Mapping a Space for a Rhetorical-Cultural Analysis

Rhetoric and Science

Against the backdrop of objectivity in science, sociologists of science and rhetors have made a claim that science is not as removed from other human affairs as classical thinkers would want us to think. Science is a rhetorical enterprise! (Graves, 1995; Gross, 1990; Sidler, 2006; Wickman, 2012). The contributors to the book Understanding Scientific Prose by Selzer (1993, p. 13) unequivocally state that “science is thoroughly human, messy, unpredictable and mentally colored by its social and political circumstance.” Because science is performed by humans and humans are immersed in language, we can agree that we cannot separate science from rhetoric because “rhetoric is fundamentally involved in every human undertaking” (Selzer, 1993, p. 5). In this regard, science is also socially constructed (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Bruffee, 1986; Kuhn, 2012).

The belief that scientific texts are socially constructed is accentuated by Greg Myers (1985) who studied two scientific texts (grant proposals) as products of a “community of researchers.” Myers makes a claim that consensus building is relevant to the development of scientific knowledge. Grant proposals, he argues, are the most obvious rhetorical writing scientists do and undoubtedly have “the most immediate effects on the structure of the discipline” (Myers, 1985, p. 220). Proposal writing, he argues, “is part of the consensus-building process essential to the development of scientific knowledge” (Myers, 1985, p. 220). Through a case study of two proposals, we are enlightened about how science changes and defines itself and about how it is funded and communicated. Studying scientific texts, he avers, can get us to think about the paradoxical nature of science and the scientific community. The proposal writing process is a rhetorical activity because the writer must find every means possible to persuade “a reluctant audience” (Myers, 1985, p. 220). The proposal document, on the one hand, is characterized by standard format that emphasizes standard questions, backgrounds, goals, budgets, and the scientific report style that emphasizes passives and impersonality and does not give enough room for most rhetorical appeals. On the other hand, Myers (1985, p. 220) notes, “every sentence in a scientific proposal is charged with rhetorical significance” [italics mine]. If a scientific proposal aims at persuading an audience, then we can conclude that scientific writing is rhetorical.

Like Myers, Jeanne Fahnestock also makes a case that the scientific genre is rhetorically exigent in the sense that it changes as audience changes. This is made evident as Fahnestock (1986, p. 275) traces how scientific writing addressed to a popularized audience goes through four stases questions “from fact and cause to value and action.” Fahnestock looks at the rhetorical nature of science by studying how scientific information in scientific journals on similar subjects is metamorphosed to meet the needs of audiences with different backgrounds and interests. She observes that first, the scientific genre shifted focus as document moved from its original presentation to a popularized audience. Scientific documents addressed to audiences of nonspecialists became epideictic rather than forensic. Their main purpose was celebratory rather than validating. Second, information changed. The science author, she avers, “selects only information that serves his epideictic purpose” (Fahnestock, 1986, p. 281). In essence, scientific information is rhetorically charged as it meets the needs of the targeted audience. There is no way we can separate scientific information and scientific knowledge from rhetoric. Rhetoric is therefore epistemic; it creates knowledge.

It is not enough to identify that rhetoric is epistemic or science is rhetorical; it is also important to identify how discourses used “participate in systems of knowledge and power” (Longo, 2007, p. 119). Thus rhetoric participates in a culture. Little has been done to situate science in an ideological culture. Dale Sullivan, however, acknowledges the cultural exigency of science. Sullivan (1991) argues that science is not different from other cultures because science as a community is characterized by two tensions: (a) continuity and change and (b) oneness and variation. These are traits shared by all cultures. If science is characterized by these traits, then it is possible to study science rhetorically. Based on this syllogistic argument, Sullivan studies the epideictic nature of science. He points out and rejects two misconceptions about science: the belief that science can only be judged epistemically and not socially; and the belief that scientific theories are “incommensurable” and that making it impossible to judge between theories. To the first belief, he argues that when we see science as epistemic rather than doxa, the aspect of science that deals with society will be ignored. To the second, he says that science must make room to accommodate opinion as opposed to absolute truth. Epideictic rhetoric is practiced by people who belong to orthodoxy, and orthodoxies form part of traditions or belief systems that contain unproven assumptions.

