Abstract Preparing students for civic engagement requires new knowledge about the uses of documents for advocacy and social change. Substantial social change results from repeated rather than from single rhetorical acts. Reconsideration of the rhetorical canon of delivery suggests expanding the concept beyond its present connection to publication (visual design, medium) to a rhetorical situation comprehensively defined. Delivery may take place over time and embrace a web of activities including field work, updates, and interconnections with other publications.

Although the concept of community has been advanced in technical communication as a moral reference point for civic rhetorical action, this concept is typically used in romantic, redemptive, and essentializing ways. This article argues for a radical and symbolic/rhetorical view of community, regarding it a discursive construct purposefully invoked by technical writers for strategic reasons.

This article presents the history, purposes, outcomes, and significance of the CCCC Outstanding Dissertation Award in Technical Communication during its first five years. It analyzes the topical areas and research methods of the 34 dissertations nominated for the award from 1999 to 2003, as well as the evaluations of the judges. Methods of the nominated dissertations are interpretive (41%) and empirical (59%), but many dissertations combine methods. In the empirical category, qualitative methods (17) outnumber quantitative methods (3). The most frequent topical areas are workplace practice (8), rhetoric of the disciplines (7), and information design (6). Topics that are not widely investigated include issues of race and class and international communication.

Abstract This article explores the writing of archaeologists to argue that the metaphor of context-as-rhetorical-situation may understate the power that context has to shape scientific discourse. The author offers instead the metaphor of context-as-active-agent in the rhetorical situation—one that sometimes reifies values that are dangerous to the archaeologists' belief systems. As scholars of technical writing, we must develop a greater understanding of the subtle but powerful influences that context wields on the writing we read and help to produce.

This article argues that fact sheets produced by environmental activists in response to proposed nuclear waste repositories constitute a new genre of scientific rhetoric. By analyzing the rhetorical features of these texts, including the simultaneous reliance on and distrust of scientific evidence, this article demonstrates how effective environmental activists' texts can be, in spite of the constraints and pressures of their rhetorical situation.

This article examines one mechanism for the radical change in public perception of wilderness. The published papers of the Harriman Expedition, a scientific expedition at the end of the nineteenth century, are used to illustrate a process that I call "metaphoric reconstruction." I argue that conceptual metaphors are one of the tools through which texts and rhetorical contexts can be mutually transformative.

In this article, a biochemist and a rhetorician collaborate to define "junk science." They apply that definition as they rhetorically analyze a book that makes strong claims about endocrine disruption (Our Stolen Future) and a website developed to embarrass those claims (Our Swollen Future). This article argues that junk science and accusations of junk science evince ideologicaVeconomic motives and pronounced efforts to construct, or assail, scientific ethos.

Ernst Haeckel was a fascinating German scientist, philosopher, and advocate of social Darwinism who sought to reinvent science as the basis of all knowledge and best guide for human activities. His monistic and vitalistic philosophy of science influenced later German holistic science and Nazi pseudo-science. Recent research reveals several of his most famous illustrations, of embryos of various animals and that are still published today, to be incorrect and probably knowingly so. The complex rhetorical connection between theory and visual support is revealed, as creationist critics contend that the falsity of the visuals implies the refutation of evolution. We see that our decisions made in crafting illustrations carry serious rhetorical and ethical implications for various audiences.

Using field study to teach writing and speaking in rhetoric impacts both how technical communication defines itself and its role in the curriculum. This article reviews materials that support field study, describes course assignments, and examines student writing. I find that as field study offers a precise, event-based resource for teaching rhetoric, so rhetoric offers an audience-centered format to bring properties of the field inside.

Abstract The focus of workplace communication research on visual rhetoric has tended to be the efficient and unproblematically "effective" functioning of visual texts. By suggesting ways in which the visual representations of science are construed by expert readers, this article responds to a call within our discipline for more critically focused contributions to the study of visual literacy. A former editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Botany was asked to explain his interpretation of visuals appearing over an 80-year period in that journal; his responses illustrate how visual explanations testify to their creators' authority and how, once established, such authority actuates the rational arguments of science. Rhetorical appeals within and arrangement of visual texts are considered, as is the persuasive power of legends and captions.

