Rhetorical Analysis Second Paper

Kevin (Kyoo Sang) Jo

Professor Glen McClish

RWS 600 Second Paper

22 November 2013

Introduction

In South Korea, every sophomore in high school has to choose one of two different courses such as the liberal arts and the sciences. Therefore, those who prefer math and physics to literature and language like me tend to select the science course. As they focus on the science course rather than the liberal arts course like writing, they lack self-confidence in writing even though exceptional cases always exist. I am such a student. As I entered college to major mechanical engineering, the situation got worse for me. Most classes related to my major, mechanical engineering, required me to answer an exact number or a concise word in the exam. I didn’t have to write even a sentence when I took the exam. Whenever I took the exam in the liberal arts such as psychology, cultural anthropology, and art history, I had some difficulties in writing down my answers because I had to express my opinion about the problems in a long written response. Little importance on writing education for engineering students was considered at that time although it has changed these days. In my experience, as mentioned above, I searched for research papers related to engineering writing.

For the purpose of this essay, I have selected two academic papers to analyze: Jack Selzer’s “The composing process of an engineer” and Marcia M. Pierson et al.’s “Beginning and endings: keys to better engineering technical writing.” Selzer’s paper is one essay in Central Works in Technical Communication, which is a collection of influential essays edited by Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. It was originally published in the journal College Composition and Communication. Interestingly, Selzer investigated in detail the composing processes of a single engineer, Kenneth E. Nelson. Selzer collected and examined all the interim written materials that contributed to several of Nelson’s finished products – jottings, notes, outlines, plans, drafts, revisions. In addition, he visited Nelson at work to observe Nelson writing and interviewed Nelson about things he had observed. Finally, he explained how an engineer plans, arranges, writes and rewrites on the job based on his findings of investigating Nelson. On the other hand, while Selzer’s paper shows writing process of an engineer, Pierson’s paper suggests a methodology to write better engineering papers for engineers. Pierson is an editor in Engineering Publication and Communication Services at Iowa State University; and she works with both faculty and students to prepare papers, proposals, contract reports, newsletters, conference proceedings, and other documents for the College of Engineering at Iowa State University. In this paper, she pointed out that it is often very difficult to actually write common features such as the title, abstract, introduction, methods, results, and conclusions in the same order they appear in the finished product. Instead of such a linear approach, she recommends a modular approach starting with the core sections, the methods and results that researchers know best, and working backward and forward to pick up the beginnings and endings.

The structure

Looking into the overall structure of these two papers, I found much difference between them despite the fact that the major concepts and ideas are outlined separately in explicitly marked sections. The Composing Processes just starts with a formalized introduction without a brief abstract. It seems to be the customary structure of the journal College Composition and Communication because another paper in the journal by Dorothy A. Winsor has no abstract just same as The Composing Processes. Interestingly, this paper almost matches the standard Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion (IMRD) pattern exactly even though it is not a typical research paper of the science or engineering field including experiment, data, and result. Selzer describes the methods section as “procedures” because he performed an investigating process to find out how an engineer, Nelson, writes at work. In response to the results section, according to Nelson’s composing habits, he breaks it into four categories: planning and inventing, arrangement, drafting, and revision.

Unlike The Composing Processes, Pierson et al.’s Beginnings and Endings does not match the standard IMRD pattern exactly despite the fact that it is published in an engineering journal, IEEE Transactions on professional communication. It shows only introduction and conclusion explicitly, but methods and results are included in the main body. As this paper is about effective writing methods for engineering technical writing, the main body is composed of six sections in the recommended writing order as follows: Getting started, methods and results, writing the introduction, writing the conclusions, developing a title, and writing the abstract. It also provides a brief abstract and index terms. Abstracts of research papers give a brief overview and help the reader know and judge the value of the paper. In such a respect, the abstract of Pierson’s paper is appropriate to meet the goal of abstracts and is concise. There are two main approaches to writing research paper abstracts (Swales, 384). One is the result-driven abstract, which concentrates on the research findings and conclusions from them and the other is the summary abstract, which provides one or two sentence synopses of each section of the paper. On the other hand, research paper abstracts can be characterized as either indicative (describe what was done) or informative (include the main findings) (Swales, 384). According to Swales’ abstracts model, the abstract of Pierson’s paper can be classified as an informative result-driven abstract because it explains only the results and conclusion without mentioning every single section of the paper.

The contract

Turning to the introduction section, I focused on the academic “contract,” defined by John Swales and Christine B. Feak in their book Academic Writing for Graduate Students. They break down the approach into three parts: “Move 1: Establishing a Research Territory”; “Move 2: Establishing a Niche”; and “Move 3: Occupying the Niche” (331). This rhetorical pattern has become known as the create-a-research-space (or CARS) model, but these steps are not quite so obligatory in the humanities as they are in scientific fields.

