Why I Run With Scissors: A Defense of Scholar-Practitioners in Technical Communication and Rhetoric

Author

• Margaret Hsiao, Utah State UniversityFollow

Date of Award:

8-2026

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

Communication Studies and Philosophy

Committee Chair(s)

Rebecca Walton

Committee

Rebecca Walton

Committee

Chen Chen

Committee

Jared Colton

Committee

Afsane Rezaeisahraei

Committee

Aggrey Otieno

Abstract

Technical communication impacts everyone at work. Whether it’s a training document, a standard operating procedure, or a report outlining a new organizational policy, technical communication is the vehicle that drives action in the workplace. Although some employees may not consider themselves communicators if the word is not in their job title, technical communication is part of any person’s job responsibilities if they are learning how to do something or communicating for a particular outcome. The question is how they can perform these duties ethically and responsibly.

I learned firsthand about technical communication and rhetoric by studying and living it. For almost five years, I worked full time in the higher education and healthcare industries while completing a doctoral program in Technical Communication and Rhetoric (TCR) at Utah State University. While my classmates taught classes and drafted research proposals, I spent my days editing newsletters, writing policy briefs, summarizing executive memos, and trying to figure out how what I was learning at night applied to what I was doing in the morning. My attempt to bridge that gap became a defining component of my research.

Through my research, I discovered that the gap between academic research and real-world practice is smaller than one might think. The theories I studied in class gave me new ways to understand my work—and myself—as ethically complex, filled with unspoken values and beliefs, and connected with other people. During this time, I observed that my work gave my research a sense of urgency and specificity that is not often found in purely classroom-based scholarship. I also noticed how the same sense of urgency and specificity at work benefited from greater thoughtfulness that was generated by theory. Both theory and practice informed the other in ways I did not anticipate when I first enrolled in the TCR program, and I appreciate how they support each other in mutually beneficial ways.

This dissertation includes five articles I published between 2023 and 2026 and covers topics like how everyday people can participate in the federal rulemaking process, why professional communicators need to think carefully about whose interests they are actually serving, and how to talk about community health so leaders can make informed decisions. The overall finding of my research is that the people who work in technical communication have something important to contribute to the research that studies it—and the scholarship has something equally important to offer them.

Checksum

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Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Hsiao, Margaret, "Why I Run With Scissors: A Defense of Scholar-Practitioners in Technical Communication and Rhetoric" (2026). All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present. 880.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd2023/880