Coding, the analytic task of assigning codes to nonnumeric data, is foundational to writing research. A rich discussion of methodological pluralism has established the foundational importance of systematicity in the task of coding, but less attention has been paid to the equally important commitment to language complexity. Addressing the interplay among a commitment to language complexity, the selection of tools, and the construction of workflow, this article offers a framework of analytic tasks in coding. Three general purpose coding tools are explored: Excel, MAXQDA, and Dedoose. This exploration suggests that how four aspects of analysis should be supported in order to manage language complexity: code restructuring, segmentation in advance of coding, use of a full coding scheme, and retrieval of full context by code. This analysis is intended to help writing researchers choose tools and design workflow to support coding work consistent with our commitment to language in its full complexity.

A decade ago, my colleagues and I (Geisler et al., 2001) published an IText manifesto in the Journal of Business and Technical Communication to call attention to the impact of information technologies with texts at their core. These ITexts, we claimed, represented ‘‘a new page in the story of the coevolution of humanity, culture, and technology,’’ promising to change both the nature of texts and their role in society. The manifesto arose out of discussions in May 2000 at the annual meeting of the Rhetoric Society of America on the future of research on text-making activities and how they affect and are affected by new information technologies. About 14 months later, the IText manifesto was published in the pages of this journal. Three years later, a special issue of JBTC illustrated ‘‘the ubiquity of IText’’ with articles on Web technologies, dictation, screen capture, and text visualization (Geisler, 2004).

In responding to Gunn and Lundberg's critique of her report on rhetorical agency, Geisler uses their Ouija Board metaphor to undertake an analysis of what it might mean to teach the post‐modern rhetor. In particular, once the autonomous agent has been denaturalized, members of the profession of rhetoric have plenty to do in helping students first to engage with and then to participate in a more appropriately theorized rhetoric. Like the Ouija Board player, we may not be able to know how the results of our classroom teaching are related to our intentions. But—like every other rhetor—we need to recognize the costs of walking away from the game.

Abstract One of the primary discussions at last fall's meeting of the Alliance of Rhetoric Societies addressed the question, “How ought we to understand the concept of rhetorical agency?” Several developments are worthy of note. First, although concern with agency began as a rear guard action against the post‐modern critique, the discussion appears to have shifted to more productive investigations into the consciousness and conditions of agency. Second, a growing number of scholars acknowledge that rhetoric as an interpretive theory describes a variety of rhetorical positions, some with more and some with less rhetorical agency. Rhetoric still faces the issue, however, of incorporating this knowledge into rhetoric's mission as a productive art.

Most people who use information technology (IT) every day use IT in text-centered interactions. In e-mail, we compose and read texts. On the Web, we read (and often compose) texts. And when we create and refer to the appointments and notes in our personal digital assistants, we use texts. Texts are deeply embedded in cultural, cognitive, and material arrangements that go back thousands of years. Information technologies with texts at their core are, by contrast, a relatively recent development. To participate with other information researchers in shaping the evolution of these ITexts, researchers and scholars must build on a knowledge base and articulate issues, a task undertaken in this article. The authors begin by reviewing the existing foundations for a research program in IText and then scope out issues for research over the next five to seven years. They direct particular attention to the evolving character of ITexts and to their impact on society. By undertaking this research, the authors urge the continuing evolution of technologies of text.

Texts function as both means and motive for human activity in the same way that other technological objects function: They move from private mediational means to public motive as part of the shifting consciousness that sustains the everyday life of complex organizations. In complex organizations, the status of text, the condition of public visibility, is an achievement rather than a given. Seeing texts as objects calls our attention to a range of textual phenomena associated with the advent of information technologies. In infomated environments, the virtual states of textual objects are becoming ever more ubiquitous and consequential. A sample analysis of the texts produced and used in the context of the new technology of personal digital assistants (PDAs) suggests, for example, that such “ITexts” may facilitate the migration of the documentary reality of the workplace into the home.

