2003
MMLA
New Histories of Writing IV:
Forms and Rhetorics
Brian Ballentine
Case Western Reserve University
Rhetoric
and Engineering: The "Ironic" Re-emergence of Classical Aristotelian
Rhetorical Conventions in the Present Day Engineering Classroom
While discussing Brainerd Kellogg's 1880 publication A Text-Book on Rhetoric, a work used for several decades at the high school and college level, S. Michael Halloran notes that there is "no sense that the subject is intellectually challenging or socially important" (175). As early as the middle of the 19th century, courses studying rhetoric were beginning to slip from college curricula and the prevailing attitudes reflected by Kellogg and others did not help. The Industrial Revolution was in part to blame as blossoming corporations began to put pressure on schools regarding the specialized skill-sets required of their employees. A notion of "professionalism" was born. Students were going to school to get an education in a particular field of study often dictated by industry. Not surprisingly, what was the instruction of classical rhetoric began to take on a system of values influenced by professionalism. Halloran explains:
The ethos of professionalism is reflected also in the common organizational scheme for current-traditional textbooks: from words, to sentences, to paragraphs, and finally to the whole discourse. The underlying metaphor is of the discourse as something constructed from parts, much as a machine is assembled from its parts, or as science in the Baconian inductive mode assembles discrete observations into general principles (168-9).
Seen this
way writing does take on a mechanistic quality. It became a vehicle with
which to transport information for consumption. The element of "passion"
and the idea of "persuasion" were being forced out. The crowding
came from the presence of new classes required of the growing fields of
study such as engineering and the sciences. But, while rhetoric and composition
were certainly losing the battle for competing number of classes, the
alternate courses "bore ironic traces of the rhetorical tradition
they were displacing" (Halloran 178). This project examines how new
"ironic traces" of the rhetorical tradition are cropping up
in contemporary coursework, specifically in the field of engineering.
The research draws heavily from personal experience and the responsibility
of directing the professional and technical writing program at Case Western
Reserve University.
Edward P. J. Corbett and Robert J. Connors assert, "modern students
are not likely to have received much formal training in the art of persuasion"
(16). While stereotypes regarding the poor communication skills of engineers
in the workplace are certainly prevalent, this comment may prove to be
changing from within the curriculum. Reviewing engineering programs offered
by competing institutions such as Case Western Reserve University, Carnegie
Mellon, University of Rochester and MIT elucidates this point. All of
the programs require a version of freshman writing, English or composition.
Beyond this common component, the approaches to instilling writing and
communication skills do not vary a great deal. Most of the programs look
to the humanities. MIT states in its description of their "Communication
Requirement" that the "subjects are intended to provide you
with a foundation in effective expository writing and speaking" (MIT).
These subjects have been determined to be "either writing classes
or classes in the humanities, arts, and social sciences in which students
plan, organize, draft, and revise a series of sequenced assignments based
on course material." Similarly, Carnegie Mellon requires that a "sequence
of humanities, social science or fine arts courses which provides depth
in a specific area must be completed" (CMU). At the core of Rochester's
engineering mission statement is the idea that the university will "provide
students with the opportunities to partake in research projects that require
both the application of skills learned in the classroom and effective
communication of the results of these efforts" (UR). The goals of
these programs appear to stand in opposition to the assertion by Corbett
and Connors as well as the general stereotype surrounding an engineer's
communication skills.
But, critics of these programs assert that the schools are still not doing
enough in the way of educating in the art of communication and that they
are merely paying lip-service to accreditation agencies. Indeed, most
engineering programs are quick to mention their compliance with the Accreditation
Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). This agency has been in existence
for over 70 years but recently revised their strategic plan in 2002. ABET's
most current document on accreditation, "Criteria for Accrediting
Engineering Programs: Effective for Evaluations During the 2003-2004 Accreditation
Cycle" states that graduating students must possess "an understanding
of professional and ethical responsibility" and "an ability
to communicate effectively" (ABET).
