Rhetoric, as the theory and practice of the discursive means of human influence, and science, as the observational study of the physical world, have traditionally been considered to exist in separate realms. In the past thirty years, however, theoretical convergences in the philosophy of rhetoric and the philosophy of science have yielded a discipline in the rhetoric of science—a discipline concerned with the discursive aspects of knowledge production and reproduction in the sciences. Rhetorical theory has argued convincingly in this century that all language in use is language for use and is therefore, to varying degrees, persuasive. The rhetoric of science begins from the assumption that persuasion is a factor in the construction of scientific knowledge, and from the belief that members of scientific communities (rhetorical communities in every sense) advocate versions of reality which are based in theory, formed in language, and dependent on the agreement of other scientists for their validation. This present project contributes to literature in the applied study of rhetoric of science by analyzing, from a rhetorical perspective, thirty-five scientific articles published in the last six years in major medical journals. (All of the articles are on the subject of primary—or functional—headache.) The project uses a methodology based on classical and contemporary theories of rhetoric to discover persuasive strategies in these scientific texts. It poses questions about how authorial intentions are actualized in scientific texts, how scientific texts have effects on readers, and how the texts affect the situations into which they are introduced. While scientific texts, like literary texts, could be analyzed from a variety of theoretical perspectives, rhetorical theory provides a particularly appropriate heuristic model for analyzing "real world" texts. The rhetorical analysis (which includes both an overview of the complete sample and three case studies) begins by questioning the extent to which the conventions of scientific prose (for example, use of the passive, of nominal iz at ions, of complex sentence structure; use of statistical reasoning and arguments from authority) actually produce a prose that is objective and disinterested in keeping with traditional ideals of science. The analysis shows that medical authors in fact use a variety of persuasive strategies in their articles (strategies which may be classified according to the classical canons of rhetoric), and that the writing in medical journals, is not simply objective and disinterested, although on initial reading, because of its impersonal style, it may appear to be so. The rhetorical analysis demonstrates that the use of textual features promoting an appearance of neutrality is itself a rhetorical strategy which argues for the acceptance of particular claims in scientific articles. The rhetorical analysis is significant for the theory and practice of science, for the discipline of rhetoric of science, and for the discipline of rhetoric itself. The analysis describes the complex rhetoric of scientific writing as a genre, probes the assumptions that underlie its conventions, and argues that scientific texts must be read critically, as rhetoric. To read scientific texts as rhetoric is to locate their arguments, scrutinize their forms, judge their authors, and evaluate their effects. The role of the rhetorician is to urge such reading, and everywhere to promote discussion of the ways of influence exerted especially by texts which appear at first not to be rhetorical. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

D.Ed. / This thesis investigates concept maps as an effective learning strategy for Business English vocabulary development of first year students at the former Technikon Witwatersrand. The research has been conducted with first year students in the National Diploma in Human Resources Management at the Faculty of Business Management (the Auckland Park Bunting Road Campus). The study involved research on the understanding and use of the subject vocabulary of two groups of students. The problem of this study was that the majority of the former Technikon Witwatersrand students had difficulty understanding and using technical terminology related to Business English writing. The research question for this study was: To what extent does the use of concept maps help to improve the business vocabulary of first year ND Human Resources Management students registered at the TWR? The aim of the study was to teach students how to draw concept maps in order to make use of meaningful (conceptual) learning to improve their Business English vocabulary, and it is assumed that this would empower the learners to write better academically. The methodology used was that of action research in order to make an inductive analysis of the students‟ acquisition of Business English vocabulary. A mixed purposeful sampling scheme was chosen. Triangulation was used as method to integrate the literature review with the qualitative and quantitative research tools. The quantitative data in this study indicated that the students in Group A enhanced their performance in the vocabulary tests and examinations in their different first year subjects and the qualitative data indicated the students‟ feelings and attitudes about the construction of concept maps and learning Business English vocabulary. The research tools were questionnaires, concept maps, journals, vocabulary lists and tests, examinations, paragraph writing, and focus group interviews. The findings made were that students who constructed concept maps of the business vocabulary did perform somewhat better than the students who did not make use of concept maps. The conclusion from this study was that learners who use concept maps can perform better in learning business vocabulary.

