This article offers a personal view of some developments in science and technology studies that may be important to researchers on writing and to writing teachers. The field has emerged from laboratory studies to engagement with broader issues of power and change. Frameworks developed in the sociology of scientific knowledge have been applied to the analysis of things (not just people and facts), of social boundaries (not just specialist disciplines), and of organizations (not just individual writers). The article draws on approaches from critical discourse analysis to show how we might read noun phrases, clause structure, discourse representation, and discourse practices in terms of this new perspective on texts. Throughout the article, the implications are illustrated with the example of a news article reporting the temporary shutdown of a nuclear power plant.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Akrich, M.
(1992). The de-scription of technical objects. In W. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping technology/building society: Studies in sociotechnical change (pp. 205-224). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
2.
Ashmore, M.
, Myers, G., & Potter, J. (1994). Discourse, rhetoric, reflexivity: Seven days in the library. In S. Jasanoff, G. E. Markle, J. C. Petersen, & T. Pinch (Eds.), Handbook of science and technology studies (pp. 321-342). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
3.
Bastide, F.
(1990). The iconography of scientific texts: Principles of analysis. In M. Lynch & S. Woolgar (Eds.), Representation in scientific practice (pp. 187-229). Cambridge: MIT Press. [Original work published in French in 1985]
4.
Bastide, F.
(1992). A night with Saturn. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 17, 259.
5.
Bazerman, C.
(1988). Shaping written knowledge: The genre and activity of the experimental article in science. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
6.
Bazerman, C.
(1992, August). Patent realities: Legal textual stabilization of inauthenticity elsewhere. Paper presented at the Society for Social Studies of Science, Gothenberg, Sweden.
7.
Bazerman, C.
(1993, November). Edison's notebooks. Paper presented at the Society for Social Studies of Science, West Lafayette, IN.
8.
Bazerman, C.
(1994). Constructing experience. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
9.
Bell, A.
(1991). The language of news media. Oxford: Blackwell.
10.
Berkenkotter, C.
, & Huckin, T. (1995). Genre knowledge in disciplinary communication. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
11.
Bijker, W.
(1994). Sociotechnical technology studies. In S. Jasanoff, G. E. Markle, J. C. Peterson, & T. Pinch (Eds.), Handbook of science and technology studies (pp. 457-480). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
12.
Bijker, W.
, Hughes, T., & Pinch, T. (Eds.). (1987). The social construction of technological systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
13.
Bijker, W.
, & Law, J. (Eds.). (1992). Shaping technology/building society: Studies in sociotechnical change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
14.
Bloor, D.
(1976). Knowledge and social imagery. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
15.
Boden, D.
(1994). The business of talk: Organizations in action. Cambridge, MA: Polity.
16.
Bowker, G.
(1992). What's in a patent? In W. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping technology/building society: Studies in sociotechnical change (pp. 53-73). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
17.
Callon, M.
(1986). Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay. In J. Law (Ed.), Power, action, and belief: A new sociology of knowledge? (pp. 196-233). London: Routledge.
18.
Callon, M.
(1991). Techno-economic networks and irreversibility. In J. Law (Ed.), A sociology of monsters: Essays on power, technology, and domination (pp. 132-163). London: Routledge.
19.
Callon, M.
, Law, J., & Rip, A. (Eds.). (1986). Mapping the dynamics of science and technology. London: Macmillan.
20.
Cambrosio, A.
, Keating, P., & Mackenzie, M. (1990). Scientific practice in the courtroom: The construction of sociotechnical identities in a biotechnology patent dispute. Social Problems, 37, 301-319.
21.
Cambrosio, A.
, Limoges, C., & Pronovost, D. (1990). Representing biotechnology: An ethnography of Quebec science policy. Social Studies of Science, 20, 195-227.
22.
Collins, H.
(1985). Changing order: Replication and induction in scientific practice. London: Sage.
23.
Collins, H. M.
