Rhetorical Code Studies

Abstract

This project, like so many of the cases discussed in the following pages, could not have been possible without myriad collaborators, colleagues, and mentors, all of whom have profoundly impacted my life through their assistance and friendship. I cannot overstate the gratitude I feel for all the time, energy, and consideration that has been shared with me. At the same time, I recognize my words here will be inadequate in acknowledging everyone who has helped me and in describing the impact they have had on me and this book. I want to begin by offering my deepest thanks to Nancy Penrose, who took a chance on me when I was a struggling master's student who felt ambivalent toward writing and its study. At the time, I did not know just how significantly my life would change by turning my focus toward rhetoric and composition. Without Nancy's support and patience with my gaining a grasp of the field, I would never have been able to pursue this career trajectory. I also owe a considerable debt to the faculty with whom I studied in the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media doctoral program at North Carolina State University; their guidance helped me develop the ideas central to my argument throughout this book. David M. Rieder offered invaluable and enthusiastic input throughout my time in the program. Alongside David, Susan Miller-Cochran, Jason Swarts, and Kenneth Zagacki all shared with me their incredible insight and feedback on my dissertation, which served as an early attempt at articulating my argument in this book. In addition, the courses I took with

Technical Standards and a Theory of Writing as Infrastructure

“…Or as Star (1999) puts it, “For a railroad engineer, the rails are not infrastructure but topic” (p. 380). Many other forms of professional writing—even broadly defined to include code (Brock, 2019; Vee, 2013)—are hypervisible to small audiences but then get built into material objects, software interfaces, physical procedures, and so on and then seemingly disappear.…”

“…build upon the work of scholars like Vee (2013) and Brock (2019) to broaden what counts as writing and text in the field of writing studies…”

Not All Who Want To, Can--Not All Who Can, Will: Extending Notions of Unconventional Doctoral Dissertations

“…The GitHub website "provides a system for easy tracking, commenting, and forking (making new, individually customizable versions) of git-based projects" (Brock, 2019, p. 125). Brock (2019) also argues that there are social and rhetorical dimensions to GitHub that bear some resonances with the academic peer review environment, such as the practice of offering "in-code comments" and "meta-discursive commentary" (p. 128).…”