What Does Professional Communication Research Have to Do with Social Justice? Intersections and Sources of Resistance

A brief review of literature indicates that professional communication scholars have had a complex, veiled relation with social justice. It is important to better understand the origins of that relation. After briefly contrasting the degree to which social justice has been explicitly integrated in professional communication and three related disciplines, this paper describes potential sources of resistance to incorporating social justice constructs into professional communication research. In professional communication, these sources of resistance are associated with ideologies that circulate within engineering, scientific, and technical contexts: the apolitical myth, ingroup bias, and technical-social dualism. In addition to exploring those three reasons why professional communication researchers generally avoid foregrounding social justice as an explicit component of their research, the paper also considers deviations from that norm by describing the work of pioneers who are integrating social justice in professional communication research. The implications of these pioneers will be discussed.