The “shock and awe” of digital research design//anticipated proposal for IEEE

IEEE International Professional Communication Conference 2008 (IPCC 2008)
Conference Theme: Opening the Information Economy
Conference Location: Concordia University, Montréal, Canada
Conference Dates: July 13-16, 2008

Martine Courant Rife, JD, PhD Candidate
Rhetoric & Writing Program
Michigan State University
c/o 7805 N. Gregory Rd.
Fowlerville, Michigan 48836
517/4839906::martinerife@gmail.com
http://www.msu.edu/~courantm
September 30, 2007

PROPOSAL
The “shock and awe” of digital research design: An argument for building disciplinary cohesion and strength via the affordances of digital technologies
In this presentation I examine the challenges and affordances of conducting programmatic research virtually, and the role of rhetoric in executing such studies. Connors (1982), Dobrin (1983), Durack (1997), Lay (1991), and Rutter (1991) (among others), outlined debates within the field of TPW regarding how we define ourselves as a profession, what matters, and what we study, while writers such as Charney (2004, 1998), Haswell (2005), Johanek (2000), North (1987), and Phelps (1988) document debates on appropriate methodologies and resistance to the use of typical “social science” and/or “empirical” research design in TPW or composition studies. I will further complicate this “identity crisis” by showing the methodological problems arising when a field fails to see itself as a cohesive unit. Further, I discuss ironic glimmerings of resistance-to-digital-research in TPW – as the field simultaneously holds itself out to value knowledge production in the new economy.

As part of a two-year study on rhetorical invention in copyright imbued environments, I examined knowledge and understanding of US copyright law among digital writers (both students and teachers) in US technical/professional writing programs. The purpose of the study is to obtain an overview of this population’s understanding of fair use/copyright, and to explore how that understanding influences digital composing processes. The study’s first phase includes administering an online survey to a randomly selected population of such programs. This aspect of the study posed the researcher as “consumer,” and the participating programs as “contributors,” relying on a distributed work model where program directors across the US were asked to “reach” into the classrooms for student-survey participants. Yet, the roles of consumer/contributor became intertwined and blurred since knowledge generated from the study hopes to make important contributions to the field.


After outlining rhetorical considerations such as ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos as well as specific methods used to execute this digital research, I document the varied responses from program directors asked via email for programmatic participation in the study. Reaction from the population varied, and in some respects challenges existing notions that US professional/technical writing is a cohesive academic field. Upon receiving inquires from prospective participants, I illustrate how rhetorical considerations factored into my own subsequent digital responses – each response tailored to the rhetorical nature of potential participants’ inquiries.

I end the presentation first by offering a heuristic to facilitate successful online programmatic research within our current environment, and then by imagining an architecture, leveraging the affordances of digital technology, one that breaks out of content silo effects of “membership lists” posted to various websites, an architecture that might engender online collaboration, distributed models of work-research, and cross-programmatic/cross-global communication such that the field of TPW could self-reflect, model the processes it upholds, and gain disciplinary strength through cohesion.

References
Charney, D. (2004) Empiricism is not a four-letter word. In Johndan Johnson-Eilola & Stuart A. Selber (Eds.). Central Works in Technical Communication (pp. 281-299). New York: Oxford UP.

Charney, D. (1998). From logocentrism to ethnocentrism: Historicizing critiques of writing research. Technical Communication Quarterly. Retrieved on April 12, 2007, from http://www.attw.org/TCQarticles/7.1/7-1Charney.pdf.

Connors, R.J. (1982). The rise of technical writing instruction in America. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 12(4), 329-52.

Dobrin, D.N. (1983). What’s technical about technical writing? In Paul V. Anderson, R. John Brockmann, and Carolyn R. Miller (Eds). New essays in technical and scientific communication: Research, theory, practice. (pp. 227-250). Farmingdale, NY: Baywood.

Durack, K.T. (1997). Gender, technology, and the history of technical communication. Technical Communication Quarterly, 6, 249-60.

Haswell, R. (2005). NCTE/CCCC’s Recent War on Scholarship. Written Communication, 22(2), 198-223

Johanek, C. (2000). Composing research a contextualist paradigm for rhetoric and composition. Logan, Utah: Utah State UP.

Lay, M.M. (1991). Feminist theory and the redefinition of technical communication. Journal of Business and Technical communication, 5(4), 348-70.

North, S. (1987). The making of knowledge in composition: portrait of an emerging field. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

Phelps, L.W. (1988). Composition as a human science: Contributions to the self-understanding of a discipline. New York: Oxford UP.

Rutter, R. (1991). History, rhetoric, and humanism: Toward a more comprehensive definition of technical communication, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 21(2), 133-53.