Abstract Based on an ethnographic study of scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this article describes how the rhetorical invention process of a group of working scientists is strongly rooted in social collaborative processes. These writing practices of working professionals are not always synonymous with the way students entering the professions have been taught to write. Because invention is such an important aspect of the writing process, it is important to teach students the approaches to invention that are actually used in science, approaches that include a great deal of interaction, including talking to other scientists and reading journal articles. This article ends with pedagogical suggestions for teaching collaborative invention to students based on the results of the study.

(2003). Review of Technical Communication, Deliberative Rhetoric, and Environmental Discourse: Connections and Directions. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 234-236.

In 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh received from Queen Elizabeth a patent to colonize any region of North America not possessed by a Christian prince. In 1585 he sent a fleet of seven ships to plant a colony under the governorship of Ralph Lane on Roanoke Island near what is now the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The colony lasted less than a year and then returned to England, where Lane produced a commercial report explaining the failure. Using research from speech communication on the rhetoric of apologia, this essay analyzes Lane's attempts to answer four criticisms of his governorship: that he mistreated the Indians, that he failed to explore the region to find commodities valuable to Raleigh and his investors, that he was an incompetent military commander, and that he deserted the colony. The essay also evaluates Lane's recommendations that future colonies be established further north on the Chesapeake Bay.

Abstract This article brings to light a topic that surfaces regularly among technical writing practitioners and theorists but is rarely addressed in the literature of the field. Stuart Selber deals with it in his 1997 essay "Hypertext Spheres of Influence" (see especially page 30), but a check of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW) Bibliography for the last two years produced only one recent article obviously devoted to it (see Mitra). The topic centers around this question: Is teaching technology problematic for technical writing instructors? Voices are heard here of 64 ATTW members who were queried on their roles as teachers of technical writing in relation to the demands made upon them to also be teachers of technology skills. Answers are presented and examined in terms of "teacher lore," the informal sharing of teacher experiences and opinion/feeling about those experiences. The article concludes with a call for more research to clarify the roles teachers of technical writing should be playing in an age where technological determinism—shown by a tendency to turn a technical communication course into a software tools course—can be seen as a threat to effective teaching of complex workplace rhetoric.

Abstract Advances in computing technologies, growth of business involvement on the Web, and our culture's affinity for image-intensive communication have forced technical communicators to become more involved with making and using a wide variety of images in their compositions. Too often our theories about how to write and read images are limited to a functional view, which stresses objectivity, ignores interpretation, and sees design as preset layout formulae. Combining current graphic design theory with rhetoric's understanding of techne, I argue for a configural view of images that stresses their artificiality and cultural significance and articulates design in strategic terms.

The classical Greek discourse on techne has much to offer technical communication teachers concerned about the relationship between theory and practice, but this potential has not yet been realized. Plato's and Aristotle's discussions about the relationship between techne and rhetoric, for example, encompass questions about the rhetorical goals of the speakedwriter and about the role of theory in teaching rhetorical art that are of continuing relevance to the modern discourse on technical communication. The aim of this article is to identify several points upon which a fruitful dialogue between ancient and modern discourses can begin. First, I supply some background on how the term techne was used up through the fourth century BCE. Then I discuss how the modern discourse on technical communication (including material from popular textbooks) both converges with and departs from Plato's and Aristotle's statements on the relationship between techne and rhetoric. Finally, I point out areas for further discussion as teachers of technical communication continue to reflect upon and refine their pedagogies.

(2002). Review of Rhetoric, the Polis, and the Global Village: Selected Papers from the 1998 Thirtieth Anniversary Rhetoric Society of America Conference. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 99-101.

This article proposes a theoretical frame for technical communication peda- gogy based on six layered literacies: basic, rhetorical, social, technological, ethical, and critical. The layered literacies frame advocates diverse instruction in technical communication programs, ranging from the ancient art of rhetoric to the most contemporary of technologies, from basic reading and writing skills to ethical and critical situational analyses. The article also suggests how the frame can be applied to a program of study or individual course in order to establish teaching objectives; develop course and lesson activities; and assess pedagogical materials, students, and programs.

(2002). Review of Twentieth-Century Rhetorics and Rhetoricians: Critical Studies and Sources; and Living Rhetoric and Composition: Stories of the Discipline. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 102-104.

