Understanding the Rhetoric of Research

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** Denotes the entry as an editorial policy, comment, or article used as a source or examples for the section on The Evolution of Four Key Journals.

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Agar, M. (1990). Text and Field Work: Exploring the Excluded Middle. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography,19 (1), 73-88.

Agar discusses the issue that 'Ethnography' is an ambiguous term meaning both a process and a product; this ambiguity neatly describes a fundamentally disciplinary problem. Both the process and product of ethnography have been under debate recently and Agar discusses the problem of text theories developing in isolation from research processes.

Anson, C. M. (1988). Toward a Multidimensional Model of Writing in the Academic Disciplines. In D. A. Jolliffe (Ed.), Writing in Academic Disciplines (pp. 1-33). New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Corp.

This article focuses on the epistemological affects on researching writing across the curriculum. The author points out that because various disciplines "reflect differences in the structures of various knowledge systems-for example in their methods in inquiry, their criteria for evaluation, and their ways of reporting knowledge"-the disciplines can be compared. The author considers three areas of scholarship on writing in the academic disciplines: "studies of variations in the characteristics or processes of writing relative to its disciplinary context; studies of the instructional uses or functions of writing across different academic disciplines; and studies of the relationship between writing and learning."

Barton, E. L. (1995). Contrastive and Non-Contrastive Connectives: Metadiscourse Functions in Argumentation. Written Communication, 12 (2), 219-239.

"This article describes a set of metadiscourse functions arising from the use of contrastive and non-contrastive connective expressions in academic argumentation." This study describes interpersonal metadiscourse functions within the presentation of claims and counter claims in argumentative essays. Barton proposes that "interpersonal uses of non-contrastive and contrastive connectives mitigate counter claims and emphasize claims based on the assumed roles and responses of writers and readers in an academic discourse community."

Bazerman, C. (1994). Constructing Experience. Carbondale:Southern Illinois University Press.

In this group of essays and lectures, Bazerman explores the interconnectedness among what literacy is, how people engage in literate practices, and how literate activity is a major means of making society and ourselves. In these essays, Bazerman adopts the term rhetoric to "apply to the study of all the strategic uses of language, in whatever form..." (Bazerman, 1994, p. 9).

Bazerman, C. and Paradis, J. (1991). Textual Dynamics of the Professions. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

This text provides another take on Berkenkotter, Huckin and Ackerman's study of a Ph. D. candidate's (Nate's) experience of being initiated into a writing research community. The author's discuss various issues surrounding the entrance into what Bizzell, Herington and Portor have called discourse communities. "Academic or professional discourse communities are not necessarily located in specific physical settings, but rather their existence can be inferred from the discourse that members of a disciplinary subspecialty use to communicate with each other."

Beale, W. H. (1987). A Pragmatic Theory of Rhetoric. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

As a more general source for our project, we'll take a look at how Beale proposes to bridge the gap between rhetoric studied in speech communication programs and the communication studied in writing and literature programs. His theory will focus more on acts of discourse than on "linguistic and cognitive conditions that underlie the doing" of discourse.

Berkenkotter, C. and Huckin, T. (1995). Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication: cognition/culture/power. Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates.

Berkenkotter and Huckin define "genre knowledge" as "an individual's repertoire of situationally appropriate responses to recurrent situations." Through various types of research into people's genre knowledge, ranging from ethnographic and case study techniques to discourse analyses of large numbers of texts, Berkenkotter and Huckin demonstrate the "interpenetration of process and system in disciplinary communication." In other words, they draw connections between research methods and the rhetorical structures used to communicate results of the research.

Berlin, J. A. (1987). Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

In this work, Berlin provides a comprehensive history of the how the field of composition and the "writing profession" came into being in American university settings. Here, Berlin addresses three epistemological categories-objective, subjective, and transactional-that have dominated rhetorical theory and practice in the twentieth century.

Bizzell, P. (1992). Academic Discourse and Critical Consciousness. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

In this collection of essays, Bizzell tracks her progression of thoughts about the field of composition and her own research from her graduate work at Rutgers to the early 1990s, and her attempt to understand her role as a writing teacher during this time.

