In American ecopoetics, resonance (a term from systems theory) is in many ways a desirable replacement for the dead metaphorical commonplace reflection, but an even stronger alternative requires serious questioning of the field’s romantic and transcendentalist traditions, as well as increased attention to the physical and political contexts of writing.

Over the last two decades, environmental rhetoric, ecocomposition, and related work in scientific and technical communication have developed at a steady, if overall unimpressive rate compared to th...

This essay sketches a theoretical rationale for a revived pedagogy and research program in environmental studies within the field of professional communication. The first wave of such studies drew upon themes established by environmental rhetoric and ecocriticism within the Cold War context of political environmentalism. The second wave might well look to ecocomposition and ecopoetics in developing a new kind of ecologically sensitive workplace study and a renewed interest in the language of space and place and the concepts of local and global in teaching and research.

Abstract The way rhetorical analysts now use the term appeals—meaning to plead or to please—has outstripped the available theories, particularly those derived from Aristotle. Indeed, Aristotle's ethos, pathos, and logos may not even be appeals in the modern sense. A revised model relates author and author positions to values in a triangulating relationship. Appeals also appear as techniques for working through varying media, not only media defined semiotically but also as forms of resistance related to cultural differences. Examples from criticism, film, and advertising provide a foundation for replacing a modes approach to rhetorical appeals with a genre approach.

Abstract Beginning with the premise that consultants occupy a strategic position for observing how research results are generated, applied, modified, or ignored in technical communication practice, this article reports on a project using interviews with seven successful consultants to gather insights into the creation and circulation of new knowledge in our field. The interviews revealed a surprising degree of uncertainty about the state of research in technical communication and the relationship of formal research to workplace experience.

Margaret A. Syverson discusses the ways in which a theory of composing situations as ecological systems might productively be applied in composition studies. She demonstrates not only how new research in cognitive science and complex systems can inform composition studies but also how composing situations can provide fruitful ground for research in cognitive science.Syverson first introduces theories of complex systems currently studied in diverse disciplines. She describes complex systems as adaptive, self-organizing, and dynamic; neither utterly chaotic nor entirely ordered, these systems exist on the boundary between order and chaos. Ecological systems are metasystems composed of interrelated complex systems. Writers, readers, and texts, together with their environments, constitute one kind of ecological system.Four attributes of complex systems provide a theoretical framework for this study: distribution, embodiment, emergence, and enaction. Three case studies provide evidence for the application of these concepts: an analysis of a passage from an autobiographical poem by Charles Reznikoff, a study of first-year college students writing collaboratively, and a conflict in a computer forum of social scientists during the Gulf War. The diversity of these cases tests the robustness of theories of distributed cognition and complex systems and suggests possibilities for wider application.

Instead of offering a predictive “history” of the future, this essay explores how we arrive at our attitudes toward the future and the effects of such attitudes toward current practice. We greet the future with attitudes prepared by myths, master narratives that guide our vision of who we are and what we are becoming. One key myth in our discipline, the myth of immediate communication, proves an unreliable guide to the future. Readings in science fiction serve to demonstrate how a critique of the immediacy myth might proceed. The essay argues for a critically informed, open‐minded approach to the future, an approach that encourages an honest self‐criticism within the discipline.

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Rhétoriques de la modernité by Manuel Maria Carrilho. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992; pp. 170. The Place of Emotion in Argument by Douglas Walton. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992, xiv; 294 pp. Reasoning and the Logic of Things: The Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898 by Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Kenneth Laine Ketner, with an introduction by Kenneth Laine Keiner and Hilary Putnam. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992; xiv; 297pp. Criteria of Certainty: Truth and Judgment in the English Enlightenment by Kevin L. Cope. Lexington: The UP of Kentucky, 1990; viii; 224. Writing Ourselves Into the Story: Unheard Voices from Composition Studies by Sheryl I. Fontaine and Susan Hunter. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1993; pp. 383. Novelties in the Heavens: Rhetoric and Science in the Copernican Controversy, by Jean Dietz Moss. Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1993. Preface xiv, 353 pp. The Book of Memory by Mary Carruthers.Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1992; 393 pp.

complex of social formations. In the field of composition and rhetoric, such systems have been described as communities. The term is useful in the theory and analysis of writing because it embraces the rhetorical concern with social interchange (discourse) and with situation or context (community). But the term can lead the analyst astray by prompting an uncritical acceptance of as a natural element or transcendental category. Because community, like discourse itself, is socially constructed-by the analyst as well as by the people who claim membership-the act of identifying communities is never innocent, never free of ideological influences. As both Lester Faigley and Joseph Harris have noted, the word community is almost always used positively, and herein lies its danger to rhetorical analysis. If the community is always good, who but the perverse could question or rebel against practices that sustain the community? However, to accept this irresistible goodness as somehow prior to discourse (above question) would amount to abandoning a key premise of rhetorical criticism-the idea of the rhetorical situation (Bitzer), which demands that the analyst acknowledge the possibility of transformation among the elements and aims of discourse, including location. In addition to changing language and changing minds, the enterprise of rhetoric suggests that speakers and writers have the power to transform the site of discourse, the community itself. In this essay I argue that as a defense against an uncritical adoption of the community concept rhetorical theory needs to keep alive competing concepts of discourse communities, so that alternatives exist in the description and analysis of discourse practices. Recent definitions of discourse communities have established a rather too-narrow foundation upon a communitarian ethic. At the present time, when liberalism's stock is down, communitarianism appears to be a strong alternative for understanding the relation of people to government and culture (Lasch). In liberalism, social organization depends upon two strong formations-the individual, who may enjoy a wide range of rights and freedoms at the possible cost of