(1987). Certainty and the public understanding of science: Science on television. Social Studies of Science, 18, 725-748.
24.
Collins, H.
, & Yearley, S. (1992). Epistemological chicken. In A. Pickering (Ed.), Science as practice and culture (pp. 301-326). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
25.
Cooter, R.
, & Pumphrey, S. (1994). Separate spheres and public places: Reflections on the history of science popularization and science in popular culture. History of Science, 32, 237-267.
26.
Doheny-Farina, S.
(1992). Rhetoric, innovation, technology: Case studies of technical communication in technology transfers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
27.
Dunn, J.
(1995, January 4). A-Plant is closed. Lancashire Evening Post, p. 1.
28.
Durant, J. R.
, Evans, G. A., & Thomas, G. P. (1989). The public understanding of science. Nature, 340, 11-14.
29.
Faigley, L.
(1992). Fragments of rationality: Postmodernity and the subject of composition. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
30.
Fairclough, N.
(1989). Language and power. Harlow, UK: Longman.
31.
Fairclough, N.
(1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge, MA: Polity.
32.
Fairclough, N.
(1995). Critical discourse analysis. Harlow, UK: Longman.
33.
Fowler, R.
, Hodge, B., Kress, G., & Trew, T. (1979). Language and control. London: Routledge.
34.
Gieryn, T.
(1983). Boundary work and the demarcation of science from non-science: Strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists. American Sociological Review, 48, 781-795.
35.
Gilbert, N.
, & Mulkay, M. (1984). Opening Pandora's box. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
36.
Golinski, J.
(1992). Science as public culture: Chemistry and enlightenment in Britain, 1760-1820. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
37.
Greatbatch, D.
(1988). A turn-taking system for British news interviews. Language in Society, 17, 301-330.
38.
Halliday, M.A.K.
, & Martin, J.R. (1993). Writing science: Literacy and discursive power. London and Pittsburgh: Falmer and University of Pittsburgh Press.
39.
Haraway, D.
(1991). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association.
40.
Herndl, C.
, Fennell, B., & Miller, C. (1991). Understanding failures in organizational discourse. In C. Bazerman & J. Paradis. (Eds.), Textual dynamics of the professions (pp. 279-305). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
41.
Horn, D.
(1994). [Review of the book Shaping technology/building society]. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 19, 386-388.
42.
Hughes, T. P.
(1983). Networks of power: Electrification in western society, 1880-1930. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
43.
Johnson, J.
(1988). Mixing humans and non-humans together: The sociology of a door closer. Social Problems, 35, 298-310.
44.
Kress, G.
(1989). Linguistic processes in socio-cultural practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
45.
Kress, G.
, & Hodge, R. (1988). Social semiotics. Cambridge, MA: Polity.
46.
Kress, G.
, & van Leeuwen, T. (1990). Reading images. Victoria, Australia: Deakin University Press.
47.
Latour, B.
(1987). Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press.
48.
Latour, B.
(1991). Technology is society made durable. In J. Law (Ed.), A sociology of monsters: Essays on power, technology, and domination (pp. 103-131). London: Routledge.
49.
Latour, B.
(1992). Where are the missing masses? The sociology of a few mundane artifacts. In W. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping technology/building society: Studies in sociotechnical change (pp. 225-258). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
50.
Latour, B.
(1993). We have never been modern (C. Porter, Trans.). Hemel Hempstead, UK: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
51.
Latour, B.
, & Woolgar, S. (1986). Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Previously published as Laboratory life: The social construction of scientific facts, 1979, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage)
52.
Law, J.
(Ed.). (1986). Power, action, and belief: A new sociology of knowledge?London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
53.
Law, J.
(1987). Technology and heterogenous engineering: The case of Portuguese expansion. In W. E. Bijker, T. P. Hughes, & T. Pinch (Eds.), The social construction of technological systems (pp. 111-134). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
54.
Law, J.
