Goubil Practitioner's Guide notes

Goubil-Gambrell, Patricia
A Practitioner's Guide to Research Methods

582
quant's strength: ability to describe cause-effect
qual strength: depiction of subjects in actual setting

research methodology in Rhet COmp not widely understood

583
links to MacNealy article we just read
more cites on how/why research in TC is so important
two goals of article: ID main types of methodology business & tech writing; second, help folks in TC understand the difference in the methodologies
omitting methodology unfortunately common but causes some issues

583-4
empirical methods: quant & qual

584
2 other methods in Eng Dept
scholarly inquiry and Practitioner inquiry
quant: establish cause/effect
qual: descriptive
scholarly inquiry: goal is dialectic, confront opposing view
practitioner inquiry: goal is to report/tell story of how a person handled a specific situation

585
generalization a big issue
quant characteristics:
random sampling/select of subjects
intro of a treatment
use of control group
quasi experimental method
subjects are not random
researcher will use intact groups
(this sounds like a lot of comp/TC research)

random samples can be stratified

in quasi-exp, groups not random so R must pull on power of exp method to show grps are comparable
PRE-TEST



586
Five points to examine hypothesis' quality
conceptually clear & concepts defined operationally
have empirical referents, not value judgments
be specific to determin if testable
related to available testing techniques
related to a body of theory

Two kinds of stats
descriptive: describe data in orderly fasion (mean, meidian, mode)
inferential infer relationships

Causes manifest in 4 ways
in a sequence to produce effect
converge/cluster to produce effect
single cause may disperse into many areas
all three may occur & create a complex net of causes & effects

587
indie variable: cause of something in a relationship; treatment in a experiment--activity that will make a difference in the outcome
dependent variable: effect is change/difference that is the result of changing the indie variaable

validity: does experiment measure what it says it will
internal: change in dep var actually result of ind variable
external: results are generalizable to other groups
Reliability: whether experiment precisely measure a single dimension of human ability

quant issues
isolated variables--not realistic
other variables are eliminated
587
char of qual research
case study: small group or individual
ethnographic study: whole environment in which folks function as communicatiors

588
in qual, subjects not random
extreme case sampling: subjects are unusual
intensity: have skill/ability, but not best
maximum variation: what common patterns emerge from diverse groups

in qual, no treatment
no isolation of variables

purpose in qual is to identify salient features/variable
giving a treatment would interfere
in qual, researcher usually participates

589
triangulation important: reduces bias & helps validate 7 verify data
data
methods
researcher
theory


judging a qual study
data coll methods explicit
data used to document analytic constructs
neg instances of findings are shown/accounted for
biases discussed
strategies for data collection/analysis are clear
field decisions that change approach are documents
competing hypotheses presented/discussed
data preserved
participants truthfulness assessed
theoretical sig & gernalizability made explicity

pro/con of qual research
pro: depicts writing situations as they are
con: thus they cannot be generalized because it's not randomized

590
develop methodological literacy

Qual can be judged by 4 constructs
credibility of study
transferability of conclusion
dependability
confirmability

Paideia/ Jaeger: Vol 3 Ch 3

Read for 5364
Print out of scan
Need to get page numbers

Jaeger defines rhetoric:

"RHETORIC is, to begin with, an instrument of practical politics. But as soon as it is able to formulate ideals of statesmanship, it becomes the representative of a political form of culture."

Useful to have a collection of definitions of rhetoric. Interesting that it is inherently linked to politics.

"Again and again, Isocrates stresses the point that for the speaker or writer everything depends on the greatness of the subject with which he has to deal."

Note the above; put into a collection of writing tips/notes.
This could also be used in an FYC course. It is a good way to focus on the topic and the interesting, or not, nature of the materials.


For Isocrates, the subject of rhetoric had to always be political, i.e. centered on the polis, the community, and that which helped or hurt the community.

"The new partnership between culture and awakening national sentiment is immortalized in the Panegyrics of Isocrates."

"It is his [Isocrates'] faith in the unique mission of Athenian culture that is triumphant in his philosophy of history, and above all in his interpretation of hte legendary past. Isocrates' nationalistic ideology (in which Athens is the founder of all civilization), along with all the other ideas implicit in his paideia, was later taken over by humanism as part of its general view of history."

