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Introduction to Rhetoric and the Presentation of Research in English Studies

The presentation of research is part of an ever-expanding research cycle. At the end of a project, researchers present their findings to other scholars, members of their discourse communities. Other researchers and funding agencies look to these presentations as starting points for further research. The rhetorical conventions for research reports, essays, and articles may not, however, be readily apparent to students who are beginning to study and conduct research. This guide introduces to some of the complexities involved in this category.

in this guide, we discuss the connection between research methods and presentation, the conventions used to present research results to the English studies discourse community, the history and trends of four prominent journals in the community, the growing importance of hypertext as a means of presenting research, and the ethics of research and presentation.

Understanding the Research Community

The keys to understanding how to conceive, conduct, and report research are found by investigating and learning the important "conversations" that move the community forward. Although it's also important to learn the stylistic and organizational features of research writing, Charles Bazerman notes that "understanding the appropriate linguistic and rhetorical conventions is only a part of the difficulty that students entering an academic discipline confront. They must also become aware of the conversations of the discipline" (Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995, p. 118).

In this section, we focus on five key issues related to learning the disciplinary converstations and discourse conventions of the field of English studies.

Becoming a member of a discourse community is largely a process of immersion. As a student new to the field of English studies, you can more quickly benefit from this process of immersion by understanding some of the unique features of the field. To read more about these features, click on the items below:

• Learning the Conversation
• Key Factors Shaping Research in the Field
• Common Features of Research in the Field
• Learning the Research Styles in the Field
• Studying the Journals in the Field
• Learning about Style Manuals and Genre Analysis

Learning the Conversation

In the article "Conventions, Conversations, and the Writer: An Apprenticeship Tale of a Doctoral Student," Carol Berkenkotter and Thomas Huckin (1995) follow the progress of Nate, a doctoral student, as he works through his first year of graduate school and struggles to become a member of a research-oriented discourse community. Early in Nate's first year he says in a self-report:

"I feel like I'm butting heads finally with ACADEMIC WRITING and it is monstrous and unfathomable… I feel that they [Nate's professors] have access to the code and I do not" (p. 125).

Once students understand their discipline's conversations, they will begin to formulate research questions that will further those conversations. The questions students choose to focus on suggest methodologies, which in turn lead to particular rhetorical strategies and formats that are most appropriate for the presentation of their research. Although there are some accepted style guides beginning researchers can consult, it's important to recognize that styles differ according to the research itself, the presentation forums, and the accepted discourse conventions.

Key Factors Shaping Research in the Field

Four key rhetorical elements shape research models in English studies: context, audience, subject position, and status of the researcher in the field. Although other factors also shape research in the field, these provide a useful foundation for further exploration.

• Context
• Audience
• The Researcher's Subject Position
• The Researcher's Status in the Field
• Prevailing Paradigms in the Community

Context

Back to Key Factors

Two major types of context are relevant here: 1) context of the research; and 2) context of the research presentation.

Context of the research includes:

• where the research is done
• who the subjects are
• how and why they are chosen
• what are the conditions under which the research is conducted

• where the research is presented
• whether it is written or verbal
• what is the final format of the presentation

Decisions about context, including participants, locations, methodologies, are rhetorical decisions. When researchers formulate questions that have the population to be studied embedded in them (e.g., Do most male freshman at a given state university drink alcohol?), they are also making rhetorical decisions. They believe there is something representative, telling, or worthwhile in investigating these questions. Context, then, becomes a critical aspect of the presentation of research.

According to Swales and Najjar (1987), researchers will often present the context for the studies in the introductions, as a way of appealing to a specific audience (p. 260). Swales (1990) goes on to present a model for introductions based on "creat[ing] a research space" (p. 140). In this context-creating model, the first rhetorical move is to show that the research is significant. The second move is a summary or review of relevant literature. The researcher makes an argument that the literature, while crucial, is not yet complete. Researchers complete the context by positioning themselves and promising to add something new that will make the community's literature more complete. Other steps towards defining the research context can be taken in methods' sections where researchers discuss the selection of participants, their own role in the study, and appropriate descriptions of the methodologies used.

Ethnographic research methods in English have expanded notions of acceptable research contexts, particularly with regard to researchers' positions relative to context. It is now acceptable for a researcher to investigate, for example, her own students. A study of this sort would have been seen as insufficiently objective until ethnographic methods became once again accepted by the English community.

In the design section of her paper, "How Characteristics of Student Essays Influence Teachers' Evaluations," (from Hayes, et al., 1992, p. 317) Sarah Warshauer Freedman gives great attention to a description of criteria used to choose the subjects of her study and how she organized them into groups for the purposes of the study. In the article, it is clear that Freedman believes she must not only describe but justify her choice of subjects if her presentation is going to be convincing. This becomes clearer when Freedman presents the same findings in another article (link to Appendix A).

The Freedman article was taken from the collection of articles, Reading Empirical Research Studies: The Rhetoric of Research by Hayes et al., and is one of two articles by Freedman about the same research re-published in the book. In both articles, Freedman clearly identifies and justifies her choice of population. Rhetorically, this implies that regardless of where a given piece of research is published (the two journals Freedman wrote for - CCC and Journal of Educational Psychology - differ widely in their focus, purpose, and rhetorical constraints), defending the appropriateness of the context of the research is a critical piece of the presentation in both of the contexts Freedman chooses.  

Audience

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Separating audience from context is somewhat misleading. In general, audience is an integral part of considerations of context. It has been separated here so that the rhetorical constraints around the question, "Who do I want to reach?" can be more carefully examined.

A clearly defined audience will affect the methodologies researchers use to conduct their studies. Some audiences will be swayed more easily by certain research methods. Education researchers may be more attentive to experimental methods that focus on generalizable results while practicing classroom researchers may get more use out of individual case studies and/or ethnographies of groups of students.