I take a cue from Sullivan’s logic by stating that science has a culture (Latour, 1986; Sullivan, 1991). I combine the tools of rhetoric and cultural studies to foreground my argument that science is both rhetorically and culturally situated. Rhetoricians of science have focused so much on the epistemic nature of science and have neglected to look at how rhetoric can help bring out how institutions produce, reproduce, and maintain social realities. They try so hard to prove to Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates that rhetoric is epistemic and generates knowledge. This, I will argue, has blinded rhetoricians from discussing the power structures that shape how knowledge is communicated or revealed. In order to unravel the power structures that shape the production of scientific knowledge, and to identify how enframed rhetoric is, we need to extend our studies to doing rhetorical-cultural analysis. In the next section, I discuss how cultural studies can give an insight into science studies.

Culture and Science

What is cultural analysis? To understand how to do a cultural analysis, we must establish what the meaning of culture is. Indeed this is not a simple task because it is difficult to define culture. Stuart Hall, for instance, states that “the concept [culture] remains a complex one—a site of convergent interests, rather than a logically or conceptually clarified idea. This ‘richness’ is an area of continuing tension and difficulty in the field [Cultural Studies], (parenthesis mine)” (Stuart, 1980, p. 59). Raymond Williams, as Stuart Hall points out, gives us two concepts of culture. The first concept connects “‘culture’ to the sum of the available descriptions through which societies make sense of and reflect their common sense.” In this sense, “culture is ordinary.” The second concept that is very relevant to my analysis emphasizes social practices. Culture in this regard is “threaded through all social practices and is the sum of their inter-relationship” (Stuart, 1980, p. 59). Similarly, Patrick Brantlinger (1990, p. 37) makes it clear that “culture is a category that transcends or transgresses various disciplinary and theoretical boundaries … ”

Though it is complex to define culture, it is possible to find the general concerns that run through most cultural analysis. Carl Herndl (1993, p. 64) makes us aware that most studies in the field aim at exploring and exposing how “particular practices and modes of representation organize cultural power.” He traces a thematic trajectory of what scholars in the field have analyzed. Scholars, Herndl writes, have looked at the relationship between the knowledge a society produces and the material and ideological structures that maintain and structure the production of knowledge, the way cultural discourses realize and make “available forms of subjectivity and possibilities of action” (p. 65) and how “culture” defines itself through processes of exclusion and inclusion. Despite the multifaceted approach, Herndl states that cultural analysis has taken two major forms: the humanist and the structuralist. The humanists have looked at the ordinariness of culture. Studies under this paradigm have looked at social phenomena “as human experiences through which people construct their identities, knowledge and values, and through which they position themselves within their everyday living conditions.” The structuralists, on the other hand, look at experience as secondary phenomena. In their view, “human experience or any social activity is conditioned by ideological structures that provide the categories of thought through which people come into social being” (Herndl, 1993, p. 65). The structuralist perspective has been influenced especially by Louis Althusser’s theorization of ideology.

Some feminist scholars have taken a lead in demonstrating that science has an ideological framework that favors men rather than women. These scholars who have brought our attention to the gendered nature of science have taught us to recognize that science as a culture values traits that have been associated with men in western culture (Code, 1991; Haraway, 1998; Harding, 1986, 1991; Keller, 1985; Merchant, 2006). We are made aware that a reexamination of the origins of modern science in the 16th and 17th century, for instance, reveals that sciences practiced at these times were based on masculine notion of reason and objectivity. It was rooted in the dichotomy that existed in Western thought which valued culture over nature, mind over body, reason over emotion, objectivity over subjectivity, and the public realm over the private realm (Wajcman, 1991). Because women were almost always identified with nature, body, emotion, subjectivity, and the private, the assumption was that they were not fit for the field of science as it is the province of culture, objectivity, reason, mind, and public—traits associated with men. If science is objective and true, then it means that only men can pursue it or the man is the only being to be considered scientific.