In short, it appears that humanists swallowed Isocrates vision/view of Athens as the source of civilization. Given the current acceptance and roots of this in western culture, he appears to have been quite successful.

"It is deeply interesting to see how Isocrates again and again conceives the essence of culture as a purposeless intellectual and spiritual activity--an ideal parallel to that of the gymnastic contests. Rhetoric does not define; it represents, through contrast and comparison. And so, although rhetoricians constantly extol its pracical usefulness for the community, its real meaning continues to be epideixis--the speaker's display of his own intellectual powers: an activity of which no barbarian ever feels himself in need."

Another definition of rhetoric.
The role of culture. It is interesting that it is the process of culture, not the end result, which has the emphasis. Similarly, it is interesting that the emphasis excludes the physical.


"Every useful attempt to raise the condition of mankind, whatever be its content, must take its form from language; and so the logos, in its double sense of 'speech' and 'reason', becomes for Isocrates the symbolon, the 'token' of culture. That was a happy conception: it assured rhetoric of its place, and made the rhetorician the truest representative of culture."

Western emphasis on importance of rhetor/language?

Quote from Isocrates:

"'The man who shares our paideia is a Greek in a higher sense than he who only shares our blood."

"But he [Isocrates] believes that intellectual nationalism is nobler than racial nationalism."

"In fact, that ideal contains a higher justification for the new national imperialism, in that it identifies what is specifically Greek with what is universally human. This is not actually said by Isocrates; and some may object to our interpretation. But the only meaning that can possibly be given to the universal exaltation of Greek paideia which fills Isocrates' thought is this: the Greeks, through the logos, over which they naturally have command, have revealed to other nations a principle which they too must recognize and adopt because its value is independent of race--the idea of paideia, of culture."

Selting: Conversations with Technical Writing Teachers: Defining a Problem

Selting, Bonita R. “Conversations with Technical Writing Teachers: Defining a Problem.” TCQ, Summer 2002, vol 11, no. 3 (251-266)

A teacher lore based discussion of the standard positions held on just how much technology and software to teach in the TW classroom. The key issue: how to balance instruction in rhetoric, editing, writing, and reading of the documents with familiarity with the actual tools (software and hardware) that students will use in the TW jobs. Related: what should have a priority since some skills and not others can carry over in to other fields—especially since not every student in a TW course is going to be a TW. 261

Few deny the importance and role of technology, but nobody seems sure of just how to make sure the students obtani the necessary set of skills and abilities they need. Some folks spend minimal class time on it; others teach students, others have students teach students and still other think students should learn it elsewhere. 258

The machine and software is taught by some as an integral art of the course and is engaged with rhetorically.260

Most useful, I thought, was that some instructors incorporate the writing of instructions for software to context-specific applications. This seems to engage both the rhetorical concerns as well as the students' need to develop their familiarity with software. 262

Author: too many folks treat the issue as not problematic too regularly. 263

Get Selber, Stuart. “Beyond Skill Building: Challenges Facing Technical Communication Teachers in the Computer Age.” TCQ 3 (1994): 365-90.

Rich: A Rhetoric of Fitness: Persuasion and Perspiration

Rich, Susanna. “A Rhetoric of Fitness: Persuasion and Perspiration.” Et cetera. Fall 1996. 266-274.

Very accessible voice—not formal academic.
267 cites three rhetorical routines on contemporary fitness: divide and conquer; measure up

267 forms of measurement: time; weight; counts from a trainer; numbers of reps; heart rate
268 states a core message is More, Farther, Faster, Now
268-9 the pressure generates/ results in a form of dependence upon externals like videos, gyms etc
270 “Instead of getting into it, we are always struggling to get it over with.”
271 fitness conversations are one way, from the instructor or trainer down to the person—it is not a dialogue
272 we are isolated from one another; genders are often isolated; muscles are often isolated for development (spot exercises)

273 sisyphus as model for current fitness programs
274 put out makes us self-conscious and dependent
divide and conuer keeps us vulnerable and malleable
measure up helps to calculate and collocate thousands of clients.
we are meant to work for the programs, they are not meant to work for us (almost literal quote)

Pritchard: Sport, War, and Democracy

Pritchard, David. Sport, War and Democracy in classical Athens.
from In Press Sport in the cultures of the ancient world. Special issue of the Int'l journal of the History of Sport
downloaded PDF

Overall, this is an incredibly well-documented and thorough discussion of some of the basic issues which interest me regarding sports, war, and Greece. There are over one hundred footnotes and an extremely useful list of works cited.