Universities are no doubt feeling pressure from the engineering industry
too. Companies are demanding more from their employees, and during economic
downturns and tight job markets, they can afford to be selective. During
a recent interview, C. Richard Hullihen, former Vice President at Marconi
Medical Systems and Timothy Kulbago, Chief Technology Officer at RIS Logic
Inc., discussed their criteria for hiring their engineering teams. According
to Hullihen, he has a "three category system." The first portion
is what he terms the "Can Do" portion or the candidate's known
or proven technical skill-sets. The next is "Will Do" or what
the candidate has accomplished with these skills in the past and therefore
what they "will do" for his company in the future if hired.
Both growth potential and candidate weaknesses are determined in this
category. The third section Hullihen loosely refers to as "Fit"
but Kulbago adds, "this is where the ability to communicate really
comes into play." Both men explain that in order for an engineering
team to function within any company the team members must be able to convey
their ideas to not only other engineers but also other divisions such
as sales and marketing. Quite simply, how can someone sell or market a
product that they do not understand? Both men stress the notion that although
"Fit" is the third category it is no less important than the
first two and that they will not extend a job offer without it.
Case Western Reserve University's next accreditation review will occur
in 2006 -2007 and this year they will graduate nearly 350 engineers. Under
pressure to both meet the expectations for accreditation and successfully
place their graduates, the engineering and English departments have formed
a partnership. The English department teaches an upper-level course titled
"Professional and Technical Communications for Engineers." The
course is a requirement for all engineering students in addition to their
first year writing class. An oversight committee consisting of faculty
from both departments was formed to decide the curriculum, the text and
the general pedagogical approach to the course. An examination of some
of the texts that were considered for the class as well as course instruction,
begin to bring to light Halloran's "traces" of rhetoric.
The text currently used for the course is Paul V. Anderson's Technical
Communication: A Reader Centered Approach. As the title suggests, audience
analysis and understanding the audience are at the forefront of the course's
agenda. For every assignment, students are required to complete a "Quick
Planning Sheet" in order to define their objectives and strategize
about their writing. It is important to note that this strategizing is
relevant to all of the communications in this course including written,
spoken and digital communications. The sheet has six categories: readers,
situation, goals, document path, uncertainties, and strategies. Students
compile data on the audience including who the people are that it consists
of, their knowledge of the subject matter as well as what they may desire
from the communication. Anderson clarifies the role of this first category
by stating, "when you construct your mental portrait of your readers,
you should incorporate those characteristics of your particular readers
that will influence the way they respond to your communication" (61).
Determining their familiarity with the subject matter allows the communicator
the liberty of using technical terminology and assuming a certain understanding
of field-specific concepts or requires him/her to develop and explain
topic fundamentals. Simply stated, audience analysis is a foothold for
establishing credibility and fundamental to producing a persuasive piece.
This, of course, is not a new tactic. In book two of his On Rhetoric,
Aristotle recognizes the importance of gaining the trust of his "hearers."
He states, "for it makes much difference in regard to persuasion
(especially in deliberations but also in trials) that the speaker seem
to be a certain kind of person and that his hearers suppose him to be
disposed toward them in a certain way and in addition if they, too, happen
to be disposed in a certain way" (120).
Before continuing to the situation category it is important to note that
all of these categories are recursive in nature. That is, the development
of situation or strategies may include a "call back" to the
audience category. Indeed, it is impossible to discuss situation without
understanding the role audience plays in a particular situation. This
relationship is by design and the development and re-development of the
content of the categories creates a more robust analysis.
So, while the notion of rhetorical exigency has not found its way into
this classroom, understanding the situation in which the students are
communicating strives to take its place. Students are asked to determine
the context in which the audience will receive the communication, analyze
relevant history that may impact the reception, understand any current
events that could alter it and determine the degree to which the "hearers"
are heterogeneous. Engineers, or any other communicator for that matter,
may not have the luxury of assuming a homogeneous audience. Contemporary
rhetoricians, such as Loyd F. Bitzer, identify the rhetorical situation
as carrying great significance because it "contains a set of constraints
made up of persons, events, objects, and relations which are parts of
the situation because they have the power to constrain decision and action
needed to modify the exigence" (305). While Aristotle is perhaps
not as succinct in his treatment of the repercussions for not addressing
the rhetorical situation he does provide tactics for addressing heterogeneous
audiences. Chapters 12 through 17 of book two in On Rhetoric breaks down
what Aristotle has determined to be dominant character types of potential
audiences. Granted, chapters such as "The Character of Those in the
Prime of Life" and "The Effect on Character of Good Birth"
are gross generalizations but Aristotle's methodology of dissecting the
make-up of his audience still serves the contemporary student.