Although audience does change the methods used to conduct research, perhaps a rhetorically more important influence exerted by audience is on the forum for results presentation. If a teacher-researcher wanted to present the results of a study of the text-production habits of her class of 14-year-olds to other junior high school or middle school teachers, she wouldn't attempt to publish an article in the New England Journal of Medicine. In fact, she might determine that publishing, at least initially, was not the best way to make her argument. Perhaps her findings, research context, or even initial question(s) are such that an oral presentation at a regional conference of middle school teachers would seem more effective. She must choose the forum that will allow her to accomplish her rhetorical ends.

To return to the example cited in our discussion of context, the two articles Sarah Freedman wrote about the same research project are for two different audiences, and many features of her articles reflect clear rhetorical strategies aimed at those different audiences. The introduction to Freedman's articles by Hayes, et al. says:

The differences in rhetorical stance between these two papers-describing conclusions to practitioners [CCC article] versus arguing for their validity to empirical researchers [JEP article]-are reflected in important structural differences between the papers (1992, p. 317).

Subject Position of the Researcher

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Rhetorically, in conducting research and presenting findings, a researcher must take a subject position. At its grossest level, taking a subject position, in this context, means either taking on an assumed objectivity or foregrounding the subjective "I" who is doing the research and writing/presenting.

Taking a seemingly objective, "there is no 'I' doing the research," stance is most commonly associated with empirical approaches to research questions. This has, however, also been a tenet of humanities work of even the most basic sort for decades. Only recently has ethnography revitalized a generally respectable "I" within research and academic writing.

The objective stance brings with it certain rhetorical baggage, such as analytic and evidentiary discourse modes (Branscomb, 1995, p. 472). The stance maintains distance between the "what is being said" and the "who is saying it," which has the rhetorical effect of obscuring the subjectivity of the point of view expressed. An example of the reliance on an assumed objectivity can be found in the Berkenkotter, Huckin, and Ackerman (1988) study, "Conventions, Conversations, and the Writer: Case Study of a Student in a Rhetoric Ph.D. Program" [a.k.a., the Nate study]. In publishing this study, the researchers intentionally obscured the fact that one of the subjects was also one of the researchers. They created a persona, "Nate," to represent John Ackerman, who was both a subject and a researcher in the study. In a postscript to a later re-print of the article (Berkenkotter and Huckin, 1995), Ackerman writes about why he and his fellow researchers chose to do this. Ackerman says, "We were nervous about revealing the co-identity of researcher and research subject; we needed some of the conventional distance between researcher and participant" (Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995, p. 145). He adds that

We did debate whether to reveal the dual identities of Nate. . . [W]e decided to separate the two because our field had not yet published hybrid, collaborative research relationships, and thus to reveal our method was to take an unwise risk (p. 145).

As shown in the section, "The Evolution of Scholarly Journals in English and Composition Studies," the use of a clearly subjective voice has a historical base in English studies. A foregrounded subjective voice is a rhetorical move that has once again come into its own with the rise of ethnography that calls for an accounting of the researcher's position as an inevitable participant in the study. What the foregrounded subjective voice provides rhetorically may be somewhat akin to "hedging" in more empirical presentations (Hayes, et al., 1992, p. 319). Identifying the position from which research is being conducted and explained may add to the researcher's credibility in a manner similar to that of hedging.

Freedman's introductions also provide an example of objective and subjective voices and their different rhetorical affects. In her more empirical JEP article, she uses first-person constructions seven times in the first five paragraphs as compared to twenty-two uses in the first five paragraphs of the CCC article. The rhetorical constraints of JEP are such that an objective position is more likely to be effective. The reverse is true of CCC. Freedman makes a rhetorical decision about positioning herself based on the presentation context and the needs of her audience.  

The Researcher's Status in the Field

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Researcher status has a profound and fairly evident influence on the rhetoric of research, particularly for new members and those who are working to gain membership. One of the keys to becoming a member of the community is learning enough about the current conversation within the community to begin to participate meaningfully. Learning the conversation isn't just a matter of learning the current topics; it is just as much a process of learning accepted and effective ways of approaching and discussing those topics.

The Berkenkotter, Huckin, and Ackerman (1988) study is a good example of allowing the current conversation to inform a rhetorical presentation. As two of the researchers reflected in a subsequent article, when the study was published, the conversation in the community was such that, ". . .to reveal our method was to take an unwise risk" (Berkenkotter and Huckin, 1995; p. 145). Doubtless, the status of the researchers in the community when the article was published was such that they didn't feel they were in a position to raise what was tantamount to a challenge to the accepted methods and conventions of the community.

Prevailing Paradigms in the Community

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In a 1979 College English article, Patricia Bizzell notes the value to English studies of Thomas Kuhn's definition of "paradigm" as a "comprehensive theoretical model that governs both the view of reality accepted by an intellectual community and the practice of the community's discipline" (p. 39). The prevailing paradigm is both the theoretical model currently in use and the practice that derives from it.

For most members of a discourse community, and certainly for new members and those seeking to gain entry, learning and following the prevailing paradigm are major steps on the road to full inclusion in the conversation. One of the things this implies for the rhetoric of research is that successful challenges to the current paradigm are most likely to be made by those who know it best, the experts in the field. They are also the members most likely to dominate the conversation. However, students, particularly graduate students, come to understand that the "accepted knowledge and methodology is most often transmitted through course work and through working on research projects with established researchers or scholars who have achieved credibility within the field" (p. 118). While the process of learning the rhetorical conventions and methodologies for research and the presentation of research is often tedious and sometimes painful, it may be helpful at this juncture to transfer Berkenkotter's and Huckin's findings about Nate's "enculturation" into his graduate program. Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995) say that "students begin as novices, or newcomers to the community and begin their enculturation through peripheral forms of participation that change over time as apprentices change their status from newcomers to members" (p. 118).

Common Features of Research in the Field

Most research accepted by professional journals has some common rhetorical features. Hansen emphasizes S. E. Toulmin's (1984) argument that "any wholly explicit argument" puts forth a:

• claim, or an assertion the arguer wishes his audience to accept;
• the grounds, or "the particular facts in the situation that make good the claim" (experimental observation, statistical data, personal testimony, etc.);
• warrants or "the previously agreed upon facts, rules, laws, principles, that authorize or license the movement from grounds to claim"; and
• backing, or a common body of knowledge relied on "to establish soundness and relevance of the warrants" (p. 205).

