Carolyn Miller's "A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing"

1) the problem:
---Some people see technical communication courses as lacking a humanistic value.

2) the solution:
---Miller suggests that TC definitely has humanistic value, but that often, the way the courses are currently taught lack this humanistic aspect because they are taught from a positivist perspective. She suggests that we instead take a "consensualist perspective" to teaching TC.

---the quick and dirty of positivism: science and rhetoric are mutually exclusive, because science is made of logic, and is the only way to get the external, absolute truth, whereas rhetoric is made of symbols and emotions and uncertain/incomplete truths. Positivism views the point of TC as direct communication. Content is separable from the words used to express it, according to positivists, which led to "pure observation" language. They view typical language as a distraction from the ideas.

---effects of positivism on TC: (all of them create the lack of humanistic value.)
A) TC isn't defined systematically (because they use content or clarity as a basis for defining TC but they fail.)
B) form and style>invention (because science doesn't invent; it discovers. TC is simply used to relay truth.) C) insistence on objective tone (but English syntax doesn't deal gracefully with this)
D) TC's looking at the relationship between reader and reality (analyze audience by level of knowledge) instead of looking at the relationship between reader and writer

---Instead! Consensualist Perspective: "reality cannot be separated from our knowledge of it; knowledge cannot be separated from the knower; the knower cannot be separated from a community." (Miller 20). a.k.a knowledge is constructed and internal.

---effects of consensualism on TC: (all of them serve to give humanistic value.)
A) defines TC as writing that occurs in a tech community for certain communal reasons.
B) TC is not seen as teaching a skill set; it is an enculturation, or how to belong in a community.
C) students learn about the rules (also taught with positivism) as well as why they are the rules, how and when to break them, and the social implications and ethics that go into breaking them or keeping them.

3) questions:
A) Much of this seems very similar to the arguments between those who teach positivism vs. those who teach the new rhetoric (as lined up and summarized by James Berlin). In that case, I'm still a little fuzzy on the REAL difference between FYC and TC, especially given that most of the articles talk about how impossible it is to define the field. Anyone care to draw some concrete differences?
B) On that note, is there such a thing as an expressivist movement for TC? If not, would it be possible, and what might it look like?
C) Miller says that taking on the new view instead of positivism might not change the TC course very much in terms of syllabi/subject matter/assignments, but that the teachers'/students' attitudes would. However, I see the course changing very radically; I do not envision a typical positivist course including much on ethics, but I'm not well-versed in these things. So, my question here is whether positivist courses DO include much ethics/social implication material, and if so, how is it/how would it possibly be framed?
D) To what extent is it necessary to teach TC students the ideologies behind your consensualist teaching?

4) connections:
1) Overall, the consensualist perspective shows up in all (I think) of the other readings for this week, and many readings lend themselves toward looking at TC as humanistic.
2) More specifically, the debate between Moore and Johnson deals with TC and the knowledge it creates having an ethical responsibility. Also, the interdisciplinary approach of Johnson works with Miller because if knowledge is a communal thing, then we should be looking beyond the strict silos of specific disciplines and at the academic community as a whole. The act of translation is the act of creating knowledge within a larger community, or bridging communities for new knowledge. The section on history and defining TC relates to Miller, too. Some of the problems that Miller hints at in regards to defining TC (clarity and content) are expanded by Allen. Connors explains that TC classes gained popularity as call for a more humanistic approach to engineering schooling, which certainly helps to prove Miller's point. This is because they needed to be more familiar with the ethics and consequences of their actions, and it stressed the writer-reader relationship just as Miller stresses (91). It also explains how a rhetorical approach began to be more emphasized than a genre-based class. In regards to the piece on gender in history, redefining the workplace is a perfect example of what Miller is attempting to do: she says that the community defines knowledge and what is important, so obviously it is possible to redefine the workplace (and it is happening) through this lens and explain why previous injustices based on gender occurred. Thralls/Blyler point out that Miller's viewpoint falls under the ideologic/liberatory pedagogy. So according to them, her perspective "attempts to impose control on a communicative process that defies such control" (120). (Because  it attempts to teach systematically.) Shirk says that rhetorical history is "a social construction not only in the sense that rhetorical processes constitute historical processes, but also in the sense that historical study constructs reality for society in which or for which it is produced." this relates to Miller because it is a very consensualist perspective. He says history is made/evolved for people, and thinking of how people and organizations interact is very humanistic, which means that Miller's argument would be better supported if TC courses included more TC history. ....and so on and so forth.