Compressing, Expanding, and Attending to Scientific Meaning: Writing the Semiotic Hybrid of Science for Professional and Citizen Scientists

Abstract

Drawing on a text-based ethnography of digital writing in a biology laboratory, this article examines the text trajectory of a scientific manuscript and a scientific team's related writing for public audiences, including for citizen scientists. Using data drawn from texts, observations, interviews, and related artifacts, the author examines how scientists conceptualize and adapt their multimodal writing for specialized scientific audiences as well as lay audiences interested in the work of scientific inquiry. Three conceptsmeaning compression, meaning expansion, and meaning attention-were used to analyze the multimodal strategies that scientists employ when composing for different audiences. Findings suggest that while scientists often restrict their writing practices to meaning compression to maintain the values and conventions of scientific genres, they also sometimes deploy a wider range of multimodal strategies when writing for nonspecialist audiences. These findings underscore the complex rhetorical environments scientists navigate and the need to support emerging scientific writers' development as versatile

Rhetorical temporality in online scientific communication

“…Our second frame is the role of consensus in the rhetoric of science. Many scholars have previously argued that science is a rhetorically constructed discourse (Simons, 1980;Miller & Selzer, 1985;fahnestock, 1986;Prelli, 1989;gross, 1990;Ceccarelli, 2001;Walsch, 2010;Reid, 2019). More specifically, drawing on the work of Alan gross ( 2006), we recognize that scientific bodies often use a rhetorical appeal to objectivity as a persuasive strategy that lends credibility to scientific endeavors.…”

Disciplinary Literacy in a Second‐Grade Classroom: A Science Inquiry Unit

“…In phase 1, Miss Magee co‐constructed a concept map with her students; this model of writing is a literate expression common to scientific work. Scientists “deploy a repertoire of multimodal strategies according to rhetorical situation and epistemic goals” (Reid, , p. 91). The concept map activity was followed by students going into the field to create technical drawings (Collins & Fulton, ).…”

“Everything Is in the Lab Book”: Multimodal Writing, Activity, and Genre Analysis of Symbolic Mediation in Medical Physics

“…The "study of writing and rhetoric in science," as Wickman and Fitzgerald (2019) have observed, is "an area of inquiry that spans decades and continues to provide the field [of writing studies] with new and compelling insights related to writers, texts, and discourse practices" (p. 3). Included in these insights is the view that writing shapes disciplinary knowledge in science (e.g., Bazerman, 1988;Reid, 2019;Wickman, 2013Wickman, , 2015. Indeed, in academic research contexts, writing is not only something that scientists do often, if not constantly (Emerson, 2016), it is also a practice that serves to enact disciplinary ways of knowing, doing, and arguing (Prior, 2009).…”

“…Bazerman et al, 2019). Recent explorations of scientific writing have been influenced by what has come to be known as the "visual turn" (Purdy, 2014, p. 615) in communication research or the multimodal turn in composition research (Allan, 2013;Sheridan, 2010), which has inspired examinations into how visuals are implicated in the everyday writing of scientists (e.g., Rachul & Varpio, 2020;Reid, 2019). More and more attention has been paid to various embodied and interactional aspects of writing (e.g., Fogarty-Bourget et al, 2021;Mondada & Svinhufvud, 2016;O'Halloran, 2015;Weedon & Fountain, 2021).…”