Making a claim is a matter of taking a position in an unexplored niche that a researcher perceives in the conversation. According to Swales (1990), "the higher the level of the claim, the more likely that it will involve contradicting large bodies of the relevant literature . . . [T]he lowest level claims may contradict nothing, but may also add very little" to the conversation (p. 117). Warrants, in all cases, are produced by members of individual disciplines and perpetuated by journal editors who decide what will be of interest to their readers and how such information should be presented.

Researchers in English position themselves in a conversation by reviewing the relevant literature and bringing that literature to bear on the research in question. Researchers draw on prior knowledge about their topic at the same time that they acknowledge members of the discourse community. This is one way researchers establish credibility in a community where previously published research has demonstrated its value because it has been read and accepted by many members of the community. Similarly, an extensive and detailed explanation of methodology is common, as researchers in English may use a variety of methods. In other disciplines, such as "hard sciences," an extensive methodology is not always necessary, as all researchers may use the same one.

Discourse community members must be constantly aware of what is currently considered valid research methods and presentation formats. How researchers choose a rhetorical style depends on their knowledge of rhetoric patterns that mirror the type of research they have conducted. "Rhetoric," Hunter (1990) says, "is the systematic study of the acts of communication by which people convince others of the reality of the truth of their assertions" (p. 4). To produce convincing rhetoric, English researchers must negotiate the conventions of the research genre with other members of their disciplines. Berkenkotter and Hukin (1995) explain that "genres are the intellectual scaffolds on which community-based knowledge is constructed. To be fully effective in this role, genre must be flexible and dynamic, capable of modification according to the rhetorical exigencies of the situation" (p. 24). Even though a researcher can identify useful patterns that may help with the presentation of research, the dynamism of the genre makes it impossible to prescribe specific methods of research presentation.

Learning the Research Styles in the Field

An important element of understanding a research community is learning the styles of research conducted by its members. According to Janice Lauer and William Asher, two major methods or styles of research and presentation exist within English studies: rhetorical and empirical (1988). These two methods are similar in at least one way: they both begin with a problem or "motivating dissatisfaction" which needs to be resolved (Lauer and Asher, 1988).

But the way in which each style attempts to solve the problem differs dramatically. A rhetorical style proposes a new theory and argues for its advantages over existing theories. It applies many of the rhetorical components (such as making a claim and providing warrants) as we discuss in the section on common features of research in the field.

Empirical research, on the other hand, uses "inductive processes instead of the deductive and analogical processes of rhetorical inquiry" (Lauer and Asher, 1988); empirical research is essentially descriptive and often experimental in design. But in its final discussion of results, empirical research is similar to rhetorical in that it must interpret the data and argue for its relevancy and importance. As Lauer and Asher put it, "the data and results do not speak for themselves."

Learning the Research Styles in the Field

Students who pursue research in English and composition studies can familiarize themselves with specific rhetorical conventions by studying journals, books, and other forums where established members of the research communities present their work. Scholars who look at the historical development of English and composition journals find that what is thought to be appropriate and desirable research methodology and rhetorical style changes along with English studies and the influence of journal editors. What might not be so obvious to the reader is that during the past century, members of the English community have drawn on other disciplines to widen the breadth of their research methods and presentation formats.

For a look at the history of four journals in English studies, see our discussion of The Evolution of Four Key Journals.

Learning about Style Manuals and Genre Analysis

In his book, Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings, John M. Swales (1990) conducts genre analysis of other researchers' work, as well as his own corpus of research articles. He also looks at style manuals. His work suggests that in addition to analyzing research articles in journals, beginning researchers can also benefit from consulting style manuals, such as the American Physical Society Style Manual or A Guide to Writing and Publishing in the Social and Behavior Sciences. Researchers can also look to the work of other scholars who have done genre analysis, including Latour and Woolgar (1979), Knorr-Cetina (1981), and Berkenkotter, Huckin, and Ackerman (1988). However, the advice offered in style manuals and the analysis of rhetorical moves made in published research articles does not always match, which suggests that researchers cannot always rely on style prescriptions (Swales and Najjar, 1987).

The Evolution of Four Key Journals

In this section, we follow the evolution of rhetorical strategies in the field of English and composition studies by tracing the development of four well-established and respected journals: English Journal, College English, College Composition and Communication, and Research in the Teaching of English.

In this section, we discuss changes in the rhetorical conventions followed in four key journals in English and composition studies. Evidence of these changes are found in the publications' editorial comments, policy statements, and the tables of contents. To read more about these changes, click on the items below:

• On the Importance of Rhetorical Conventions ...
• English Journal
• College English
• College Composition and Communication
• Research in the Teaching of English

On the Importance of Rhetorical Conventions ...

Why is it important to understand the evolution of rhetorics and writing conventions of journals in our field?

Writing conventions and structures are not "out there" to be chosen from and then overlaid onto or applied to ideas and research. Students must learn the conventions that are particular to their discourse community of choice, and this is not a simple process. Berkenkotter & Huckin (1995) say that "learning the genres of disciplinary or professional discourse would . . . be similar to second language acquisition, requiring immersion into the culture and a lengthy period of apprenticeship and enculturation (cf. Freedman, 1993)" (p. 13). Rhetorics arise from an interaction of writing purposes, contexts, and shared knowledge. In turn, rhetorics build communities that promote ongoing research, teaching, and writing within disciplines. Because of this, understanding the origins of the writing in our discipline can help us understand how and why certain research methods have come to be accepted and how results of research are communicated to others.