Once audience and situation are under development, students begin refining
the goals and objectives of their persuasive argument. Anderson instructs
students stating, "your goal will be to bring about change. You will
be endeavoring to transform some aspect of the current situation - the
way things are now - into a more desirable state" (57). His book
provides a simplified diagram of the ideal communication:
Other texts reviewed for this course such as John M. Lannon's Technical
Communication include sections such as "Identify Your Specific Goals."
Lannon advises:
Arguments can differ considerably in what they ask people to do. Your
goal might be to (a) influence people's opinions, (b) seek their support,
(c) propose some type of action, or (d) alter their behavior. In each
instance, persuasion asks people to try something new or different - to
accept some type of change requiring some level of personal involvement
(41).
Students
are encouraged to begin with generalized conceptions of their goal state.
For example, a software engineer may identify his/her goal state as the
implementation of a proposed software upgrade. Breaking down this overarching
goal yields the underlying goal states that must be reached for the communication
to be a success. For instance, the need to influence the opinion of the
information technology staff so that their view of the proposed software
is positive needs to be considered. Once their perception is positive
another goal should be obtaining the staff's support for the project.
While Lannon did not specifically say so in the included section, it must
be noted that the desired goal state may represent a state where no change
occurs. That is, the communication might endeavor to preserve the existing
system. But regardless of the identified goals, these desired states directly
effect what is said in the communication. The software upgrade example
shows that if the information technology department's opinion must be
swayed then the accolades of the product must be researched and presented.
Persuasive elements of these arguments might include testimony from other
companies that have successfully upgraded their software or other unbiased
reviews. This discovery of arguments is directly tied to the first canon
of rhetoric or inventio. The process of and the ability to "find
something to say on a given subject" according to Corbet and Connors,
"is the crucial problem for most writers" (19).
The communication path asks the students to speculate on readership beyond
their known audience. This requires them to envision the present uses
of their forming communication and its potential future uses. Again, due
to the recursive nature of these categories, audience must be re-thought
and developed further. This information can have a large impact on invention
often altering or adding to the writer's argument. In their introduction
to Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries, William A. Covino and
David A. Jolliffe offer terminology for this dilemma such as "primary"
and "subsidiary" audiences as well as "immediate"
and "mediated" audiences (12). While these terms can be useful
for discussion, the document path asks students to actually trace potential
routes the communication could take and analyze readers along the way.
For instance, many engineering design documents, reports, and proposals
will be maintained by companies for future consultation. Students should
get in the habit of asking themselves questions like, "If my design
documents are consulted for legal purposes will they adequately convey
my ideas?" They should also entertain the possibility of unexpected
or extended audiences with question such as, "If my proposal is read
or heard by upper-level management will it exude the appropriate degree
of professionalism as well as speak to their level of expertise?"
In an academic setting, the students' communications rarely go beyond
the professor who prepared the assignment. Mike Markel, in his text also
titled Technical Communication, warns that in "the working world,
however, you probably won't have explicit guidelines, and you will often
write to people you have never met" (93). Indeed, in large corporations
engineers will prepare proposals for senior management and decision makers
that they may never meet in person. Likewise, the lawyers that may need
to reference engineering design documents for patent or copyright purposes
may never meet the engineer who composed them.
All of the categories discussed thus far can and most likely do contribute
to the uncertainties categories. The purpose is for students to compile
a list of unknown data and then systematically plan for those uncertainties.
Referencing again the software upgrade example, students may have identified
the company's chief financial officer as an audience member but his/her
level of familiarity with the proposed software may not be determined.
As noted the information technology staff will certainly be reviewing
the communication but any history these audience members have with the
product cannot always be known. Do they have colleagues in another company
that have had a negative experience with the software? Have they had a
negative experience with another product that the producer of the software
you are proposing makes? Students are encouraged to consider as many possibilities
they can and decide which questions require plans and strategies.
