Liberal arts colleges that elect to introduce technical writing courses or programs into their curriculum face the dilemma of vocationalism vs. liberal education. This paper examines the philosophical differences between the two as well as their practical compatibility or incompatibility, and then argues for the union of technical writing and the liberal arts school while admitting certain reservations. The technical writing course at a liberal arts school should use a wider range of books and periodicals than should a technical school, should stress rhetorical theory and strategy, and should confront the moral issues resulting from technology.

IN The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn elaborates the concept of the a comprehensive theoretical model that governs both the view of reality accepted by an intellectual community and the practice of that community's discipline. This concept has increasing interest for English studies because new demands on our composition courses, along with new developments in literary theory, have contributed to a hot debate over the premises of our discipline. Maxine Hairston, for one, has explained in an address to the 1978 convention of the Conference on College Composition and Communication that we should understand this debate as the sort of profound revolution in accepted thinking that accompanies a new paradigm, rather than as an unrelated group of local disagreements over critical tastes and pedagogical methods. Professor Hairston wants to dignify our debate as a debate because she fears, with good reason, that its beginnings in literary theory and composition pedagogy have allowxved too many practitioners in English studies to regard it as tangential to their main business. Therefore, Hairston emphasizes the comprehensive nature of the as Kuhn explains it. Having characterized our situation as a debate, however, Hairston goes on to support her own candidate for our new by an appeal to evidence. But it is Kuhn's most striking point that a determines the identification and interpretation of empirical in a given discipline. Empirical makes sense only when considered in light of a paradigm; therefore, evidence cannot be imported to establish a above debate. Hairston and others (Janet Emig and E. D. Hirsch, for example) have sought, however, to establish a based on such evidence, under the misapprehension that only a so established can raise English studies to the status of a truly rigorous discipline. On the contrary, Kuhn argues that a is established, even in the natural sciences, not because of compelling evidence, but because of a rhetorical process that delimits the shared language of the intellectual community governed by the paradigm. Indeed, he suggests that he has derived his concept of paradigm for the sciences from a study of the theoretical models that govern the humanistic disciplines. In following Kuhn, we should not be misled into a scientistic faith in evidence as compelling. Instead, the special province of our new may be indicated in his analysis of the ways in which any is constituted by language.

Perelman, Chaim. L'Empire rhétorique; rhétorique et argumentation. Collection “Tour Demain,” Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1977. Perelman, Chaim and Olbrechts‐Tyteca, L. The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation. Trans, by J. Wilkinson and P. Weaver. Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969. First paperback edition, 1971.

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Although the search for a reliable, quantitative measure of the maturity of written composition antedates LaBrant's (1933) subordination index, it was not until Hunt's (1965) identification of the T-unit that quantitative measures of sentence and clause length factors could be demonstrated to be valid, reliable indices of maturity. Following Hunt's exploration of the T-unit, several researchers attempted to design measures embodying linguistic features beyond clause and sentence length factors which indicate the maturity of written composition. Such scales include Botel and Granowsky's (1972) formula for measuring complexity: A directional effort, Endicott's (1973) proposed scale for and Golub and Kidder's (1974) syntactic density score.

The traditional view of rhetoric and science as sharply distinct has helped reduce the technical writing course to mere vocational training. Current thinking in rhetorical theory and philosophy of science supports the contrasting view that science is rhetorical. Salient aspects of the rhetoric of science are illustrated by Crick and Watson's discovery of the structure of DNA, as recorded in Watson's The Double Helix [1]. Analysis of the rhetoric of science suggests that the study of technical writing could be central to liberal education for a technological society.

(1978). Burke's dramatism and action theory. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 8-15.

For more than 45 years, research institutions have supported the “publication charge plan” and thereby shared part of the expense of publishing the results of the physics research they have sponsored. The cost of publishing falls naturally into two general categories: (1) editorial work and composition; (2) printing and distribution. An excellent fitting of publication income to publication costs can be made by adjusting the publication charges to cover the cost of editorial work and composition and then adjusting subscription rates to cover the cost of printing and distribution. Such an ideal situation does not exist in practice, but the basic philosophy of this kind of division is approximated at the American Institute of Physics for member subscriptions. Specific identification of cost categories and an awareness of their magnitude has also provided incentive to improve productivity and lower costs. Despite inflation, most publication charges are at nearly the same level as they were in 1970. In addition, publication schedules have been streamlined with monthly journals being put in the mail 35 working days after receipt of the last manuscript from the scientific editors. The overall result is a healthy publishing program with journals having a much larger circulation, at lower subscription rates, than journals published without a publication charge plan.

A conceptual framework for assessing scientific journal quality, both on intrinsic and on relative scales, is outlined. Several quantitative tools for objective estimation of relative quality are discussed, including volume use, citation analysis, quality sampling, and rejection rate analysis. The identification of factors that contribute to journal quality, and the implications for quality control, are briefly considered.

THE RHETORIC OF RELIGION, Kenneth Burke. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1970, 327 pp.

In 1968, Alan Purves and Victoria Rippere published their ground-breaking study, The Elements Writing about a Literary Work, in which they proposed a new system for content analysis response to literature. Beginning with published writings of numerous critics from the time Aristotle, continuing with a pool critical statements about one work provided by contemporary scholars and critics, and finally refining the system on the basis essays drawn from students in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and Belgium, Purves and Rippere shifted the focus analysis from the correctness or accuracy a stated response to its content or subject. The which they proposed for analyzing response ranged from such literary devices as allusion and irony to general statements thematic importance or identification 139 elements in all, combined into 24 subcategories and 5 categories (engagement-involvement, perception, interpretation, evaluation,, and miscellaneous). The elements, presented with careful instructions for their use, illustrative studies, and the necessary reliability data, filled a methodological void and helped both to stimulate and to focus a nascent interest in research in response

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With Good Reason. S. Morris Engel, Nev York; St. Martin's Press, 1976; and Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric. Howard Kahane. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1971. The Rhetoric of Renaissance Poetry. Eds. Thomas O. Sloan and Raymond B. Waddington. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1974. A Review and Counter‐Review: Poetics, Rhetoric, and Logic: Studies in the Basic Disciplines of Criticism. Wilbur Samuel Howell, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1975.

The schism between theory and practice is reflected in English studies. British technological universities have attempted to meet the needs of industry in technical fields. Economic and academic pressures often make this difficult. A degree in modern English studies is planned which attempts to combine traditional academic values and functional needs. A new approach to rhetoric combining linguistic and critical disciplines with practical skills in communication can combine liberal and vocational needs. The course content of the degree and the teaching approach is related to the ethos of a technological university.

Systems design consists of a tremendously complex series of choices in which no decision point is completely independent of other decisions which have already been made or have yet to be made. A systems approach to the design of document-handling information systems would require a detailed examination of the choices to be made in the design process and the ramifications of possible choices in terms of the capabilities, performance, cost, and other characteristics of the system. The authors advocate a systematic procedure involving six steps: 1) identification of fixed parameters, 2) identification of variable parameters, 3) identification of available options for each variable parameter, 4) identification of factors affecting a choice among available options, 5) identification of factors affected by a choice among available options, and 6) logical analysis of the picture thus presented to determine the optimum sequence in which decisions should be made during the design process and the nature of the decision process itself.

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