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published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

<p>Understanding technical documentation is of vital importance, since instructions and descriptions are given about how technical products are used, maintained and repaired. Because of the increased economic globalization, more and more documentation is both written in English by non-native English writers, and delivered to non-native English readers. More and more documentation is also translated by means of computerized aids. In order to improve comprehension and translatability of technical documentation, controlled languages are created. Controlled languages are subsets of ordinary languages, but with restricted vocabularies and writing rules.</p><p>The aim of this report is to discuss the advantages and disadvantages for Swedish export companies to use Simplified Technical English (STE), which is a controlled language, for their technical documentation. In this work technical writers are asked about their opinions of STE. Additionally, technical texts written in traditional English are compared with versions written in STE, in order to find out whether texts written in a controlled language are easier to read or not. Within the comparison, the differences between the versions are discussed and a readability measurement is done. The measurement showed that readability in technical documentation is improved by using STE. The writers’ opinions are illuminated in three areas, which are: higher documentation quality, reduced translation costs and reduced production costs.</p>

This thesis argues that generic communication practice plays an important role in preparing engineering students for the workplace. Engineering courses, being contextually-bound, cannot prepare students in the same way as generic courses, which can be more flexible in being able to bring workplace practices, documents and artefacts into the academic domain. Therefore the thesis promotes the view that the communication course can provide a basic structure in terms of genre training and technical language from which the students may access further knowledge from the workplace. In an engineering faculty, the communication course facilitates the student’s interactions in classroom discourse. The course also plays a vital role in the student’s transition from academic discourse to the professional discourse of the workplace. This research views this transition from a social perspective, placing the student within the context of the engineering faculty’s discourse community, and, subsequently, sees the student-trainee in the workplace as part of a community of practice. The study concentrates on the contradictions between these two contexts in order to investigate how the communication course impacts on the progress of the student’s discourse practices between classroom and workplace. The observable features of discourse which the investigation focuses on are genre rules, the use of technical language, and the student-trainee’s interaction with colleagues, supervisors, and artifacts of the workplace. The study uses discourse theory with an academic literacy underpinning to establish a framework for the student’s interactions with academic language. These interactions are explored by means of 100 questionnaires administered to first-intake engineering students at Durban University of Technology. The findings reveal that, while students say they do not always understand what is expected of them in terms of using genres to produce documents assigned by the communication course, they appear to be capable of using genre rules when applied to group tasks. Furthermore, students do not seem to regard technical language in its wider context, as a feature of classroom discourse practices. Instead they see it narrowly, as a necessary but isolated skill to be learnt for workplace discourse practices. The research considers the impact of these perceptions and practices on the findings and analysis of workplace practices. The investigation into workplace discourse practices is guided by activity theory which sees a document’s genre rules in a mediating function, and community of practice theory, which places the student-trainee’s interactions within the construct, situated learning. The study used the participant-observer technique to explore workplace discourse in eight engineering companies in Durban and surrounding areas. The observations were complemented by follow-up questions in interviews with thirty six student-trainees in these companies. The findings have shown that, even though students said they had difficulties with technical language in the classroom, they were able to apply it adequately within the context of the workplace. Furthermore, genre rules needed to be adapted to suit workplace practices, therefore the rules of document design in classroom practices should focus on flexibility as well as structure. The findings also suggest that the communication course should see the classroom and the workplace as two activity systems which complement each other, and the communication course should be placed in close proximity to the student’s entrance to the workplace. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011.

