Technical Communication, Deliberative Rhetoric, and Environmental Discourse: Connections and Directions

1. Technical Communication, Deliberative Rhetoric, and Environmental Discourse: Connections and Directions Edited by Nancy W. Coppola and Bill Karis Volume 11 of the ATTW Contemporary Studies in Technical Communication Published in 2000 Grace Bernhardt November 13, 2006

2. The Rise of Environmental Discourse within Academia • 20th anniversary of Earth Day (1990) • Growing public interest in environmental issues • Environmental writing is regularly discussed at 4Cs, meetings of ATTW and MLA, and CPTSC

3. Environmental Discourse is • “the language we use to speak and write about the environment” (xiii) • Increasingly technical and specialized • Highly rhetorical • Increasingly complex

4. Technical Communication is • “communication that adapts technical knowledge and human values for an intended audience” (xiii) • Deliberative • High stakes • Interdisciplinary

5. Technical Communicators • translate highly technical information • take a multidisciplinary approach • “have skills to accommodate the position of the scientist and that of the politician” • have the ability to adjust “ideas to people and people to ideas” (xiii)

6. Deliberative rhetoric is • “discourse that attempts to change attitudes and inspire action regarding matters of public concern” (xiii) • Concerned with future and decision making

7. Part I: Theoretical Perspectives and Models in Technical Communication and Environmental Rhetoric • “Part I develops a productive overview of constructing environmental discourse on the framework of theory and models” (xxiii).

8. Chapter 1: Defining Sustainable Development: A Case Study in Environmental Communication By Craig Waddell Michigan Tech

9. Overview • Examines the role of the public in the formation of environmental policy • Examines public deliberations on sustainable development • Offers models for public participation • Discusses how to translate this case to classroom practices and tech comm

10. Models for Public Participation • Technocratic • The One-Way Jeffersonian • The Interactive Jeffersonian • The Social Constructionist

11. Implications • “The Social Constructionist Model for public participation in environmental-policy formation can guide both our reflection about and our practice of public deliberation in a way that encourages respect for participatory democracy” (15).

12. Implications for Tech Comm Technical communicators can be • agents for social change • ethical decision makers and can disclose harmful information to the public • involved throughout the process

13. Part II: Visual Thinking and Multimedia Strategies in Technical Communication and Environmental Rhetoric • “Part II focuses on an area of study where work has only just begun—visual rhetoric in environmental communication” (xxiii).

14. Chapter 5: Geology, Photography, and Environmental Rhetoric in the American West of 1860-1890 By Gregory A. Wickliff UNC Charlotte

15. Overview • Examines the 19th century geological surveys of the American West • Examines the ways surveys were used as tools of colonization of the land and the Natives

16. Photographs and Maps • Photographers recorded • images of natural wonders for publicity of “wilderness” tourist industry • images of developing villages like SLC, UT and Leadville, CO to show ag and mining industry successes and opportunities for profit • Maps describe natural resources, remapped and renamed the land

17. O’Sullivan’s Photos Taken by Timothy O’Sullivan Flash lit picture of Comstock Mine worker carrying out dangerous work Not included in survey reports

18. Geological Surveys as Tool of Colonization • Maps and catalogs were a way to affirm dominance of white culture • Surveys portrayed the wild and unique natural wonders of the West and encouraged tourism by Easterners • This goal required removal of natives

19. Economic Colonization • Surveys also prompted discussion of mining industry, logging, and agriculture • Needed maps to show areas where new operations could be set up

20. Portrayal of Natives • Sentimentalized and objectified • Survey documents “historicize and sentimentalize the living Native American cultures in their catalogs of dying languages and traditions, their conventionally posed, specimen-like portraits of pacified tribal chiefs, their images of Native American architecture and artifacts.” (89) • Exploitation of Natives and land

21. Effects of Surveys • Used to create scientific record of land to legitimize Western colonization that had occurred in 1800s • Surveys are “Aristotelian arguments of fact made by government-sponsored scientists and directed primarily at Eastern capitalists and their representatives in Congress.” (88)

22. Effects of Surveys • Surveyists “espoused an expansionist rhetoric that devalued native peoples…[and] invented a mythic West …that could be mastered by Eastern technology and put to whatever purposes the government deemed most appropriate.” (108)

23. Chapter 6: Modernism and a New Picturesque: The Environmental Rhetoric of Ansel Adams By James Frost Boise State University

24. Overview • Looks at Ansel Adams’ nature photography and its contribution to environmental causes • Adams’ photographs are a form of epideictic rhetoric in praise of nature and also a tool of deliberative rhetoric

25. Adams’ Shifting Styles Adams’ Early Abstract Modernist Style Adams’ Later “Photographic Picturesque” Style

26. Power of Photographs • “Adams was discovering that his photographs could play a broader social role…Adams could use his art photographs of nature for the cause of conservation” (124). • Adams began photographing landscapes and attempted to record the “sublime” experience of nature

27. Nature as ‘other’ • Adams’ exclusion of humans and manmade trails and roads “implies nature’s relationship to humans as ‘other’…The portrayal of an isolated nature can also connote nature as a commodity for consumption, a view that was well in keeping with the approach the park service took in promoting the national parks” (131).