Abstract This article explores the shift from observation of users to participation with users, describing and investigating three examples of user-centered design practice in order to consider the new ethical demands being made of technical communicators. Pelle Ehn's participatory design method, Roger Whitehouse's design of tactile signage for blind users, and the design of an online writing program are explored for the creation of a dialogic design ethic. The development of effective collaborative design methods requires meaningful communication between users and designers, and dialogic ethics can guide the development of effective and humane technological design methods.

This study explores two cases of professional communication among U.S. and South American personnel in one multinational organization in Quito, Ecuador. The results suggest that implicit in U.S. rhetorics of professional communication are valorizations of writing as a mechanism of regulating behavior, of universalism and individual reference points as rhetorical strategies, and of common‐law or precedent‐setting logic as compositional and interpretive strategies. However, many South American personnel seem predisposed to think of personal interactions as a mechanism of regulating behavior, of particular and collective reference points as rhetorical strategies, and of civil law logic as compositional and interpretive strategies. Thus, widespread claims about the roles of writing to “construct,”; mediate, or regulate organizational behavior need to be contextualized in the predominant rhetorical values of the organizational context.

Visual metadiscourse can provide design criteria for authors when considering the needs and expectations of readers. The linguistic concept of metadiscourse is expanded from the textual realm to the visual realm, where authors have many necessary design considerations as they attempt to help readers navigate through and understand documents. These considerations, both textual and visual, also help construct the ethos of authors, as design features reveal awareness of visual literacy and of the communication context. Visual metadiscourse complements textual metadiscourse in emphasizing the necessity of rhetoric in technical communication.

This article analyzes the clinical protocol within the rhetorical framework of the drug development and approval process, identifying the constraints under which the protocol is written and the rhetorical form, argumentative strategies, and style needed to improve and teach the writing of this document.

Abstract This article investigates the quantitative and qualitative evolution of debate‐creating (DEB) vs. accounting (ACC) references in 90 French medical articles published between 1810 and 1995. My findings suggest that nineteenth‐century French academic writing tends to be more polemical or oppositional than cooperative by contrast to its twentieth‐century counterpart. These results suggest that the debate‐creating vs. accounting opposition could be a rhetorical universal of referential behavior in medical literature.

Writing/Disciplinarity: A Sociohistoric Account of Literate Activity in the Academy. Paul A. Prior. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998. 333 pages. Exploring the Rhetoric of International Professional Communication: An Agenda for Teachers and Researchers. Ed. Carl R. Lovitt with Dixie Goswami. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company, Inc., 1999. 326 pages.

Academic disciplines certify knowledge through publication in scholarly journals; therefore, peer review of journal articles is one method of authorizing someone's speech. It is possible, however, to see peer review and other strategies as methods by which elites silence or de‐authorize voices that pose a threat to their status. This article discusses four methods of forum control— peer review, denial of forum, public correction, and published ridicule. Examples are drawn from cases in science.

The Presentation of Technical Information. 3rd ed. Reginald Kapp. Letchworth, Hertfordshire, UK: The Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators, 1998. 136 pages. User‐Centered Technology: A Rhetorical Theory for Computers and Other Mundane Artifacts. Robert R. Johnson. Albany: SUNY P, 1998. 195 pages. Ethics in Technical Communication: Shades of Gray. Lori Allen and Dan Voss. New York: Wiley, 1997. 410 pages. The Dynamics of Writing Review: Opportunities for Growth and Change in the Workplace. Susan M. Katz. Vol. 5 in the ATTW Contemporary Studies in Technical Communication. Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing Corp., 1998. 134 pages. Essays in the Study of Scientific Discourse: Methods, Practice, and Pedagogy. Ed. John T. Battalio. Vol. 6 in the ATTW Contemporary Studies in Technical Communication. Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1998. 264 pages. Outlining Goes Electronic. Jonathan Price. Vol. 9 in the ATTW Contemporary Studies in Technical Communication. Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing Corp., 1999. 177 pages (including bibliography and indexes). Wiring the Writing Center. Ed. Eric H. Hobson. Logan, Utah: Utah State UP, 1998. 254 pages. Inventing the Internet. Janet Abbate. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. 264 pages.

This article argues that professional writing researchers can help shape public policy by understanding policy making as a function of institutionalized rhetorical processes and by using an activist research stance to help generate the knowledge necessary to intervene. My goal is to argue for what activist technical writing research might look like, lay out an understanding of institutions that is helpful for influencing public policy, and illustrate the promises and the problems of both positions by using the case of a study focused on local HIV/AIDS policy making. According to this way of thinking, professional writing researchers can impact policy by helping change the processes by which policy gets made.