Branscomb, E. H. (1995) Shadows of Doubt: Writing Research and the New Epistemologies. College English, 57 (4), 469-480.

This article discusses the theoretical shifts occurring in research methodology and presentation in North-American University English departments. Positivistic research is becoming increasingly suspect as a way of producing knowledge and this has lead to new techniques in research.

Braxton, J., & Bayer, A. (1996). Personal experiences of research misconduct and the response of individual academic scientists. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 21, (2) 198-213.

Buchman, M. (1986). Reporting and Using Educational Research: Conviction or Persuasion? Occasional Paper no. 96. East Lansing, MI: The Institute for Research on Teaching.

"This philosophical paper examines what rhetoric used in communicating with general audiences is appropriate to educational research as a form of knowing. It discusses standard difficulties of explaining claims in written reports." Buchman addresses the issue of how to walk the thin line between explanatory writing and persuasive writing in research reporting.

Budd, W. C. (1967). Research designs of potential value in investigating problems in English. Research in the Teaching of English, 1(1).

Burgess, R. (1989). Ethics and educational research: An introduction. In R. G. Burgess (Ed.), The Ethics of Educational Research, (pp.31-59). New York: The Falmer Press.

Burton, D. L. (1955). Preview and Comment. English Journal, 44 (2).**1

Buzzelli, D. (1993). The definition of misconduct in science: A view from NSF. Science, (259) 584-648.

Chin, E. (1994). Redefining 'Context' in Research Writing. Written Communication, 11 (4), 445-482.

Chin discusses the issue that there is little agreement on what constitutes "context as a theoretical construct." The article explains the ways context has been defined and suggests a reconceptualization of this construct. Through an ethnographic study of graduate journalism students, Chin suggests that "contexts for composing need to take into account individual writers' personal and social histories as they interact with the economic and political circumstances in which writers compose."

Connors, R. J. (1993). Actio: A Rhetoric of Written Delivery. In J. F. Reynolds, (Ed.), Rhetorical Memory and Delivery: Classical Concepts for Contemporary Composition and Communication (pp. 65-77). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Connors focuses his article on the importance of delivery in the field of composition. He discusses the importance of type and typefaces, paper type, typography and layout, and other minor considerations.

C.W. R. (1950). Editorial Comment. College Composition and Communication, 1 (3).**

DeMarco, Joseph P. (1996). Moral Theory, A Contemporary Overview, London: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.

This textbook introduces moral philosophies addressing some basic questions relative to making causal hypotheses, evaluating, judgments, addressing moral theories, such as Moral Objectivity and Subjectivity, Cultural Relativism, Pluralism, and Virtue Ethics, etc. It discusses roles and practices in solving moral problems, and has a good section on Metaethics. It engages some traditional arguments from Aristotle and also Alasdair MacIntyre on Virture. It discusses Feminist Ethics and Gender Bias. This is excellent reading for the aspiring social science researcher because it applies these theories to current problems in research.

Dillion, G. L. (1991) Contending Rhetorics : Writing in Academic Disciplines. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Djerassi, C. (1993). Basic research: The gray zone. Science, (261) 972-973.

Doheny-Farina, S. (1993). Research as rhetoric: Confronting the methodological and ethical problems of research on writing in nonacademic settings. In R. Spilka (Ed.), Writing in the workplace: New research perspectives (pp. 253-267). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Drummond, A. (1994). Writing a Research Article. British Journal of Occupational Therapy,57 (8), 303-305.

This article provides guidelines for those wishing to write up a piece of research for publication. By convention, the research article usually follows the IMRAD structure-Introduction, Method, Results and Discussion-and this paper presents an outline for the possible content of each of these sections.

Editorial Policy. (1950). College Composition and Communication, 1 (3).**

Editorial Policy. (1937). College English, 1 (1).**

Editorial Policy. (1970). College English, 32 (1).**

Editorial Policy. (1994). College English, 56 (1).**

Freedman, S. W. (1992 ). How Characteristics of Student Essays Influence Teachers' Evaluations. and Why Do Teachers Give the Grades They Do? In J. R. Hayes, et al. (Eds.) Reading Empirical Research Studies: The Rhetoric of Research (pp. 322-345). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

These articles have been used as appendices to this chapter to demonstrate how the same research can be re-written to satisfy editorial boards of different professional journals whose intentions are to serve different audiences. Such examples demonstrate how rhetoric can be used in the presentation of research.