In The Composing Processes, the introduction section is very concise with only six sentences in one paragraph. The first sentence coincides with Move 1, but the author’s literature review is not rich. Selzer mentioned only one previous research study by Janet Emig and indicated that writers’ composing habits had been studied. Then, he directly went into the gap using the transition word “however.” He opened the niche of the research with negative language “little” as follows: “. . . little impact on the teaching of technical writing. Little work has been done on the composing strategies of people who call themselves engineers or scientists, not writers or students; little study has been devoted to people who compose within the limitations of the workplace” (178). In the next sentence, a negative word told us that it is also a part of establishing the niche as follows: “. . . we know far less about how they plan, arrange, write, and rewrite on the job” (178). The author explained the problem resulting from having no answer to research question in the last sentence. It seems like Move 3 because it means the purpose or the effect of the present research. To sum up, first sentence is Move 1, the next three sentences consist of Move 2, and Move 3 is found in the last sentence.

Surprisingly, the introduction of Beginnings and Endings starts with a sentence in accordance with my prejudice by stating that “Conventional wisdom says that engineers as a group dread writing” (299). The introduction consists of three paragraphs and the first paragraph serves as Move 1-a by showing that the research area is interesting and curious to the readers. It also shows that practicing engineers spend a significant portion of their time creating their own technical documents and working on those of others and their need to write well is pervasive. In the second paragraph, each literature is introduced. Through the previous research, the authors pointed out that engineering and writing have been inextricably linked historically. Even early engineers in Roman times felt responsible not only for practicing engineering but also for documenting it and making their knowledge available to others. In such a respect, the first two paragraphs fall within Move 1, which means establishing a research territory. On the other hand, the last paragraph seems like Move 3 because it discusses its principal findings and the structure of the research paper. The authors’ main argument is in the last part of the introduction as follows: “Our recommendation is to adopt a modular approach for writing a technical report of article” (300). So, where can a niche be founded? I think that the authors expressed the niche in the last sentence of the second paragraph implicitly by stating, “Even these early engineers felt responsible not only for practicing engineering but also for documenting it and making their knowledge available to others. That goal is still important today and is amplified by the knowledge that how well engineers conduct research, write, and publish has a great impact on the advancement of their careers as well as on the advancement of knowledge” (299). In other words, the niche is how engineers could write their documents well.

The citation style

In response to citation practices, both articles are totally different. In general, it is common in the humanities to follow the Modern Language Association’s citation style. However, Selzer’s article is not in accord with MLA citation at all. There is no reference section or work cited section in the end of the article, but it only has endnotes. Of course, its endnotes include references cited as well as a sample engineer’s personal history, a previous researcher’s related study, and further references to be worth reading. Compared with other papers in the same journal, it is not the formal guidelines of the journal because the other paper by Winsor meets the MLA citation style exactly. On the other hand, Pierson’s article conforms with the IEEE style in both textual citations and a reference list. IEEE style is often used for technical documents in areas ranging from computer engineering to aerospace and consumer electronics. What is unique about IEEE citation style is that the reference number appears on the line, in square brackets, inside the punctuation as follows: “Early in this century, the famous scientist Charles Steinmetz [5] had a particularly clear view of the value of good engineering writing” (299). In Selzer’s article, a footnote appears in the first page once and it introduces who the author is and where the paper is presented. In case of Pierson’s article, there is no footnote, but the authors’ career and research interest are described in the end of the article.

The presentation of claims

Taking a look at Selzer’s principal claim, he maintains that technical writing teachers might begin to modify students’ writing process based on the result of investigating a sample engineer, Kenneth E. Nelson, who is an experienced engineer in Chicago. He proposes that teachers might direct students to various ways of developing, selecting, and arranging content, emphasize principles and techniques of arrangement, regard revision as the least important activity, and teach students to adapt and re-use previously written material. He also says that “It may be appropriate to describe the writing process of engineers as more linear than recursive” (185). This opinion is different from Pierson’s argument, which states that she recommends a modular approach instead of the linear approach. Of course, Selzer admits lack of the ground of his claim because of just one sample. Moreover, he expects the opposition of his argument in the conclusion by stating that “It is impossible to come to reliable conclusions about the writing process of engineers on the basis of a single case study. . . . Whether his (Nelson’s) linearity is a personal quirk or characteristic of on-the-job writers in general or engineers in particular must be determined by further research. . . . Such suggestions about the conduct of technical writing courses must remain suggestions and not firm recommendations, however, until we know more about the composing processes of engineers. Additional research on composing might reveal how Nelson, his firm, and his subdiscipline are and are not typical” (185). In spite of such a prolepsis, he still argues that some observations based on Nelson’s composing habits are worth making because they direct further research and suggest some new directions in pedagogy.

