Textual Dynamics of the Professions
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Textual Dynamics of the Professions HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY STUDIES OF WRITING ~~ IN PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITIES EDITED BY CHARLES BAZERMAN AND JAMES PARADIS THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS The University of Wisconsin Press 114 North Murray Street Madison, Wisconsin 53715 3Henrietta Street London WCZE 8LU, England , Copyright 0 1991 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System All rights reserved 54321 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Textual dynamics of the professions : historical and contemporary studies of writing in professional communities :edited by Charles Bazerman and James Paradis. 404 pp. cm. ~ (Rhetoric of the human sciences) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Discourse analysis. 2. Technical writing. 3. Business writing. 4. Professions. 5. Bazerman, Charles. 6.. Paradis, James G., 1942- 111. Series. P302.T455 1990 808'.0014 - dc20 ISBN 0-299-12540-4 90-50079 ISBN 0-299-12594-7 (pbk.) CIP CONTENTS Contributors ix Introduction 3 Charles Bazerman and James Paradis PART ONE TEXTUAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE PROFESSIONS 1 How Natural Philosophers Can Cooperate: The Literary Technology of Coordinated Investigation in Joseph Priestley’s History and Present State of Electricity (1767) 13 Charles Bazerman 2 Stories and Styles in Two Molecular Biology Review Articles 45 Greg Myers The Rhetoric of Literary Criticism 76 Jeanne Fahnestock and Marie Secor The Medieval Art of Letter Writing: Rhetoric As Institutional Expression 97 Les Perelman The Role of Narrative Structure in the Transfer of Ideas: The Case Study and Management Theory 120 Ann Harleman Stewart Scientific Rhetoric in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: Herbert Spencer, Thomas H. Huxley, and John Dewey 145 James P. Zappen V vi Contents PART TWO THE DYNAMICS OF DISCOURSE COMMUNITIES 7 Toward a Sociocognitive Model of Literacy: Constructing Mental Models in a Philosophical Conversation 171 Cheryl Geisler 8 Social Context and Socially Constructed Texts: The Initiation of a Graduate Student into a Writing Research Community 191 Carol Berkenkotter, Thomas N.Huckin , and John Ackerman 9 Meaning Attribution in Ambiguous Texts in Sociology 216 Robert A. Schwegler and Linda K. Shamoon 10 Texts in Oral Context: The "Transmission" of Jury Instructions in an Indiana Trial 234 Gail Stygall PART THREE THE OPERATIONAL FORCE OF TEXTS 11 Text and Action: The Operator's Manual in Context and in Court 256 James Paradis 12 Understanding Failures in Organizational Discourse: The Accident at Three Mile Island and the Shuttle Challenger Disaster 279 Carl G. Herndl, Barbara A. Fennell, and Carolyn R. Miller 13 Creating a Text /Creating a Company: The Role of a Text in the Rise and Decline of a New Organization 306 Stephen Doheny-Farina vii Contents 14 Intertextuality in Tax Accounting: Generic, Referential, and Functional 336 Amy J. Devitt A Psychiatrist Using DSM-III: The Influence of a Charter Document in Psychiatry 358 Lucille Parkinson McCarthy CONTRIBUTORS John Ackerman coordinates Business Writing and teaches at the Univer- sity of Utah. His research interests are in the connection between writing and disciplinary learning. He is coauthor of Reading to Write: Exploring a Cognitive and Social Process (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Charles Bazerman teaches at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he directs degree programs in rhetoric and technical communication. His interests are in theory of writing as a social activity and the rhetoric of science. He is author of Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science (University of Wisconsin Press, 1988). His textbooks include The Informed Reader and The Informed Writer. Carol Berkenkotter teaches rhetoric and composition at Michigan Tech- nological University. Her early studies of audience-related composing strategies have led to an interest in the situational contexts of writing and academic genres. She has published essays in Research in the Teaching of English, College Composition and Communication, Rhetoric Review, and Journal of Advanced Composition and has completed the textbook College Contexts for Reading and Writing. Amy J. Devitt teaches at the University of Kansas, specializing in compo- sition theory and in the English language. Her publications include Standardizing Written English: Diffusion in the Case of Scotland, 1520- 1659 (Cambridge University Press, 1989). Stephen Doheny-Farina teaches technical communications at Clarkson University. He has published on a range of issues related to writing in nonacademic settings and has recently edited Effective Documentation; What We Have Learned from Research (MIT Press, 