A case study of an experienced professor's comments on a design report in a first‐year engineering class was conducted over the period of an academic year. When compared with the commenting styles of technical writing teachers, the engineering professor's comments were found to be highly directive, and thus at odds with the preference for facilitative comments that prevails in composition studies. However, differences in genre conventions explain much of the discrepancy.

A common genre of corporate promotional materials in Finland is a video that introduces a company to various audiences, including customers, shareholders, and visitors to the company's offices. The video uses visuals, sounds, and text to establish the company's identity and credibility as well as informing the audience about company products. The video appeals to deep‐seated cultural values to promote its message. This study applied theories of both advertising and semiotics to analyze the first minute of a video produced for a Finnish company that manufactures log buildings and wraps its image around a concept of leisure.

The periodic engineering report can become a source of conflict and frustration when North American engineers collaborate with colleagues abroad. To overcome such difficulties, technical companies may hire writing consultants, who then take on the additional role of cultural interpreters, helping the partners bridge differences in both the practice of engineering and the language and culture of each country. As such a writing consultant, I worked with a Canadian engineering company, its Russian contractors, and a Russian translator to analyze the sources of difficulties in their reports. The language of the reports was English, but differences in tone as well as reader expectations about organization, format, and appropriate content caused misunderstandings among the collaborators. Contrastive rhetorical analysis helped to identify problems in both the conception of the report as a document and the translation of particular text.

Despite being raised in a culture that denied her access to formal education and employment, Flora Annie Steel became an Inspector of Female Schools in the Punjab, India, in 1884. Her inspection reports for the occupying British government of India are the focus of this study, which examines texts within the context of British imperialism and late‐nineteenth century report conventions. The study concludes 1) that cultural expectations for women in imperialism influenced Steel's response to the genre and 2) that the report genre may have been fluid within imperialism, crossing boundaries between professional and government writing pertaining today. The study suggests that, historically, we need to study these genres of writing from the perspective of economic and political expansion as genres of imperialism.

This article analyzes two reports on energy policy by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The reports, though based on scientific inquiry, present rhetorical arguments that aim to influence future action. The reports are strategic tools for advocacy and action and are planned with an idea of their use in the field. Science and the reports serve the interests of social responsibility.

Abstract Pseodotransactionality—writing that Is patently designed by a student to meet teacher expectations rather than to perform the "real" function the teacher has suggested—is a problem that has frequently troubled writing teachers, especially professional writing teachers. This article attempts to analyze the problem from a sociohistorical perspective by using two Russian theoretical exports: (1) M. M. Bakhtin's concept of genre and (2) Vygotsklan activity theory. The article concludes by suggesting how a sociohistorical perspective mlght help to counteract pseudotransactionality In the professional writing classroom.

Five academic veterinary scientists were interviewed to learn about their professional writing experiences and relate them to technical writing pedagogy. The interviews probed the genres in which they write, their composing methods, their professional attitudes toward writing, and the sources of training in writing. The data suggest that while writing is an integral part of their research, teaching, and professional advancement and is used in conducting business, the academic scientific curriculum does not specifically address this important element in their careers.

The instructor and students in a technical writing class constitute a complex organizational unit with an array of interests, needs, values, and agendas. The need to negotiate and define both shared and conflicting goals and assumptions presents a richly problematical rhetorical situation. In this context, we can use the old standard organizational genre, the memo, in ways that are both rhetorically and pedagogically rich, helping students to write themselves—and their instructors—into a more vital, satisfying, and effective learning environment.

Signs, Genres, and Communities in Technical Communication. M. Jimmie Killingsworth and Michael K. Gilbertson. Amityville: Baywood, 1992. 272 pp. Sociomedia: Multimedia, Hypermedia, and the Social Construction of Knowledge. Ed. Edward Barrett. Cambridge: MIT P, 1992. 580 pp. On Line Help: Design and Evaluation. Thomas M. Duffy, James E. Palmer, and Brad Mehlenbacher. Norwood: Ablex, 1992. 260 pp. The Professional Writer: A Guide for Advanced Technical Writing. Gerald J. Aired, Walter E. Oliu, and Charles T. Brusaw. New York: St. Martin's P, 1992. 426 pp. Techniques for Technical Communicators. Ed. Carol Barnum and Saul Carliner New York: Macmillan 1993. 368 pp.

Critics may fail to appreciate the rhetorical significance of scientific texts that do not fit within the dominant genre of truth‐forming argument. Only by identifying Schrödinger's text as inspirational community‐forming discourse do we come to recognize the rhetorical artistry of his negotiation between two audiences, a negotiation that includes a subtle building of common ground, the application of productive ambiguity at a key point of collision, and a skillful _ reversal of language expectations to relocate audience loyalties.

J. B. S. Haldane, in attempting to show connections between Marxist political theory and Darwinian evolutionary theory, blurs the generic characteristics of political and scientific discourse. Read from the perspective of Bakhtin, this blurring of genres is also a blurring of ideologies. Haldane's essays thus contribute to our understanding of the cultural dimensions of scientific activities and accordingly help re‐define concepts of genre in scientific writing.

Business and technical writing grows out of a need to “build bridges” between ourselves and others. With today's diversifying readerships and increasingly global marketplace, business and industry face a new challenge that is reshaping our conception of business/technical writing and the metaphors of the genre. The metaphors of “selling” and “reader‐centeredness” demand especially to be recast and subordinated to a new metaphor of interculturalism/ internationalism—"ourselves among others.” Grounded in a social theory of language and communication, this new metaphor signifies that “bridge‐building” across differences will be the key in contexts becoming at once more heterogeneous and global.