In their feminist analysis of a scientific text, “The Spanderels of San Marco and the Panglosian Paradigm” by Gould and Lewontin, Mary Rosner, and Georgia Rhoades explain what feminists question about patriarchal science, how some feminists might read the essay, and how the essay might have been different if it had been written from feminist perspective. In their analysis, they make an important claim that “every discipline is made up of a set of restrictions on thought and imagination” (Rosner & Rhoades, 1993, p. 83), and science is no exception. They list some cultural characteristics of science: Science is said to be objective, texts that scientists write present “the truth of the world through passives, nominalizations, abstractions, and mathematical and visual symbols that elevates the results of an interpretation” (p. 83), facts speak, not the scientist, and they speak through impersonal authority, and the style of science communication eliminates all forms of emotional or personal involvement. Science still holds on to this form of communication. This is how science communicates its social reality. This is how ideology operates.

According to Althusser, the individual living in ideology behaves in ways and practices bounded by the ideological apparatus on which depend the ideals that he/she mistakenly believes to have been consciously and freely chosen. The ideas of a human subject exist in his actions, and the actions are “inserted into practices,” and these practices are “governed by the rituals in which these practices are inscribed, within the material existence of an ideological apparatus” (Althusser, 1971, p. 25). The subject is very central to the notion of ideology “because there is no ideology except by the subject and for the subject” (Althusser, 1971, p. 30). This means that ideology can only be made possible by the subject: “meaning, by the category of the subject and its functioning” (Althusser, 1971, p. 31). Althusser adds that we are “always already subjects,” as such, we practice rituals of ideological recognition that guarantees that we are concrete, individual, distinguishable, and (naturally) irreplaceable subjects. We can sum up by stating, therefore, that ideology is a system of representation. As a system of representation, it is composed of concepts, ideas, practices, myths, or images that guide the way men and women [scientists] live their imaginary relations to the real conditions.

Rhetorical-Cultural Analysis: Mapping Dynamic Networks in a Scientific Text

Blake Scott (2003) points out that rhetorical-cultural analysts account for science’s broader conditions. They map out the shifting intertext of science in action; they evaluate the effects of science; they target instances where they can intervene in the harmful effects of science; and they identify opportunities for cross-pollination. My analysis of a grant proposal written by a graduate student in Forestry will be based on the second move: mapping the shifting intertext of science in action because this move will help us identify science as “a heterogeneous dynamic web of cultural practices” (Scott, 2003b, p. 25). Carolyn Rude makes us understand that “Maps encourage movement and exploration and the breaking down of boundaries. Maps identify spaces and call for attention: To ‘put it on the map’ is a way to emphasize an issue, idea, or program by giving it a space” (Rude, 2009, p. 178). By choosing this move over the others, I aim to provide a space for us to think about the possible ways that rhetors can combine rhetorical theories with cultural studies theories. Though I am invoking rhetorical-cultural approach in my analysis, I employ it loosely to refer to how a scientific proposal sheds light on three rhetorico-ideological elements: ethos, interpellation (subjectivity), and apprenticeship. By ethos, I refer to the various strategies that the author used in order to project her character as a scientist; interpellation refers to various means by which her persona makes her a subject to scientific ideological practices; and apprenticeship refers to the means through which she learns how to construct her scientific persona.

Results of Analysis

In this section, I present the result and discussion of the rhetorical-cultural analysis of a proposal written by a PhD Forestry student working on a project that seeks to develop “genomic resources for important North American hardwood species” (proposal). This project is part of an ongoing project to recover the forestlands of the United States from threats from biotic stresses (insects, diseases, pathogens, and invasive species), abiotic stresses (drought, temperature, and precipitation), urban growth, fire risk, and climate change. ¹ Sustaining North American hardwoods calls for “informed knowledge on the genetic basis for tolerance and resistance to” ² the biotic and abiotic stresses. The proposal I analyzed was submitted to one of Michigan Tech’s internal funding programs: Ecosystem Science Center. The mission of this funding unit is “to promote understanding of ecosystem function through education and research at Michigan Technological University. ³ ” The center was “designed to advance our understanding of how ecosystems function and how human activities influence ecosystem processes. ⁴ ”

What is obvious in the proposal is the use of technical terms to situate the project within the broader field of study—forestry and ecology. These terms are used in order to create a context for the work. Terms such as “genus level,” “genetic differentiation,” “sympatric speciation,” and phrases such as “Genetically and morphologically similar species of the Lobatae section Q. ellipsoidalis E.J. Hill, Q. coccinea Münchh, Q. rubra L. and Q. velutina Lam.” are analyzed in this study, and “ecological speciation and hybridization” are employed by the author. The fact that she does not explain most of the terms could tell us that she is conversing with people who understand and have foreknowledge of what she is working on. This adds to the ethos of the author. The argument of the text also references some figures and theories in her field. Such theories as “Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations” and “Hardy-Weinberg and linkage equilibrium” play an important role.

