(2005). Figures of Speech as Persuasive Strategies in Early Commercial Communication: The Use of Dominant Figures in the Raleigh Reports About Virginia in the 1580s. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 183-196.

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.

(2002). A Fantasy-Theme Analysis of Arthur Barlowe's 1584 Discourse on Virginia: The First English Commercial Report Written about North America from Direct Experience. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 31-59.

In 1917 Frank Aydelotte, an English professor at MIT, became AT&T's first outside writing consultant. Because many of its older, better-educated male employees had been mobilized to fight World War I, the company found itself with numerous young, poorly-educated employees. Drawing on the humanistic approach to writing instruction that he had developed at MIT in his book English and Engineering, Aydelotte created a year-long program at AT&T that taught employees to think and write about issues important to their work. The course is important for two reasons: first, it offers insight into the kinds of early consulting work that English professors did, and, second, it shows that Aydelotte's humanistic approach to technical communication worked as well in business as it did in academic settings.

Frank Aydelotte's English and Engineering (1917) is one of the first anthologies in technical communication. Developed at MIT, this book attempted to broaden the education of undergraduate engineering students by using the tenets of the thought movement. This movement, which Aydelotte first articulated while directing Indiana University's first‐year English program, modified for universities in the United States the education that he had received at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. Rather than emphasizing matters of form and correctness, the thought approach required engineering students to think and write about issues important to their education and future careers.

Introduction Social Science Perspectives Who are Basic Writers? by Andrea Lunsford and Patricia A. Sullivan Development Psychology and Basic Writers by Donna Haisty Winchell Literacy Theory and Basic Writing by Mariolina Salvatori and Glynda Hull Linguistic Perspectives Modern Grammar and Basic Writers by Ronald F. Lunsford Dialects and Basic Writers by Michael Montgomery TESL Research and Basic Writing by Sue Render Pedalogical Perspectives Basic Writing Courses and Programs by Michael D. Hood Computers and Writing Instruction by Stephen A. Bernhardt and Patricia G. Wojahn Writing Laboratories and Basic Writing by Donna Beth Nelson Preparing Teachers of Basic Writing by Richard Filloy Appendix: Selective Bibliography of Basic Writing Textbooks by Mary Sue Ply Name Index Subject Index

John White was England's first important ethnographic illustrator. Collaborating with one of the Renaissance's most innovative scientists, Thomas Hariot, while working as an expedition artist on Sir Walter Raleigh's 1585 attempt to colonize Virginia, White produced influential illustrations of American Indians that were published as etchings and widely distributed in Theodor de Bry's America (1590). Apprenticed as an artist in Elizabethan England, White redirected this traditional training as a limnist and a costume painter to scientific, ethnographic purposes.

With the rise of science, 18th-century logic and rhetoric began to make use of inductive patterns of discourse. In logic, William Duncan discussed two methods of organizing extended discourse, the methods of analysis and synthesis. Analysis represents the movement of thought as the thinker or writer works through a problem to discover its solution. This method is actually an early form of what is now known as problem solving that Joseph Priestley, a rhetorician as well as a scientist, introduced into rhetoric. He uses analysis in his scientific writing, especially in his Experiments on Different Kinds of Air, in the form of a five-stage mental operation or heuristic that records the progress of his thoughts as he experimented on air to isolate and identify oxygen.