"Strategies," Corbet and Connors claim, "is a good rhetorical
word, because it implies the choice of available resources to achieve
an end. It is no accident that the word strategy has military associations,
for this word has its roots in the Greek word for army" (2). Aristotle
reminds that "all people are persuaded by what is advantageous"
and Anderson adds that what is motivating to the audience may not be what
motivates the speaker (75). Strategizing in regards to how to appeal to
an audience is ideally made easier with the use of the planning sheet
but clearly is still a complicated task. These appeals to the audience
are what Aristotle called pisteis. The term has "no precise English
equivalent" but can be roughly understood as the "means of persuasion"
(Covino & Jolliffe 15). Under the first canon of inventio mentioned
earlier, the speaker could make use of two types of arguments or means
of persuasion. The first was classified as a system of "non-artistic
proofs" which the speaker "did not have to invent" (Covino
& Jolliffe 18). Alternately, the second mode of persuasion was dubbed
"artistic" and was comprised of rational, emotional and ethical
appeals or logos, pathos and ethos. Those readers familiar with Aristotle's
system of logos, pathos and ethos can no doubt begin to see how these
three appeals are embedded in the six categories of the engineering planning
sheet. Anderson, Lannon and Markel all make wide use of the artistic proofs.
Anderson's chapter on "Planning Your Persuasive Strategy" instructs
students on how to bolster claims with rational appeals. However, the
text does not pursue logical or rhetorical terminology. For instance,
the differences between deductive and inductive reasoning are not explored
and terms such as syllogism and enthymeme are not introduced. Instead,
Anderson focuses simply on the importance of being able to display empirical
data and examples as rational proof. Lannon and Markel follow suit with
the omission of any such terminology and concur for an emphasis on data
and example simply stating "numbers can be highly convincing"
(53) and an "example makes as abstract point more concrete"
(125). All three authors also caution against underdeveloped and illogical
arguments. According to Anderson, the audience will "search aggressively
for a weak line of reasoning" and that "they are wary of arguments
based on false assumptions" (108). He provides his own example by
way of a proposal to computerize a textile mill:
For example, [the audience] may agree that if another textile mill like
yours saved money by computerizing, then your mill will probably enjoy
the same result; your readers, however, may question the assumption that
the other mill is truly like yours. Maybe it makes a different kind of
product or employs a different manufacturing process. If you think your
readers will suspect that you are making a false assumption, offer whatever
evidence or explanation you can to dispel their doubt (108).
While Anderson's
example could certainly serve as a segue into a discussion on, say, dialectic,
he never makes that transition.
Nor is the transition made to discuss pathos, but understanding and appealing
to an audience's emotional needs is clearly part of the persuasive strategy
for both Aristotle and contemporary technical writing texts. While Aristotle
may have desired argument to rely solely on reason (an approach very much
in-line with the traditional engineering mindset) he recognized that people
are "also endowed with the faculty of free will, and often enough
their will is swayed more by their passions or their emotions than by
their reason" (Covino & Jolliffe 18). Taking emotional needs
into account is a necessary strategy for effective communication in the
engineering workplace. If, for example, a chemical engineer is going to
request the assistance of a colleague on an upcoming research project,
he/she has a better chance of receiving the help if their communication
begins by recognizing that person's past successes in the field and noting
the invaluable nature of their expertise. Likewise, if a boss or manager
has to provide criticism of a subordinate's performance, the critique
will be better received if it includes both positive and negative evaluative
points. Anderson asserts that being sensitive to emotional needs such
as "the desire for recognition, good relationships at work, a sense
of achievement, personal development, and the enjoyment of work itself"
can advance a communication's persuasive potency (102).
The third mode or the ethical appeal could, according to Aristotle, be
the most persuasive of the three. Ethos does not correspond to our modern
understanding of ethics rather it was intended as an assessment of the
character of the communicator. Attributes such as "intelligence,
benevolence and probity" are of extreme importance as without them
"an orator's skill in convincing the intellect and moving the will
of an audience could prove futile" (Covino & Jolliffe 19). Again,
all of the engineering communication texts support and discuss the merits
of this rhetorical component. Lannon mirrors Aristotle by stating that
"[o]ften, the biggest factor in persuasion is an audience's perception
of the writer" (45). Anderson included a complete section on tactics
for building an effective relationship with the audience and how to appear
a credible person. He advises:
If your readers feel well disposed toward you, they are likely to consider
your points openly and without bias. If they feel irritated, angry, or
otherwise unfriendly toward you, they may immediately raise counterarguments
to every point you present, making it extremely unlikely that you will
elicit a favorable reaction, even if all of your points are clear, valid
and substantiated. Good points rarely win the day in the face of bad feelings
(111).
