Texas Tech Graduate Courses in Technical Communication, Spring 2008

ENGL 5362: Rhetorical Analysis of Text

ENGL 5362 provides a general introduction to methods of rhetorical criticism. The first half of the course offers a context for understanding the rise of “critical pluralism” in rhetorical studies. We’ll start by considering the dominance of neo-Aristotelian criticism in the first half of the 20th century. Then we’ll focus on the critique and fall of neo-Aristotelianism in the 1960s, which gave way to a number of alternative methods. The second half of the course will cover a number of these methods/approaches -- situational, dramatic form criticism, genre, content analysis, framing analysis, narrative criticism, fantasy-theme criticism, feminist criticism, ideographic, critical rhetoric, and metaphor criticism. Issues and questions of interest to rhetorical theorists and practitioners will also be covered -- e.g. the relationship between language and reality; the role of the critic’s personality; the connection among method, theory, and object; the rhetorical situation; intertextuality; how text and talk interact, visual rhetoric; and constitutive rhetoric.

By the end of the course, students should be able to select, apply, combine, and evaluate a variety of methods of rhetorical criticism in the context of your own research projects. As such, the course aims to foster critical thinking about the relationships among rhetoric, texts, and society.

For a list of required books, please see the course website: http://cms.english.ttu.edu/zdenek/courses/spring-2008/engl-5362-spr08-rhetorical-analysis/

ENGL 5365 (270/370): Alternative Rhetorics

The term "Rhetoric" has come to have a culturally accepted history, theory, and culture, one which spans only the Western world, begins with Aristotle and ends with current political applications, and is populated and theorized primarily by men. This course seeks to explore, problematize, and re-envision Rhetoric as it is created by, understood by, and applied by non-traditional sources: women, non-Western thinkers, and those without "cultural capital". We will begin with a historical investigation into the origins of Western rhetoric, looking at how our histories are representations which privilege certain voices (even in the re-envisioning). This historical situating will lead to theoretical questions about how re-envisioning rhetoric in terms of "reclaimed" history and culture might relate to (or conflict with) our pre-existing definitions of the rhetorical tradition. We will explore whether or not there is/should an alternative rhetoric or rhetorics, what difference this categorization might make, and how this new idea might affect the application of rhetoric, particularly in terms of teaching, theorizing, and administering writing. Is there, for instance, a women's praxis? How might this affect our reading, writing, our daily activities? We will look at non-Western rhetoric, but also attempt to see how non-traditional thinkers have used and accommodated to traditional methods of argument and exposition, but also how they resisted and subverted tradition and, in the process, invented new rhetoric(s) to argue for and enact a changed culture.

Our exploration will be guided by the following questions:

• How have those not represented by the dominant rhetorical traditions accommodated their writing? How have they resisted/altered what we know of the rhetorical tradition? Or, have they instead adhered to a different, culturally-derived rhetoric?
• Is there a "rhetoric"? How can we define it? Or are there "rhetorics"? Is it useful or dangerous to expand the rhetorical tradition as we have come to know it?
• What can we learn about our own rhetoric(s) in action by studying alternative rhetorics?
• How can praxis resulting from alternative rhetoric(s) inform our practice: our teaching, our scholarship, our administration?

This course will, I hope, also be framed with questions about our own rhetorical practice, as it is now, and as it might be. Since it's my belief that the very exigency of non-traditional rhetorical situations leaves little room for leisurely theorizing, unconnected to practical action, I hope that in our discussions, our reading, and our writing we will discover new perspectives from which to understand our own rhetorical actions in various communities (and in our larger culture), including the classrooms in which we learn and teach.

ENGL 5365 (271/371): Administering Writing Programs

ENGL 5365, “Administering Writing Programs,” will help TCR graduate students understand the complexities of administering composition and technical writing programs. Colleges and universities continually seek out qualified scholars to start and manage innovative writing programs. There’s a very good chance that you might find yourself administering such a program in your career as a professional academic. 5365 is your chance to learn from the mistakes and successes of the program administrators who have gone before you.

5365 will provide its students the benefit of two highly experienced and respected writing program administrators – Dr. Kemp and Dr. Kimball – in a scenario-driven curriculum combining current theoretical issues of pedagogy, technology, and management with on-the-ground problem-solving discussed by experienced members in the field. MOO sessions will include participation by long-time writing program administrators such as Bill Condon, Carolyn Handa, Michael Day, and recent graduates from TTU’s TCR program discussing their encounters with expectations at their new institutions.

ENGL 5369: Discourse and Technology (Digital Rhetoric)

These graduate-level courses focus on the intersections between rhetorical theory, literacy, textuality, technology, and how they affect our notions of discourse, persuasion and design in online publication. Course topics address online pedagogy, hypertext and hypermedia, ethics, authorship, credibility, and literacy within the contexts of discourse, textuality, and digital culture. And finally, the courses cover contemporary perspectives of digital rhetoric, including transformation theory, interaction, and virtual reality, among others.

The online and on-campus sections will use the same syllabus, will share common WebBoards, and will work on common projects.

English 5372 (Technical Reports)

Focuses on the work place documents that create knowledge and support decision-making—proposals and reports. Proposals seek approval or funding for a plan or activity. Reports provide information on the feasibility or progress of such activities, or on the status of scientific research. Proposals and reports emerge from real rhetorical situations or exigencies. They are examples of rhetorical genres, or strategies available for social action.

