The value of linguistics
To what extent can knowledge of linguistics and
theories of human language be of value to the technical author?
Introduction
Writing technical documents is a practical problem a large element
of which revolves around bringing the language of the document in
line with the language of the target audience. Linguistics is the
science of language, so it could be expected that linguistics could
help technical authors write documents. This essay examines the
issues involved trying to use the academic theories of linguistics
in a practical context.
After putting forward my view of the main challenge facing technical
authors I look at two scenarios: technical authors learning linguistics
to apply it to their work; and linguists applying their expertise
to the problems of technical authors. I raise some questions about
how universally useful a knowledge of the general theories of linguistics
is to technical authors, and argue that linguists studying technical
authorship would be more effective way of bringing the theory into
practice.
What is a technical author?
As Noel Williams writes [Williams (2000) pp. 7-8], technical writing
is writing with a purpose. To satisfy that purpose the range of
interpretation of the writing must be constrained to those that
meet it. Unfortunately, language is ambiguous; there is no document
that cannot be misinterpreted by or be completely incomprehensible
to someone somewhere.
Technical authors get around the ambiguity in language by aiming
their writing at a target audience. They can then use their knowledge
of the target audience to predict how the audience will interpret
their work (assuming the authors know, or find out, enough about
the target audience to make accurate predictions). The authors then
accept responsibility for the interpretation put on their writing
by the target audience. If the target audience misinterprets a document
then it is a problem with the document not the audience.
Two people reading the same text may interpret it differently.
This can be a benefit allowing a single document to fill a number
of roles, as in the scenario described by Peter Medway where an
architect distributes a document to all the participants of a building
project and
the text in fact means different things to each [reader]
because the intertextual connections giving it meaning are different
for each individual. For Joe's boss the Site Instruction to
lower the ceiling relates to the conversation in which Joe asked
for his opinion, and reflects his judgement on what should happen
to the ceiling. For Luc, the site supervisor, the document relates
to a series of conversations with Joe during the latter's site
visit, and to the vital distinction, maintained by unspoken agreement,
between problems that had to be dealt with "on the record",
e.g. through a Site Instruction, and others that the two of them
would resolve by informal, unrecorded deals, such as - though it
was not put so starkly into words - "You don't charge
for widening that chimney hole in the concrete slab and I'll
overlook the missing window seal". One meaning of the Site
Instruction for Luc is thus, "This is one of the problems we
had to deal with by the book". That meaning will not, however,
be activated for an auditor who eventually allocates the cost of
the alteration. [Medway (1996), p. 32]
More often the multiple interpretations by the target audience
are a problem to be overcome by the author. For example, a document
aimed at both experts and novices would need to use technical terms
in the same exacting way as the experts, but in such a way that
novices unfamiliar with the technical definitions can still understand
them. In this case the author would work towards getting the experts'
and the novices' interpretation as close as possible.
For a document to succeed completely all the interpretations of
the target audience need to meet the purpose of the document. The
task facing a technical author can be looked at as being one of
expressing the message of the document in the language (or languages)
of the target audience so that all its interpretations are appropriate.
Linguistics, being the scientific study of languages, would seem
to be a good place for the author to look for help.
The value of linguistic expertise to authors
An introductory book such as John Lyons' "Language and
Linguistics" [Lyons (1981)] gives an account of the concepts
of linguistics. These concepts capture the insights into languages
of the people who built up the theories and explicitly express the
rules and structures that are implicit in our use of language. So,
in the terms of Hartley and Williams [(2000) p. 24], they make our
unconscious knowledge of language conscious. The two most obvious
applicable areas brought consciousness this way that are grammar
and semantics.
Grammar looks at the way that components of a sentences are constructed;
it gives the author tools to analyse the structure of their writing.
Technical authors need to choose the grammatical structures that
best suit the purposes of their documents and to create grammatical
rules in their work. Using illustrations, headings, bulleted lists,
numbered lists, and changes in typefaces all involve setting up
grammatical conventions within a document (and applying them consistently).
The way that I characterised the tasks facing technical authors
in terms of interpretations puts emphasis on semantics. Semantics
looks at meaning in language, and to interpret a text is to give
it meaning. If the semantics of a document are wrong then it will
not be interpreted correctly, and so it will fail in its purpose.
If the grammar is wrong then the document will fail if the grammatical
problems compromise its semantics, but if the semantics remain intact
then the document may still meet its purpose (although the problems
with the grammar would make it a less than ideal solution).
It is essential for a technical author to have a tight control
of the semantics and grammar of his documents, but he can be (and
many are) adept at this without knowing what the linguists have
to say about it. Just how much benefit would a technical author
gain from the insights in linguistics after reading a book like
Lyons'?
