Negotiating objectivity and subjectivity
Before this week’s reading, a lot of what we read about science seemed to address science as naïve. That is, science had a belief that it was somehow “correct,” but that belief was mistaken. And, more often than not, we humanists needed to ride to the rescue. In particular, this peppered readings from the 1970s and 1980s that seemed to work on coalescing a humanist, rhetorical faction in the study of technical writing. I’m thinking specifically about Carolyn Miller’s “A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing” and “What’s Practical about Technical Writing;” Mary Lay’s “Feminist Theory and the Redefinition of Technical Communication” (published in 1991); and Charlotte Thralls’ and Nancy Blyler’s “The Social Perspective and Professional Communication” (published in 1993, but recounting work from earlier). Each of these—and I’m guessing other contemporary works—emphasized the social and human aspects of writing and, in making that case, often set that paradigm against a “scientific” paradigm the authors measured as incompatible with the social dynamic of writing.
Now, with this week’s reading, we see another angle. Here, we focus more on the scientific method’s ability to create dialog and engage in the very sorts of activities that Miller and others seem to value. While demonstrating the value of subjectivity, some of these arguments were uncritical. Davida Charney made a rather damning statement in “Empiricism is not a Four-letter Word,” noting Susan Peck MacDonald’s study, which found “… the proportion of ‘epistemic’ language to ‘knowledge’ claims was higher in the developmental psychology texts than in the history texts, and the lowest in the literary texts” (289). Here we see that, despite a purported desire to ground our thinking in the real and the subjective, writing technical communications theorists lay out claims in an unexamined way—much in the way other theorists have criticized the sciences.
While that example resonated with me, I wondered what we could do to counteract that sort of thinking. After all, that quote refers to the writing of technical communication theorists, not what theorists were studying or how theorists researched. And, despite Charney’s warning that “…disciplines and professions can come to rely too heavily on pet methods,” (291), I couldn’t help but believe studying writing necessitated methods that were “unscientific,” or, perhaps more precisely, methods that are qualitative, not quantitative. Hence the case study, the ethnography, the analyses of workplace writing. And, when Koerber and McMichael summarized these techniques, I felt justified. They write: “a researcher using a convenience sample, then, should be especially careful not to overgeneralize” (463). This rings true; qualitative methods can be valuable, but we can’t overgeneralize. This, to me, echoes Kent’s idea that we cannot distill writing into a single set of rules, but instead, we must tie it specifically to single situations.
That said, a collection of single situations seems relatively useless. Unless we connect this body of knowledge to a sort of scientific discourse—not the positivist discourse so roundly criticized, but the dialogic nature of the scientific method as discussed by Charney. We need theorists of technical communication—and composition studies more broadly—in a dialog that will bring meaning to the myriad case studies, ethnographies and other works grounded in particular settings. While Kent might not see this body of knowledge as creating any set of “rules,” But, this background might allow us to inform better “hermeneutic guesses.” After all, Kent says no convention exists that will “ensure” a technical communicator will communicate effectively (36). But his discussion of background knowledge and the dialogic seems to suggest that more background might make effective communication more likely. So the background is important.
And, what Koerber noted was that theorists in technical communication have no good way to communicate about that background research and no way to make connections because there is no standardized “vocabulary” to discuss it. And, while Koerber’s systematizing of qualitative sampling methods may smack of the categorizing that seems unfit in the study of writing, I think it can be useful if it helps researchers enter a dialog about their research. And, by foregrounding that dialog, we may do more to validate research. And, we may, by foregrounding the dialog, avoid the inherent issues with the current model of subjectivity—namely, as Charney quotes Karl Pearson, “to avoid relying on the perceptual experiences of the elite few” (284). For, if we only accept the subjective analyses of key thinkers in the field, we are creating the same sort of oppressive structures that technical communications theorists have feared stem from cold, objective data-gathering.
Works cited
Charney, Davida. “Empiricism is not a Four-Letter Word.” Central Works in Technical Communication. Ed. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. pp. 282-297. Print.
Kent, Thomas. “Paralogic Hermeneutics and the Possibilities of Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Review 8.1 (1989): 24-42. JSTOR. Web. 27 Aug. 2012. PDF.
Koerber, Amy and Lonie McMichael. “Qualitative Sampling Methods: A Primer for Techical Communicators.” Journal of Business and Technical Communications. Vol. 22, No. 4, October 2008, pp. 454-473. PDF.