Y’all Call it Technical and Professional Communication, We Call it #ForTheCulture: The Use of Amplification Rhetorics in Black Communities and their Implications for Technical and Professional Communication Studies
This project seeks to define and identify the use of Amplification Rhetorics (AR) in the social movement organization TRAP Karaoke and at three Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). In highlighting the AR practices in Black communities. This project will provide insight into what these practices and spaces have to offer to the field of Technical and Professional Communication (TPC). AR is a theoretical framework that details the discursive and communicative practices, both written/textual and embodied/performative performed/used by individuals that self-identify as Black and centers the lived experiences and epistemologies of Black people and other historically marginalized groups. AR are #ForTheCulture practices that provoke change within the academy, regardless the field, however for this project I focus on the field of TPC. The phrase "For the Culture," is used to describe or allude to an action that can benefit those individually or within a community much like TPC artifacts. This project identifies rhetorical practices located in Black spaces and communities that can be identified as TPC through the reclamation of agency, the sharing of narratives, and the inclusion of Black epistemologies. It illustrates just what it means to pass the mic and remind folks that we not 'bout to act like there aren't people of color at the TPC table. This project will lead practitioners, mentors, and people in positions of power to reconsider their own rationale alongside implicit and explicit bias that may influence how they review work that does not identify as the "standard" within the field of TPC. This project is unapologetically Black. Its foundation is built upon Black theoretically frameworks. And just to make sure folks are payin' attention, I even tossed in some AAVE and shade; you may even catch a read or two. This project provides the reference guide for my AR framework and also a multimodal artifact that embodies AR theory put into practice.
Black, Amplification, Womanist Theory, Digital Scholarship, Multi-Modal Dissertation, Critical Race Theory, African American / Black Rhetorics
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