Branscombe (1995), Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995), among others note general shifts in the research methods and rhetoric of English and composition studies. They usually start this discussion with the rise of positivistic methods and structures which occurred around the 1940's as more and more scientific "truths" were being discovered and the methods used to determine these truths became accepted as the most effective paths to answer research questions. At this time, researchers in the humanities began to use more empirical methods and therefore rhetorics identified with scientific investigation filtered into the scholarly journals of those fields. However, more recently there has been a significant backlash to some of those methods and theories. With the rise of feminism, resurgence of Marxism, and the current appeal of postmodernism in many English departments, empirical, positivist research methods have come under much scrutiny (Branscombe, 1995). Many scholars have long been questioning "the notion of single, fixed, and determinable Truth" (Branscombe 1995). The new epistemology being advocated is based on ideals of democracy, social constructivism, polyvocality, and often relies on very personal approaches to research. Written modes of these epistemological constructs are generally descriptive, narrative, even confessional, as opposed to the analytical, evidentiary and persuasive rhetorics of positivism (Branscombe 1995).

The wide range of acceptable rhetorics around the time of rising positivism in the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s is evident in the tables of contents of well known English journals. For example, even as the debate between quantitative researchers and qualitative researchers became more heated, we see narrative classroom accounts, linguistic models, poetry, and composing process models listed next to one another in the contents of College Composition and Communication. However, it is important to note that before the rise of quantitative methods and rhetoric, researchers in English departments used personal, descriptive, and narrative voices in their publications. Opinions were to be based on personal experience in classrooms, according to editorial boards; nowhere was purely quantitative research emphasized or encouraged.

It is also important to note how the journals grew out of one another in response to certain needs addressed at conferences dealing with English studies. The progression of many scholarly journals can be traced from public forums (conferences, committee meetings) through informal written newsletters and correspondence, to scholarly journals, and larger academic communities of discourse.

English Journal

The English Journal (EJ) was founded with the development of the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) in 1912. Like most new journals in the field, the editor's note in the very first issue justifies the need for another forum of teachers. The editor, James Fleming Hosic argues that although there are many localized councils of teachers, there are still many problems to be solved in the field of English and therefore a unified, national committee could help. He gives credit to the Modern Language Association for their work, but states that they are primarily interested in research. Therefore, NCTE is needed due to its dedication to the practical issues of teaching of English. With this purpose in mind, Hosic (1912) states that EJ is the medium through which the Council reaches the public as it "aspires to provide a means of expression and a general clearing-house of experience and opinion for the English teachers of the country" (46).

Volume 1:6 describes the editorial policy of EJ a little further:

"...the Journal is progressive. We do not wish to root out, tear up or overthrow, but we are eager to move steadily forward. The Journal does not worship at the shrine of tradition; it does not prize school practices merely because they are old. Social conditions change and schools must change with them. Nevertheless, we believe in sound methods of investigation and testing" (1912).

These "sound methods" are not specifically mentioned, but the articles in the issues up to this sixth issue deal mainly with teachers' reflections on their own methods in light of popular or new pedagogies. The editor also puts forth that the journal must be representative of the diverse local committees of teachers forming the NCTE and that a high standard of style and typography is expected.

In 1920 EJ received a new editor and made a shift toward a stronger emphasis on literature education. Before this time articles were balanced between writing and literature topics. Sometimes shifts like this one have more to do with editors' preferences than with trends in overall English studies.

In 1955 we see another more subtle shift in focus of the journal with a new editor. Volume 44:2 introduces Dwight Burton whose policy is very general: "Anything which will improve the teaching of English in the secondary school is considered for these pages." During this decade we see the broadest range of acceptable rhetorical stances in EJ and other English/composition journals. Articles on reading literature, teacher narratives of classroom activities, and research studies on what college freshman are expected to know and do in English are all included. This atmosphere of openness to many different ideas and rhetorical stances is indicative of the times. Science and technology is booming and people in all fields are excited about new ideas and ways of doing things. We hear the importance of progressive teaching which is mindful of the goings on outside the school walls. Rhetorics which shake up the status quo a bit appear to be strongly encouraged.

The 1970 volume 62:6 of EJ introduces another new editor along with some changes in format (a larger 8 1/2" by 11" format rather than nearly half that size) and organization of articles. The new editor, Stephen Judy (1970), says, "[EJ] needs to be a practical magazine, dealing in concrete terms with problems faced by classroom teachers, but it cannot drift toward gimmickry or shallow eclecticism. It needs to be a scholarly journal, investigating ideas at the forefront of the discipline, but it cannot fall prey to pedagogical fantasy." The magazine is divided into four sections including Opinion Editorial, Features (scholarly articles centered around a particular theme), Teaching Ideas, and Resources.

The editorial in volume 62:7 discusses the major shifts in teaching and rhetorical foci the discipline of English has gone through in the latest several years. Judy (1970) states, "Some wondered if NCTE was trying to emulate the National Science Foundation with this interest in a "scientific" approach to language, and they voiced their distrust: "If I'd wanted to be a mathematics teacher, I would have been a mathematics teacher." Note below that, during this same decade, College English mentions in an editorial policy that they will only accept articles of a more particular focus on "critical theory, curricular thinking, pedagogy and so on." These reactions characterize some of the beginning backlash to positivistic, empirical articles because these journals, which are trying to hone down their rhetorical foci, tend not to include strictly quantitative studies. However, other scholarly journals such as Research in the Teaching of English are being made available around this time for the more empirical type of article.

Presently, EJ still has a very magazine-like look. The covers have color photographs or artwork and articles generally include pictures. This look likely appeals to the secondary school English teacher who has a very practical outlook on his/her teaching. Most of the articles are based on real classroom activities and curricula, rather than on educational or composition theory. Specific editorial parameters for EJ are available over the Internet, and can be accessed via the EJ home page.