Practical experience teaches the difficulty and the messiness of democratic public policy processes. A discourse analytic perspective on rhetorical action in the institutional settings of policy work reveals the dynamics of effective agency. By simulating practical experience and by developing a discourse analytic perspective, academic instruction in professional and technical communication can show students what elected officials, governmental staff, and non‐profit non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) do to make or to implement policy.

This article examines a 1994 General Accounting Office (GAO) report on sexual harassment at U.S. service academies to determine how power structures affected the report writers' rhetorical choices. Employing postmodern mapping theories, the article identifies what is valued and devalued in the report's contents. Then it describes Congress's reaction to the report and speculates on the report's impact on public discourse and subsequent social action. It offers postmapping theory as a way of understanding the relationship between discourse and power in policy reports.

This article describes a discipline‐specific communication course for engineering students offered by a Canadian university. The pedagogy of this course is based on North American theories of genre and theories of situated learning. In keeping with these theories, the course provides a context in which students acquire rhetorical skills and strategies necessary to integrate into a discipline‐specific discourse community. The authors argue that such a pedagogical approach can be used to design communication courses tailored to the needs of any discipline if the following three key conditions are met: assignments are connected to subject matter courses, a dialogic environment is provided, and the nature of assignments allows students to build on their learning experiences in the course.

For small and mid‐sized universities, the 200‐level technical writing service course often represents the primary writing experience for students after their freshman year. Our “service” should help students develop the tools for analyzing language and understanding writing in complex ways. Assignment sequences should engage students in active research to develop four primary literacies: rhetorical, visual, information, and computer. This article focuses on disciplinarity and underlying pedagogical goals in technical writing classrooms by describing a search engine assignment sequence which promotes literate practices in three short reports: 1) A preview/instructions report, 2) An analysis/ evaluation report, and 3) A narrative review of a research activity. This article concludes with implications for these types of classroom practices.

In this article we explore how some contemporary language usage presents challenges for technical editing. Drawing on scholarship in the rhetoric of science and in critical linguistics, we argue that language does affect our perception of reality. Consequently, the language used in some technical documents needs to be reconsidered or even challenged by technical editors. Present textbooks on technical editing do not directly confront this issue, though some scholars have begun to challenge the use of terms such as “studgun.”; We conclude by demonstrating how a critical analysis of metaphors in everyday technical documents would help students question these language choices and draw attention to the consequences of using them.

In this article, we build on arguments in risk communication that the predominant linear risk communication models are problematic for their failure to consider audience and additional contextual issues. The “failure”; of these risk communication models has led, some scholars argue, to a number of ethical and communicative problems. We seek to extend the critique, arguing that “risk”; is socially constructed. The claim for the social construction of risk has significant implications for both risk communication and the roles of technical communicators in risk situations. We frame these implications as a “critical rhetoric”; of risk communication that (1) dissolves the separation of risk assessment from risk communication to locate epistemology within communicative processes; (2) foregrounds power in risk communication as a way to frame ethical audience involvement; (3) argues for the technical communicator as one possessing the research and writing skills necessary for the complex processes of constructing and communicating risk.

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.

The Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age. Ed. Theresa Enos. New York: Garland, 1996. 803 pages.

Nostalgic Angels: Rearticulating Hypertext Writing. Johndan Johnson‐Eilola. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1997. 272 pages. Persuasion and Privacy in Cyberspace: The Online Protests over Lotus Marketplace and the Clipper Chip. Laura J. Gurak. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1997. 181 pages. Fundable Knowledge: The Marketing of Defense Technology. A. D. Van Nostrand. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997. 241 pages. Rhetoric and Pedagogy, Its History, Philosophy, and Practice: Essays in Honor of James J. Murphy. Ed. Winifred Bryan Horner and Michael Leff. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1995. 337 pages. Of Problematology: Philosophy, Science, and Language. Michel Meyer. Trans. David Jamison, in collaboration with Allan Hart. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995. 310 pages.