Key points:
3 sport atheletes had some of the highest esteem in Athens
3 athletes were rarely targeted by playwrights for abuse
5 athletics were closely associated with justice and moderation
6 two primary roles of athletics in classical athens: festival based agonesand physical education classes
7 athletics one of three traditional subjects in male education; grammar/letters and music were the other two
7 education privately funded; only the wealthiest could afford to send their boys to all three forms of training
8 Athenians held that athletic training was necessary in order to perform well in sports; the result is that only those boys who had been trained were encouraged to compete; hence the athletic heroes of athens were the sons of the rich
9 discussion of role of public schools in England preparing boys to lead the country
10 Orwell: int'l sport creates int'l ill will,not good will
11 popular culture regards sports as safe way to blow of steam & reduce anger
11 steam blowing related to Konrad Lorenz's aggression as innate drive and aggressive activities are drive-discharge catharisis—thus the more sport, the less aggression and war
12 social sciences discredit drive-discharge
12 psych & physiologists for simplifying aggression; phys anthros & biologists for fallacious extrapolation from animals toohumans; cult. anthros for ignoring observed cultural variation in responses to threats
12 multiple studies listed where watching violent sports resulted in agitated folks
12 study of students who responded differently; those who worked out their agg via punching ended up being the angriest and most aggressive
12-13 Berkowitz: aggression related experiences form network in memory and thus current agg potentially summons up past agg
13-14 Sipes finding that war/sport support each other's presence; study on 20 pre-modern culutres found 9/10 violent cultures had combative sports as well

14 battles and sports events were both considered agones
15 agones tested the moral fiber and confirmed/demonstrate the arete of the competitors
16 if men lost in the games, they deserved to receive abuse in the Athenian pespective
17 bc fifth century Athens democratized war
18 poor citizens now experienced war; shared that in common with elite
20-1 experiencing war and that form of agone enabled the poor to identify with the agones of the elite wealthy athletes “As a result, lower-class citizens came to beliee that upper-class athletes exhibited te same moral qualities and experienced the same ordeals as they did when fighting battles.

Review the bib for articles to order/get copy

Geertz: Thick Description: Ch 1

Geertz, Clifford. Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture
(this is from a pdf printed out via download from ScribD, so my pages are located that way.)

2 his concept of culture is essentially semiotic

3 (section II) "...if you want to understand what a science is, you should look in the first instance not at its theories or it findings, and certainly not at what its apologists say about it; you should look at what the practitioners of it do."

4-5 thin description: what is physically occurring; thick description: what the ethnographer thinks what is occurring means

7 "Analysis, then, is sorting out the structure of signification...and determining their social ground and import."
8 "What the ethnographer is in fact faced with...is a multiplicity of complex conceptual structures, many of them superimposed upon or knotted into one another, which are at once strange, irregular, and inexplicit, and which he must contrive somehow first to grasp and then to render."

10 "Culture is public because meaning is."

11 people find it hard to understand the significance of what other groups do or intend because of a "lack of familiarity with the imaginative universe within which their acts are signs."

Section IV
12 "As interworked systems of construable signs (what, ignoring provincial usages, I would call symbols), culture is not a power, something to which social events, behaviors, institutions, or processes can be causally attributed; it is a context, something within which they can be intelligibly--that is, thickly--described."

13 the object of study is one thing and the study of it is another. REREAD.

14 "In short, anthropological writings are themselves interpretations, and second and third order ones to boot. (By definition, only a "native" makes first order ones: it's his culture.) They are, thus, fictions; fictions, in the sense that they are "something made," "something fashioned"--the original meaning of fiction--not that they are false, unfactual, ore merely "as if" thought experiments."

