Davida Charney

Commenting on Writing: Typology and Perceived Helpfulness of Comments from Novice Peer Reviewers and Subject Matter Experts.

How do comments on student writing from peers compare to those from subject-matter experts? This study examined the types of comments that reviewers produce as well as their perceived helpfulness. Comments on classmates’ papers were collected from two undergraduate and one graduate-level psychology course. The undergraduate papers in one of the courses were also commented on by an independent psychology instructor experienced in providing feedback to students on similar writing tasks. The comments produced by students at both levels were shorter than the instructor’s. The instructor’s comments were predominantly directive and rarely summative. The undergraduate peers’ comments were more mixed in type; directive and praise comments were the most frequent. Consistently, undergraduate peers found directive and praise comments helpful. The helpfulness of the directive comments was also endorsed by a writing expert.

The role of elaborations in learning a skill from an instructional text

In these studies, we examined the role of elaborations for subjects learning a procedural skill (viz., using a personal computer) from an instructional text. In Experiment 1, we compared two sources of elaborations: those provided by the author and those generated by learners while reading. In the latter condition, subjects were given advance information about the tasks they were to perform so that they would generate more specific task-related elaborations while reading. Each source of elaborations facilitated skill performance. This result contrasts with results of the past experiments testing declarative knowledge in which author-provided elaborations were found to hurt performance. In Experiment 2, the author-provided elaborations were classified into those illustrating the syntax of the operating system commands and those explaining basic concepts and their applicability. Syntax elaborations produced significant facilitation for experienced and novice computer users. Concept elaborations produced no reliable improvement.

Moving beyond the Moment Reception Studies in the Rhetoric of Science

Studies in the rhetoric of science have tended to focus on classic scientific texts and on the history of drafts and the interaction surrounding them up until the moment when the drafts are accepted for publication by a journal. Similarly, research on disasters resulting from failed communication has tended to focus on the history of drafts and the interaction surrounding them up until the moment of the disaster. The authors argue that overattention to the moment skews understanding of what makes scientific discourse successful and neglects other valuable sources of evidence. After reviewing the promises and limitations of studies from historical, observational, and text-analytic approaches, the authors call for studies of responses to research articles from disciplinary readers and argue for studies using a variety of qualitative and quantitative methodologies that will explore the real-time responses of readers to scientific texts, test the effects of rhetorical strategies on readers, and track the course of acceptance or rejection over time.

“I'm Just No Good at Writing” Epistemological Style and Attitudes Toward Writing

The authors assessed writing attitudes and epistemologies of 117 first-year and 329 upper-level undergraduates. Attitude scales assessed enjoyment of writing, self-ratings of writing ability, and belief in writing as learnable. Epistemological scales measured absolutism (belief in knowledge as determinably true or false), relativism (belief in the indeterminacy of all claims), and evaluativism (belief that truth can be approximated). Absolutism correlated negatively with writing grades and verbal aptitude, whereas evaluativism exhibited a weak positive correlation with both. Students with higher evaluativism tended to enjoy writing more and to assess themselves as good writers. Upper-level students were less absolutist and marginally more evaluativist than first-year students. Differences in attitudes and epistemologies emerged between men and women and among upper-level students in four disciplinary groups. The authors sketch some implications for writing pedagogy.

Lone Geniuses in Popular Science The Devaluation of Scientific Consensus

Popular accounts of scientific discoveries diverge from scholarly accounts, stripping off hedges and promoting short-term social consequences. This case study illustrates how the “horse-race” framing of popular accounts devalues the collective sharing, challenging, and extending of scientific work. In her best-selling Longitude, Dava Sobel (1996) depicts John Harrisons 18th-century invention of a marine chronometer, a ground-breaking precision instrument that eventually allowed sailors to calculate their longitude at sea, as an unequal race with Harrison as beleaguered hero. Sobel represents the demands of the Board of Longitude to test and replicate the chronometer as the obstructionist machinations of an academic elite. Her framing underreports the feasibility of the chronometer and its astronomical rival, the lunar distance method, which each satisfied different criteria. That readers accept Sobels framing is indicated by an analysis of 187 reviews posted on Amazon.com, suggesting that popular representation of science fuels cynicism in popular and academic forums.

