Navigation

Return to the front page.

Return to the overview for this issue of CCC.

Access a full text PDF of this article. (Note: PDFs are available through NCTE, or JSTOR for issues prior to Volume 48. Site subscription may be required.)

Delicious Bookmark this entry on Delicious

CiteULike Bookmark this entry on CiteULike.

Print this entry.

[need to do a plaintext style sheet for entries]

Then below here, we'll add the lower navbar stuff from the original version, inc. site search, tag search, categories, issue bar, etc.)

W. Michele Simmons and Jeffrey T. Grabill. Toward a Civic Rhetoric for Technologically and Scientifically Complex Places: Invention, Performance, and Participation.

Simmons, W. Michele, and Jeffrey T. Grabill. "Toward a Civic Rhetoric for Technologically and Scientifically Complex Places: Invention, Performance, and Participation." CCC 58.3 (2007): 419-448.

Abstract

The spaces in which public deliberation most often takes place are institutionally, technologically, and scientifically complex. In this article, we argue that in order to participate, citizens must be able to invent valued knowledge. This invention requires using complex information technologies to access, assemble, and analyze information in order to produce the professional and technical performances expected in contemporary civic forums. We argue for a civic rhetoric that expands to research the complicated nature of interface technologies, the inventional practices of citizens as they use these technologies, and the pedagogical approaches to encourage the type of collaborative and coordinated work these invention strategies require.