Students
are asked in class to consider the authors of engineering journals they
consult during their own research. In subsequent discussions regarding
the inclusions of the author's educational degrees, their university affiliations
and their past publications, students agree that this information can
add to or take away from the credibility of the presenter. This point
becomes particularly relevant in this course when it comes time for students
to display their own credentials in résumés and cover letters.
The assignments surrounding the creation of these documents require the
same amount of strategizing about persuasive tactics. The employment documents
are generally a struggle for most engineering students. The notion that
an argument must be made regarding their abilities is unnatural and once
again the "truth" surrounding their skills and experience should
be self-evident.
This is why many engineering students enter with negative preconceived
notions about a course that deals so much with what they initially perceive
as manipulative strategizing. Beginning with the planning sheet confirms
their suspicions. Students' ideas about arriving at "truth"
in their research and then presenting their findings in their writing
seem to mirror more Plato's philosophy of "transcendent absolute
truth" than Aristotle's probability and dialectic (Bizzell &
Herzberg 81). Where does this ideology come from? Halloran would contest
that it stems from professionalism's nurturing of a strict adherence to
concrete scientific method that had no perceived use for rhetoric and
persuasion. "Within the ethos of professionalism, passion would ideally
be eliminated altogether, and so persuasion, once the overarching purpose
of all rhetoric, became a concession to the weakness of the audience"
(Halloran 168). Indeed, many students feel that relying on rhetoric and
persuasion to support research is merely a crutch for incomplete research.
Worse yet, this stigma surrounding rhetoric can steer students away from
embracing its techniques simply because they fear being accused of abusing
its power.
These are concerns that must be addressed in the classroom. "It is
wrong to warp the jury by leading them into anger or envy or pity: that
is the same as if someone made a straightedge rule crooked before using
it" (Aristotle 30). The measurement analogy is convenient but Aristotle
still will not appear in any of these texts. Yet, ABET clearly requires
institutions addressing Aristotle's concern when they state students must
graduate with "an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility."
Again, all three of the engineering communications texts meet the challenge
without the overt use of rhetorical conventions. Almost every chapter
of the Anderson text ends with a discussion on ethics or appropriate moral
conduct in regards to the materials covered. Topics include ethical communication
in a student's résumé, cover letter, persuasive strategies,
speeches and presentations, proposals, progress reports and even graphs,
charts and visual aids. The crux of Anderson's ethical remarks is "[w]hen
you are writing persuasively, respect your readers' right to evaluate
your arguments in an informed and independent way. If you mislead your
readers by misstating facts, using intentionally ambiguous expressions,
or arguing from false premises, you deprive your readers of their rights"
(118).
For some students this discussion of rhetoric and the importance of protecting
an audience's "rights" may not be enough to display the impact
rhetoric can have in the engineering world. While some of the time the
texts are restricted to fabricated situations or examples for which the
students must prepare their communications, all of the works strive to
include factual instances of engineers communicating with both great success
and sometimes catastrophic failure. In Lannon's chapter titled "Weighing
the Ethical Issues" he candidly discusses NASA's decision to launch
the space shuttle Challenger. On the evening before the shuttle was scheduled
to launch the company that produces the rocket boosters for NASA, Morton
Thiokol, faxed NASA officials a recommendation to abort the launch. Although
this was the first time in twelve years that the company had formally
made such a recommendation NASA is documented as having been "appalled"
(Lannon 72). Thiokol's recommendation came in the form of a faxed presentation
which contained charts and diagrams in support of their claim. Thiokol
engineers asserted that the forecasted weather with its projected low
temperatures would cause the seals around the boosters to fail potentially
causing a massive explosion. Unfortunately, the graphical representation
of the data failed to create a cause and effect relationship between temperature
and seal failure (Tufte 24). Later investigation would reveal that both
NASA and Morton Thiokol engineers were under pressure from their respective
managements to authorize the launch. This multi-faceted catastrophe serves
as a powerful backdrop for the difficult situations in which engineers
may find themselves and how effective communication could have come to
their aid.
