Moving beyond the Moment

Studies in the rhetoric of science have tended to focus on classic scientific texts and on the history of drafts and the interaction surrounding them up until the moment when the drafts are accepted for publication by a journal. Similarly, research on disasters resulting from failed communication has tended to focus on the history of drafts and the interaction surrounding them up until the moment of the disaster. The authors argue that overattention to the moment skews understanding of what makes scientific discourse successful and neglects other valuable sources of evidence. After reviewing the promises and limitations of studies from historical, observational, and text-analytic approaches, the authors call for studies of responses to research articles from disciplinary readers and argue for studies using a variety of qualitative and quantitative methodologies that will explore the real-time responses of readers to scientific texts, test the effects of rhetorical strategies on readers, and track the course of acceptance or rejection over time.

[1]  Davida Charney.  Empiricism Is not a Four-Letter Word. , 1996 .

[2]  Lawrence J. Prelli,et al.  A Rhetoric of Science: Inventing Scientific Discourse , 1989 .

[3]  D. A. Winsor,et al.  Communication failures contributing to the Challenger accident: an example for technical communicators , 1988 .

[4]  J. Shreeve.  Secrets of the gene , 1999 .

[5]  Michael H. MacRoberts,et al.  Quantitative Measures of Communication in Science: A Study of the Formal Level , 1986 .

[6]  T. Melia.  And lo the footprint . . . selected literature in rhetoric and science , 1984 .

[7]  Carol Berkenkotter,et al.  Genre knowledge in disciplinary communication , 1994 .

[8]  Vanessa Dean Arnold,et al.  Communication: the Missing Link in the Challenger Disaster , 1988 .

[9]  James Hartley,et al.  The Effects of Changes in Layout and Changes in Wording on Preferences for Instructional Text. , 1981 .

[10]  Jack Selzer,et al.  Understanding scientific prose , 1993 .

[11]  Alexander Zahar,et al.  Shaping written knowledge: the genre and activity of the experimental article in science , 1991, Medical History.

[12]  James Hartley,et al.  Which layout do you prefer? An analysis of readers' preferences for different typographic layouts of structured abstracts , 1996, J. Inf. Sci..

[13]  John Law,et al.  Putting Facts Together: A Study of Scientific Persuasion , 1982 .

[14]  S. Gould,et al.  The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme , 1979, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological Sciences.

[15]  D. Gaonkar.  The idea of rhetoric in the rhetoric of science , 1993 .

[16]  E. Jackson.  Opticks: or a treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflections and colours of light. , 1932 .

[17]  Ann Madeline Blakeslee.  Inventing Scientific Discourse: Dimensions of Rhetorical Knowledge in Physics. , 1992 .

[18]  O. Avery,et al.  STUDIES ON THE CHEMICAL NATURE OF THE SUBSTANCE INDUCING TRANSFORMATION OF PNEUMOCOCCAL TYPES , 1944, The Journal of experimental medicine.

[19]  R. Franklin,et al.  Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate , 1953, Nature.

[20]  John M. Swales,et al.  Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings , 1993 .

[21]  T. Kuhn,et al.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. , 1964 .

[22]  Kathleen M. Carley,et al.  Communication at A Distance : The Influence of Print on Sociocultural Organization and Change , 1994 .

[23]  Alan W Gross,et al.  Scientific Discourse in Sociohistorical Context: The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1675-1975. Dwight Atkinson , 2001 .

[24]  Dennis S. Gouran,et al.  A critical analysis of factors related to decisional processes involved in the challenger disaster , 1986 .

[25]  S. Michael Halloran,et al.  The Birth of Molecular Biology: An Essay in the Rhetorical Criticism of Scientific Discourse. , 1984 .

[26]  S. Lazerow.  The Institute of Scientific Information , 1961, Nature.

[27]  A. Gross,et al.  Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science , 1997 .

[28]  F. Crick,et al.  Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid , 1953, Nature.

[29]  G. T. Goodnight,et al.  Accidental rhetoric: The root metaphors of three mile Island , 1981 .

[30]  Davida Charney,et al.  Introducing Chaos (Theory) into Science and Engineering , 1995 .

[31]  On the shoulders of giants: Seventeenth‐century optics as an argument field , 1988 .

[32]  J. Lederberg,et al.  What the double helix (1953) has meant for basic biomedical science. A personal commentary. , 1993, JAMA.

[33]  P. Dombrowski.  Challenger and the Social Contingency of Meaning: Two Lessons for the Technical Communication Classroom , 1992, Humanistic Aspects of Technical Communication.

[34]  J. Argüelles.  Science and Culture , 1946, Nature.

[35]  Roger C. Pace.  Technical Communication, Group Differentiation, and the Decision to Launch the Space Shuttle Challenger , 1988 .