(Ed.). (1991). A sociology of monsters: Essays on power, technology, and domination. London: Routledge.
55.
Law, J.
(1994). Organizing modernity. Oxford: Blackwell.
56.
Leech, G.
, & Short, M. (1981). Style in fiction. Harlow, UK: Longman.
57.
Lynch, M.
(1985). Art and artifact in laboratory science. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
58.
Macdonald, S.
(1994). Professional and academic writing in the humanities and social sciences. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
59.
Mackenzie, D.
(1990). Inventing accuracy: A historical sociology of nuclear missile guidance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
60.
Musil, R.
(1953). The man without qualities (E. Wilkins & e. Kaiser, Trans.). New York: G. P. Putnam. (Original work published 1930)
61.
Myers, G.
(1985). The social construction of two biologists' proposals. Written Communication, 2, 219-245.
62.
Myers, G.
(1991). Conflicting perceptions of plans for an academic centre. Research Policy, 20, 217-235.
63.
Myers, G.
(1993). Centering: Proposals for an interdisciplinary research centre. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 18, 433-459.
64.
Myers, G.
(1994). Words in ads. London: Edward Arnold.
65.
Myers, G.
(1995a). From discovery to invention: The writing and rewriting of two patents. Social Studies of Science, 25, 57-105.
66.
Myers, G.
(1995b). “The power is yours”: Agency and plot in Captain Planet. In C. Bazelgette & D. Buckingham (Eds.), In front of the children (pp. 62-74). London: BFI Books.
67.
Nelkin, D.
(1987). Selling science. New York: Freeman.
68.
Packer, K.
, & Webster, A. (1995). Patents and academic-industrial relations. Social Studies of Science, 25, 107-117.
69.
Rosen, P.
(1993). The social construction of mountain bikes. Social Studies of Science, 23, 479-514.
70.
The Royal Society
. (1985). The public understanding of science. London: Author.
71.
Secord, A.
(1994). Science in the pub: Artisan botanists in early nineteenth-century Lancashire. History of Science, 32, 269-315.
72.
Shapin, S.
(1988). Following scientists around [Review of the book Science in Action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society]. Social Studies of Science, 18, 533-550.
73.
Shapin, S.
, & Schaffer, S. (1985). Leviathan and the air-pump. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
74.
Singleton, V.
, & Michael, M. (1993). Actor-networks and ambivalence: General practitioners in the UK cervical screening programme. Social Studies of Science, 23, 227-264.
75.
Star, S. L.
(1991). Power, technology, and the phenomenology of conventions: On being allergic to onions. In J. Law (Ed.), A sociology of monsters: Essays on power, technology, and domination (pp. 26-56). London: Routledge.
76.
Star, S. L.
, & Greisemer, J. (1989). Institutional ecology, “translations,” and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39. Social Studies of Science, 19, 387-420.
77.
van Dijk, T.
(1988). News as discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
78.
Witte, S.
(1992). Context, text, intertext: Toward a constructivist semiotic of writing. Written Communication, 9, 237-308.
79.
Woolgar, S.
(1988). Science: The very idea. London: Ellis Horwood/Tavistock.
80.
Wynne, B.
(1982). Rationality and ritual: The Windscale Inquiry and nuclear decision in Britain. Chalfont St. Giles, UK: British Society for the History of Science.
81.
Wynne, B.
(1992). Misunderstood misunderstanding: Social identities and public up-take of science. Public Understanding of Science, 1, 281-304.
82.
Wynne, B.
(1994). Public understanding of science. In S. Jasanoff, G. E. Markle, J. C. Peterson, & T. Pinch (Eds.), Handbook of science and technology studies (pp. 361-388). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
83.
Yearley, S.
(1991). The green case. London: HarperCollins.
84.
Yearley, S.
(1994). The environmental challenge to science studies. In S. Jasanoff, G. E. Markle, J. C. Peterson, & T. Pinch (Eds.), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (pp. 457-479). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