In Beginnings and Endings, the authors’ claim is definitely a recommendation of the modular approach. The modular approach is to pull the sections out of their normal order and to work on them in the order of ease for the author. Pierson et al. explain their recommendation confined to the typical research paper like a journal article. According to their modular approach, writing order is the following: Methods and results, introduction, conclusions, title, and abstract. Of course, comparing to a modular approach, a normal or linear approach is to write in order of title, abstract, introduction, methods and results, and conclusions. The reason why the authors recommend a modular approach is very simple, because writing first what a researcher knows best builds confidence and gets the creative juices flowing (303). Exploring how to write each section of the paper, Pierson et al. discuss the function of each section by citing the previous study as follows: “Menzel, Jones, and Boyd [9] indicate that ‘the first sentence of the introduction is a kind of a road map, a brief indication of the direction the argument will take and the nature of the goal.’ . . . Miles [11] states that the introduction ‘usually gives an overview of the problem confronted, the theory behind the methodology used, and a statement about the significance or importance of the current research,’” (301). While Selzer identifies results of his investigation and arrives at a claim in the conclusion section, Pierson et al. suggest their claim at first, explain it in the main body, and repeat it in the conclusion.

Concerning the rhetorical features of the piece, a few metaphors or similes appear in some places. When the authors explain the circumstance in which researchers have difficulty about writing, they describe it as follows: “researchers frequently have trouble writing technical papers because they get bogged down in the beginnings and endings” (300). She also uses a metaphor as follows: “Beginning with what they know best gets writers off dead center and into the fray.” (300). Dead center means an enervated state to be needed external driving forces, and fray means an competitive state in a noisy fight. In addition, they compare key places to hook the reader to onion’s layers: “As we take a long view of technical articles, we see that the writer has three key places to hook the reader – each one reveals a little more about the topic, like layers of an onion: for example, 1) the title . . . 2) the abstract . . . 3) the introduction . . .” (303).

Conclusion

Through a comparison of these two academic articles, the most significant lesson is the value of the title and the abstract. They play an important role outside of the article rather than within the article because they provide the hook for the reader and serve as a filter for classifying papers. Similarly, I also looked into the title and the abstract first when I selected two research papers. In Selzer’s paper, there is no abstract and the introduction replaces it as a role of the abstract. However, I think that it is desirable to provide a stand-alone abstract itself in academic materials. On the contrary, the introduction can give the readers guidance by summarizing the main body’s structure and organization so that the readers could find what they want to look for easily.

To enforce his claim’s persuasiveness, Selzer maintains that he adopted and adapted methods suggested by Emig’s “The composing processes of twelfth-graders” and by Cooper and Odell’s “Research on composing” to figure out how Nelson writes at work. Even if his methodology is verified and valid, Nelson is just one person among the great number of engineers. Nonetheless, he seems to believe that the writing he does at work is typical of the writing done by most engineers at a similar career stage. Moreover, he seems to assume that Nelson’s linear writing way is quite an effective approach. I think that his thought results from Nelson’s ethos because Nelson credited his M.A. thesis director at Northwestern with inspiring him to take special pride in his writing and Nelson said that he recognized the importance of good writing to his work and enjoyed publishing professional articles on engineering. Due to the aforementioned reason, Selzer’s claim can be viewed as a bit hasty conclusion.

It is unfortunate for Pierson to assert that a modular approach is a better way only because it is easy to write in the order of the sections that researchers know best. To finish the article, it is very important to make the whole sentence logically consistent as an organic body. However, this paper seems to be lacking discussion on how all the sections fit together, how each section maintains consistency, and how the writing can be tightened and made clearer. In the conclusion section, the authors say that the quality of the writing has been talked little and that is not a primary focus in this paper. Therefore, the question about the quality of the writing itself will be able to provide a further research topic.

Works Cited

Selzer, Jack. “The Composing Processes of an Engineer.” College Composition and Communication, Vol. 34, No. 2 (1983): 178-87. Print.

Pierson, Marcia M., and Pierson, Bion L. “Beginnings and Endings: Key to Better Engineering Technical Writing.” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Vol. 40, No. 4 (1997): 299-304. Print.

Winsor, Dorothy A. “Engineering Writing/Writing Engineering.” College Composition and Communication, Vol. 41, No. 1 (1990): 58-70. Print.

Swales, John M., and Feak, Christine B. Academic Writing for Graduate Students. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2012. Print.