What is perhaps more surprising than how well these texts make use of
Aristotle's ethical guidelines as well as logos, pathos and ethos is their
representation to some degree of all five canons of rhetoric. Inventio,
dispositio, elocutio, memoria and pronuntiatio all come through in these
texts. Similarly to logos, pathos and ethos, these rhetorical conventions
show just how much they intersect and inform each other in the engineering
arena. That is, if they were still overtly in use. It is important to
consider that while Halloran pinpoints the Industrial Revolution and professionalism
as key factors in the demise of rhetoric, other scholars trace at least
the beginnings of it disappearance to start hundreds of years earlier.
Chaim Perelman in his The Realm of Rhetoric accuses Petrus Ramus and then
René Descartes of consolidating the five canons. It was Ramus who
"attributed to dialectic the study of every kind of reasoning, analytical
as well as dialectical, and thus reduced rhetoric to elocution, the search
for forms of expression that were out of the ordinary, for ornamentation"
(1380). Descartes was equally culpable. According to Perelman he actually
"went even further in his desire to eliminate all rhetoric from his
philosophy. His idea of a philosophy more geometrico was to build a system
which, moving from one self-evidence to another, would leave no room for
any disputable opinion" (1380). In her recent book, Electric Rhetoric,
Kathleen Welch summarizes Perelman's assessment stating that it is from
Ramus that the "long journey of rhetoric as attenuated style or language
decoration gathered great power that continues today" (150). And
yet Anderson, Lannon and Markel all use and it will be argued even need
all five canons for their texts to succeed.
As already noted, inventio refers to the process of locating arguments.
When students are asked to locate an argument in the Challenger example
they generally begin by stating that the shuttle should not launch due
to the cold weather. Of course this is true but inventio is the process
of uncovering all of the necessary arguments that must be made to reach
the desired result. Why will the rocket boosters explode? It is because
the seals will fail. Is there a direct correlation between temperature
and seal failure? Yes, but an argument will need to be made to show why.
Eventually this questioning process reveals the substantive arguments
necessary to build a case against the launch.
Inventio can often yield a complicated network of ideas and proposed arguments
but not any structure. The second canon, dispositio, deals with arrangement
and organization. "Once the ideas or arguments are discovered there
remains the problem of selecting, marshalling, and organizing them with
a view to effecting the end of discourse" (Corbett and Connors 20).
This process also gets a great deal of attention throughout the engineering
texts. Anderson has developed what he terms "superstructures"
for all of the documents proposed in his text including oral presentations.
For example, the Challenger presentation could be organized into categories
such as criteria, method, alternatives, evaluation and recommendation.
Even seemingly lesser communication tasks have recommended formats. For
instance, a progress report submitted to a manager could contain information
organized via an introduction, sections on past and future work, as well
as conclusions and recommendations. All of these sections are tied to
questions that engineers will have to answer or argue. "Is your work
progressing as planned?", "What progress do you expect?"
and "How do things stand overall?" are questions built into
this superstructure (524). Anderson generally capitalizes on the opportunity
to discuss how a communication such as a progress report is rhetorical
in the first place. (The texts do not use the term "rhetorical"
rather they will refer to the persuasive component of the communication
or instruct on how to build a strong argument with it.)
The third canon elocutio or style is difficult to define but generally
deals with the selection of words and how they are arranged or presented
for a given situation. Focuses include but are not limited to tone, clarity,
ornamentation and the use of jargon. Anderson begins his section on "Creating
Your Voice" with these remarks:
While reading something you've written, your readers "hear"
your voice - and, based on what they hear, they draw conclusions about
you and your attitudes. These conclusions can affect the persuasiveness
of your communications. Consequently, the ability to craft and control
your voice is an area of expertise that is essential to your success (240).
The engineering texts ask various questions of the communicator to assist
them in selecting the appropriate style. "How formal do my readers
think my writing should be?" "How subjective or objective do
my readers believe my writing should be?" "How much 'distance'
do my readers expect me to establish between them and me?" All of
these ideas can, of course, be found in classical rhetoric. Selecting
from the low, middle, or high style (attentuata, mediocris and gravis)
was Quintilian's method for approaching a speech. Each category had it
own purpose attached to it. The low style was generally for "instructing,"
the middle for "moving" and the high for "charming"
(Corbett and Connors 21). With what has become typical of the engineering
texts, Anderson, Markel and Lannon omit the rhetorical theory and terminology
and move straight to application.