College English

College English grew out of English Journal and became its own journal in 1939 when there appeared to be a stronger need for analysis of English in higher education. Originally there had just been a College Edition of EJ. College English has had a very similar editorial policy to that of EJ except that it has been a bit more open to highly theoretical articles and cross-disciplinary studies. In 1970 it is especially clear that College English wants to continue a progressive stance on issues in the field of English. The areas of scholarship the journal is interested in include:

(1) The working concepts of criticism: structure, genre, influence, period, myth, rhetoric, etc. (2) The nature of critical and scholarly reasoning; implicit standards of evidence and inference; the nature of critical explanation. (3) The structure of our field; implications of the way we segment it; consequences of specializing in the usual ways; the place of rhetoric and composition. (4) The relevance of current thinking and research in other fields (e.g., philosophy, history, art history, psychology, linguistics) to the study and teaching of English. (5) Curriculum, pedagogy, and educational theory. (6) Practical affairs in the profession. (7) Scholarly books, textbooks, and journals in the field.

The current policy for College English is similar in its scope and notes further that, "Contributions should either add new knowledge to what is already known, challenge received opinion, or simply inform a larger readership of the implications of scholarship and research that would otherwise be known only to specialists." The policy emphasizes that the rhetoric should be accessible to people of varied interests. Therefore, we don't see any extremely empirical articles in the journal. For College English, an article on empirical research needs to be focused largely on interpretation of the findings rather than on the detailed ins and outs of data collection or statistical findings. A glance at the December 1997 issue's table of contents, and it becomes clear that a "narrative" or qualitative approach is emphasized. Included is an article entitled "Pomo Blues: Stories from First-Year Composition," a poetry section, and a review entitled "Telling Tales about Teaching Writing."

College Composition and Communication

The fourth journal we chose to follow is College Composition and Communication (CCC). It began in 1950 and posits that it should be seen as a compliment to the work shown in College English. CCC's original policy was to "provide a forum in which controversial issues can be thrashed out" (Volume 1.3). "Thrashed out" is definitely a good way to describe the writing styles found in the first issues of the journal. Writer's respond to each others' views with words like, "The article....by ...Knickerbocker is an expression at the very least of a frivolous obscurantism, or at the most of a vigorously cultivated ignorance..." (Lloyd 1950) and "...the sentiments expressed in Mr. Lloyd's article .. have been reiterated so often, so righteously, and at such tedious length... I wish I could be as shocked by his article as he is by Mr. Kenneth L. Knickerbocker's, but I cannot: the best that I can manage is exasperation" (Steinmann 1950).

In the early 1970s we see a broader range of the types of accepted articles in CCC. Reports of research and linguistic studies are welcome along with theory and poetry. Due to this, a wide range of rhetorical conventions may be seen in the journal: algebraic-like linguistic formulas occupy some pages, while descriptive narratives of classroom practices and heated comments on class and racial bias in our schools occupy others. However, these broad approaches have narrowed down considerably in recent years.

In the 1995 CCC we see no empirical research reports or complicated linguistic models. CCC is largely focused on theory, and the Guidelines for Writers encourage submitters to "blur genres and mix discourses, to cut across and make connections among a range of intellectual and professional issues." Even more so than College English, CCC appears to encourage progressive and new ideas from wide ranging perspectives. The guidelines also state that, "Pieces that simply restate or apply familiar work in writing or teaching do not merit publication in CCC. The goal of writers for CCC should rather be to add to, extend, inflect, or revise current work on composition and its teaching" (1995). Though some articles focus directly on teaching practices, many deal strictly with theory. The policy also states clearly that "CCC does not publish articles written in the form of a research study or report. Most pieces take a more discursive form that allows the writer to argue for a point as well as to present the results of research" (1995).

The May 1996 issue includes articles mainly dealing with theory, with an interesting "disruptive" text on the "Postings on a Genre of Email" in which the authors speak back and forth in an Email-type dialog. True to the journal's original goals, "Counterpostings on a Genre of Email" are also included.

Just as English studies appear to welcome many ideas from other disciplines, so do the journals offer many possibilities for publishing different types of reports and articles. As a writer and researcher in the field of English it is essential to be aware of and understand the varied means of communication available to you. Your audience considerations may need to include the policies of journals to which you plan to submit your work.

Research in the Teaching of English

In 1967, NCTE started another journal, Research in the Teaching of English,(RTE) which has a very different focus from English Journal or College English. Its articles are highly specialized documents on empirical research. It was around the late '60s and early '70s that many English journals began honing down their policies to exclude highly empirical studies because they are not as accessible to a wide range of scholars and teachers in the field. Plus, some of the methods had been and still are being seriously questioned. Therefore, it is no surprise that such researchers in English felt the need to start their own journal in order to publicize their work. Though there is no specific editorial policy published in the first several issues of RTE, the first few articles in issue one give readers a good clue as to what will be expected. The first article by William C. Budd (1967) is titled "Research designs of potential value in investigating problems in English" and the second by Doris V. Gunderson (1967) is "Flaws in research design." Basically, they give the reader an idea of what TO do and what NOT to do.

Briefly, the first article emphasizes descriptive research including descriptive surveys, normative surveys, and correlational studies. Budd (1967) suggests both univariate and multivariate designs and quasi-experimental designs. (For definitions and discussion of survey research, see the survey research methods unit. For definitions and discussions of quasi-experimental designs see our unit on experimental and quasi-experimental research.) To avoid flawed research the second article by Gunderson (1967) advises to clarify the problem carefully and set up a theoretical framework, build on a range of previous research, present objectives, hypotheses, or questions clearly, and to plan appropriate procedures, instruments and statistical treatments. Gunderson (1967) also emphasizes a carefully balanced rhetoric which is not overly technical so as to appear "pseudo technical". (For a brief discussion of the difference between rhetorical and empirical research styles, see the section in this guide entitled Research Styles.) Organization and utilization of sub-headings to signal the reader clearly is important as well. Just by glancing through an issue of RTE one can get a sense of organizational strategies which utilize categories and more objective views on research processes; Narrative and personally descriptive writing conventions are nearly non-existent in RTE.

Currently, RTE still publishes research reports which are highly quantitative and employ strict structures with sub-headings and categories labeling research processes. Empirical sorts of research in English are definitely being conducted and published, but in their own journals, for more specialized audiences.