The authors report an investigation of the discourse practices of the “affiliated professions” of software engineering design. Lists of design issues generated by students in computer science and technical communication were compared to lists produced by experts affiliated with software engineering and by students entering an unaffiliated profession. The results suggest that (a) the affiliated experts addressed a more balanced set of issues, (b) the students in computer science looked more like the affiliated experts in their attention to technical issues and more like the unaffiliated students in their attention to human issues, and (c) the students in technical communication looked more like the affiliated experts in their attention to the human issues and more like the unaffiliated students in their attention to the technical issues. The results are discussed in terms of a landscape of highly clustered, fractured, and stratified affiliated professions over which students travel during their educational and professional careers.

The first full-length account integrating both the cognitive and sociological aspects of reading and writing in the academy, this unique volume covers educational research on reading and writing, rhetorical research on writing in the disciplines, cognitive research on expertise in ill-defined problems, and sociological and historical research on the professions. The author produced this volume as a result of a research program aimed at understanding the relationship between two concepts -- literacy and expertise -- which traditionally have been treated as quite separate phenomena. A burgeoning literature on reading and writing in the academy has begun to indicate fairly consistent patterns in students acquire literacy practices. This literature shows, furthermore, that what students do is quite distinct from what experts do. While many have used these results as a starting point for teaching students how to be expert, the author has chosen instead to ask about the interrelationship between expert and novice practice, seeing them both as two sides of the same project: a cultural-historical professionalization project aimed at establishing and preserving the professional privilege. The consequences of this professionalization project are examined using the discipline of academic philosophy as the site for the author's investigations. Methodologically unique, these investigations combine rhetorical analysis, protocol analysis, and the analysis of classroom discourse. The result is a complex portrait of the participants in this humanistic discipline use their academic literacy practices to construct and reconstruct a great divide between expert and lay knowledge. This monograph thus extends our current understanding of the rhetoric of the professions and examines its implications for education.

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Authorial newness or innovation has become a subject of growing interest in the sociology of science. We review some of this literature and elaborate constituents of a theory of authorial novelty. We also discuss some parameters that account for the changing assumptions of novelty across disciplinary communities. Finally, we show that many of the insights required in a parameterized theory of newness have not yet made their way into theories of rhetoric or written composition.

(1989). Making meaning in literate conversations: A teachable sequence for reflective writing. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 229-243.

Even before the Research Network was called to order during the 1988 Conference on College Composition and Communication, we as organizers had become aware that we had tapped into a strongly felt need. As Charles Bazerman recounted in his opening remarks that morning, response had been overwhelming. Not only had we been impressed with the number of people willing to travel early to CCCC to talk about their work in progress, but we had been unprepared for the number who wanted to listen and respond. This deeply felt need, as Bazerman suggested, was a sign that we had come of age as researchers. No longer exhausted with the task of defending our projects to outsiders, we sought the time and space to talk among ourselves. Ironically, much of the morning talk was given over to expressions of good will and pluralism that initially obscured rather than furthered this dialogue. It was as if we had to assure ourselves that no one was going to walk out the door before we could get down to work. The tone of the meeting changed by the afternoon, however. In small groups the participants quickly ignored the global questions we had formulated over lunch (What do we need to know?; How will we know it?; What do we do with it when we get it?) and turned with more relish to the work-in-progress presentations. In these, researchers from strikingly different perspectives attempted to explain their current projects in terms the others could understand. Now, instead of speaking of our global pluralism, we more frankly admitted our ignorance in the face of each

Experts on style agree that writers frequently have trouble using the unattended anaphoric this clearly. Few, however, have proposed explicit guidelines for sorting appropriate from inappropriate uses. This article examines the limitations of a recent classification proposed by Moskovit (1983), and then suggests an alternate classification relying on concepts from functional grammar. In particular, Moskovit's distinction between demarcational, syntactic, and semantic reference is found not to predict actual readers' judgments. In its place, the authors suggest a classification based on the functional notions of topic and focus. The unattended this is shown to be English's economical routine for moving the focus of a discourse from nominal topics to clausal predications relating those topics. Before deciding to employ this routine, however, writers are warned to evaluate its consequences on clarity and rhetoric.