The fourth canon, memoria, which deals with the memorization of speeches,
has traditionally received the least treatment in works on rhetoric. Other
than a brief introduction, Corbett and Connor decided that there would
be "no consideration in [their] book of this aspect of rhetoric"
(22). While the engineering communications texts give less attention to
memorization, they all address the subject. The consensus is that approaching
oral presentations with the decision to commit all of the content to memory
is not productive and potentially detrimental to persuasion. When trying
to present complex data a "small slip in phrasing could be embarrassing
or damaging" (Anderson 405). Markel points out that even "trained
actors" struggle with the task.
Most of what is discussed in regards to memory is actually in relation
to the fifth canon of rhetoric termed delivery or pronuntiatio. While
the communications planning sheet discussed earlier is used for strategizing
oral presentation, Anderson, Lannon and Markel all devote at least a chapter
to the art of delivery. As an alternative to memorization, the texts propose
"scripted," "outlined" or "impromptu" talks
based on the situation the students may find themselves in. Anderson covers
a wide range of presentation considerations including the need to make
eye contact, combating nervousness, the need for rehearsal, the importance
of voice projection and the dynamics of presenting as a group (412-7).
In fact, all of the communications discussed in the texts can be thought
of in terms of delivery. That is, a project manager can ask for an impromptu
progress report in an elevator or a manager could ask to hear about the
recommendations from a project proposal. Ultimately, the books try and
impress the idea that presentation and the need for a solid delivery could
occur at any time.
The "traces" that Halloran has observed appear to be quite pervasive
in these texts. So what are the potential problems with the different
systems these universities are proposing? Where is the disconnection or
does a disconnection occur in the attempt to teach effective communication
skills to engineers? To begin, the programs average 130 hours of coursework
for undergraduates and anywhere from 6 to 12 hours of that time is required
in composition and professional communications. All of the programs allow
students to test out of their freshman writing obligation via Advanced
Placement credit from high school. While CWRU's decision to make students
wait until their junior year to enroll in their professional communications
class is a sound one, it is possible for a student with Advanced Placement
credit to have gone without formal writing instruction since high school.
The obligation to the core curriculum requirements of their engineering
disciplines is simply too great.
Also, the contexts in which the courses are set should be called into
question. When a student of engineering enrolls in an English class, attends
the class at the English department and has new multi-disciplinary peers,
they are distanced from their engineering environment. While this is certainly
healthy from the standpoint that students are exposed to alternate ways
of thinking and communicating it becomes the responsibility of the student
to take what they have learned from the humanities and effectively apply
it to their field. The situations that engineering students may be "writing
into" in their humanities courses do not necessarily reflect any
real-world engineering dilemmas. Keeping a student's writing and communication
education separate from their engineering studies can unfortunately serve
to uphold the disconnection between rhetoric and engineering.
While CWRU's course effectively brings the two together, it faces its
own set of hurdles. It wants to bypass the theory that provides the foundation
for the course's ideology and skip right to application. The class will
begin to function analogously to a "what-you-see-is-what-you-get"
or "WYSIWYG" software package. Take, for instance, any of the
HTML editors that are currently on the market such as Macromedia's Dreamweaver,
Adobe's GoLive or Microsoft's FrontPage. All of these applications offer
a graphic user interface which allows users to author HTML and write relatively
complicated code without knowing anything about mark-up language or scripts.
Software engineers are critical of such applications as they are notorious
for producing inefficient code that does not comply with many industry
standards but nevertheless will run. Advocates for rhetoric will have
a similar "purist" response to CWRU's engineering course. The
class will potentially produce graduates who do not possess an understanding
of what it is that brings potency to their communication. Once this becomes
transparent, the course moves from being perceived as part of the engineering
core curriculum, that is, something imperative to an engineer's education,
to a mere service course. Communications for engineers, perhaps more specifically
rhetoric for engineers, has a small foothold in the university curriculum
but remains in constant danger of falling back into obsolescence.
Works Cited
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