Poroi

The Rhetorics of Health and Medicine: Inventional Possibilities for Scholarship and Engaged Practice

Blake Scott et al. — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:55:26 PDT

This essay argues that rhetoricians of health of medicine should continue to carve out an expansive focus on the exigencies, functions, and impacts of health-related discourse; attend to the movement, surrounding networks, and ecologies of this discourse; and work with other scholars/researchers, both inside and outside disciplinary rhetorical studies, toward a variety of goals.

Constructing Texts in Fringe Science: Challenges in Propaedeutics

David M. Berube — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:55:26 PDT

This brief article examines the scholarship of propaedeutics, which is involved when teasing meaning from cutting-edge scientific and technological fields that are often in flux. Because these fields are plagued with uncertainty, mired in shifting jargon, highly controversial, and often politicized, the scholar who studies these areas must build texts in order to approach the claims and counterclaims made by proponents and opponents and offer rhetorical critical insight. The term fringe science is used to describe three sub-fields that have been the subject of work by the author and his team. Nanotechnology, synthetic biology, and geo-engineering are three highly interdisciplinary technological fields that offer many opportunities for rhetoricians of science and technology as well as pose risks. To critique them demands a basic understanding of what they are and what they purport to be.

Emerging Directions in Science, Publics, and Controversy

James Wynn et al. — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:55:25 PDT

This essay discusses the major themes that emerged as part of an Octavian roundtable discussion on the topics of science, publics and controversy at the Association of Rhetoric of Science and Technologies’ (ARST) 2012 Vicentennial preconference. Participants expressed interest in developing research exploring the differing scales and types of scientific controversies and the roles that rhetoricians might play as interveners in public disagreements on techno-scientific issues. Participants also explored the emerging phenomenon—such as the role of the internet in facilitating interaction between lay publics, science, and scientists—that they believed would provide fertile sites of investigation for scholars in rhetoric and communication interested in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine.

Projecting Possible Lines of Sight for RSSTM

Lawrence J. Prelli et al. — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:55:24 PDT

Scholarship concerning visual representations in science, technology, and medicine is in a preliminary phase. This essay surveys selected areas where visually-oriented rhetorical studies of science, technology and medicine are emerging. It examines the relationships between visual and verbal dimensions of scientific, technical, and medical texts; raises questions concerning the appropriateness of using concepts from the linguistic tradition to analyze visuals; and outlines fruitful areas for further study, ranging from studies of the truth-value of images through public communication about visualizations.

The Rhetoric of Technology as a Rhetorical Technology

John A. Lynch et al. — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:55:23 PDT

Defining the “rhetoric of technology” encounters the challenges scholars have identified when defining both “rhetoric” and “technology,” and it raises issues about how to demarcate the rhetoric of technology from media studies and other cognate fields. One distinguishing feature of both rhetoric and technology is the focus on invention. Giving priority to invention highlights the liminal positionality of a rhetoric of technology, which lies betwixt and between science and commerce, and novelty and familiarity. Considering invention further encourages interdisciplinary reflexivity about the decisions made in technological development and dissemination.

Genres in Scientific and Technical Rhetoric

Carolyn R. Miller et al. — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:55:22 PDT

The idea of genre marks large-scale repeated patterns in human symbolic production and interaction, patterns that are taken to be meaningful. Genre thus can be defined by reference to pattern, or form, and by reference to theories of meaning and interaction. This report on a discussion of scientific and technical genres at the 2012 Vicentennial meeting of the Association for the Rhetoric of Science & Technology (ARST) briefly considers the differences and difficulties with different ways of defining genres and their relevance to science and technology, explorations of the ways genres change or evolve, and pedagogical applications of genre analysis in scientific and technical discourse.

Audiences, Brains, Sustainable Planets, and Communication Technologies: Four Horizons for the Rhetoric of Science and Technology

Carolyn R. Miller — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:55:21 PDT

This response to papers by Leah Ceccarelli, Randy Harris, and Carl Herndl and Lauren Cutlip in the “Horizons of Possibility” panel at the 2012 ARST Vicentennial conference raises questions about each of the visions as they relate, respectively, to ARST audiences, brain science, and sustainable planets and programs. It also suggests renewed attention to communication technologies by scholars studying the rhetoric of science and technology, maintaining that rhetoricians need to come to terms with emerging twenty-first century communicative forms.

Horizon Myths

Lynda Walsh — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:55:21 PDT

In this short response to the papers in the “Horizons of Possibility” group, I first identify a dialectic between calls to disciplinarity and calls to engagement. Then, instead of offering a transcendent synthesis, I point to two recent narratives suggesting that stakeholders in scientific debates are starting to seek out rhetoricians as resources.

"How Can We Act?" A Praxiographical Program for the Rhetoric of Technology, Science, and Medicine

Carl G. Herndl et al. — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:55:19 PDT

The future of the rhetoric of science—which will increasingly take the form of a rhetoric of technology, science, and medicine (RTSM)—will be shaped by its move away from its modernist, humanistic roots in response to institutional pressures and historical contingencies. This paper advocates a “praxiographical” emphasis on the ability to intervene in science policy and other STEM-related discourses for the field of RTSM. It describes four research foci emerging from this emphasis to be used as areas of programmatic concern at an Institute for Applied Rhetoric of Science and Sustainability at the newly organized Patel College of Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida.

The Rhetoric of Science Meets the Science of Rhetoric

Randy Harris — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:55:18 PDT

Thirty years before the beginning of the still ongoing cognitive revolution, Kenneth Burke articulated a universalist program of verbal resources that falls into close synch with many of the findings and principles of that revolution. In this paper, I connect Burke’s program to the insights of Jeanne Fahnestock in her work on figuration and argumentation and argue that cognitive rhetoric in this mode can undergird rhetoric of science.

