Pragmatic Feminist Empiricism: An Original Analytical Framework for Technical Communication

Abstract

Focusing on issues of embodiment and power in technical communication specifically through visual discourses of health and medicine created through data, the research is an introduction to an original methodology called pragmatic feminist empiricism. Pragmatic feminist empiricism urges technical communicators to acknowledge their own embodiments to inform the creation, reflection, and transformation of medical discourse; value differences in the embodiments that are both represented and served by medicine; and consider the multiple aims inquiry may serve and their impact in both private and public spheres. Pragmatic feminist empiricism draws upon Miller's notion of the social construction of knowledge as well as Hayles's concept of skeuomorphic design in creating more inclusive definitions of health and disease. The research centers on tropes in medical rhetoric that lean toward creating standardized visual representations of bodies to represent norms and their dangers to public health, as well as the effect of medical discourse on embodiment of health and disease that are represented in medical models. Case studies of the Visible Human Project[registered] and several anatomy textbooks use pragmatic feminist empiricism to identify exigencies in visual medical technical communications and to reimagine how images may be designed to create more inclusive definitions of health and disease. In addition, a study of pragmatic feminist empiricism as a pedagogical tool for teaching Scientific Writing demonstrates the power of education as a change agent in expanding discourses about health and disease to acknowledge and value multiple embodiments.