Gebhardt,R. C. (1995). Scholarship, Promotion, and Tenure in Composition Studies. In J. F. Reynolds (Ed.), Rhetoric, Cultural Studies, and Literacy (pp. 177-184). Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates.

This article addresses the professional Rhetorical Studies community and issues that members face when trying to achieve tenure. The author recognizes the following: "the range of [composition research] approaches and of its scholarly products, makes it difficult to define the standards of scholarship that should apply to the field and to explain them to people working in more focused scholarly paradigms."

Gunderson, D. V. (1967). Flaws in research design. Research in the Teaching of English, 1 (1).**

Hansen, K. (1988). Rhetoric and epistemology in the social sciences: A contrast of two representative texts. In D. A. Jolliffe (Ed.), Writing in Academic Disciplines, (pp. 167-210). New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Corporation.

This article, "compares written texts from two disciplines in the social sciences, sociology and social anthropology. The authors studied a similar subject -modern American black families living in poverty-but the texts are quite different rhetorical products because, [as the author will argue], the rhetorical conventions of each text reflect some of the epistemological assumptions of the dominant research model in its author's discipline." Scrutiny of the text "in this way is to describe some of the rhetorical knowledge practitioners of these disciplines must have."

Harris, J. (1995). CCC Guidelines for Writers. College Composition and Communication, 46 (1).**

Hayes, J. R., .et al. (Eds.).(1992). Reading Empirical Research Studies: The Rhetoric of Research. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

This book examines many different empirical studies in rhetoric and provides critiques of the studies and their presentations. The editors seek not only to help us be good critical readers of individual research projects, but to show how no studies are perfect and that many studies may work and fit together (though they have flaws) to move closer to adequate answers to questions by accumulating evidence from many sources. We choose to use S. W. Freedman's essays used by Hayes, et. al. (Chapter 13) in their "Researchers about Text Evaluation," for one of our appendices.

Helsley, S.L. (1993). A Special Afterword to Graduate Students in Rhetoric. In J. F. Reynolds (Ed.), Rhetorical Memory and Delivery: Classical Concepts for Contemporary Composition and Communication (pp. 157-159). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

In this short article Helsley advises graduate students in rhetoric to pay heed to classical rhetoric. She argues that there are a variety of ways that students and teachers can employ the classical canon of memory and interpretations of delivery into their studies of rhetoric, composition, and communication.

Hosic, J. F. (1912). Editorial. English Journal, 1, 46. **

Hunter, A. (1990). Introduction: Rhetoric in research, networks of knowledge. In A. Hunter (Ed.), The Rhetoric of Social Research: Understood and Believed, (pp. 1-22). New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

In the introduction to this book, Hunter discusses the fine line between careful reporting of observations and convincing prose in writing up social research. Hunter also explores the interrelationships of context among researchers, subjects, and the rhetoric of reports.

Judy, S. (1973). Editor's Page. English Journal, 62, 855. **

Judy, S. (1973). Editor's Page. English Journal, 62, 959. **

Lauer, Janice M. and Asher, William J. (1988). Composition Research: Empirical Designs. New York: Oxford University Press.

This book defines and discusses the major quantitative and qualitative methods of composition research. It includes chapters on case study, survey, experiment, and meta-analysis, among others. The introduction was used in this essay, as it highlighted the differences between rhetorical and empirical research and presentation.

Lloyd, D. J. (1950). Darkness is King: A Reply to Professor Knickerbocker. College Composition and Communication, 1, (2), 10-12. **

Marshall, E. (1993). MSU officials criticized for mishandling data dispute. Science, (259) 592-594.

Mackintosh, H. K. (1956). A Statement by the President. English Journal, 44 (1), 67. **

Meiland, Jack W. and Krausz, Michael. (Eds.) Relativism: Cognitive and Moral. London: University of Notre Dame Press.