Hypertext: A New Medium for Presenting Research

Some of what exists on the Internet amounts to no more than paper text articles transferred to the World Wide Web, with no revision to their presentation or content. Articles are displayed in their entirety, much as they would be in a print journal. Initially, this was how the research methods units on this Website were presented. Since the fall semester of 1997, they have been presented in hypertext format.

As in all hypertext publishing, the goal of revising these research units is to make them more "user friendly." Users, confronted with large blocks of text when opening a unit may be daunted, and end up printing the essay out to read on paper. If hypertext is to be widely accepted by readers it will have to succeed on the strengths of its own unique format. According to John Morkes and Jakob Nielsen of Sun Microsystems, who collected data from four years of Web usability studies, "users do not read on the Web [but] scan the pages, trying to pick out a few sentences or even parts of sentences to get the information they want" (1997). Further, as many readers of these research units are quick to discover, "users do not like long, scrolling pages: they prefer the text to be short and to the point." In the end, Morkes and Nielsen (1997) recommended that on-line "texts" should be "concise, scannable, and objective."

Presenting a document in hypertext creates a new type of text which is broken up into nodes of smaller amounts of information with clearly marked links to those nodes. The advantage to this scannable system is that it gives the user control over which sections of text he or she will read based on the reader's interests. Instead of scrolling through long strings of text, the reader quickly links to the bit of information desired. According to Jack Lule, in the August 7th, 1998 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, "hypertext will encourage non-linear narrative-blocks of texts that readers pursue in the order they choose, depending on what aspects of a story most interests them." The introduction of hypertext changes the way writers approach research writing, the way readers approach research texts, and the way publishers present research findings.

Read about the Differences between Print and Hypertext

Read about Specific Online Journals

The Differences Between Print and Hypertext

Back to Hypertext

Composing an original document for hypertext format is different from writing a paper text document. As mentioned earlier, information need not be presented linearly in a hypertext format. Lule points out that "writing changes when technology changes" (1998).

Hypertext technology enables the writer to approach the writing project with a somewhat modified arsenal of choices at his or her disposal. What this means for the writer is basically more tools in the toolbox. The ability to include links in the document enables the writer to give the reader the option of pursuing information that need not be included in the main body of text. For instance, in traditional print publications a section suggesting further reading might be added at the end of the main text. In hypertext documents, further reading may be accessed instantaneously through the use of links. Background information and definitions of technical terms need not be included in the main body of the document. Instead, links can instantly connect the reader to any supplemental information needed.

Another distinction between print and hypertext documents of is that once a research text has been published in print, the writer's ability to revise and update the work is limited. This revision involves printing new editions that can be occasional at best, or entirely cost prohibitive at worst. After publication in print, the text may be viewed as inert for all practical purposes. These restrictions are no longer an issue in hypertext. The writer (who could very well be the publisher, due to the relative low cost and accessibility of Web publishing) can now revise and update on an ongoing basis. In ongoing research projects, new findings can be published at various stages during the life of the study. As the writer becomes aware of new, pertinent information, this information can be added to the text at any time.

Another consideration for researchers publishing on the Internet is the increased speed of the presentation, discussion and debate of research findings afforded by hypertext and Internet technology. In the print model, the author submits a research report or some other form of scholarly publication and patiently awaits publication. Then the slow process of formal response to the work begins. The discussion can take months or even years to evolve. With Web technology this process can expedited.

Simply pasting a text as it exists in print form into hypertext is no longer the standard for online publication. The Internet was once nothing more than a clearinghouse for greater accessibility to previously printed research. Currently, Internet publication is moving towards a links-based presentation of research texts that cannot exist in print. In the field of English research, the Internet has moved toward original online journals that do not necessarily have -- or need -- a print counterpart.

Read about Specific Online Journals

Specific Online Journals

Back to Hypertext

There are a number of journals in English studies that now have Web sites with submission information, current articles, and archived articles. More and more journals, however, are becoming specifically online journals, in which information is meant to be read only online and is presented in hypertext. In this section, we will explore six of the contemporary research journals online and note their strengths and weaknesses in presentation and style. Most of the following information is taken from the mission statements of the various publications.

1) academic.writing: http://aw.colostate.edu

academic.writing is strictly an online text. It offers World Wide Web access to a wide range of additional materials, including posts to Web forums, teaching materials, writing-across-the-curriculum program proposals and reviews, and a range of primary research materials as well as an opportunity for interaction among various researchers and professionals. Unlike a conventional online journal, which mirrors the volume/issue format of print journals, this journal is designed to function as an evolving, growing document (or, more accurately, a collection of documents) on the Web.

This journal is still in its preliminary stages but hopes to offer the following materials via the Web: submissions sent to an editorial board, a formal table of contents for each volume, and additional navigational aids to provide alternative ways of accessing materials on the site. At regular intervals, announcements about the new materials on the site will be published. Similarly, regular calls will be published for submissions and invitations for special editions of the journal.

2) Kairos: http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/

Billed as "A Journal For Teachers of Writing in Webbed Environments," Kairos welcomes contributions from scholars pursuing a wide variety of online issues, from theory to praxis. This journal carries regular feature articles, a CoverWeb, reviews, news, and response sections, any of which are often interlinked, since the medium affords this advantage. Kairos offers abstracts of each article and then a hotlink to actual article. Kairos works in a standard, printed format breaking the site into each volume and issue. One of the interesting sections Kairos has is an online forum to discuss the various issues and articles presented in each issue.

Kairos will only publish "native" Webtexts (i.e. composed in/for hypertext or the World-Wide Web); any submissions which could be printed in a traditional paper-journal are not appropriate to this venue. They look to publish: empirical research reports conducted in and relating to Web-based writing classrooms; sample syllabi, with notes and commentary from the teachers and students; editorials from teachers regarding past experiences; theoretical essays designed to help ground practice in pedagogical theory and vice-versa; commentary on resources, including Websites, M**spaces, listservs, newsgroups and print resources; reviews of pertinent software and papertexts; other additions based on appropriate submissions and recommendations from the editorial board.

