In an era of continued globalization, migration, and digital transformation, technical and professional communicators are navigating increasingly complex cultural and technological landscapes. Communication professionals today must negotiate how information is created, shared, and understood across diverse contexts—both locally and globally. Intercultural negotiation has become an everyday reality, shaped by accelerating national exchange and evolving workplace practices. Two major disruptions globally in the past years provide us a critical exigence to revisit TPC’s understanding of how to negotiate intercultural difference broadly conceived: (1) the radical policy shifts in the wake of the 2024 election especially regarding the presence of perceived cultural others, globally and markedly in the US; and (2) the accelerated development and adoption of GenAI/LLM tools in every aspect of society (professional, academic, legal). While not limited to these two, we invite engagement with these issues as well as other disciplinary, pedagogical, and practitioner commonplaces in our field framed as sites of intercultural negotiation. We welcome submissions that critically and creatively examine the ways in which TPC mediates, negotiates, and sometimes challenges geographic, intercultural, and technological boundaries. Our goal is to foster innovative scholarship and dialogue that address the opportunities and tensions of working across difference, hybridity, and change in a world marked by interconnectedness and disruption.
Huatong Sun (2012) defined culture as “the meaning, behaviors, and practices that groups of people develop and share over time as well as the tangible manifestations of a way of life, such as artifacts, values, and states of consciousness” (p.5). Manifestations of culture include organizational culture, institutional culture, technologies as cultural products, language, identity, age, and much more. Culture is not static; it is lived, negotiated, and enacted daily, informing our approaches to communication, problem-solving, and collaboration. Culture shapes how we communicate, interpret meaning, and negotiate differences. In diverse societies like the United States, these cultural frameworks often meet—and sometimes clash—in public and workplace discourses. When disagreement becomes amplified through polarization and fear, it can obscure the intercultural values, shared complexities, and lived realities that shape our communication practices. Gloria Anzaldúa’s (1987) borderlands theory—which identifies the border as a contested hybrid space where languages, cultures, and identities intersect—offers TPC scholars and practitioners a framework for intercultural negotiation. Anzaldúa’s articulation, grounded in the lived realities of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, offers a lens to think about TPC contexts as materially and linguistically embodied in-between spaces shaped by everyday intercultural negotiation, which considers identities, languages, and geography.
For TPC, sites of intercultural negotiation offer an operationally applicable lens, one that directly addresses the practical challenges of producing content, interfaces, and workplace discourses for audiences whose identities are not only hybrid but also linguistically, culturally, and geographically in flux. It invites us to rethink what we want TPC to look like at a moment when polarizing rhetoric often erases or vilifies such complexities. Understanding TPC as a site of intercultural negotiation—a “third space” (Bhabha, 1994)—provides TPC with frames for working in environments where global (Batova, 2019; Savage & Agboka, 2016), gender-diverse (Green, 2025; Sánchez et al., 2024), cross-border (Aguilar, 2022; Flores & Durá, 2021), multilingual (Gonzales, 2022; Lee, 2022; Pihlaja & Durá, 2020; Rivera, 2024), and culturally hybrid (Baca et al., 2019; Rivera & Gonzales, 2021) users are the norm rather than the exception.
We propose an opportunity to reflect on and rethink TPC experiences, issues, or conditions considering how our unique identities and positionalities shape these perspectives through the following points for discussion:
Considering recent, significant shifts in culture, the economy, and global politics— accelerated in no small part by technological innovation like GenAI and LLMs, how might our understanding, utilization, and ongoing development of the concepts of “border” and “third space” need to change?
In what ways might we reassert, reinvigorate, or reframe our perspectives on “borders” and “third spaces” within the context of TPC?
How might parallel works of transformation in TPC (e.g., Jones et al., 2025; Mckoy et al., 2022) be in conversation with the concepts of “border” and “third space”?
What are the emerging trends and future directions for intercultural negotiation in TPC?
How are new “cultures” of AI adoption developing amidst and across previously understood cultural categories (national, ethnic, linguistic, organizational)—shaped by a continuum of perspectives, from wholesale adoption of AI tech to outright refusal to emerging “middle way” perspectives?
How might these new technological cultures be impacting previously understood cultural categories?
How can TPC scholars help negotiate differences across these emergent technological cultures?
