Call for Proposals: Special Issue on “Legal Issues in Global Contexts”

Technical Communication, the journal of the Society for Technical Communication (STC), is soliciting article proposals for an upcoming special issue that will examine how factors of law and of culture affect how technical communicators work in international and cross-cultural contexts. This special issue will be published in November 2010, and the guest editors are Kirk St.Amant of East Carolina University and Martine Courant Rife of Lansing Community College.

SPECIAL ISSUE DESCRIPTION
Legal issues are increasingly affecting the work we do as industry practitioners, academic researchers, university and college educators, and independent entrepreneurs in technical communication. In some cases, these legal issues involve notions of ownership, copyright, and trade secrets. In other instances, legal concerns related to privacy, disclosure, and free speech affect how technical communicators perform different activities. These legal issues are further complicated by different cultural perspectives related to working in global environments and to addressing the informational needs of different cultural groups within our own nations. Very few individuals in technical communication, however, are lawyers or have formal training in issues of law and its intersection with different cultural communication expectations and assumptions.

This special issue of Technical Communication will examine the legal issues affecting technical communication practices related to designing materials for or to working with individuals from other nations and cultures. Read the rest of this entry »