Since the 1960s, attitudes toward empirical research on writing, including research on technical/professional writing, have shifted from encouragement to resistance. This essay traces these shifts in light of changes in writing research, psychology, and the rhetoric of science. In composition studies, an initial mild uneasiness about “scientism”; intensified with the rise of process models, suggesting a Romanticist defense of the mystique of creativity. More recent post‐modernist denunciations of scientific methods as immoral have other Romanticist overtones. In technical communication, a long‐standing interest in workplace writing practices allowed a smoother integration of empirical analysis with descriptive studies of writing contexts. However, as in composition, recent critiques in technical communication suggest that empirical methods should not be employed. These critiques too tightly circumscribe the values that may be considered humanist and cut off important avenues of inquiry and critique that historically have advanced both the sciences and humanities.

Researchers in technical communication have recently begun to take advantage of the interactions taking place via computer-mediated communication as a rich source for research. Yet, although research in cyberspace is growing, there are few guidelines for researchers to follow. This article reviews three forms of technical communication research methods (ethnography, rhetorical analysis, and surveys) and raises preliminary issues to consider when using such research methods in cyberspace. These issues include privacy and author permissions.

This article focuses on the botanical publications of two eighteenthcentury English women writers: Elizabeth Blackwell's A Curious Herbal (l737-1739) and Priscilla Bell Wakefield's An Introduction to Botany (1796). A brief rhetorical description and analysis of these books indicates that they contribute several new perspectives and techniques to the historical tradition of botanical writing and illustrating, as well as exhibit many of today's techniques for effective technical communication. Several suggestions are offered for further research directions to establish the significance of these writers within the conceptual framework of the feminine "green" tradition.

Medical rhetoric has long been characterized by a focus on disease and on the physician as healer. Now, in the era of managed health care, patients are increasingly being viewed as agents in the management of their own chronic diseases. This article examines the concept of patient agency from a rhetorical perspective in lay and professional medical discourse relating to diabetes care. Kenneth Burke's dramatistic pentad is used as a tool to help uncover and analyze sites where values appear ambiguous. This study shows that patient agency is closely related to patient compliance in the language of biomedicine. The terms "compliance" and "adherence" operate as terrninistic screens in professional discourse and serve to limit discussion of patient agency. In managed health care, tension is evident between the trend toward greater patient agency and the constraints of biomedical text conventions concerning doctor and patient roles.

This article employs aspects of Jurgen Habermas's theory of communicative action and his concept of a lifeworld, alongside composition theory's use of community, to examine the effectiveness of guilt as a rhetorical strategy in two national environmental publications. It finds that, ultimately, for long-term cdmmunicative action to occur, environmental groups should not rely on guilt as a rhetorical strategy because outside their "discourse communities," it will not lead to "dialogue, deliberation, and consensus-building."

The twelve-year long battle over the relicensure of the Kingsley Dam in western Nebraska is a representative anecdote of environmental regulation. Typical of regulatory discourse, the metaphor of "balance" determined the available fopoi. We argue that "balance" procedurally diminishes the public, cloaks the subjectivity of decision making, and reduces the reasonable rhetor to the role of umpire. Finally, we explore rhetorical strategies for undermining the appeal to "balance."

The geological surveys of the American West in the 1860s-80s are photographically illustrated scientific and technical documents that impose colonizing metaphors upon "natural" areas and resources-metaphors that continue to be contested today in Sierra Club calendar views of Yosemite peaks and in contemporary Congressional ddbates over mining rights and royalties on public Westem lands. Photographic images by William Henry Jackson, Timothy O'Sullivan, and others are central to the survey reports and are here read not so much as products of individual artistic or aesthetic sensibility, but more as thetoncat products of economic, ideological, and political forces in the decades after the American Civil War.

This article examines contributions of selected theories to technical communication's understanding of environmental discourse and uses a dialogical synthesis to construct a model of stakeholder analysis. The model, with its interactive variables of stakeholder knowledge, attitude, and desired behavior, is applied to a pollution prevention document and calls for an active research emphasis in determining effective communication strategies.

This article looks at the commentary's role in scientific disputation by analyzing the rhetoric in two scientific papers. First, it considers each author's explanation as to why disagreement exists among scientists. Second, it investigates one author's accusation that "cultural norms" have foreclosed research avenues in evolutionary studies. Third, it examines each author's appeal to values. These values cohere with their explanations as to why disagreements exist and their particular recommendations for administrating the Endangered Species Act.

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.