Bazerman Wrting Well Scientifically

chap 12
Genre is a sociopsychological
category which we use to recognize and construct typified actions
within typified situations. It is a way of creating order in the ever-fluid
symbolic world.
Because genre is such a multidimensional, fluid category that only
gains meaning through its use as an interpretive, constructive tool, the
reduction of any genre to a few formal items that must be followed for
the sake of propriety (decorum in its most restricted sense) misses the
life that is embodied in the generically shaped moment.
Skill in scientific writing, as with most human arts, is
knowing what you are doing and making intelligent choices.
However, in the search for certainty of statement and
compellingness of argument, the constructed, socially active character
of the scientific symbolic system seemed to be forgotten. Scientific language
began to seem an escape from language, and thus not a matter for
conscious control. Propriety and clarity, not letting errors of language
get in the way, were all the scientific writer needed to worry about.
A rhetorical approach to writing well in science would not set forth a
set of formal prescriptions to be followed for propriety’s sake, nor would
it suggest a set of universally advisable procedures. A rhetorical approach
would attend to the range and meaning of current practices and
then suggest how to deploy them appropriately and effectively within
specific contexts. The current practices, properly understood, within
themselves contain their own recommendations for appropriateness
and advisability, for they embody a history of inventions and choices by
prior writers addressing and shaping similar situations.
CONSIDER YOUR FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS, GOALS,
AND PROJECTS
The underlying epistemology, history, and theory of a field cannot be
separated from its rhetoric.
If your work is simply harmonious
with disciplinary assumptions and projects, and if the discipline
has forged a rhetoric adequate to its beliefs and tasks, you can
adopt the local rhetoric with a fuller understanding and commitment l If,
however, you find yourself in some way at odds, you can begin to understand
the rhetorical task before you-both in developing terms appropriate
to your emerging claims and in finding ways to make your claims
intelligible and persuasive to peers committed to other beliefs and rhetorics.
CONSIDER THE STRUCTURE OF THE LITERATURE, THE
STRUCTURE OF THE COMMUNITY, AND YOUR PLACE IN BOTH
At any particular moment the literature of a field is structured around
issues and themes historically evolving and of current moment.
newly emerging field with a small and loosely structured literature
draws on the literary capital of other specialties out of which it emerged;
The explicit recognition of the importance of prior statements has
been realized through the techniques of overt intertextuality developed
over the last few centuries
Swales’s schematic analysis of the
four moves of a typical article introduction (establishing the field, summarizing
previous research, preparing for present research, and introducing
present research) is precisely an elaboration of the standard
current strategies of this generic task.
Explicit intertextuality also helps mobilize a range of literature to support
and extend the new claim, The more firmly you can tie the claim to
the accepted intertextual web, the more persuasive the claim appears.
Reading the literature against a developing schematic view of
what problems the discipline has addressed, what the discipline has
learned, where it is going, who the major actors are, and how all these
things contribute to your own project, helps you interpret the literature
actively in support of your developing project.
Familiarity with the
social structure of a community surrounds you with statuses, roles,
norms, rights, obligations, appropriate attitudes, and acceptable actions.
You learn what you must do and how you must act to participate in
the activity of the community what the acceptable degrees and ranges of
variation are, and what sanctions are likely for violation.
CONSIDER YOUR IMMEDIATE RHETORICAL SITUATION
AND R HETORICAL TASK
certain relationship with
your colleagues. The more clearly you understand this emergent rhetorical
situation, the more precisely and effectively you can choose what
you do next. Assessing the situation helps you judge what kind of statement
is called for, if any. The situation may seem to call for an immediate
written response, it may call for further experiments to address unresolved
questions and criticisms and to result in a compelling published
answer, or it may call for fundamental investigations out of which whole
new kinds of statements will grow. Within the conversation of communal science, all choices have rhetorical import, for they help shape the next statement to be made.
Compton’s sequence of investigations and papers reveals consistent
rhetorical choices as to how more satisfactory and persuasive claims
might be developed and pressed.
CONSIDER YOUR INVESTIGATIVE AND SYMBOLIC TOOLS
bringing
to bear on any particular argument the literature of the field, the currently
accepted theory, deductive reasoning, representations of
method, and representation of empirical experience.
for the scientific argument hangs on the quality and character of the
evidence. Experimental and observational techniques are precisely
ways of transforming nature into symbolic representations, which then
have meaning for claims and arguments asserted on the symbolic plane.
choose to pursue investigations that are likely to result in strong and
striking evidence for the emergent claims. You can choose investigations
where you suspect the emerging evidence is likely to expose new
issues or reopen old ones.
CONSIDER THE PROCESSES OF KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION
creation, such as the after-the-fact reconstruction of the intellectual
genealogy in the review of the literature, the focused procedural
account of methods, and the selective narrative of results.
you can often gain some
sense of what kind of impact a reported experiment or a newly framed
argument is likely to have. Anticipation of the impact can help you
shape the presentation to forestall unwanted responses and heighten
the desired ones.
ACCEPT THE DIALECTICS OF EMERGENT KNOWLEDGE
 outcomes
of investigations, writing processes, and social interaction can
never be anticipated with clarity and certainty.
how to proceed, we must then be ready to notice what
develops and revise our plans accordingly.
As events unfold we discover that our nascent formulations match
and mismatch in curious ways with the data we pursue in order to explore
those investigations. The dialectical struggle to find ways of generating
data significant for our formulations and to then reconcile that
data
we will be led to say by what we find. Although we need issues,
assumptions, methods, hypotheses to drive our discovery process,
start to draw all the elements of our investigation
together in the single location of a text
vision that can tighten threads of connections, reveal new issues and
anomalies, excite new insights, and define new projects.
having sent our text out into the world, we need to be
open to what experience and thought others bring to the published formulations.
Sometimes this may mean buttressing arguments, closing
loopholes, and clearing up misunderstandings. These acts in themselves
may lead to new discoveries or more powerful formulations.
data can transform the claims. And the evolution of continuing work
will assign a social meaning and pragmatic role for our formulations;
our understanding of and reactions to that social meaning will influence
our future investigations and formulations. To keep the conversation
going, we must constantly reread the dynamics and meaning of the conversation
and our place in it. An inability to recognize the continuing
evolution of the communal projects will leave us singing the same old