RESEARCH INTERESTS

My research is founded on the assumption that technology informs what and how we can know. To live ethically in a technological world demands an understanding of the veiled and diffuse rhetorical operations by which this is achieved. As such, I apply rhetorical theory to technologies, in and out of the classroom, to elucidate the rhetorical operations that inform why and how we use technology and the consequences of that use.

Current Research

My dissertation’s contribution to my research goals is to argue that rhetoric, viewed as a machinery of meaning-making, creates symbolic technologies that exist parallel to, but separate from, the material technologies they represent. Symbolic technologies are created by inventing and selecting information about a material technology. They are negotiated as material technologies are developed and used, thus opening spaces for rhetorical activity through which technical writers and users may intervene and initiate change.

A sample of several articles, which I have recently submitted or intend to submit shortly, stem from my dissertation as well as additional lines of inquiry and are described below.

In “Rhetoric and Dialectic in HCI: A Consideration of the Ethical Consequences of GUI Design,” I argue that technical use is a rhetorical activity. I examine Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) as a rhetorical situation in which interaction with the computer is interaction through the computer. Computer software manufacturers and computer users engage metaphor to inscribe Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) with meaning that should be viewed as symbolic inducement to action.

In “Plato’s Protagoras, Gorgias, and Phaedrus: Advertising the Love in Philosophia,” I argue that the technologizing of the word and the resultant noetic shift from orality to literacy, as outlined by Walter Ong, caused Plato to develop a pedagogy based on a caring and face-to-face teacher/student exchange. This pedagogy’s development is documented in his three major dialogues on Rhetoric and is useful in classrooms today.

In “Power Relations in Basic Writing: The Discipline of Composition and a Pedagogy of Resistance,” I argue that basic writing programs are a technology by which the academy subjugates basic writers and marginalizes their discourse as a way of maintaining the hegemony of its own discourse. But rather than mainstream basic writers, basic writing programs should teach academic discourse as one of many discourses which basic writers must learn to use as they learn to resist it from within.

Projected Research

My first task is to revise my dissertation for publication, for which I have targeted MIT Press’s Inside Technology series. The series has the goal of providing an in depth analysis of the making of a technical artifact or system, the work of a technologist(s), or a significant impact of a technology on society. I have been studying books from the series to determine the types of moves the series editors expect their authors to make. With this in mind, I will revise my dissertation by choosing a new data set that, while more discrete, will allow access to large amounts of historical, political, and social documentation through which I can trace the networks of historical, political, and social influences that constitute the context surrounding my object of study.

As a field of study, the Rhetoric of Technology is nascent. The question of whether or not it should be a field of study separate from Rhetoric of Science and Technology (RST) is still under debate. I intend to be a leader in the field, and, as such, I feel compelled to mark the boundaries of the field if only to cross them later. As such, I ask the following questions as the foundation of my future research.

What constitutes Rhetoric of Technology as a field of study?

I look to articulate the set of attitudes, assumptions, and practices that researchers and practioners will form as they build a sense of group identity. I look to articulate the disciplines, such as philosophy and sociology of technology, to which we will have aligned ourselves. I look to articulate the relationship between rhetoric of technology and technical communication as they merge or separate.

What constitutes research in Rhetoric of Technology?

The trend for rhetoricians to study technology through the analysis of texts stems from current interests in rhetorical studies of technical communication. However, the social networks through which the meaning, value, and presence of a technology are transmitted are complex, dynamic, and move beyond the text. I predict that a fully conceived rhetoric of technology will view technology as text, medium, and context. I look to articulate whether or not my prediction holds true and which other visions of technology will inform future research in rhetorical studies of technology.

What constitutes teaching in Rhetoric of Technology?

Currently, scholars conducting rhetorical studies of technology can be found in several departments across the academy, from Sociology, English, Philosophy, Communication, Digital and Interactive Media, and Technical Communication. As the discourse of these scholars shapes and reshapes the analytical spaces and terms that constitute valid lines of inquiry, the field will ally itself with other fields and other departments. I look to articulate these maneuvers and the progression of knowledge-making that, in turn, informs how and what is taught as a rhetoric of technology.

I foresee answering the questions above through one or more edited volumes (perhaps via the SUNY series: Studies in Scientific and Technical Communication) or special issues of Technical Communication Quarterly or Technology & Culture.

While answering the above questions, I will be completing the groundwork for my second book, tentatively titled The Rhetoric of Technology. I intend to frame this book as a foundational text, following Lawrence Prelli’s work in A Rhetoric of Science as a guide, rather than Alan Gross’s The Rhetoric of Science, which I feel is too strictly grounded in Classical Rhetorical theory.

Lest you think I have a one track mind, I intend to continue my research in technical and professional communication, classical rhetorics, computer game studies, and computers and composition. I find in these subjects a valuable connection via pedagogy. The pedagogies of Isocrates, Plato, and Aristotle were influenced by a transformed noetic at the end of a long shift from orality to literacy. Those pedagogies can help us understand how we should think and teach in light of changes caused by computer technology. As a technical communicator, I cannot do my work without technology, and I hail the computerized classroom. But I accept it skeptically and critically. My research goal for computers and composition is to continue to question how computers mediate teaching in the composition and technical communication classrooms. Similarly, my research goal for the study of computer games is to determine how best to employ them as pedagogical tools in and out of the classroom.