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The Social Issues Informative Guide Project: A Concrete Application of Invitational Rhetoric
Why Invitational Rhetoric for Technical Communication Pedagogy?
Core Principles of Invitational Technical Communication Pedagogy
Implications: How Invitational Rhetoric Addresses Systemic Exclusion in Technical Communication
Considerations, Challenges, and Honest Limitations
Appendix A: Social Issues Informative Guide Project Overview
Why Invitational Rhetoric for Technical Communication Pedagogy?
Historically, technical communication pedagogy has been grounded in privileged sites of knowledge production such as scientific empiricism and corporate workplace norms, while systematically excluding vernacular discourses from marginalized identity groups (Scott, 2004). Early technical writing curricula centered efficiency, clarity, and transparency as universal, neutral standards—values reflecting masculine Western paradigms—while denigrating feminine, embodied, relational, or non-Western communicative styles (Flynn, 1988). Despite increasing student diversity in recent decades, contemporary technical communication classrooms continue judging minority groups and multilingual learners as deficient “others” in need of remediation or assimilation to dominant expectations (Agboka, 2013). Students with disabilities, non-binary students, working-class students, and international students frequently encounter curricula that position them as exceptions to default assumptions. These systemic inequities manifest in whose communication styles are validated as effective technical knowledge warranting instruction and whose are dismissed as inefficient, unclear, or improper.
Yet recent scholarship demonstrates that deliberate, equity-oriented pedagogical interventions can interrupt these exclusionary patterns. Jones, Moore, and Walton (2016) show how disrupting traditional narratives about technical communication creates conceptual space for alternative ways of knowing and communicating. Walton, Moore, and Jones (2019) document how recognizing technical communication as a “discipline of conscience” repositions the field toward justice work and accountability to marginalized communities. Cañas (2019) articulates decolonial feminist methodologies that center marginalized knowledge producers and challenge Western epistemological dominance. Simultaneously, scholars working in decolonial technical communication including Haas (2012), and Itchuaqiyaq (2021) extend decolonial approaches specifically within technical communication contexts, examining how technical knowledge itself is racialized, gendered, and linked to colonialism. Further, Frost (2015), Kalodner-Martin (2022), and Vealey & Gerding (2021) demonstrate persuasively that personal narratives, testimonies, and lived experience function as epistemically valid ways of knowing—particularly for those whose experiences of marginalization provide unique insights into systemic functioning.
Invitational rhetoric is specifically well-suited as a pedagogical framework for technical communication because it provides concrete, implementable practices grounded in this recent scholarship, rather than remaining abstract principles. As Scott (2004) argues “technical communication pedagogy needs models explicitly designed to handle postwar pluralism and globalization” while embracing diverse ways of knowing beyond Western norms (p. 285). Unlike creative writing spaces, which have longer traditions of accommodating diverse voices and personal expression, technical pedagogy has not prioritized inclusion and must therefore employ explicit counter-hegemonic strategies. Invitation provides concrete, teachable corrective practices for fostering classrooms where students can challenge standards privileging certain groups and collaboratively challenge what constitutes good technical communication, such as- expanding definitions to value multiple vernacular traditions, embodied ways of knowing, and marginalized perspectives.
An invitational paradigm provides specific pedagogical interventions enabling marginalized technical communication students to bring full selves and communities to their work rather than conforming to paradigms that have historically oppressed the communities from which they come. Importantly, implementing invitational rhetoric does not guarantee inclusion; rather, it requires intentional, conscious work by instructors aware of power dynamics and personally committed to justice. In these ways, invitational rhetoric constitutes an essential, culturally responsive framework for addressing endemic issues of marginalization within technical communication education—not as an add-on or special topic, but as foundational to the discipline.