Added to the use of technical terms is the author’s shibboleth adoption of the passive voice. This rhetorical move, I argue, is aimed at producing, maintaining, and reproducing ideological structures that shape science practices. There is a clear separation of the subject doing the research and the object. For instant, the author constructs sentences such as:

DNA extraction from leaves of 96 Q. ellipsoidalis (12, 22, 26 and 36 from two locations each in Illinois, IL, Indiana, IN, Michigan, MI and Wisconsin, WI, respectively); 95 Q. velutina (12, 19, 36 and 30 from two locations each in IL, IN, MI and WI); 47 Q. rubra (seven from three locations in IL, 11 from locations in MI and 29 from one location in WI); and 20 Q. coccinea (one location in IL) samples was done using Qiagen DNeasy96 Plant Kit (Qiagen, Hilden, Germany) per standard manufacturer protocol.

The use of the passive, scholars have argued, is to suppress human agency to imply that the work is beyond human volition. Passive constructions are used to help the author to achieve an objective, value-neutral stance. By adopting this writing style, the author strives to preserve the dichotomy between the researcher and the researched. The use of the passive style is a sine qua non of scientific discourse. Studying a 66,500-word corpus of 16 scientific articles, Rodman found that 66% of sentences are in the passive voice. Harmon also studied 50 most cited texts and found out that 53% of the main verbs are in passive (Ding, 1998). Most researchers have argued that the passive is the dominant style adopted by scientific discourse (Fahnestock, 1986; Myers, 1985; Rosner & Rhoades, 1993). The author of the proposal adopts the passive voice in order to participate in a cultural practice that values certain ways of doing things. She also shares in the beliefs of the culture that by adopting this move, she is making an objective claim about what she is presenting. In this sense, one can say that the author is a subject who is produced by and also reproduces an ideological belief. “Ideology,” as Althusser (1971, p. 28) wants us to understand, “always exist in an apparatus, and its practice, or practices.” The use of the passive is a conventional practice of science writing. The author who has chosen to be a scientist is always already a subject (an effect of interpellation) of this system and will partake in this ideological apparatus. The author has chosen to “participate in the construction of scientific subjectivity and the dominant model of science as nonideological” (Herndl, 1993, p. 77). The use of the passive foregrounds the idea that scientists are embedded in a system of representation. This is the best way that scientists communicate their material conditions and conditions of existence to the external world. To the scientist, the use of the passive style of writing (a rhetorical move) embodies an ideology of truthful representation of reality. Strict adherent to passive style of writing “subsumes” other forms of writing that are possible but not articulated.

We are also exposed to the scientist’s view of language. To the scientist, language is a transparent medium that presents an accurate account of the world. This is a reenactment of Bacon’s assertion that the scientific writer must report reality in an impartial language that is transparent and unproblematic as Charles Bazerman notes. According to Sir Francis Bacon, the originator of the modern scientific method, “persuasion is extraneous” to the science writer and the writer is not supposed to

write for a particular audience, but should rather attend to the object under consideration, for all humankind is capable of recognizing the truth clearly stated. The book of nature is open to all; by meticulously transcribing it the scientist is able to rise above the limitations of self and society (Bazerman, 1983, p. 157).

