Scientific and Technical Communication: Theory, Practice and Policy

Introduction

One of the principle founders of modern science, Robert Boyle (1627-1691), conveyed the difficulty in concisely reporting his experiments: "I have ... delivered things, to make them more clear, in such a multitude of words, that I now seem even to myself to have in divers places been guilty of verbosity." Hoping to reflect the integrity and accuracy of his experiments to his readers, Boyle decided no detail or contingency was too small to include even if it meant that he "... knowingly and purposely transgressed laws of oratory in one particular, namely, in making sometimes my periods (i.e., sentences) or parentheses over-long ..." But Boyle's lament does not simply reveal the practical limitations of scientific writing; rather it marks a recognition of the richness, intricacy and power of the activity being described.

Textbook conceptions of effective scientific and technical communication have been captured by the twin visions of efficiency and efficacy. Driven by science and technology's complex cumulative practices, disciplinary discourses evolved into jargon-dense mediums. Jargon, if comprehensively understood and uniformly taught, can be an effective conceptual shorthand. Practitioners use jargon to "stand for" lengthy explanations. Supported by graphics efficient scientific communication, however, often sacrifices clarity for efficiency. The contexts supporting the presentation, consideration and reception of theories and facts are, generally, dismissed as irrelevant to scientific and technical end-products (including knowledge) and inappropriate to the most revered form of presentation, the journal article. The efficacy of context, as a debatable issue which technical communicators must take into account, and as a means for framing and discussing ideas, has been ceded to science popularizers. Still, Boyle's fundamental challenge remains for all modern scientific and technical communicators: How do we more accurately and fully express scientific and technological practice for the audiences affected by it?

Transforming Image and Practice

An initial step in transforming and communicating the image of science and technology involves integrating the perspectives of different academic disciplines, professions and institutions. These perspectives are linked to the economic, historical, philosophical, political social and rhetorical contexts in which science and technology take place. Understanding science and technology in context consists of regarding and translating the language, theories, explanations and interests of one group into the language, theories, explanations and interests of another groups. For example, one can talk about biology in sociological terms such as "values", "social class", "power" and "institutional structure." Similarly, one can talk about social behavior in biological terms such as "evolution", "mutation", "adaptation" and "heritability." Talking about one discipline in terms of another reveals to students how their interests are pursued in a number of distinct but related ways by diverse professional communities. Like communicating with different cultures, translation and communication across disciplinary boundaries brings to light internal differences of which participants were not aware.

Technical jargon is not the stuff of which public interest is made, yet the activities hiding behind that jargon are maintained largely through taxes, tuition, grants and corporate sponsorship. When the prescriptions and procedures for scientific and technical communication are seen out of context, they reinforce our perception of science and technology as distant and inert. Students and practitioners face a host of new challenges as scientific and technical communicators: the presence of increasingly diverse audiences, the proliferation, ownership and marketing of information, the ethical problems presented by developments in science and technology, and the need to balance individual and social responsibilities. They will assume important and unique roles in our evolving "technical society." They will serve as gatekeepers within professions by determining who has access to information. They will serve as mediators among the interests and concerns of professionals and lay persons. And they will serve as translators of specialist language to and from the language of other specialists and laypersons. These new challenges and unique roles will converge and shape, and be shaped by, the practice of scientific and technical communication.

The Structure of the Text

The Reader

Part II of the book is a collection of provocative essays on a wide range of issues in science and technology. Their authors represent a variety of backgrounds and interests. There are educators from communication and linguistics, scholars from science and technology studies, and policy analysts. These articles were choose for importance, diversity of their ideas, and sheer interest. And we hope that the curious reader will be able to find something of lasting value.

The Rhetoric/Reader Relation

We wanted to present scientific and technical communication in their contexts. The difficulty in presenting the contexts of technical documents is that there are many from which to choose — history, society, economics and ethics, to name a few. We decided that the best approach was a limited one — that we would relate certain types of documents to particularly appropriate contexts. So, the chapters in Part I of the book discuss concerns of all communicators (collaborative writing, audience, argument and persuasion). The essays in the Part II discuss issues related to those concerns . The book's halves are interactive. That is readers will better appreciate the information presented in a given chapter of Part I by considering the issues raised in the corresponding chapter of Part II. For instance, Chapter One, Scientific and Technical Communication in Context is paired with Chapter Seven by Steve Fuller, "Putting People Back Into the Business of Science: Constituting a National Forum for Setting the Research Agenda." Together, the chapters ask you not only to examine the contexts affecting technical communication, but to consider the implications the contexts and images of science have for public policy. Writing exercises and discussion questions will help readers make the connections. Although every chapter in Parts I and II is self-contained, and although you may proceed usefully through the book many ways, one stands to gain the most by bridging the chapters.