1988). Jeanne Fahnestock teaches rhetoric and writing at the University of Mary- land at College Park. She is coauthor of The Rhetoric of Argument and has published articles in College Composition and Communication; Written Communication; and Science, Technology, and Human Values. She is now working on a book on the rhetoric of science. ix X Contributors Barbara A. Fennell teaches linguistics and German at North Carolina State University, where she also coordinates the minor in linguistics. Her main research interests are in Germanic and English sociolinguistics. Cheryl Geisler teaches rhetoric and composition at Rensselear Polytech- nic Institute and directs the Writing Intensive Program. She has published articles on academic conversation in Written Communication, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and Rhetoric Review, and is coauthor of the textbook Arguing From Sources: Exploring Issues Through Reading and Writing. Carl G. Herndl teaches English at North Carolina State University, and has published on corporate and technical writing. He is currently writing about postmodernism and ethnography, and about the implications of Marxist critical theory for writing research. Thomas N. Huckin teaches discourse analysis, advanced expository writ- ing, and technical writing at the University of Utah. He enjoys doing context-sensitive linguistic analyses of written texts, written genres, and "rules of good writing." He is coauthor of Technical Writing and Pro- fessional Communication and has published articles in Research in the Teaching of English, Written Communication, Linguistic Analysis, Visible Language, and other journals. Lucille Parkinson McCarthy teaches literature and writing at the Univer- sity of Maryland, Baltimore County. She has published articles about students writing in academic settings and has coauthored a book on the psychiatry of handicapped children. Carolyn R. Miller teaches at North Carolina State University where she coordinates the M.S. in Technical Communication. Her primary research interest is the rhetoric of science and technology, on which she has pub- lished several theoretical and critical essays. She is also coeditor of New Essays in Scientific and Technical Communication. Greg Myers is a lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Lancaster, Lancaster, EngIand. He has recently published a book of case studies, Writing Biology: Texts in the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge, and he is now working on a study of the discourse of the computational linguistics and AI research communities in Britain. xi Contributors James Paradis teaches technical communication at the Massachusetts Insti- tute of Technology. His primary scholarly interests are the rhetorical his- tory of science and technology and science and literature in Victorian culture. He has consulted extensively as an expert witness on the role of manuals in the social construction of technology. His publications include T. H. Huxley: Man’s Place in Nature and numerous essays in journals and volumes. He is coeditor of Victorian Science and Victorian Values and Evolution and Ethics (Princeton University Press, 1989). Les Perelman is an Assistant Dean and Coordinator of the Writing Require- ment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Trained in medieval literature and rhetoric, he is interested in historical relationships between the social function of discourse and the concurrent formulation of rhetori- cal theory. He has coedited The Middle English Letter of Alexander to Aristotle and has published articles in College English, The Writing lnstructor, and Neophilo logus. Robert A. Schwegler teaches courses in rhetoric and composition in the English Department at the University of Rhode Island. His research cur- rently focuses on the ways cognition, disciplinary constraints, and ideol- ogy shape readers’ perceptions and evaluations. He has published articles in College English, Freshman English News, Journal of American Folk- lore, and The Writing Instructor. Among his textbooks are Patterns in Action and Patterns of Exposition. Marie Secor teaches at Penn State University, where she has also served as director of the Penn State Conference on Rhetoric and Composition. She has published essays in College Composition and Communication, Pre/ Text, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Philosophy and Rhetoric, and Written Communication, and she is coauthor of A Rhetoric of Argument (2d ed., McGraw-Hill) and Readings in Argument (Random House). She is interested in rhetorical history, theory, and analysis, and is doing fur- ther studies on the rhetoric of literary argument and on style. Linda K. Shamoon is Director of the College Writing Program in the English Department at the University of Rhode Island where she teaches courses in rhetoric and composition and in the teaching of writing.