To Whom Do We Speak? The Audiences for Scholarship on the Rhetoric of Science and Technology

Leah Ceccarelli — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:55:18 PDT

A review of work being published in our journals establishes that we most often think of ourselves as passive intellectuals, engaged in critical reflection about rhetorics of science and technology. But another persona lurks in that scholarship as well—the rhetorician as agent of change making the world a better place. This paper argues that rhetoricians of science and technology need to think harder about how we take the academic understandings developed in our primary internal discursive genre and transform them into productive engagements with external publics. Whether we encounter those publics in the classroom or in civic forums or in scientific or technical organizations, we need to be able to translate our research findings to these empowered stakeholders in ways that are meaningful and constructive. By sharing best practices for pedagogy and public engagement, rhetoricians of science and technology can improve our chances of making an impact with our research.

Promoting the Discipline: Rhetorical Studies of Science, Technology, and Medicine

Jeanne Fahnestock — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:55:16 PDT

Condit, Prelli, and Depew and Lyne offer useful taxonomies of scholarship in the rhetoric of science, technology and medicine (RSTM), and once again provoke questions about the distinctiveness of a rhetorical approach. Rhetorical studies examine the choices rhetors make at all levels of invention (e.g., lines of argument, arrangement, terminology, visuals). But rhetoricians have not been clear in defining the distinctive contribution of their approach, and scholars in related fields do not routinely access or acknowledge rhetorical studies. There are also impediments to framing rhetorical studies for scientists and practitioners: the term rhetoric still has negative connotations in science publications, and rhetorical concepts like cooperation and reputation are addressed by other fields, creating a competing discourse. Nevertheless, RSTM will expand, and new directions for scholarship include visual rhetoric and the new persuasive practices brought about by online publication.

State of the Art Twenty Years On: Reflections

John A. Campbell — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:55:15 PDT

This paper discusses three position papers presented at the vicentennial conference of the Association for the Rhetoric of Science and Technology (ARST) concerning the disciplinary prospects of rhetoric of science and technology as a field. It identifies common themes among the three papers, including a theoretical focus on rhetorical invention, the prospects for viable responses to institutional changes and pressures in the academy, and the possibilities for interdisciplinary and public engagement by rhetoricians of science. It also identifies points of departure among the three papers, including their respective foci on globalization, the place of style in invention, and the interaction of the technical and public spheres.

The Productivity of Scientific Rhetoric

David J. Depew et al. — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:55:15 PDT

We argue that the rhetoric of science occupies an important niche in contemporary science studies. Although we are pluralistic about how different rhetoricians of science can and do conduct their inquiries, we assert that their disciplinarily distinctive approach is to treat argumentation as a constituent of context. From this perspective, we observe various interacting forms of rationality at work in the controversies that constitute science in society. We argue that modes of discovery and modes of proof are mutually engaged in the process of rhetorical invention. We identify a variety of topics or commonplaces that show invention as we conceive it at work. We take a pro-science attitude toward the role of science in finding the truth and in sustaining democratic institutions.

Mind the Gaps": Hidden Purposes and Missing Internationalism in Scholarship on the Rhetoric of Science and Technology in Public Discourse

Celeste M. Condit — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:55:14 PDT

Since 1984, academic essays addressing the public rhetorics of science and technology have embodied at least four purposes: theory-building, discounting scientific representations, deprecating scientific influence, and strategizing to improve the efficacy of scientific rhetorics. Some of these purposes are in conflict with each other, but there has been little explicit discussion about the purposes for ARST studies. This essay argues in favor of a synthetic vision that places humanistic, social scientific, and natural science endeavors as part of an over-lapping set of practices, each of which demonstrably makes distinctive positive contributions to globalizing human consciousness. The essay argues that the few existing studies illustrate how increased internationalism in ARST studies is not only important in its own right, but also could provide one academic route for expanding the imagined relational possibilities among humanistic "critics," the natural or social sciences, and broader societies.

The Prospect of Invention in Rhetorical Studies of Science, Technology, and Medicine

Lawrence J. Prelli — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:55:13 PDT

This paper recommends three general lines of inquiry concerning rhetorical invention as alternative ways to advance work in rhetorical studies of science, technology, and medicine. One line of inquiry involves the study of the creative processes and imaginative practices involved in the invention of perspectives in discourses of and about science, technology, and medicine. This line of inquiry is elaborated with attention to the master tropes, dramatism, argument, and visual representations. The second general line of inquiry involves identification, analysis, and critique of the commonplaces that are deployed as authoritative in discourses about purportedly “expert” matters. The third line of inquiry concerns articulation of the distinctive place of a rhetorical perspective, informed by an emphasis on invention, in cross-disciplinary projects involving science, technology and medicine.

Conspectus: Inventing Futures for the Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine

Lisa Keranen — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:55:12 PDT

This introduction to the Association for the Rhetoric of Science & Technology’s (ARST) twentieth anniversary special issue of Poroi reflects on the inventional resources for scholarship concerning the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine (RSTM). After previewing the essays in the special issue, it outlines four questions facing RSTM scholars. These questions concern how to discern the purposes of our scholarship, how to reach the multiple audiences for our work, how to use multiple methods while retaining our rhetorical core, and how to orient our work theoretically. The essay concludes by briefly discussing how these questions present both challenges and opportunities for future RSTM inquiry and engagement.