| Carl Chatfield home page | Thesis | Introduction |
In mainstream computer applications such as Microsoft Word for Windows version 6.0, one will find a User's Guide included with the product. This User's Guide is a primary manual. It is included with the software application. A visit to any large bookstore will also reveal a large number of manuals about Word. Called secondary manuals, these manuals are not written by the same software development company that produced Word, nor are they included with Word. Both types of manuals are produced by technical writers and in many ways are similar in scope, content and cognitive strategies. However, in other respects some primary and secondary manuals are quite different, and that difference is the focus of this thesis.
Previous research has found that the most fundamental differences between primary and secondary computer manuals have had to do with rhetorical issues (Walters and Beck, 1992). In this thesis I will examine a set of rhetorical issues in a primary and secondary manual. My analysis will be based partially on criteria established by previous researchers in technical communication. However, technical communication theory alone cannot fully explain the rhetorical differences between some primary and secondary computer manuals. To provide a more robust analysis of these rhetorical issues, I will apply research from literary analysis.
Why is literary analysis relevant to technical communication? Literary analysis is an appropriate source from which to inform the technical communicator because in both fields the author attempts to move the reader from the known and familiar to a new understanding created by the author via the text. In both technical communication and literature, the author attempts to convey to the reader a particular world view or definition of reality, however fictitious that reality may be. In certain critical respects the reader experience of computer manuals is not so different from the reader experience of literary texts. Certainly the author's and reader's intentions in literary texts differ from those in computer manuals, but some of the same rhetorical dynamics are at play. While authors of literary texts by definition manipulate these dynamics to suit their artistic preferences, authors of computer manuals are rarely aware of the rhetorical dynamics at work within their texts, or by convention they must appear unaware.
In this thesis I examine relevant rhetorical analysis theories from the technical communication and literary analysis fields (Chapter I). I then lay out a method of analysis to identify rhetorical factors within computer manuals (Chapter II), and carry out that analysis on two computer manuals and discuss the results (Chapter III). To conclude, I consider the organizational and political issues that result in rhetorical differences between primary and secondary manuals (Chapter IV). I find that rhetorical author and reader roles allow secondary computer manuals to develop a sense of "otherness" from software applications that primary computer manuals cannot so easily develop. This sense of otherness allows secondary manuals to better use rhetorical factors such as the author's ethos and empathy with the reader than is possible with primary manuals.