Technical Rhetorical Principles and Grammatical Choice

Recently, much interest has been shown in the notion "rhetoric" in the English of Science and Technology (EST), and in the effect that specific rhetorical choices have upon grammatical forms. This paper 1) defines rhetoric in EST in terms of the essential notion "conceptual paragraph"; 2) presents and describes the two major categories of relational rhetorical principles-natural and logical; 3) presents examples of several of these principles and examines their effects on specific grammatical choices in EST; and 4) provides examples from areas of grammar which, traditionally, have been difficult to describe linguistically and to teach to foreign students-e.g., article use and tense choice. We first became involved in research in grammatical choice and technical rhetorical principles several years ago. We found nothing in the Applied Linguistics literature about teaching English to foreign learners that suggested to us remedies to specifically meet the communication needs of these learners who were enrolled in the science and engineering programs at the University of Washington. To attempt to meet their communication needs, we established a sequence of courses in the College of Engineering, designed specifically for foreign learners of English who are studying in the theoretical and applied sciences. Through our involvement with this program, it became clear to us that in the scientific and technical material we were dealing with, rhetoric and grammatical choice were related in subtle ways. We decided, therefore, to embark on a study of that relationship. The purpose of our research has been, first to investigate the relationship between grammatical choice and rhetorical function in the written English of science and technology, henceforth referred to as EST; and