From Logocentrism to Ethocentrism: Historicizing Critiques of Writing Research

Since the 1960s, attitudes toward empirical research on writing, including research on technical/professional writing, have shifted from encouragement to resistance. This essay traces these shifts in light of changes in writing research, psychology, and the rhetoric of science. In composition studies, an initial mild uneasiness about “scientism”; intensified with the rise of process models, suggesting a Romanticist defense of the mystique of creativity. More recent post‐modernist denunciations of scientific methods as immoral have other Romanticist overtones. In technical communication, a long‐standing interest in workplace writing practices allowed a smoother integration of empirical analysis with descriptive studies of writing contexts. However, as in composition, recent critiques in technical communication suggest that empirical methods should not be employed. These critiques too tightly circumscribe the values that may be considered humanist and cut off important avenues of inquiry and critique that h...

Guest Editor's Introduction: Prospects for Research in Technical and Scientific Communication—Part 2

This is the second of two special issues on prospects for research in technical and scientific communication (see also JBTC 15.3). In seven articles in these two issues, researchers argue for new approaches to three key areas: designing and using electronic media, investigating and improving communication among professionals and with the public, and studying the role of texts in the course of scientific and technical innovation. The final piece in this issue, a commentary by Sandra Harner, provides timely information about applying for research funding from the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and about disseminating the results of this research to STC’s membership of scholars and practitioners. In addition to galvanizing future research, the articles in these issues also contribute to current discussions of appropriate research methods in our field. Three positions on methods emerge. First, some authors, including Christina Haas and Stephen Witte (this issue) and Clay Spinuzzi (forthcoming in JBTC 16.1), argue for making our methods more comprehensive so that we can develop better explanations of how communication works in complex settings. Others, including Ellen Barton (JBTC 15.3) and Joanna Wolfe and Christine Neuwirth (JBTC 15.3), make strong cases for making our methods more relevant and accessible to researchers and practitioners in scientific and technical communities so that the findings will be more likely to lead to productive change. A third set of authors, including Barry Thatcher (this issue) and Danette Paul, Davida Charney, and Aimee Kendall (JBTC 15.3), challenge the assumptions underlying previous research about what texts we should choose to study and how we should evaluate responses from readers. In addition, Katherine Durack (this issue) offers a variety of methods that technical and business communication researchers can use in the US Patent Office. As a confirmed methodological pluralist, I am delighted by the wide range of methods promoted in these articles, including ethnography and activity theory, text and discourse analysis, observational case studies, process tracing, historical studies, and experimental

Designing Interactive Tutorials for Computer Users

ThingLab is a constraint-oriented, interactive graphical system for building simulations. A typical problem in ThingLab (and systems like it) is that, to define an object with a new kind of constraint, the user must leave the graphical domain and write code in the underlying implementation language. This makes it difficult for less experienced users to add new kinds of constraints or to modify existing ones. As a step toward solving this problem, the system described here allows the graphical definition of objects that include new kinds of constraints. This is supported by an interface in which a user can open two views on an object being defined, a use view and a construction view. The use view shows the objects normal appearance. The construction view contains additional objects and constraints, which serve to graphically specify the new constraints on the defined object.

Performativity and Persuasion in the Hebrew Book of Psalms: A Rhetorical Analysis of Psalms 116 and 22

Recently, scholars have argued that oral poetry helped lay the groundwork for the development of rhetorical theory and practice in archaic Greece. I propose that oral poetry played a similar role in archaic Israel. First, I describe the ritual and rhetorical contexts in which psalms were composed and performed in ancient Israel. Second, I analyze two psalms (Ps 22 and Ps 116) to show that treating the psalms as deliberative argument posed by Israelites to God can explain otherwise perplexing problems in interpretation and translation. Finally, I argue that positing an active locus for rhetoric in ancient Israelite culture raises interesting cross-cultural comparisons with ancient Athens regarding the striving for social status and public influence.

Maintaining innocence before a divine hearer: Deliberative rhetoric in psalm 22, psalm 17, and psalm 7

Interpreters of the individual psalms of lament have long been intrigued and even baffled by these psalms’ apparent shifts in mood. For those seeing the psalms as therapeutic, the laments record moment-by-moment turns in emotion; a despairing individual is eventually enabled to affirm faith in God. From a rhetorical perspective, however, the shifts can be seen as parts of a connected line of argument aimed at persuading God to uphold cultural values and intervene in the life of the speaker. After outlining the major concerns of contemporary rhetorical theory, I offer readings of three innocence psalms, Psalm 22, Psalm 17, and Psalm 7, showing that their speakers start from different standpoints relative to God and aim for distinct goals. The speaker in Psalm 22 makes an elaborate case to re-establish innocence and become God’s public champion, the speaker in Psalm 17 uses claims of innocence to seek apotheosis, and the speaker in Psalm 7 accepts a dare. These readings indicate that psalms are far more than expressions of yearning or trust. Performance of public argument influences, underscores, and maintains loyalty to the cultural values of justice and faithfulness that God represents.