How can TPC methodologies function in global, capitalist spaces while resisting them (e.g., Carlson, 2023)?
How can technical and professional communicators facilitate meaningful community outreach and engagement across linguistic, cultural, and geographic boundaries using digital platforms?
What role do digital platforms play in shaping organizational, institutional, or disciplinary cultures, and how does this influence intercultural negotiation in our discipline?
How might research on intercultural or technological changes contribute to our field and beyond if the promise of GenAI fails (i.e., the “AI bubble” bursts)?
What are effective practices to teach intercultural skills in core TPC courses? How can TPC curricula effectively address and integrate intercultural negotiation skills for students preparing to work in diverse, globalized environments?
How can faculty prepare students to produce content for audiences whose identities and communication preferences are hybrid, multilingual, and constantly evolving?
What assessment methods can best capture students’ growth in intercultural negotiation and communication skills within TPC contexts?
How can TPC pedagogy evolve to respond to recent global disruptions, such as policy shifts and rapid technological changes, in ways that are inclusive and equitable? How might cultural and technological changes help us contextualize current pedagogical conversations?
How might instructors design assignments or collaborative projects that reflect real-world sites of geographic, technological, and cultural negotiation?
Given ongoing debates over whether GenAI/LLM technologies can be used ethically, in what ways can or should educators ethically leverage these tools to build intercultural competence and foster critical thinking about global communication, while also mitigating potential risks?
What ongoing, non-AI/LLM changes in technology are impacting intercultural TPC pedagogy, but may be missed due to ongoing focus on the intensified pursuit of the development and integration of “agentic AI”?
How should TPC instructors address polarizing cultural or technological viewpoints in their teaching?
What role does institutional culture play in shaping pedagogy within TPC programs?
What challenges and opportunities arise when designing online learning experiences for hybrid, multilingual, or transnational audiences?
How do technical and professional communicators navigate and negotiate cultural, linguistic, and technological differences in their work? How does TPC contribute to—or challenge—polarizing rhetoric and discourses in public, professional, or digital spaces?
How do regional, ethnic, and generational differences influence communication practices and workplace collaboration?
What challenges do technical and professional communicators face when navigating organizational norms and expectations that may conflict with individual cultural identities in global settings?
In what ways do power dynamics and social hierarchies impact the negotiation of meaning, authority, and voice in TPC?
How can technical and professional communicators promote greater cultural awareness and sensitivity when working with teams or audiences that represent diverse societies?
What strategies are effective for bridging communication gaps that arise from differing cultural values, language backgrounds, or lived experiences within American workplaces and academic communities?
To what extent can TPC continue to advocate for users in third spaces?
What new borders or third spaces are developing in the wake of the policy shifts post-2024 and/or the integration of (or resistance to) GenAI/LLM tech in and across the globe?
What are the current challenges and opportunities of designing content, user experiences, and technologies for hybrid, multilingual, or transnational audiences?
How can third spaces, or sites of intercultural negotiation, thrive amidst the shift in surveillance tech (Ridolfo & Hart-Davidson, 2023) and regulatory compliance?
In what ways do surveillance technologies impact intercultural trust, privacy, and transparency in workplace and public communication?
How has the expansion/acceptance of old/new modes of surveillance changed what it means to develop “accessible” or “culturally aware” documentation?
How do evolving tools for content creation—such as generative AI, collaborative platforms, and multimedia technologies—affect the inclusivity and accessibility of technical and professional communication?
How are emerging technologies, such as GenAI/LLM, reshaping the practices and ethical considerations of technical and professional communication across diverse cultural and geographical contexts?
What role do technologies play as both products and mediators of culture in technical communication? How do emerging technologies (including but not limited to LLM and GenAI tools) foster or hinder intercultural collaboration?
What responsibilities do technology designers have in bridging divides in intercultural communication? What are the implications of algorithmic bias for the production and reception of technical and professional communication in global, multilingual environments?
What can we learn from successful or unsuccessful intercultural negotiation cases in TPC contexts using analog, traditional tech, or emergent tech tools?
References
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Baca, I., Hinojosa, Y. I., & Murphy, S. W. (Eds.). (2019). Bordered writers: Latinx identities and literacy practices at Hispanic serving institutions. SUNY Press.
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