The use of the passive not only creates the subjective form of the author or the scientific view of the use of language, it also tells us about the historical and cultural situatedness or the material existence of science. As I mentioned earlier, Dale Sullivan stipulates that science as a culture is characterized by continuity and change; Dan Ding confirms this by asserting that the use of passive voice is a characteristic of modern science. But science has not always valued the passive over the active. Ding’s article makes us understand that scientists became more inclined toward the use of the passive at the dawn of “the age of reason,” that is, the European Enlightenment. Prior to this moment, scientists such as Priestley and scholars before the age of rationality and reason used the active verb. He ends his article by stating that the values that are cherished by contemporary scientists are influenced by “rationality and reason” that constitute “the historical roots of the passive voice and its related grammatical construct, impersonal active subjects” (Ding, 1998, p. 132). Again, the historical existence of science confirms the ideological nature of this culture. As Althusser makes us aware, ideologies have history. We are also not wrong to believe based on the above acts that science is a social act situated in a world. It is shaped by the larger occurrence in a society. It is fluid and contextually driven. Hence, science writing can be termed a situated practice.

Key to the composition of a text is the created ethos of the author and the purpose they hope to achieve. The author or rhetor, according to Aristotle, must find every available means to persuade an audience. In doing so, the author could fall on three rhetorical tools: ethos, logos, and pathos. The persona of the author in my present example is worth commenting on: She is an apprentice. I am calling her an apprentice because she is a PhD student working under the tutelage of a more accomplished scholar—a professor in the field of Forestry. The author refers to this professor as her advisor in the proposal. By writing the name of the advisor, the author is making an ethical claim and asserting that the project she is working on is very relevant to the field and it is credible. This is a way of persuading the audience, the potential funder that the money will be put to good use. The author further presents other rhetorical moves. The budget of the project is framed within the means of the funder. The author goes to the extent of saying that “additional costs will be covered” by her advisor. The purpose of the research is also carved to meet the needs of the funder. According to the author, the project she is working on aims “to identify ‘pure’ species and putative interspecific hybrids.” Identifying pure species will aid in understanding the economic speciation of taxonomic relationships among related oak species. She needs money to advance knowledge to solve an environmental problem: saving oak trees.

I mentioned that the author is an apprentice because the concept of “apprenticeship” plays a relevant role in an ideological system. It is a vehicle for ideology to operate, and this is exercised through education, the school. How does the school as an educational apparatus operate? Through her professor and other course assignments, certain amounts of know-how are drummed into her. She is presented with the ideology that suits the role she has to fulfill in society. It is in the apprenticeship in a variety of know-how that the relations of production are largely produced. In this regard, the author of the proposal is being trained to attain proficiency in the way scientists think, see, feel, and interact with the world. Thus, she is being trained as a labor power. She goes through the form of socialization that will make her a “good scientist.” The fact that she conducts rigorous research under the watch of her professor is a tacit example of how she is learning the practices of science through apprenticeship. She also learns how to contribute to the knowledge economy of science. Althusser makes us understand that all forms of socialization are geared toward the established ideology. By using the passive style of writing, by citing densely from scientists and continuing the conversation in her field (Forestry), and by using scientific theories and methods, the author, I will argue, has acquired the rhetorical moves that will help her project her ethos as a future practitioner of science. The process of apprenticeship offers us an insight into the role cultural practices play in scientific knowledge. She not only acquires certain amounts of know-how but also learns to submit to the rules and regulations that have been established by scientists. Thus, through apprenticeship, the student learns the rhetoric of their discipline: how to write and how to present their persona.

A rhetorical-cultural analysis would also get us to think about the knowledge-creating processes of a scientist: The scientist rhetorically combines elements in a specific way to achieve a desired effect. The author of this proposal narrates how she is involved in the art of making: techne. As a rhetorical move, she presents a thick description of how she will combine materials in order to achieve the goal of her project: “to identify ‘pure’ species and putative interspecific hybrids.” She uses material samples to intervene or produce knowledge or the “truth” about her study. For this project, the author narrates the method she will employ:

DNA extraction from leaves of 96 Q. ellipsoidalis … samples was done using Qiagen DNeasy96 Plant Kit (Qiagen, Hilden, Germany) per standard manufacturer protocol. Eight of each gSSR and EST-SSR markers will be characterized in the samples by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Samples will be amplified using a Peltier Thermal Cycler (Geneamp® PCR system 2700, Applied Biosystems) and the PCR products will be separated on an ABI PRISM® 3730 Genetic Analyzer (Applied Biosystems).

