Today’s plan:
- Office Hours
- Jobs Can Be Scary
- Discuss Miller
- Homework
Carolyn Miller’s “A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing”
Some questions:
- What is positivism? Why is it a problem for technical writing? What does Miller identify as the most problematic dimension of a non-rhetorical approach to scientific communication?
- Miller identifies 4 problems for technical writing pedagogy that stem from the positivist tradition. How do we avoid them?
- How does Miller–writing in 1979–describe the epistemology that is replacing positivism?
- What does it mean to teach technical writing from a communalist perspective? Why might some students reject a communalist approach to teaching writing?
Austin writes:
The article takes the time to point out that it is impossible to view any material from a completely truth-based and purely objective perspective. We unconsciously form narratives out of all data so that both ourselves and others in our society can apply it to our everyday lives in a utilitarian way, putting aside the conclusions the author might want us to arrive at instead.
This captures my own emphasis on the importance of rhetoric in a democracy, the practice and communication of science is dependent on persuasive writing. People aren’t machines. They aren’t Vulcans. We can–like Plato–condemn people for their lack of pure rationality and wish for an intellectually oligarchy in which the inferior know their place and listen to their superiors. Or we can–and I think this is the better option–recognize that communicating information requires we do so in a way that is engaging and persuasive. That leaves open the possibility of response and debate (rather than closing such things off via a tone of imperative authority).
Homework
Previously I asked you to identify 10 jobs from the corpus that you might apply for. Those will be the jobs you analyze for our first project. If you’ve already located your ten jobs, then you are ready for Wednesday’s class. Here is a link to the job corpus.
If you want to get ahead, we will be reading Herrick’s essay “An Overview of Rhetoric” for discussion next Monday. Since there isn’t another assignment this week, you might start reading it. The Herrick is a bit long (25 pages), but pretty accessible. It took me about 40 minutes to read it.