This essay presents a critical case study of how shifts in the style and genre of written communication both reflect and influence historical shifts in political consciousness and action. The field of study is the discourse of environmental advocacy. With increased public support for actions that would forestall environmental degradation, environmental politics has diversified. Formerly a resistance movement directed toward influencing large-scale governmental or industrial actions through the rhetoric of polemical dispute, environmentalism has evolved into several distinct approaches, including a globalist movement and a grass roots movement that share an interest in policy and procedure, the traditional topics of instrumental discourse. A new genre built upon this proactive attitude—the green how-to book—currently dominates the popular literature on environmental problem solving. Capitalizing on the document designs of technical communication, these manuals recommend courses of action ranging from fixing the Environmental Protection Agency to fixing the toilet; they are directed to audiences ranging from the President of the United States to the ordinary householder. They have in common an attempt to break the paralysis of fear associated with realizations about the scale of environmental damage. But—because the instrumental genre tends to obscure relations of agent, action, and effect—covert political agendas may pass unnoticed into the personalist politics of the new literature.

This study suggests an approach for expanding and integrating research to produce a history of technical writing. The study defines problems that reside in writing such a history, suggests research premises and questions, and then applies these questions to technical writing as it existed in the English Renaissance, 1475–1640.

The environmental impact statement (EIS) was created by the National Environmental Policy Act in 1969 as a means of ensuring careful study of possible effects on the environment of projects involving public lands and as an aid to effective decisions regarding such projects. This article presents a case study involving the reading of several EISs produced by one government agency, the Bureau of Land Management. An analysis of these documents reveals that, to answer the leading question of rhetoricians in the field of technical writing—Is the document effective?—we must consider the social and cultural context of the EIS as well as the characteristics of the text, its organization and style. Simple notions of purpose and audience are ruled out. We must account for pragmatics as well as syntactics and semantics. The very category of “effectiveness” is conditioned by the historical and political forces that shape the EIS. An approach through genre theory is recommended.

Amplification is the set of rhetorical techniques by which a discourse is elaborated and extended to enhance its appeal and information value. Even in the manual, long considered the most laconic of the genres of technical communication, amplification has its place. Drawing on the theory of classical and modern rhetoric, this article shows how amplification tends to increase and improve the coverage, rationale, warnings, behavioral alternatives, examples, previews, reviews, and general emphasis of technical manuals.

As a concept of rhetoric in technical writing, relevance involves an awareness of time. The report deals with the past; the manual, with the present; the proposal, with the future. To be considered relevant, however, all the modes of technical writing must relate to the present reality of the audience. Writers must recognize this need not only as it influences grammar and style but also as it affects larger concerns of organization and tone. Realizing that the temporal classification of modem reports, manuals, and proposals correlates with Aristotle's designation of forensic, epideictic, and deliberative discourse, technical writers can discover a body of rhetorical theory on which to base choices about selection, arrangement, and presentation of subject matter.

The demand for quality technical manuals has increased. A survey of industry reveals that organizations are developing new techniques of management and are shifting old priorities in order to integrate production, technical writing, and marketing in an effort to produce better manuals. Companies are seeking to specify as much as possible the exact audiences for their manuals, and are writing and testing with users in mind. To facilitate revision and to cut costs, they are automating the production process.

Les techniques de redaction technique oscillent entre la forme de l'essai (ou les faits sont subordonnes aux idees developpees) et celle du rapport (ou les faits predominent). Elles s'apparentent a la fois aux techniques de redaction utilisees en sciences humaines et a celles pronees par le journalisme

Since World War II, proposal writing, especially that which involves government funding, has become one of the most important communicative functions of the industries that employ engineers and technical writers. An immense literature on the subject of how to prepare, write, and submit proposals has grown up in the last 25 years. The 80-item bibliography provided here is designed to help the engineer, the technical writer, and the engineering manager find and use the literature most appropriate and helpful in the overlapping realms of industry and government. The bibliography lists sources of information under the topics of education, evaluation, format and preparation, general, grantsmanship, management, and style and rhetoric. The precis provide a general guide to each of these topics; occasional annotations supplement this information.

To increase general readers' understanding and sympathy for scientific and technical subject matter, authors need a literary form that allows the material to be effectively related to common human experience. The imposing formality of scientific papers and technical reports must yield to the organic form and rhetorical richness of the personal essay. Stephen Jay Gould's essay “Of Bamboos, Cicadas, and the Economy of Adam Smith” demonstrates how the use of organic form and rhetorical techniques like examples, analogies, metaphors, historical background, and general personalism can enhance communication with nonspecialists. Excellence in essay writing is achieved only through careful planning, writing, and rewriting, but effective interpretation of science and technology for the intelligent general reader is worth the effort.

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