonverbal cues in text. Social media users should also be prompted to create familiarity with others through the posing of messages in an emotional frame that is aligned with their audience’s emotional attitudes, increasing persuasive argumentation and discussion. As well, users should be prompted to thoroughly understand the issues in discussion and follow dynamics to create productive engagement, while avoiding engagement with negative commentary. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Communication 2016

abstract: My study examined Automated Writing Evaluation tools (AWE) and their role within writing instruction. This examination was framed as a comparison of 4 AWE tools and the different outcomes in the Writing Program Administrators “Outcomes Statement for First Year Composition” (the OS). I also reviewed studies that identify feedback as an effective tool within composition instruction as well as literature related to the growth of AWE and the 2 different ways that these programs are being utilized: to provide scoring and to generate feedback. My research focused on the feedback generating component of AWE and their relationship with helping students to meet the outcomes outlined in the OS. To complete this analysis, I coded the OS, using its outcomes as a reliable indicator of the perspectives of the academic community regarding First Year Composition (FYC). This coding was applied to text associated with two different kinds of feedback related AWEs. Two of the AWE used in this study facilitated human feedback using analytical properties: Writerkey and Eli Review. While the other 2 generated automated feedback: WriteLab and PEG Writing Scholar. I also reviewed instructional documents associated with each AWE and used the coding to compare the features described in each text with the different outcomes in the OS. The most frequently occurring coding from the feedback was related to Rhetorical Knowledge and other outcomes associated with revision, while the most common codes from the instructional documents were associated with feedback and collaboration. My research also revealed none of these AWE were capable of addressing certain outcomes, these were mostly related to activities outside of the actual process of composing, like the act of reading and the various writing mediums. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Composition 2017

In 2011 the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF) published the Regulations on Hyperandrogenism, a health policy banning female athletes from track and field competition if their natural levels of testosterone were found to be higher than those of most female athletes. In 2014, Dutee Chand, a sprinter from India, was banned from competition based on these regulations. She appealed her ban in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and as a result the 2011 IAAF Hyperandrogenism Regulations were suspended for two years. The issues at stake in the suspension of these regulations are, at their core, rhetorical issues related to health and medical technical communication: how information about health and medicine is communicated to stakeholders, the ethics of such communication, and the implications of such communication. They are also issues related to the medical regulation of sex and gender: Chand’s case is the latest in a history of sex verification testing of elite female athletes that began well before 2011. In this study I use feminist critical discourse analysis methods within the computer assisted qualitative analysis software program NVivo to analyze the 2011 IAAF Hyperandrogenism Regulations and the transcript of the CAS Award that suspended them. I argue that the 2011 IAAF Regulations and the CAS Award are an example of what I describe as a closed, Foucauldian system, which is not open to outside voices, stakeholders, expertise, or evidence. I also argue for the use of a heuristic alongside a feminist technical communication perspective on health and medical rhetorics that technical communicators might use to insert themselves into closed Foucauldian systems such as this one in order to enact positive change.