Rhetoric In(to) Science: Style As Invention In Inquiry

by Heather Brodie Graves

"This book examines the role that rhetoric plays in the creation and conceptualization of new technology claims. Rather than examining historical scientific documents, it looks at scientists in the act of conducting research, interpreting data, and constructing accounts of an experiment and highlights how they worked with the linguistic resources available to them to bring into existence abstract concepts and gain new insight into the subject of their study." Using ethnographic type data to observe and record the contributions of rhetoric to the work of science, the book addresses some of the big questions about the epistemic and ontological status of rhetoric in the context of ongoing scientific inquiry. The book concludes with an examination of the implications of this research for the teaching of writing, especially focusing on the role that specialists play in modeling effective writing in their disciplines.

284 pages, Paperback

First published August 28, 2004