Research abstracts are an increasingly important aspect of research articles in all knowledge fields, summarizing the full article and encouraging readers to access it. Graetz suggests that four main features contribute to this purpose--the use of past tense, third person, passive, and the non-use of negatives, although this claim has never been…

Successful research writers construct texts by taking a novel point of view toward the issues they discuss while anticipating readers' imagined reactions to those views. This intersubjective positioning is encompassed by the term stance and, in various guises, has been a topic of interest to researchers of written communication and applied…

Even as deficit model science communication falls out of favor, few studies question how written science communication constructs relationships between science and industry. Here, I investigate how textual microprocesses relate scientific research to industry practice in the Washington State wine industry, helping (or hindering) winemakers and…

Examines the slow growth of a body of knowledge about how information can best be communicated without necessary reference to overt persuasion, from Henry Day's "Art of Rhetoric" through contemporary explanatory rhetoric. (FL)

Studies the fate of scientific observations as they pass from original reports intended for scientific peers into popular accounts aimed at a general audience. (FL)

Notes that considerations of audience awareness are receiving increased attention in composition theory and teaching. Argues that while audience awareness is often conceived as a unitary, global construct, it in fact has distinctly identifiable dimensions. Discusses the dimensions of social cognition along with their interaction with the composing…

Discusses the recommendations made by compositionists from 1950 to 1980 to apply the findings of linguists to composition instruction. Argues that the noncontextual orientation of modern linguistics renders it insufficient as a comprehensive source of theoretical or practical assistance in composition instruction. (MG)