3) Computers and Composition: http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~ccjrnl/

Computers and Composition is billed as an "International Journal". This site offers a choice in format in either a normal or text only version of the articles. The current online issue runs simultaneously with the printed version offering separate articles in each format. The online journal from Computers and Composition offers an abstract of the print articles and a completely different section for the online journal. The purpose of this site is to provide news, resources, and features on the topic of computers and composition, going beyond traditional print formats to include audio, sound, video, and hypertext. Contributions may take the form of electronic manuscripts, hypertexts, multimedia constructions, or Web documents in HTML format. They are willing to publish submissions on a wide range of topics related to computers and composition, including reports of research, reflective or theoretical essays, personal accounts of teaching experiences, book and software reviews, professional articles, or bibliographies.

4) College Composition and Communication Online: http://www.ncte.org/ccc/

This site offers three initial choices in viewing: a full graphics section, a light graphics section, or text only. This is a tri-annual publication still using the notions of volumes and issues to delineate their online publication. This journal offers nothing more than abstracts for the current printed text. It does, however, offer the following: As communication becomes increasingly multimedia and hypertextual, potential contributors to CCC may feel limited by the constraints of publishing their work in a conventional print journal. Consequently, CCC Online's Parallels provides an electronic space in which authors are welcome publish materials that complement their texts accepted for publication and printed in the paper edition of CCC. The Parallels section is like an electronic appendix to the print version of the journal.

5) College English: http://omega.cc.umb.edu/~ce

College English offers very little currently in the way of online materials. It is structured in a traditional manner with volumes and issues. It offers no choice as to a format preference. College English offers a "highlights" section for each coinciding printed issue, simply offering a brief abstract of the issue's main articles. The table of contents section for the issue archives offers nothing more than article titles and authors. Submissions must be sent to the College English postal address in printed form. No articles are online and a subscription is needed to read the printed articles.

6) English Journal: http://www.cc.ysu.edu/tej/

Also published by NCTE, the English Journal Website mirrors that of College English. There is little to no information readily available online except for issue article titles and authors as well as submission guidelines. Similar to College English, all submissions must be printed and mailed to the given postal address.

Read about the Differences between Print and Hypertext

Commentary: On Ethics

Ethical considerations in publishing and presenting research findings are not separate from ethics in research. Ethics must be taken into account when planning, conducting, and reporting research because unethical conduct can damage not only the research, but also the people involved in the research. Unethical conduct can also damage the overall reputation of research and the academy in the general public's view. Ethical considerations range from minor deception, as a way of gathering information, to more serious levels of intentional or unintentional involvement in research scenarios that can lead to a variety of illegal, possibly dangerous activity.

Researchers face a myriad of ethical issues when they consider the presentation of research. Some of these are how much to include in reports, how to accurately represent studies and participants, how audience concerns (including urges to protect participants) affect results, and how reports will affect participants, researchers, institutions connected to participants, and institutions sponsoring studies.

To read more about these issues, click on the items below:

• Ethical Codes to Follow
• The Honor System
• The Researcher's Influence on Study Participants
• Use of Your Results and Plagiarism
• Final Thoughts on Ethics

Ethical Codes to Follow

Back to Ethics

Although there are some codes of ethical conduct that are enforced by government agencies through sanctions against perpetrators of unethical conduct (see Buzzelli, 1993), most professional academic institutions are self-monitoring. Professional and student researchers can access codes of ethics that are compiled by professional organizations within their areas of study, such as "Ethics and Standards in Institutional Research," edited by Michael E. Schiltz (1992). Researchers can also access ethics codes online. Some sites to begin a search include The Center for Academic Integrity at www.nwu.edu/uacc/cai and Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at www.scu.edu/Ethics.

The Honor System

Back to Ethics

Even though self-regulation seems like the most professional approach to ethical issues in research, Braxton and Bayer (1996) present Freidson's (1975) theory that says, in part, "professional self-regulation of individual performance is constrained by the rules of professional etiquette" (p. 200), which is to say that etiquette might outweigh some ethical considerations. Swazy, Anderson, and Lewis (1993) did a study of 99 graduate programs, including 2,000 doctoral candidates and 2,000 faculty from the same institutions. In the study 53% of students and 26% of faculty responding believed they would get in trouble for reporting misconduct, and although 99% of both groups believe in maintaining ethical standards, only 24% of graduate students and 27% of faculty believed that they act on those beliefs (p. 549). This study questions the effectiveness of self-regulation by illuminating the tension between professional ethics and professional etiquette.

The Researcher's Influence on Study Participants

Back to Ethics

It is sometimes difficult to see the line between a violation of ethics and taking a necessary stance for the sake of research. For example, in the case of bias when reporting ethnographic studies, researchers will be relating stories from their perspectives. Doheny-Farina (1993) says, "our results are, in a large part, what we, as researchers, bring to the research event" (p. 254). Doheny-Farina argues that authority and credibility rests on the researcher's ability to be ethical about the role of the researcher, the manipulation and/or interpretation of data, and the construction of the research report. When researchers observe groups, they must be aware of the influence they personally have on the group and the context. With regard to the manipulation and interpretation of data and the presentation of research, Doheny-Farina (1993) says that "the problems come when the claims that researchers make do not match the approach that they took in conducting the study" (p. 257). An ethical study is also a valid study in that the claims refer to what the researcher set out to measure.

In his book The Politics and Ethics of Fieldwork, Maurice Punch (1986) details cases that illustrate how the researcher, in negotiating a position when becoming a participant-observer in a group, necessarily becomes a part of the research that will have an effect on the outcome and the data (p. 12). Punch says that in their presentations, researchers "should come clean not only on the nature of [the] data-how and where it was collected, how reliable and valid he [or she] thinks it is, and what successive interpretations he [or she] had placed on it-but also on the nature of his [or her] relationship with the field setting and with the 'subjects' of the inquiry" (p. 15).

