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Articles Conference Reviews |
2007B34WallingB.34: “Studying Communication Patterns Of Science/Engineering Professionals” Sarah Read (University of Washington), Olivia Walling (University of California, Santa Barbara), and Brian J. McNely (University of Texas, El Paso) presented individual papers concerning how writers in technical fields use language to establish their identity, expertise, and constitute the reality of the subjects that they address. The work of these researchers is of particular interest to those investigating the transfer of writing skills in technical fields, the construction of expertise, the construction of knowledge about nature, and the use of written language for regulating access to technical fields. Sarah Read: “Professional Lens Grinders, Private Philosophers: How Engineers identify as Writers” Read’s presentation constituted a progress report on her on-going research into how writing is taught in engineering courses. Her research included taped and transcribed interviews with engineering faculty members about their experiences as writers, what they expect their students to know about writing, and how they transfer knowledge about writing to their students. At the time of her presentation, Read had the transcribed interviews but was just beginning to formulate an understanding of how this data might inform her research interest. Read’s tentative results indicate that while engineers engage in highly creative writing tasks, they define writing in opposition to the values with which they identify their own discipline. They associate aesthetic criteria, creativity, and metaphorical language with non-technical writing and the humanities. At the same time, they use aesthetic judgments, narrative creations, and metaphor to understand their own research and to create written reports representing that research to their peers. In short, they consider that rhetorical choices are made by writers in humanities fields, while the language of an engineering research paper is dictated by other unnamed considerations. Read asks whether by defining one’s professional identity in this way might limit the kinds of professional identities available to engineers. In this regard, Read suggests that the professional identity of those working in technical fields may be constructed in part by their conception of themselves as writers, or in the case of her study, as “non-writers.” Olivia Walling: “Writing & Scientific Identity: Building Collaborations at the California Institute of Technology” Walling’s presentation arose from her dissertation research in history of science. In her study of the development of a research program in nuclear astrophysics after World War II, Walling found that these scientists used review articles and diagrams representing experimental results in order to define the reality of the experiment, assert authority over the interpretation of data in the field, and define what counted as a contribution to the emerging field. Walling found that the physicists who engaged in this research adopted a visual method of representing the atomic nucleus from a related field of physics. The borrowing of this representation changed the community’s understanding of the physical reality of the interior of the atom and, at the same time, generated a productive research program by creating a meaningful context for data gathered from nuclear reactions created in postwar accelerator laboratories. In essence, these researchers used their resources and influence to create an atlas for the atomic nucleus. Like the traditional cartographic atlas, theirs was both an assertion of power and a definition of space that was more than the sum of its individual diagrams and charts. Walling’s research, like Read’s, shows that technical writing is a creative act. Physicists make rhetorical choices that rely on systems of symbolic representation that are fruitful because of their potential for creating new meanings (rather than their ability to circumscribe external references). Brian J. McNely: “‘Planning’ for Audience: Writing Practices and Financial Advisor Identity” McNely’s presented the results of a study that he did on the effect of a change in federal securities laws had on the discursive identities of different types of financial advisors. The 2005 ruling only allowed credentialed financial planners to engage in “financial planning” as defined by SEC regulations. This left the vast majority of people who advise clients about their finances in a situation in which they engaged in financial planning activities for clients but had to revise the language that they used to converse with clients in order to avoid running afoul of the new ruling. McNely took an ethnographic approach, and in addition to interviewing his subjects, he analyzed their correspondence with clients. McNely found that, prior to the promulgation of the new rule, these financial advisors had to address only a limited number of audiences. In contrast, under the new system of regulation, these advisors regularly had to address not only the client but also the concerns of managers, compliance officers, legal department personnel, and state and federal regulators. McNely observed how the advisors that he studied altered their discursive practices to preserve their identities as financial planners while still operating within the systems of authority and agency dictated by their employers and federal regulators. They changed their written discourse so that it no longer addressed specific financial products, and they relied more heavily on verbal and face-to-face contact with their clients. In this way, they were able to subvert partially the new identity defined for them by their exclusion from the world of “financial planning.” Comments? |