Interdisciplinary Communication

Interdisciplinary work in science and engineering has become less the exception and more the norm, and the trend is likely not only to continue, but to accelerate. Where appropriate, this book shows strategies for communicating across the disciplines. Directly, Dale Sullivan's article addresses the rhetorical resources necessary or interdisciplinary communication to be successful. The chapter on audience provides means for analyzing disciplinary boundaries which especially useful to someone investigating an area outside her own.

Reading

Textbooks in technical communication devote little space to the reading — perhaps assuming either that it is easier than writing and unworthy of time spent, or that it is unteachable. We think that both assumptions are misguided, and do the student a disservice: professionals in science and engineering spend far more time reading than they do writing. This book devotes a chapter to types of reading, and suggests means to adjust reading practices to various documents.

Purposes of the Text

Scientific and technical communicators are affected by the linguistic tools they use and by circumstances surrounding them: historical and social issues, economic needs, and cultural interactions of cultures, to name a few. Logically, communication about science and technology needs to be understood in these contexts as well. Indeed, scientific and technical communication is already being changed by developments in interdisciplinary communication, cross-cultural communication, and new communications technologies. This book acknowledges those changes, and explores their effects; toward that end it has three interdependent purposes.

1) To assist readers in understanding traditional technical writing concerns ; and to show techniques for expressing and transforming those concerns. The elements of scientific and technical communication are the means by which the artificial world (of corkscrews, bridges and computers) is constructed; they are the means through which the natural world (of electrons, trees and stars) is known. To understand this communication students and practitioners must recognize its forms; to engage in it, one needs to shape those forms.

2) To enable readers to communicate effectively across disciplines. Systems engineering integrates the technological with the larger system of human behavior, economics, and the natural environment; the field is increasingly important, but its lessons have barely begun to influence related disciplines. In asking people trained within disciplines to communicate with each other, one is struck with the difficulties encountered. Further, people within disciplines rarely talk to outsiders about their studies. The situation would be merely curious, and worthy of only passing interest, if the world outside the academy did not ask for communication of people from different backgrounds. But it does. American corporations are currently undergoing a "flattening," the result of which is that each worker is made more responsible for the entire production process. More and more, scientists, engineers and workers in all areas of technology will be expected to understand matters outside their area of expertise.

3) To provide readers the means to examine the ways science, technology and communication influence their lives as professionals, citizens and thinking persons. In recent years have appeared a number of scientific and technological issues have made headlines, and stirred discussions and debate in the home, the office and in Congress. Unfortunately, intelligent and informed thinking in these matters is rare. Many of us are unwilling to determine the course of science and technology — preferring to see it as a force beyond human control. We may be afraid, or misinformed, or even apathetic. Such attitudes are dangerous: the forces of technological change are beyond our control only if we allow them to be beyond our control. Gradually, the situation may be changing: colleges and universities are beginning to recognize their role in sparking debate. Communications courses now involve themselves with national science policy; biology curricula require a course in medical ethics; and more and more, all courses in science consider the practical application of their knowledge.

Orientation

This book integrates multidisciplinary perspectives on the relation of rhetoric, science, technology and public policy making to the process and product of technical communication. The text is inspired by Science and Technology Studies (STS), a field emerging from the history, sociology and philosophy of science and technology, and having roots in economics, political theory and rhetoric. The text reformulates the issues raised by STS within the context of technical communication. The objective of this book is to forge a critical link among rhetorical theory, rhetorical practice and public policy, to enable academics, students and laypersons to assess critically the cognitive and social factors shaping — and being shaped by — science and technology, and to begin a dialogue among academics, students and laypersons concerning the ways science, technology and communication influence and will influence their lives. Current scholarship in the rhetoric of science, the sociology of scientific knowledge and science and technology policy provides new grounding for technical communication practices. Technical communications instructors and students are a group growing in both numbers and diversity of interests. Although generally housed in English Departments, many technical writing courses have been farmed out to disciplines such as Engineering and Communications Studies. Instructors in these areas may have concerns different from those whose primary training was in English; consequently, they may be less interested in grammar (for instance) than in peptide chains. While some may draw on their work experience, others are forced to teach "cookbook" courses, or — more ambitiously — supplement standard textbooks with lectures and exercises drawn from other sources. Hopefully, this text improves upon traditional textbooks by offering theoretical orientations which relate developments in the rhetoric of science to technical communication, providing analytical models from Science and Technology Studies for understanding the contexts in which technical communication occurs, acknowledging the social factors affecting communication , and integrating cognitive models of the writing process with social ones. Nearly four hundred years ago, Francis Bacon advocated new ways of thinking and communicating we call the scientific method. As the millennium approaches, we find ourselves again needing to think about science and technology in new ways, and communicate about them in new ways. With Bacon, we can say "[T]he matter at hand is no mere felicity of speculation, but the real business and fortunes of the human race." Indeed, in a very real sense, our collective future is at stake.

Introduction to the Sage (1997) Edition

James H. Collier with David M. Toomey

Book Contents

Introduction to the Sage (1997) Edition