Professional Writing and Rhetoric: Readings from the Field
Tim Peeples, Elon University

ISBN-10: 0321099753
ISBN-13: 9780321099754

Publisher: Longman
Copyright: 2003
Format: Paper; 464 pp
Published: 11/27/2002

Suggested retail price: $56.00
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Professional Writing and Rhetoric is a disciplinary reader that introduces students to professional writing by inviting them into conversations about the field by people in the field.

Intended for undergraduates and entry-level masters students who are majoring, minoring, or getting certificates in professional writing studies, Professional Writing and Rhetoric is an edited reader that makes the field's theoretical discussions accessible to these students. Addressing a growing need as the field expands “up” from service-oriented courses and “down” from advanced graduate programs, it fills an important gap in the books currently available within professional writing studies.

This text guides students into the discussions that continue to form this relatively young field by (1) organizing readings rhetorically, (2) including several readings that are regularly cited in the field's literatures, (3) selecting readings that are accessible to students, and (4) offering pedagogical devices that aid comprehension and encourage critical reflection. The aim is not to present a “greatest hits of the field,” nor to direct students' thinking and practice toward the hottest new theories, nor to challenge the thinking of those already comfortably in the field. Instead, older and newer selections are intermixed within a rhetorical framework to encourage students to make connections across readings, promote reflective rhetorical practice, stimulate discussion, and encourage students to become co-inquirers within the discipline.

  • Connects the discipline of rhetoric and the practice of professional writing. For example, the readings are organized around rhetorical issues and questions such as, “What Is the Relationship Between Professional Writing and Rhetoric?” (Ch. 2), and “Professional Writing as Ethical Action” (Ch. 4), etc.
  • Readings feature well-known, regularly cited scholars in the fields of rhetoric and professional communication, including Lester Faigley, Carolyn Miller, Steven Katz, James Porter, Stephen Bernhardt, Robert Johnson, Charles Kostelnick, Jimmie Killingsworth, Chris Anson, and others.
  • Contains a mix of older and more contemporary readings from the fields of professional writing and rhetoric—Selections by Aristotle mingle with readings by current scholars in the field, including Johndan Johnson-Eilola, James Porter, Stephen Bernhardt, and others.
  • Includes pedagogical apparatus that aids comprehension and encourages critical reflection:

    • “Focusing on Key Terms and Concepts” before each reading selection encourage students to define a specified list of key terms and concepts as they read each selection, as a way to help them comprehend the selection.

    • “Developing Your Understanding” questions after each reading selection offer several writing prompts, some of which promote critical reflection about the reading selection and some of which ask students to produce brief documents or presentations.

    • “Projects” at the end of each chapter are longer assignments that ask students to produce some of the oral and/or written documents that a professional writer might be asked to produce, encouraging students to explore, research, and put into practice some of the ideas introduced in the readings for each chapter.

Each chapter begins with “Introduction” and concludes with “Projects.”

I. DEFINING THE FIELD.

1. What Is Rhetoric?

Sonja K. Foss, Karen A. Foss, and Robert Trapp. “Perspectives on the Study of Rhetoric.”

Aristotle. On Rhetoric, Book 1, Chapters 1-3. Trans. George A. Kennedy.

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, excerpts from Book VI. Trans. David Ross.

[Cicero]. Rhetorica Ad Herennium, excerpts from Book I. Trans. Harry Caplan.

2. What Is the Relationship Between Professional Writing and Rhetoric?

Lester Faigley. “Nonacademic Writing: The Social Perspective.”

Carolyn Miller. “What's Practical About Technical Writing?”

Susan Harkness Regli. “Whose Ideas?: The Technical Writer's Expertise in Invention.”

J. Slack et al. “The Technical Communicator as Author: Meaning, Power, Authority.”

II. PROFESSIONAL WRITING AS A SOCIAL PRACTICE.

3. Professional Writing as Organizationally Situated Action.

Linda Driskell. “Understanding the Writing Context in Organizations.”

Susan M. Katz. “Writing Review as an Opportunity for Individuation.”

Rachel Spilka. “Orality and Literacy in the Workplace: Process- and Text-Based Strategies for Multiple-Audience Adaptation.”

4. Professional Writing as Ethical Action.

Cezar M. Ornatowski. “Between Efficiency and Politics: Rhetoric and Ethics in Technical Writing.”

Steven B. Katz. “The Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust.”

James E. Porter. “Framing Postmodern Commitment and Solidarity.”

5. Professional Writing as Technologically Situated Action.

James R. Kalmbach. “Publishing Before Computers.”

Stephen A. Bernhardt. “The Shape of Texts to Come: The Texture of Print on Screens.”

Tharon W. Howard. “Who 'Owns' Electronic Texts?”

III. PROFESSIONAL WRITING AS PRODUCTIVE ART.

6. Professional Writers Produce User-Centered Documents.

Charles Kostelnick. “A Systemic Approach to Visual Language in Business Communication.”

Robert J. Johnson. “When All Else Fails, Use the Instructions: Local Knowledge, Negotiation, and the Construction of User-Centered Computer Documentation.”

Michael J. Floreak. “Designing for the Real World: Using Research to Turn a 'Target Audience' into Real People.”

7. Professional Writers Produce Social Space.

M. Jimmie Killingsworth and Betsy G. Jones. “Division of Labor or Integrated Teams: A Crux in the Management of Technical Communication?”

Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. “After Automation: Hypertext and Corporate Structures.”

Jeffrey T. Grabill and Michele W. Simmons. “Toward a Critical Rhetoric of Risk Communication: Producing Citizens and the Role of Technical Communicators.”

IV. BECOMING A PROFESSIONAL WRITER.

8. Writing Yourself into Professional Writing and Rhetoric.

Chris M. Anson and L. Lee Forsberg. “Moving Beyond the Academic Community: Transitional Stages in Professional Writing.”

Jamie MacKinnon. “Becoming a Rhetor: Developing Writing Ability in a Mature, Writing-Intensive Organization.”

Patrick Dias, et al. “Virtual Realities: Transitions from University to Workplace Writing.”

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