This book is a collection of essays on ethical constructs, such as Cognitive Relativism and Moral Relativism, looking at the subjective, objective and conceptual aspects. Thomas Kuhn's Epistemological Relativism is introduced and discussed with an interpretation and defense of his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. This book discusses Ethical Relativism, and Relativism and Tolerance, and defends Moral Relativism.

Nielsen, Jakob (1995). Multimedia and Hypertext: The Internet and Beyond. Orlando, Fl.: AP Professional.

This textbook provides an excellent introduction to hypertext and multimedia forms of communication, and includes chapters on the history of hypertext, the architecture of hypertext systems, coping with information overload, and the future of multimedia and hypertext.

Nielson, Jakob and Morkes, John (1997). Concise, Scannable, and Objective: How to Write for the Web. http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html. (3 Dec 1997).

This recent article combines the results of more than four years of studies in how users "read" on-line, and concludes that 1) users don't read on the Web, 2) users prefer short, to the point text, and 3) users hate hyped language and marketing fluff. The article is available in summary of full text.

Punch, M. (1986). The Politics and Ethics of Fieldwork. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.

Rymer, J. Scientific Composing Processes: How Eminent Scientists Write Journal Articles. In D. A. Jolliffe (Ed.), Writing in Academic Disciplines (pp. 211-250). New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Corp.

Based on the interviews with nine eminent researchers in the natural sciences, this article calls attention to scientists' views about writing which form the basis for analyzing the composing aloud protocols derived from the case study. The study concludes that some traditional attitudes toward scientific writing are questionable.

Rachels, James. (1993). The Elements of Moral Philosophy, Second Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.

This book introduces some major ethical philosophies, arguing pro and con. Rachel's applies these to specific social and political problems and suggests further sources for reading.

Russell, D. R. (1991). Writing in the Academic Disciplines, 1870-1990: A Curricular History. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Sammons, P. (1989). Ethical issues and statistical work. In R. G. Burgess (Ed.), The Ethics of Educational Research, (pp.31-59). New York: The Falmer Press.

Schiltz, M. E. (1992). A draft code of ethics for institutional research. In M. E. Schiltz (ed.), Ethics and Standards in Institutional Research, (pp. 11-15). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Sieber, J. (1994). Will the new code help researchers to be more ethical? Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 25, (4) 369-375.

Steinmann, M. Jr. (1950). Darkness is King: A Reply to Professor Lloyd. College Composition and Communication, 1(3), 9-12. **

Swales, J. M. (1990) Genre Analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Swales adopts the concepts of discourse community, genre, and (language-learning) task to discuss issues of ESL students acquisitions of knowledge required to write research articles and papers for English journals and academic English speaking communities.

Swales, J. M. and Najjar, H. (1987) The Writing of Research Article Introductions. Written Communication, 4(2), 172-191.

Swazey, J., Anderson, M., & Lewis, K. (1993). Ethical problems in academic research: A survey of doctoral candidates and faculty raises important questions about the ethical environment of graduate education and research. American Scientist, (81) 542-553.

Winkler, Earl R. and Coombs, Jerrold R. (1993) Applied Ethics. Oxford UK & Cambridge USA: Blackwell.

This textbook is a collection of essays from prominent contributors in Ethics, from Business Ethics to Biomedical Ethics. Some of the names mentioned are Holmes Ralston, III, James Rachels, and Nancy (Ann) Davis. Subject matter ranges from "Methodology," "Critical Potential, and Skeptical Doubts" to "General Issues Related to the Fields of Applied Ethics in Business and Environmental Ethics." This is a comprehensive account of the current discourse in Applied Ethics.

Zeller, N . Narrative Rationality in Educational Research. In H. McEwan & K Egan (Eds.), Narrative in Teaching, Learning, and Research, (pp. 211-225). New York: Teacher's College Press.

Zeller discusses current rhetorical practices in educational research and then demonstrates some alternative narrative strategies to talk about case study research in education. Zeller notes, "Ironically, while many researchers in the human sciences have rejected a positivist conception of objectivity in research methodology, they have not rejected its influence over their writing style." Again, the question of the rhetoric of research matching the methods of research is brought to the forefront as an important issue.