16 You can't take an interpretation out of the context of what you are interpreting without rendering it vacant.

17 "The ethnographer "inscribes" social discourse; he writes it down. In so doing, he turns it from a passing event, which exists only in its own moment of occurrence, into an account, which exists in its inscriptions and can be reconsulted.

18 "...what we inscribe (or try to) is not raw social discourse...but only that small part of it which our informants can lead us into understanding."

19 "To set forth symmetrical crystals of significance, purified of the material complexity in which they were located, and then attribute their existence to autogenous principles of order, universal properties of the human mind, or vast, a priori (messed up word spelling--I think it is weltanschauung) is to pretend a science that does not exist and imagine a reality that cannot be found. Cultural analysis is (or should be) guessing at meanings, assessing the guesses, and drawing explanatory conclusions from the better guesses, not discovering the Continent of Meaning and mapping out its bodiless landscape."

VI




sweet phrasing:
17 "gone into dissidence themselves"


Other texts mentioned:
Langer, Susanne. Philosophy in a New Key
Ricoeur, Paul.
Ryle, Gilbert. Developed term Thick Description?

Lanham: Electronic Word: Chapter 1

"The Electronic Word: Literary Study and the Digital Revolution"

4 "Electronic typography is both creator-controlled and reader-controlled."
5 discussion of text and looking AT it and then looking THROUGH it. This discussion is very important, and it should be reviewed multiple times.
6 "The interactive reader of the electronic word incarnates the resopnsive reader of whom we make so much." I am not so sure about that. Must ponder.
9 "So used are we to thinking black-and-white, continuous printed prose the norm of conceptula utterance, that it has taken a series of theoretical attacks and technological metamorphoses to make us see it for what it is: an act of extraoridnary stylization, of remarkable, expressive self-denial... Obviously these pressures will not destroy prose, but they may change its underlying decorum. And perhaps engender, at long last, a theory of prose style as radical artifice rather than native transparency." [italics author's]
11 digitization provides for endless editing and alteration of texts
15 discussion of competitive games versus play; mention of Greeks and Sophists
17 "Theory is in fact rhetorical practice, as we are becoming increasingly aware, part of a returning rhetorical paideia that began with the didacticism of Futurism and Dada and has been colonizing the humanities and social science ever since."
20 book and text as talismanic objects
24 more on paideia
24 more on AT and THROUGH--revisit this



vocab: aleatory, condign, suspirations, capacious

Mentioned sources that looked interesting:
Havelock, Eric. The Literate Revolution in Greece and Its Cultural Consequences
Illich, Ivan and Barry Sanders. ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind

Lanham: Electronic Word: Preface

Lanham, Richard A. The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 1993.

Lanham was raised in Classical Rhetoric class. It sounded intimidating, and then it sounded interesting. So I am slowly reading it.

x Lanham cites Jay David Bolter: we'll lose literacy for print, not literacy itself
xi electronic text liberates language from the rules of print
xi electronic word "incarnates the distinction between literate and oral cultures..."
xi manipulation of scale in electronic realm
xii print is philosophic medium; electronic screen is rhetorical mediuam
xiii "And I think too that the instructional practices built upon the electronic word will not repudiate the deepest and most fundamental currents of Western education in discourse but redeem them."

Eco: The Wolf & The Lamb

Eco, Umberto. "The Wolf and the Lamb: The Rhetoric of Oppression." Turning Back the Clock: Hot Wars and Media Populism. Harcourt, 2006. Orlando.

This is a great essay by Eco on rhetoric and oppression.

45-46 aristotle and some definitions of rhetoric

Lots of discussion about begging the question, how oppressors structure arguments/persuasion to manipulate folks, etc.

A nice linking between classical rhetoric and contemporary issues in the gulf with some WW I and WW II references to help set the tone. As always, it is written beautifully.

Horn: Writing with A Future

Horn, Robert. What Kinds of Writing Have a Future?
(Speech prepared in connection with receiving Lifetime Achievement Award
by the Association of Computing Machinery SIGDOC,October 22, 2001)

Brief and clearly written overview/introduction to IM and structured writing.
Summarized well here from the end of his presentation:

Summary
1. Pay attention to types of stickiness.
2. Make sure you know what you’re putting in and leaving out..
3. Write so people don’t have to read what you write (if they don’t need to).
4. Label every chunk.
5. Don’t always write in a linear fashion.
6. WYSIWYG is not quite dead – but threats to its existence in some parts are looming.
7. Use visual language. Change the ratio of images to words.