All writing in some way tells a story, and so it is with reports and proposals. A proposal from a social service agency seeking money to expand a program for the poor must tell the story of the people it hopes to serve. A report on a study of sub-atomic particles conducted by physicists using a particle accelerator tells the story of those particles, even though they exist only for nano seconds. Narrative is intrinsic to reports and proposals.

As is typical in any graduate technical writing class, we will approach this topic from a theoretical and applied perspective. We will analyze existing documents using rhetorical theory and we will produce reports and proposals based on primary and secondary research. At the end of the course each of you should be able to 1) display skills in writing and reading reports and proposals; 2) display understanding of the theoretical choices we make as practitioners of this kind of writing; 3) display an understanding of how reports and proposals contribute to the discourse of an organization, company, and geographic region; 4) contribute to the body of knowledge about reports and proposals

English 5384:  Rhetoric of Scientific Literature

If you have visited the doctor and been told you are suffering from an illness for which you should be treated, you might assume that the illness has always been clearly defined, an absolute fact. Or, if you have read newspaper reports about discoveries in deep space, you might think that those nebulae were out there waiting to be found and described. But medicine, cosmology—every kind of science—involves choices of language that help to constitute those “facts.” Some diseases that are routinely diagnosed today did not exist 100 years ago—not because people didn’t get them—but because we had no terms to describe them. A distant galaxy would have made no sense to earlier generations who had no language to conceive of a universe much beyond the earth and sun.

English 5384 is for anyone who has been curious about the language that scientists and writers of science use to develop and spread scientific knowledge. Technical communicators who make daily decisions about language will find this course useful. Others who would benefit include scholars of rhetoric, writing teachers, literature students, and scientists interested in unraveling the role of language in what they do.

In this course we will ask how science is rhetorical. The course will involve reading and responding to each other’s short essays, class discussions (MOO discussions for the online students) and activities, and a final project. The course will sharpen your analytical skills and ability to integrate theories of rhetoric and technical communication into your understanding of the scientific world.

We will begin by considering several key works in science and examining the ways in which language makes them work as scientific arguments. After I receive a list of students enrolled in the class I will send around an email to get a sense of specific interests before developing a final reading list. Books that will definitely be included are Thomas Kuhn’s, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and the instructor’s book, Metaphor and Knowledge: The Challenges of Writing Science, which presents his experiences as a writer at a multi disciplinary science think tank. Other possible books are Randy Allen Harris’s (Editor) Landmark Essays on Rhetoric of Science and Latour and Wolgar’s, Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. 

ENGL 5385:  Ethics in Technical Communication

Objectives

• identify various definitions and philosophies of ethics pertinent to the field of technical communication
• recognize the nature and scope of ethical dilemmas in the field of technical communication
• differentiate ethical dilemmas from legal dilemmas and the implications of each
• determine possible solutions to ethical dilemmas encountered by technical communicators
• compose persuasive judgments on ethical dilemmas
• explain the applicability of theories of ethics to the field of technical communication

Texts

• Dombrowski, Paul, Ethics in Technical Communication (Allyn & Bacon, 2000).
• Herrington, TyAnna K., A Legal Primer for the Digital Age (Pearson Longman, 2003).
• May, Steven (ed.), Case Studies in Organizational Communication: Ethical Perspectives and Practices (Sage, 2006).

ENGL 5388: Usability Testing and Research

This course attempts to balance the theory of usability testing with the practice of actually conducting usability tests.  It aims for two distinct modes.  The first involves the concepts of usability testing, and will require that you do the assigned readings and participate fully in class discussion.  I will expect you to ask questions, to connect ideas from various readings, and to connect these theories to our activities in the actual usability lab. The second mode of this course involves spending time in the usability lab, plugging in wires, rolling tape, positioning microphones and cameras, digitizing and editing video, and generally becoming very familiar with the workings of gathering data. Although we will meet in the usability lab every other day for practical work, I expect you to schedule your own time in the lab in order to maximize your experience.

Text: Barnum, Carol M. Usability Testing and Research. Allyn & Bacon, 2002.

ENGL 5390: Writing for Publication

The focus of this course is two-fold, as indicated by the title.  First, we will cover the principles of writing in a scholarly context.  This means understanding the stages of the scholarly writing process and how that varies.  We will also look at the types of scholarly writing and the kinds of decisions one needs to make to select to work on reviews, articles, notes, literature reviews, review articles, monographs, and longer documents.  We will look at the decision-making process for selecting topics and content and analyzing the audience for scholarly writing.  Finally, we will look at issues of composing strategy, organization, style, tone, and diction, and various documentation styles required by various fields.  We will look at strategies for versioning and document archiving.  The second focus of the course is on the requirements for publishing in scholarly venues.  We will examine how to analyze and select the appropriate publications, and how to submit and manage the publication process.  We will examine various style guidelines and the legal and ethical requirements for originality, protection of stakeholders, and presentation of source materials.  Along the way in these two focuses, we will explore the nature of citations as knowledge indicators, and the theories of knowledge making through publication.  We will also learn how to read scholarly publications

instructor: Dr. Thomas Barker, Course web site:  Writing for Publication