Sponsor
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: DePaul University (Open Funder API).
Document Type
Post-Print
Publication Date
3-11-2019
Subjects
Rhetoric -- Theory etc., Written communication, Actor-network theory, Writing -- Pedagogy, Technical writing
Abstract
This article theorizes the term infrastructure as a framework for articulating how writing products, activities, and processes underwrite organizational life in technical organizations. While this term has appeared broadly in writing studies scholarship, it has not been systematically theorized there as it has been in other fields such as economics, computing, and information science. This article argues for a four-part framework that incorporates and builds on Star and Ruhleder’s relational theory of infrastructure. Fieldwork from a federally funded supercomputing center for scientific research operationalizes the theory for its contributions to writing studies scholarship and its applications for industry and writing pedagogy.
Rights
© The Author(s) 2019
Locate the Document
DOI
10.1177/1050651919834980
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/27870
Citation Details
Published as: Read, S. (2019). The infrastructural function: A relational theory of infrastructure for writing studies. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 33(3), 233-267.
Description
This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Business and Technical Communication. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 2019. DOI: 10.1177/1050651919834980