Twenty-five computer scientists representing thirteen language groups at a highly respected university in Japan were surveyed and interviewed to identify the English writing products and processes characteristic of their professional work. Twenty-two major genres were identified and grouped according to purpose. Fourteen significant contextual factors that affected writing production and, ultimately, success in the field of computer science were also identified. Several models were proposed to provide an overview of the writing practices and products potentially illustrative of writing in the computer science field.In the second research phase, two detailed case studies were conducted involving one native and one non-native speaker of English to identify how English language proficiency affected professional practice. Efficiency was a major concern for both subjects but employed different strategies to make their work as efficient and productive as possible.The native speaker, for example, employed skillful use of the computer to gather, create, and store data that could be efficiently "chunked" and assembled into papers, either for publication or for obtaining valuable feedback from other professionals. The subject also thought a great deal about the expectations of his readers as well as the referees and editors who judged the quality of his work. He also revised his work extensively and recruited other professionals locally and abroad to assist him in refining his texts.The non-native speaker employed many of the same computer strategies for gathering and managing information; however, the added difficulty of functioning professionally in English severely limited his work pace and left too little time before deadlines to revise or solicit the amount of feedback he desired from his peers. His most effective strategy was co-authoring papers with native speakers of English who could handle most of the final editing and revising.In the final chapter, results of the surveys, interviews, and case studies were illustrated graphically in an algorithmic flowchart of professional writing practice, and educational applications for writing instruction as well as recommendations for additional research were also suggested / Department of English

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, School of English, Linguistics and Media, 1999. / Bibliography: p. 299-305. / Introduction -- Theoretical background -- The structure of popular scientific writing on 'climate change' -- Findings of analysis of texts on population growth and deforestation -- Interaction between verbal and visuals representations -- Conclusion. / The topics of climate change, population growth, and deforestation, as discussed in publications such as New Scientist, Discover, Time, and Our Planet, exemplify contemporary writing on science for the general community. As such, it is assumed that they are presented in an objective, scientific, informative way. Furthermore, these topics illustrate what it means to write complex issues in a popular manner. Consequently, they provide an opportunity for examining at least one area of popular science as a generic phenomenon.-- Through an investigation of thirty texts (ten on each of the three topics mentioned), the consistencies and distinctive features of writing on these environmental issues are investigated, in particular using discourse tools drawn from Systemic Functional linguistics. The foremost tools are the proposals concerning GSP (Generic Structure Potential) put forward by Hasan, which provide an outline of the syntagmatic unfolding of a text ("logogenetic perspective") and the four stratal perspective that is illustrated in the work by Halliday and Hasan, in particular as such work relates wording to culture. By assessing the degree to which the thirty texts constitute a genre, and the degree to which they exhibit their own internal variations, it is also possible to clarify Halliday's notion of the 'cline of instantiation' between, at one end, the 'potential/system' and, at the other end, the instance of 'text as process'.-- The investigation reveals that the assumption of an informative, objective style in popular science journal articles actually obscures a deeper underlying activism about the future, but an activism strongly based on only Western perceptions of environmental crisis. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / ix, 305, 217 p. ill. (some col.)

Understanding technical documentation is of vital importance, since instructions and descriptions are given about how technical products are used, maintained and repaired. Because of the increased economic globalization, more and more documentation is both written in English by non-native English writers, and delivered to non-native English readers. More and more documentation is also translated by means of computerized aids. In order to improve comprehension and translatability of technical documentation, controlled languages are created. Controlled languages are subsets of ordinary languages, but with restricted vocabularies and writing rules. The aim of this report is to discuss the advantages and disadvantages for Swedish export companies to use Simplified Technical English (STE), which is a controlled language, for their technical documentation. In this work technical writers are asked about their opinions of STE. Additionally, technical texts written in traditional English are compared with versions written in STE, in order to find out whether texts written in a controlled language are easier to read or not. Within the comparison, the differences between the versions are discussed and a readability measurement is done. The measurement showed that readability in technical documentation is improved by using STE. The writers’ opinions are illuminated in three areas, which are: higher documentation quality, reduced translation costs and reduced production costs.