This is an empirically testable question that could be answered
by taking two similar groups of technical authors and training one
group in linguistics to see if they became more effective technical
authors than the control group. It is impossible to give a definite
authoritative answer to the question without studying how authors
put the theory into practice. I can, however, make an educated guess
that overall the linguistically trained group would improve as their
new conscious understanding allowed them to see into what had previously
been blind spots in their performance.
However, if such an experiment were carried out I would expect
the degree of improvement to vary considerably from individual to
individual. Some authors would improve significantly, some would
improve marginally or not at all (because their own insights were
already adequate or they had trouble applying the theory) and the
practice of a few authors would actually deteriorate (as they tried
to apply the theories inappropriately).
The value of linguistics to the profession of technical authorship
Individual authors do not have to know the details of linguistic
theories to benefit from them. They can learn from the work of others,
and an analysis of technical authorship carried out by a skilled
linguist can pick out elements of the theories that are of particular
use to authors. For example, Agnes Kukulska-Hulme's communicative
approach to user interface and documentation design is "based
on concepts from the field of linguistics" [Kukulska-Hulme
(1999) p. 12]. She argues in the introduction that linguistics is
an essential tool for developing good user documentation for computer
systems, saying
The most constructive stance we can take in designing
the user interface is to regard all computer users as language learners,
since every new application environment creates new meanings for
familiar terms and introduces new terms and concepts. Considering
what appears on the screen and in the user documentation as a "new
language" for the user can make one question beliefs and assumptions
about what the user will or will not understand. It also introduces
a productive aspect to language: User's certainly need to understand,
but they also need to be able to produce language appropriate to
the application in order to get the most from its use. [Kukulska-Hulme
(1999) p. 4]
The book goes on to describe the communicative approach, using
examples from the interfaces and documentation of commercial software
to illustrate the problems that can arise when systems and documents
are designed with insufficient attention paid to their language.
Books aimed squarely at applying linguistics to technical authorship
are hard to find, putting limits on the usefulness of linguistics
to technical authors. The alternative described above, where an
author goes straight to the source and learns about linguistics
in general and then applies it to his writing, is far from ideal.
I am an experienced academic but Lyons (1981) was still a difficult
book for me (and I had no way of telling which parts I could safely
skim over). It is also twenty years old, so it does not cover recent
developments. If I rely on my own expertise then, at the very best,
I can only apply basic amateur linguistics to my writing.
Conclusion
It is essential for technical authors to understand the nature
of language. Linguistics provides one way to achieve this, but it
is not the only one. An intuitive grasp of how people use and interpret
language can be just as effective. Intuition is easy to apply in
practice, but it is difficult to develop. In contrast, linguistic
theories are much harder to apply to real life writing but knowledge
of them is easier to develop (you just read more books and articles).
The extent to which knowledge of linguistics and theories of human
language would be of value to an individual technical author depends
on the author in question. For the theories to be useful they need
to find their way into the work of the author, and the ability to
apply abstract theory to concrete situations is a specialist skill
in its own right. Authors will vary in how well they understand
linguistics and in how easily they can apply this understanding
to their work.
Having individuals adept at linguistics and theories of human
language who apply their skills to the problems of technical authorship
is important for technical authors as a body of professionals. If
we want to develop our expertise as authors then linguistics has
a lot to offer. A work like Kukulska-Hulme's (1999) reduces
the theory-practice gap and in so doing makes it more likely that
practising authors will benefit from linguistics. An additional
benefit of works by trained linguists about technical authorship
is that they can draw upon a much wider range of linguistic theory
than would be practical for most technical authors to learn.
In general I would advise technical authors to learn some general
linguistics (though unless they were particularly academic I wouldn't
advise them to start with Lyons (1981)) but not to worry if some
of the details do end up going over their head, and I would encourage
any that find the theories stimulating and useful to share their
experience so that others benefit as well.
Bibliography
Hartley, P. and N. Williams (2000) MA Technical Authorship module
2.1: Approaches to communication and linguistics, Sheffield
Hallam University
Kukulska-Hulme, A. (1999) Language and Communication: Essential
Concepts for User Interface and Documentation Design, Oxford
University Press
Lyons, J. (1981) Language and Linguistics: An Introduction,
Cambridge University Press
Medway, P. (1996) "Writing, speaking, drawing: The distribution
of meaning in architects' communication," in Sharples
and van der Geest (eds) (1996), pp. 25-42
Sharples M. and T. van der Geest (eds) (1996) The New Writing
Environment: Writers at Work in a World of Technology, Springer-Verlag
Williams, N. (2000) MA Technical Authorship module 1.1: The
writer's tasks, Sheffield Hallam University
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