Works Cited
Anonymous B Personal Interviews. 5 September 2003.
Asen, Robert. "Imagining in the Public Sphere." Philosophy and Rhetoric 35 (2002): 345-67.
Atwill, Janet. Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1998.
Bazerman, Charles. Foreword. Invention in Rhetoric and Composition. Janice Lauer. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor, 2003. xv.
Benhabib, Selya. Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Bitzer, Lloyd. "Rhetoric and Public Knowledge." Rhetoric, Philosophy, and Literature: An Exploration. Ed. Don Burks. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP, 1978. 67-93.
Blyler, Nancy. "Habermas, Empowerment, and Professional Discourse." Technical Communication Quarterly 3.2 (1994): 125-45.
Coogan, David. "Public Rhetoric and Public Safety at the Chicago Transit Authority: Three Approaches to Accident Analysis." Journal of Business and Technical Communication 16.3 (2002): 277-305.
Dahlgren, Peter. "The Internet and the Democratization of Civic Culture." Political Communication. 17 (2000): 335-40.
Epstein, Steven. Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge. Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 1996.
Fals-Borda, Orlando and Muhammad Anisur Rahman. eds. Action and Knowledge: Breaking the Monopoly with Participatory Action Research. New York: Apex, 1991.
Fischer, Frank. Citizens, Experts, and the Environment: The Politics of Local Knowledge. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2000.
Fischoff, Baruch, Stephen R. Watson, and Chris Hope. "Defining Risk." Policy Sciences 17 (1984): 123-39.
Goodnight, G. Thomas. "The Personal, Technical, and Public Spheres of Argument: A Speculative Inquiry into the Act of Public Deliberation." Contemporary Rhetorical Theory. Ed. John Louis Lucaites, Celeste Condit, and Sally Caudill. New York: Guildford, 1999. 251-64.
Goody, J. The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1986.
Grabill, Jeffrey T. Writing Community Change: Designing Technologies for Citizen Action. Hampton Press, forthcoming 2007.
Grabill, Jeffrey T., and W. Michele Simmons. "Toward a Critical Rhetoric of Risk Communication: Producing Citizens and the Role of Technical Communicators." Technical Communication Quarterly, 7.4 (Fall 1998): 415-41.
Graff, Harvey J. "The Legacies of Literacy." Perspectives on Literacy. Eds. Eugene R. Kintgen, Barry M. Kroll, and Mike Rose. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1988. 82-91.
---. ed. The Literacy Myth: Literacy and Social Structure in the Nineteenth- Century City. New York: Academic, 1979.
Gurstein, Michael. "Effective Use: A Community Informatics Strategy Beyond the Digital Divide." First Monday. 8.12 (December 2003): Accessed June 27, 2004 <http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/gurstein/index.html>.
Habermas, Jürgen. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Trans. Christian Lenhardt and Sherry Weber Nicholsen. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1990.
Katz, Steven, and Carolyn Miller. "The Low-Level Radioactive Waste Siting Controversy in North Carolina: Toward a Rhetorical Model of Risk Communication." Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America. Ed. Carl Herndl and Stuart Brown. Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin P, 1996. 111-40.
Killingsworth, M. Jimmie, and Jacqueline S. Palmer. Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1992.
Kinsella, William J. "Public Expertise: A Foundation for Citizen Participation in Energy and Environmental Decisions." Communication and Public Participation in Environmental Decision Making. Eds. Stephen P. Depoe, John W. Delicath, and Marie-France Aepli Elsenbeer. Albany, NY: SUNY P, 2004. 83-95.
Kress, Gunther and Theo Van Leeuwen. Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold, 2001.
Laird, Frank. "Participatory Analysis, Democracy, and Technological Decision Making." Science, Technology, & Human Values, 18.3 (1993): 341-61.
Lauer, Janice. Invention in Rhetoric and Composition. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor P, 2003.
Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 2001.
McGee, Michael. "A Materialist's Conception of Rhetoric." Explorations in Rhetoric: Studies in Honor of Douglas Ehninger. Ed. Ray McKerrow. Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman, 1982. 23-48.
Mirel, Barbara. "Debating Nuclear Energy: Theories of Risk and Purposes of Communication." Technical Communication Quarterly 3 (1994): 41-65.
---. "Writing and Database Technology: Extending the Definition of Writing in the Workplace." Eds. Patricia Sullivan and Jennie Dautermann. Electronic Literacies in the Workplace: Technologies of Writing. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1996. 91-114.
---. Interaction Design for Complex Problem Solving: Developing Useful and Usable Software. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 2004.
Porter, James. "The Chilling of Digital Information: Technical Communicators as Public Advocates." Technical Communications and the World Wide Web in the New Millennium. Eds. Carol Lipson and Michael Day. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 2005. 243-59.
Rowan, Katherine. "What Risk Communicators Need to Know: An Agenda for Research." Communication Yearbook. Ed. Brant Burleson. New Brunswick, NJ: International Communication Association, 1994. 300-19.
---. "The Technical and Democratic Approaches to Risk Situations: Their Appeal, Limitations, and Rhetorical Alternative." Argumentation 8 (1994): 391-409.
Sandman, Peter. "Getting to Maybe: Some Communications Aspects of Siting Hazardous Waste Facilities." Readings in Risk. Eds. Theodore Glickman and Michael Gough. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 1990: 233-245.
Sauer, Beverly. "Sense and Sensibility in Technical Documentation: How Feminist Interpretation Can Save Lives in the Nation's Mines." Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 7.1 (1993): 63-83.
---. The Rhetoric of Risk: Technical Documentation in Hazardous Environments. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002.
Sclove, Richard E., Madeleine L. Scammell, and Breena Holland. Community-Based Research in the US: An Introductory Reconnaissance, Including Twelve Organizational Case Studies and Comparison with the Dutch Science Shops and the Mainstream American Research System. Amherst, MA: Loka, 1998.
Shuler, Pete. Keeping "Public Records from the Public." CityBeat. (14 July 2004). 25 Oct. 2006 <http://www.citybeat.com/2004-07-14/statehouse.shtml>.
Slovic, Paul. "Informing and Educating the Public about Risk." Risk Analysis 6 (1986): 403-15.
Stratman, James E., et al. "Risk Communication, Metacommunication, and Rhetorical Stases in the Aspen-EPA Superfund Controversy." Journal of Business and Technical Communication 9 (1995): 5-41.
Street, Brian. Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1984.
United States Department of Justice. Office of Public Affairs Press Room. "U.S. Sues Steel Giant for Violating Environmental Laws: State of Ohio Will Move to Join Lawsuit." (29 Jun 2000). 25 Oct. 2006 <http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2000/June/376enrd.htm>.
Waddell, Craig. "Saving the Great Lakes: Public Participation in Environmental Policy." Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America. Ed. Carl Herndl and Stuart Brown. Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin P, 1996. 141-65.
Wells, Susan. "Jürgen Habermas, Communicative Competence, and the Teaching of Technical Discourse." Theory in the Classroom. Ed. Cary Nelson. Urbana, IL: U. of Illinois P, 1986. 245-69.
Willard, Charles Arthur. Liberalism and the Problem of Knowledge: A New Rhetoric for Modern Democracy. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.
Young, Iris Marion. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990.
Young, Iris Marion. Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.
____________
Tags (?)

Works Citing