I do not know if I'll use this in my diss or classes, but I do like having the overview and exposure.

I need to think about this a lot. My mind is caught on the chunking of information, labeling of chunks, and organizing. My instinct tells me that is the way to go.

Interesting mentioned article to get:
Stern, Arthur A. “When is a paragraph?”

Article: Mouratidis "Athlos"

Mouratidis, Yannis. The "Athlos" in Ancient Greece and Its Educational Significance.

I have pages 475-480. I think they were printed from a Google book, but I am not sure. Sloppy reference tracking, I know.

First, this is a good piece to give general overview/ information on the word athlos. Second, it is written in an academic tone that is easy to read, but it does not seem to have any footnotes.

476

In other words, the wider meaning of the word "athlos", [sic] covered many forms of human activity, which contributed to the advancement of civilization. The word "athlos" as time went by was more closely connected to major achievements in the field of sports contents, which achievements were, however, always attained under conditions of fair play.

...those who had neglected their physical traning were considered to be uneducated, the educated being only those who could combine it wiht intellectual pursuits. Such comibnation was truly the basic and primary achievement (or athlos) from which stemmed all other accomplishments in the field of art, science and other activities, which contribute to social progress and give a special meaning to human life.

477

The word athlos also meant good manners, nobility of character and honesty. Athlos did not mean to misue one's strength or to achieve victory by unfair means. Athlos mean as well (some characters in Greek here (modesty), honesty, respect and nobility of spirit.

Article: Lejkowit "Poet as Athlete"

Lejkowit, Mary. Journal of Sport History, Vol. 11, No 2 (Summer 1984), 18-24.

Initially I thought this might be relevant as a crossover discussion about poets and athletes in ancient Greece. It is not. Instead, it focuses largely on Pindar's odes and the comparison Pindar makes in his odes between his writing or writing of poetry and athletics.

Possible use as an example or crossover in aesthtetics or imagery, but much more literary focus than I think I need.

There are a number of references to specific odes and those could be useful in tracking down specific writings.

Geertz: Anti Anti Relativism

Geertz, Clifford. 1984

Pretty easy to read academic article. The title says it all: the piece explores in depth the attacks on relativism which are based upon a reversion to placing a universal form of knowledge at the top of a hierarchy. Just below that is morality. Geertz asserts that the two prime levers for doing this are "Human Mind" and "Human Nature."

The piece is an excellent example of professional writing which uses first person voice in places and engages in playful, sarcastic, and engaging tones. Similarly, he largely gives voice to the Anti Relativists before he pulls them apart. Very little discussion of Relativism takes place.

Key sections are second paragraph of 264: people spending too much time on what they do NOT believe; to question a universal truth often leads to being accused of not believing in anything.

page 270 Geertz covers the Anti R genre of child to adult as relativist to anti-relativist.

272 "There is the same tendency to see diversity as surface and universality as depth. And there is the same desire to represent one's interpretations not as constructions brought to their objects--societies, cultures, languages--in an effort, somehow, somehwat to comprehend them, but as quiddities of such objects forced upon our thought."


275 "Looking into dragons, not domesticating or abominating them, nor drowning them in vats of theory, is what anthropology has been all about."

Could you adjust that and change dragons to persuasion and anthropology to rhetoric?

276 The final words:

The objection to anti-relativism is not that it rejects an it-s'all-how-you-look-at-it approach to knowledge or a when-in-Rome approach to morality, but that it imagines that they can only be defeated by placing morality beyond culture and knowledge beyond both. This, speaking of things which must needs be so, is no longer possible. If we wanted home truths, we should have stayed at home.

