IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
MARCH 2025 VOLUME 68 NUMBER 1 IEPCBU (ISSN 0361-1434)
INTEGRATIVE LITERATURE REVIEWS
The Impact of Linguistic Accommodation on Transactional and Relational Goals in Business Communication, Y. Sun, P. Zheng, and N. Zhang
This review of 32 articles describes general characteristics of these articles and identifies foci of linguistic accommodation, contexts, participants (actors and targets), transactional goals, and relational goals of linguistic accommodation. In both external and internal communication, actors tend to accommodate or nonaccommodate targets by choosing different languages and communication styles on different linguistic levels based on their language proficiency. We found that linguistic accommodation generally has a positive impact on transactional goals (such as service quality perceptions, negotiation effectiveness, and group performance) and relational goals (such as brand trust, consumer engagement, and cooperation intentions). This may help business professionals adopt appropriate linguistic accommodation strategies to achieve their goals, and aid business communication teachers in developing students’ accommodation competence.
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Navigating Immigration as an Alien: A Critical Interface Analysis of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services Website, J. Chen, S. Pandey, and S. Baniya
The USCIS website prioritizes English or Spanish proficiency, potentially excluding users with other diverse language backgrounds. First-time users lack immediate access to essential features, and the site overlooks the needs of its diverse immigrant population, with limited language options, multimedia resources, and occasional discrepancies in content. Using terms like “alien” contradicts the inclusive image the U.S. aims for. The Multilingual Resource Center faces document translation shortages, contributing to a potential digital divide. Inclusive design choices are crucial for creating a welcoming environment and addressing these concerns. Conclusion: These findings have implications for understanding the rhetorics of immigration policy, power, identity, and government perceptions.
What Is in a Name? An Analysis of UK Online Technical Communication Advertisements, M. McCullagh and Y. Cleary
Despite the absence of formal third-level technical communication academic programs in the UK, the terms “technical writer” and “technical author” are prominent in the job market. Where educational requirements are included in advertisements, these tend to be domain-specific. Software development is the leading employment sector, with available jobs distributed across a range of additional sectors. Personal characteristics and competencies required are broadly in line with previous research. Conclusions: Our findings suggest key competencies associated with the specific job title “technical writer/author.” They are a springboard for further qualitative research—e.g., using interviews—to explore the profiles and boundaries in technical communication in the UK. A mixed-methods study that includes job ads, questionnaires, and in-person observations would enable further classification of technical communication roles.
This study examined 11,628 corporate posts and 235,976 fan comments on the Facebook accounts of 34 large Chinese corporations to investigate the influence of message topics and emotions on public responses. Results indicated that corporate ability (CA) topics elicited more responses than corporate social responsibility (CSR) topics, but public comments on the latter were more favorable. Among the CSR topics, “public health commitment” generated the most responses, and “supporting cultural/sport events” received the most favorable comments. “Industry leadership” generated more favorable CA comments. Overall, topics differed significantly in terms of number of responses and tone of comments. The tone of CSR posts was positively correlated with the tone of public comments, but that relationship was not observed with CA posts.
“The City Residents Do Not Get Involved”: Understanding Barriers to Community Participation in a Small Texas Boomtown, C. Spinuzzi, A. Booth, M. Scott, D. Gossi, T. B. Hooker, and N. O’Hearn
We collected documents and statistics about six small Texas towns, then interviewed community leaders about their advantages and challenges. Based on those interviews, we collected further documents. We analyzed the data using deductive and inductive coding, and narrative analysis. Through coding, we determined that interviewees saw Permia’s residents as unwilling to engage in traditional forums such as city council meetings, and their explanations fell into three categories of barriers: distrust of institutions, dwindling personal ties, and lack of moral expectations to engage in community dialogue. These three categories contrast with the other communities we studied. Through narrative analysis, we identify stories that the interviewees tell to explain how these barriers developed in Permia.
TEACHING CASE
Design Fiction as a Novel Approach to Cultivate Awareness of Social Responsibilities: An Explorative Study in a Technical Writing Course for Engineering Students, Y. Yu, Y. Wu, and S. Pan
Participants were tasked with engaging in creating speculative scenarios of future food in 2040. This scenario revolved around an imaginary technology related to food, envisioning its impact on people’s lives and society. Through a structured process of guided speculation and critical reflection, participants wove together fragments of these future scenarios to craft complete fictional narratives. The result of this investigation revealed that the fictions generated by participants encompass a diverse array of elements that manifest the writers’ heightened awareness of social responsibilities.
TUTORIAL
Capturing the Experiences of Simulated Writing for Novice Virtual Reality Users, R. Shivener and J. Tham
This tutorial offers recommendations for designing and conducting test sessions to capture the user experience of first-time VR users in simulated writing scenarios. We present five key lessons to consider for testing writing in VR. 1. Space matters when studying participants writing with technologies. 2. Some VR applications are exclusive to devices. 3. A focus on brief tasks anticipates what writers will encounter when they write with a VR headset for the first time ever or in a professional context. 4. For understanding embodied actions, researchers should also capture the first-person view of the participant wearing the designated headset. 5. Media-rich transcripts create records of what was spoken in the sessions as well as notating, through text and media, what actions were taken by participants.
Professor emeritus, Mercer University School of Engineering
Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
Life Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
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