We can identify from the analysis that scientists’ use of passives, technical terms and even belief of objectivity are ways that ideology operate through discursive practices. We realize that “discourse does ideological work that shapes our relationships to the world in ways that are not always apparent to us” (Ashcraft & Mumby, 2004, p. xviii). Ideology, as I have shown, “entails systems of representation that construct identity, securing and obscuring structural inequalities and contradictions. These systems of representation do not float above social practice; they are materially grounded in practices of everyday life” (Ashcraft & Mumby, 2004, pp. xviii–xix).

Implications for Scientific and Technical Communication

From a rhetorical-cultural approach, we get to know that science writing is kairotic, selective, and persuasive. The research could only be funded if it could solve current and future problems. Therefore, context is important to scientific knowledge. As writers, we should also know about the context of our writing and the currency of what we hope to communicate to audiences. We can also say that if science is kairotic, then it has social and cultural imports. Science is shaped by current social and political occurrence because it is only when current issues can be resolved by the research that the public will accept and fund. What is the kairos of this project? It seeks to “identify ‘pure’ species and putative interspecific hybrids.” We get to think about the connection between context and practices before we write.

The technical/scientific communicator must not have a narrow conception of language. Taking a rhetorical-cultural approach and a broader conception of language gets us to recognize the contradictory nature of language. We also get to know that language is not neutral, but it is implicated in power, values, institutional structures, and ideologies that subordinate the subject or the less powerful. We need to present what we do from multiple perspectives. We will find ourselves writing technical documents for our superiors and the powers that be. We need to know how rhetorical situation will guide and shape the telos of our production. When we stress clarity, efficiency, and objectivity as the end of what we write, we slip into the instrumentalist way of relating to the world around. Technical and scientific communicators must walk away from the positivist understanding of the use of language that stresses the idea that there is a direct relationship between the reflections of the human mind and reality. Rather, we should see writing as a social act; that writing is shaped by community, knowledge and consensus, discourse conventions, and collaboration. We should question how these forces shape what we do. I agree with John Monberg (2002, p. 224) that “if technical writing is to be not merely an instrumental tool designed to implement predetermined ends, technical writing requires a practical rhetoric; a code of conduct, a locus for questioning, and accountability to the human community … ” Questioning and critical thinking should be the key competence of scholars.

Studying scientific writing from a rhetorical-cultural approach gives us the advantage of not problematizing the passive writing style of scientists. Rather, we acknowledge that the passive style is the medium through which scientists communicate their social reality to the outside world. It represents how scientists make meaning of the world around them, their imaginary representation of the world. It also tells us that science exists in a material world. A technical writer who is aware of this mode of communication will seek to find alternative ways and appreciate alternative forms of communication. There is no one way to communicating our social reality. There are multiple ways. We must understand that science writing crafts the identities of writers. The scientist writing a proposal is always an interpellated subject in a culture that values certain kinds of thought and belief systems. What this means is that as writers and scholars, our identities will be shaped by what we write, how we write, and where we write. We are not automatons working outside ideological structures. We are almost always subjects to dominant ideas. We must therefore be aware of the connection between audience, context, and purpose anytime we write. Self-reflexivity is also important as this gets us to critically assess what we are writing and the impact that we hope to serve. Self-reflexivity helps us to think about the telos of our writing.

Conclusion

I conclude by reemphasizing that rhetoricians should be able to connect the context of what they do to practices. What we do is not neutral. Our writings will always be shaped by institutional practices, genres, and other cultural practices. The rhetorician or technical writer must be ready to study the culture of his/her audience. If Aristotle says that the duty of a rhetorician is to find the available means of persuasion, then the rhetor should also be able to identify ideological practices that shape the world of their audiences.

Rhetorical-cultural approach provides alternative mode to doing analysis. It presents an interdisciplinary way of looking at texts and the world around us. Rhetoric helps us to identify the various rhetorical moves that can help us to “persuade” audiences, but that is not enough. We need to know the culture, the ideological practices that shape what our audiences do before we can persuade. It provides a lens for rhetoricians and cultural analysts to “conceptualize the world [they are writing about], analyze it and participate in shaping it” (Slack, 1997, p. 122).

Finally, I will say that if we can look at a scientific document from the three rhetorico-ideological elements and agree that science writing reinforces ideology, then science has a material existence, and it is socially and rhetorically constructed.