Aristotle: Rhetoric: Book 2: notes

Chapter 1
1378 a

There are three things which inspire confidence in the orator's own character -- the three, namely, that induce us to believe a thing apart from any proof of it: good sense, good moral character, and goodwill. False statements and bad advice are due to one or more of the following three causes. Men either form a false opinion through want of good sense; or they form a true opinion, but because of their moral badness do not say what they really think; or finally, they are both sensible and upright, but not well disposed to their hearers, and may fail in consequence to recommend what they know to be the best course.

Chapter 3

The reason is that it is shameless to deny what is obvious, and those who are shameless towards us slight us and show contempt for us: anyhow, we do not feel shame before those of whom we are thoroughly contemptuous.

At the end of Ch. 3

It is now plain that when you wish to calm others you must draw upon these lines of argument; you must put your hearers into the corresponding frame of mind, and represent those with whom they are angry as formidable, or as worthy of reverence, or as benefactors, or as involuntary agents, or as much distressed at what they have done.

Chapter 4

We may describe friendly feeling towards any one as wishing for him what you believe to be good things, not for your own sake but for his, [1381a] and being inclined, so far as you can, to bring these things about. A friend is one who feels thus and excites these feelings in return: those who think they feel thus towards each other think themselves friends. This being assumed, it follows that your friend is the sort of man who shares your pleasure in what is good and your pain in what is unpleasant, for your sake and for no other reason.

Things that cause friendship are: doing kindnesses; doing them unasked; and not proclaiming the fact when they are done, which shows that they were done for our own sake and not for some other reason.

Chapter 5

Fear may be defined as a pain or disturbance due to a mental picture of some destructive or painful evil in the future.

... we can also see what Confidence is, about what things we feel it, and under what conditions. It is the opposite of fear, and what causes it is the opposite of what causes fear; it is, therefore, the expectation associated with a mental picture of the nearness of what keeps us safe and the absence or remoteness of what is terrible: it may be due either to the near presence of what inspires confidence or to the absence of what causes alarm. We feel it if we can take steps -- many, or important, or both -- to cure or prevent trouble; if we have neither wronged others nor been wronged by them; if we have either no rivals at all or no strong ones; if our rivals who are strong are our friends or have treated us well or been treated well by us; or if those whose interest is the same as ours are the more numerous party, or the stronger, or both.

Chapter 7
1385b

In considering this subject we must look at all the "categories": an act may be an act of kindness because (1) it is a particular thing, (2) it has a particular magnitude or (3) quality, or (4) is done at a particular time or (5) place. As evidence of the want of kindness, we may point out that a smaller service had been refused to the man in need; or that the same service, or an equal or greater one, has been given to his enemies; these facts show that the service in question was not done for the sake of the person helped. Or we may point out that the thing desired was worthless and that the helper knew it: no one will admit that he is in need of what is worthless.

Article: Staples: TC from 1950-1998

Staples, Katherine. Technical Communication from 1950-1998: Where Are We Now? Technical Communication Quarterly. Spring 1999, Vol. 8, No. 2 (153-64)

TW is mature as a discipline, is linked to workplaces and academia via pedagogy and research. However, maturity means moving away from TW's history and role as a service course.

154 GI Bill of 1944 swamped colleges with new kinds of students

154 popularity of engineering programs= popularity/need for TC/TW courses

155 TC instruction considered graphic as well as verbal presentations by end of 50s

155 TC largely taught by adjuncts/untenured in English & engineering depts.

156 by early 1970s, ten academic programs in TC/TW started

157 TC credentials/education regarded as a career advantage in 1984

157 key to professional identity was the foundation of professional journals in the 70s

158 schism in the profession in the 80s with growth: old-school, post-war men learned mostly by practice vs. new guard w/PhDs, capable in Rhet, and women

159 "Like Harris, Miller argues that praxis, applied craft, and techne, reflective art, can usefully support one another in technical communication."

161 TC/TW origins: teaching & a long relationship with applied technologies and with the workplace

161 the value of scholarship on teaching/theory is questioned by workplace/pragmatic advocates


Interesting articles referenced:
Fox on composition studies?