Use of Your Results and Plagiarism

Back to Ethics

When presenting results, Sammons (1989) says that researchers must "attempt to influence, even if they cannot determine, the way in which their data are ultimately disseminated and used" (p. 39). She also suggests that responsible researchers must know and understand the statistical techniques and tests they use in their research, especially if they are depending on computer statistics programs (p. 50).

Plagiarism is also an ethical issue in research reporting. According to the Swazy, Anderson, and Lewis (1993) study, of the nearly 1,200 faculty members responding, "nearly a third of faculty claim to have observed student plagiarism" (p. 545). Donald Buzzelli (1993), a senior scientist in the Office of Inspector General at the National Science Foundation also reports that "most of NSF's major [ethics] cases have involved plagiarism" (p. 585)

Some Final Thoughts on Ethics

Back to Ethics

There are no absolute prescriptions for "ethical" conduct in the presentation of research, but researchers still have to consider appropriate codes, recommendations, and stories of other researchers where they apply. Ethical considerations must be applied on a case-by-case basis. In "Aristotle, Foucault and Progressive Phronesis: Outline of an Applied Ethics for Sustainable Development," Bent Flyvjerg takes a "contextual" approach in Case Study research as an example of how to address the problem of making generalized knowledge claims in social sciences. Social science research should use "practice-guiding [methodologies]…enabling us to find out what is desirable so we can choose and act wisely. Social science is a kind of applied ethics…" ¹

Ethical Arguments that Arise in Case Study Research

If a universally applicable ethical theory exists that guides Case Study methodology, it might look something like the Aristotelian model for triangulating levels of analysis in scientific observation. This pluralistic approach addresses epistemological (How do we know what we know?), technical (What is being produced?), as well as practical (Phronesis) concerns (practices that are good or bad, i.e., questions regarding research conduct). ² Aristotle's Phronesis promotes an ethical research that we can translate into more user-friendly language.

Bent Flyvjerg engages this idea, addressing the question of "whether or not social sciences can establish general knowledge claims" (epistemology.) He believes research in the social sciences should "rely on the study and analysis of particular cases" (technical) (what is being produced) as opposed to relying upon generalized theory. Flyvjerg's case study methodology is "contextual" and promotes a type of Phronesis that considers

• "particular and context-dependent" over the universal
• concrete and practical over the theoretical
• "power of example"
• relationship

Most importantly, Phronesis (practices that are good or bad, i.e., questions of conduct) should posit questions concerning values, power, closeness, minutiae, practices, concrete case studies, context, how-questions, narrative/history, actor/structure, and dialogue.

Flyvbjerg, Bent. "Aristotle, Foucault and Progressive Phronesis: Outline of an Applied Ethics for Sustainable Development," in Applied Ethics: A Reader, Eds. Earl R. Winkler and Jerrold R. Coombs, (Oxford: UK & Cambridge USA: Blackwell, 1993, 11-27.

What are some ethical theories that are relevant to Case Study research?

The basic argument from "Cultural Relativism," as outlined by James Rachels in Elements of Moral Philosophy is as follows:

1. Different societies have different moral codes.
2. There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one societal code better than another.
3. The moral code of our own society has no special status; it is merely one among many.
4. There is no "universal truth" in ethics-that is, there are no moral truths that hold for all peoples at all times.
5. The moral code of a society determines what is right within that society; that is, if the moral code of a society says that a certain actions is right, then that action is right, at least within that society.
6. It is mere arrogance for us to try to judge the conduct of other peoples. We should adopt an attitude of tolerance toward the practices of other cultures. ³

 Rachels finds that this argument is not plausible. Taking the form of argument for Cultural Relativism we are encouraged to believe that:

1. Different cultures have different moral codes.
2. Therefore, there is no objective "truth" in morality. Right and wrong are only matters of opinion, and opinions vary from culture to culture.

1. Ruth Benedict Patterns of Culture (New York: Pelican, 1946)
2. William Graham Sumner, Folkways (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1906)
3. Kai Nielsen "Ethical Relativism and Facts of Cultural Relativity," Social Research, vol. 33(19660), pp. 531-551.

The basic idea behind Ethical Subjectivism (as argued by James Rachels.)

Similarly:

"X is morally unacceptable"

"X is wrong"

"X is bad" all mean "I (the speaker)

"X ought not to be done" disapprove of X"

The argument against Simple Subjectivism:

1. If Simple Subjectivism is correct, then each of us is infallible in our moral judgments, at least so long as we are speaking sincerely.
2. However, we are not infallible. We may be mistaken, even when we are speaking sincerely.
3. Therefore, Simple Subjectivism cannot be correct.

C. L. Stevenson, Facts and Values (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963)

C. L. Stevenson, Ethics and Language (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944)

G. E. Moore, Ethics (London: Oxford University Press, 1912)

1 Flyvbjerg, Bent. (1993). "Aristotle, Foucault and Progressive Phronesis: Outline of an Applied Ethics for Sustainable Development" Applied Ethics. Winkler, Earl R. and Coombs, Jerrold R. (Eds.) Oxford UK and Cambridge USA: Blackwell, 11-27. See Bent Flyvbjerg (1989): "Socrates Didn't Like the Case Method, Why Should You?" in Hans F. Klein, ed.: Case Method Research and Application, Needham, Mass. See also the excellent analysis of this point in Alisdair MacIntyre (19770): "Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative and the Philosophy of Science," Monist, vol. 60.

2 Flyvbjerg, 11-27.

3 Rachels, James. (1993). The Elements of Moral Philosophy, Second Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 18-19.

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Commentary by Beverly S. Hotard, Fall 1998

Related Sites

English Journal
http://www.cc.ysu.edu/tej/

College English
http://omega.cc.umb.edu/~ce/

College Composition and Communication
http://www.ncte.org/ccc/

Research in the Teaching of English
http://www.ncte.org/rte/

Computers and Composition Online
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~ccjrnl/

Kairos: A Journal For Teachers of Writing in Webbed Environments
http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/

The Center for Academic Integrity
http://www.nwu.edu/uacc/cai

Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
http://www.scu.edu/Ethics

Annotated Bibliography

** 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.