28. Adams’ Rhetoric • Nature is sacred and primordial, a “national heritage and spiritual resource” (134) that must be preserved • Adams’ rhetoric “presents a nature always ordered, beautiful and untouched by humanity” (135). • Adams developed an ethos by presenting a large body of work in print

29. Reading Adams Today • “A heightened awareness of environmental loss has led many to see Adams’ photographs [as] no longer representative of the American landscape” (136). • Photographs are too Edenic; do not show humans and their “technological appendages”

30. Challenges for Environmental Rhetoricians • Environmentalists must communicate the value in nature while also defining the concurrent domains of “nature” and “humanity” (136) • Environmentalists must construct “reality,” and photographs are a powerful part of this discourse (136)

31. Part III: Case Studies in Technical Communication and Environmental Rhetoric • “Part III develops specific cases of environmental rhetoric in use and offers strategies for implementation and practice” (xxiii).

32. Chapter 11: Rhetoric, Habermas, and the Adirondak Park: An Exemplum for Rhetoricians By Bill Karis Clarkson University

33. Overview • Case example of NY’s Adirondak Park and debate there over two proposed commercial projects • Examples show the range of values that influence decision making and the potential for deliberative rhetoric to affect decision making

34. Technological Expediency • In most public decisions, technological expediency takes precedence over other values • Environmental debate suggests that “processes can be and are being implemented that allow for greater inclusion of different values into deliberative rhetoric” (228).

35. Rhetoric and Public Participation • Debates provide “potential for deliberative rhetoric to make a positive contribution to such decision making within our society” (226) • Author argues Habermas would “point to preferred condition in which all values and interests would be considered” (229)

36. The Role of Rhetoric • “Rhetoric’s role in environmental issues should be to help people discover how to synthesize and mesh technical knowledge with human values” (233).

37. Part IV: Scientific Inquiry in Technical Communication and Environmental Rhetoric • Part IV is “a section on scientific inquiry and deliberative rhetoric, which demonstrates that empirical evidence and credible reasoning can advance environmental action” (xxiii).

38. Chapter 14: Environmental Policymaking and the Report Genre By Carolyn D. Rude Texas Tech University

39. Overview • Mainstream environmental organizations rely on reports for information to support their efforts • Within academia, the report genre is overlooked and seen as an end product with a limited audience • Author examines two reports by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)

40. Rhetorical Analysis of Reports • Author argues that “A rhetorical analysis cannot stop with the words on the page (information, arrangement, style, and delivery), but must also consider how the rhetorical choices serve other purposes” (271).

41. Rhetorical Analysis of Reports • “Understanding the report in the context of advocacy increases the potential for using the genre powerfully” (270). • Author looks at reports in context of other work and as a strategic piece of writing

42. Characteristics of UCS Reports • Strategic tool for launching action • Forward-looking • Use science but interpret findings through lens of social responsibility • Inviting style and visuals • Organized around issues and options rather than methods and results

43. The Value of Reports • UCS reports serve three purposes—they are identifiers of sound science, advocacy, and social responsibility (273) • UCS reports reflect a “scientific commitment to accurate information, an activist and pragmatic commitment to advocacy and action, and an ethical commitment to solving social problems” (274).

44. Deliberative Rhetoric in UCS Reports • UCS reports focus on “change rather than on control, on technical solutions rather than regulation, on future actions rather than remediation of past actions” (275) • UCS reports use deliberative rhetoric to focus on the future and epideictic rhetoric to politely shame policymakers (275)

45. Pedagogical Implications • Teaching the use of reports for policymaking should emphasize their purpose and issues of social responsibility in addition to form and method • We can “reconceive the report not as the end of a study, but rather as a tool for action” (282)

46. Summing up!

47. Themes across the Readings • Deliberative rhetoric in environmental communication • Divisions within environmental communication • Our roles as educators of future technical communicators and public citizens

48. Public Deliberation • Environmental communication offers opportunity to • demonstrate the need for technical communication • revive our concern with public deliberation as an area of study

49. Divisions in Environmental Communication • Tendency to group the environmental movement into two views/approaches—preservationists and conservationists, environmentalists and developmentalists, jobs vs. the environment (11-12) • Tendency towards “use of oppositional pairs such as ‘logger/tree hugger’ or ‘environmentalist/developer’ triggers a predetermined bias” and “a simplistic response to environmental problems” (23)

50. Divisions in Environmental Communication • “the language of divisiveness, of polarity and exclusion, draws lines between groups and frames arguments so people stop thinking and stop talking…it creates a simplistic dichotomy between “us” and “them,” between the environmentalist who wants to protect the environment at any cost and the developmentalist who wants to preserve economic prosperity at any cost to the environment” (23-24)