Kynell, Teresa Writing in a Milieu of Utility

Miller, Carolyn "What's practical about Technical Writing" 1989
apparently the article has important references about TW pedagogy and keeping critical awareness about when working with industry

Redish & Judith Ramey 1993 study about value added to tech products by communicators
"Special Section: Measuring the value added by professional technical communicators. TC 42 (1995): 23-29

Article: Connor: Rise of TW Instruction

Connors, Robert J. The Rise of Technical Writing Instruction in America. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Vol. 12 (4), 1982. 329-352.

Overall history of TW instruction from 1900-1980. Focuses on the personalities, key textbooks, and forces that "shaped courses in technical writing during the period 1895-1980," as well as the growth & success of the TW courses.

329 TW fills the need for people communicate with each other about their tools.

330 Morrill Acts 1862 & 1877 founded & promoted land-grant ag & mechanical colleges

330-31 Civil War/ Indust Rev increased need for engineers and thus for their writing/communication, and thus TW increased while there were few courses actually given in TW--training was primarily FYC

332 1911 Samuel Chandler Earle, Father of TW: The Theory and Practice of TW

333 until 1950s TW and Engineering writing were synonymous

333-4 issues between English & Engineering: cultural supremacy bias versus philistine engineer bias; Engl depts producing lit scholars who wanted to teach lit; hostilities between the depts. was big

334 encultration and humanizing ala Aydelotte vs. reading and writing skills ala Earle.

335 TW/Engineering English classes seen as low-status, low-interest classes--resented/regarded very much like FYC is today: let new, powerless people teach

335 1923 first "modern" TW textbook: English for Engineers by Sada A Harbager; organized according to the "technical forms

337 usage texts vs. forms texts

337 TW teachers: no respect from lit folks; Eng profs dissed many TW teachers; Eng students oft dissed TW profs (again, it reminds me of composition)


340 quote near bottom of page "The engineering professor who saw no pressing need fo r curricular changes viewed composition courses as service adjuncts to his activities, not important to fight for, and the humanistic-stem supporters did not see writing courses as humanistic enough to be included under their rubric." [In context of discussing the Hammond Reports of 1940 & 1944]


341 WW2 vital for TW: high demand to write manuals for all the new gear; quote by Jay R. Gould

342 1950s when TW "grew up"

343 "...arguably the single most important postwar technical writing text: Gordon Mills and John Walter's Technical Writing."

343 two most important assumption Walter & Mills learned from their survey of TW writing situations:
a rhetorical approach rather than "types of reports" was best
only good criterion for TW is "does it work?"--writer/reader relationship is most important


343-4 in late 50s & early 60s TW expanded out of engineering into other fields

344 1957 Sputnik led to tech race/war & increased work for TW; still, teaching TW was low prestige

346 Mills & Walter 1954: nobody's tried to say exactly what TW is
346 in the 60s, a variety of folks try to figure out what TW is

Key early essays: Robert Hays, 1961; W. Earl Britton, 1965


346 Britton's conclusion was TW defined most by "the effort of the author to convey one meaning and only one meaning in what he says." quoted in Connors.

346 first empirical research into TW and teaching TW took place in 60s

Early research/experiments
1964 Harry E Hand errors
1967 Richard M. Davis efforts of variable in tech description

347 1970 Journal of TW & Comm started; 1973 ATTW founded; 1976 MLA the first TW panel appeared

348 popularity, need, & growth of TC led to more courses, more tenure, and some more respect in 70s















Vocabulary:
diachronic
limne
quondom




Another article to get:
Composition for the culture of professionalism: notes on thehistory of technical writing instruction
Russell, D.R.
Iowa State Univ., Ames, IA;

This paper appears in: Professional Communication Conference, 1989. IPCC '89. 'Communicating to the World.', International
Publication Date: 18-20 Oct 1989
On page(s): 39-41
Meeting Date: 10/18/1989 - 10/20/1989
Location: Garden City, NY, USA
References Cited: 0
INSPEC Accession Number: 3695088
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/IPCC.1989.102095
Current Version Published: 2002-08-06



Abstract
The history of technical writing instruction reveals an increasing specialization which mirrors growing specialization in both engineering and the wider culture. Since World War II, professional communicators have taken on the role of translators, bridging the inevitable communication gaps between communities of specialists. Technical writers are specialists in specialization

Blogging as Social Action

Blogging as Social Action by Miller and Shepherd