Large institutions, like hospitals and juvenile mental health facilities, are often places where members from several different professions come to interact and negotiate ideological differences. This study explores the authorial identities of some of these members in the electronic charts of a large juvenile mental health facility. These charts portray their authors' ethos as that which is fluid and variable, craftily moving between the neutral observer status of scientific rhetoric and the expert blame-shifter of social work rhetoric. I argue that these multi-disciplinary identities are best understood when using a rhetorical frame of métis, a rarely studied rhetorical strategy.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
McGeeM. C. and LyneJ. R., What Are Nice Folks Like You Doing in a Place Like This?: Some Entailments of Treating Knowledge Claims Rhetorically, in The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences, NelsonJ. S.MegillA., and McCloskeyD. (eds.), The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, pp. 381–406, 1987.
2.
SegalJ. Z., Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, Illinois, 2005.
3.
HeifferonB. and BrownS. C., Rhetoric of Healthcare: Essays toward a New Disciplinary Inquiry. Hampton Press, Cresskill, New Jersey, 2008.
4.
SegalJ. Z., Writing and Medicine: Text and Context, in Writing in the WorkplaceSpilkaR. (ed.), Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, Illinois, pp. 84–98, 1993.
5.
MillerC., The Presumptions of Expertise: The Role of Ethos in Risk Analysis, Configurations, 11: 2, pp. 163–202, 2003.
6.
MyersG., Writing Biology: Texts in the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 1990.
7.
GrossA., The Rhetoric of Science, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1990.
8.
PrelliL., The Rhetorical Construction of Scientific Ethos, in Rhetoric in the Human Sciences, SimmonsH. (ed.), Sage, New York, pp. 48–68, 1989.
9.
ParéA., Writing as a Way into Social Work: Genres Sets, Genre Systems, and Distributed Cognition, in Transitions: Writing in Academic and Workplace Settings, DiazP. and ParéA. (eds.), Hampton, Cresskill, New Jersey, pp. 145–166, 2000.
10.
HallC.SarangiS., and SlembrouckS., Moral Construction in Social Work Discourse, in The Construction of Professional Discourse, GunnarssonB. L.LinellP., and NordbergB. (eds.), Longman, New York, pp. 265–291, 1997.
11.
DetienneM. and VernatJ. P., Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, 1978.
12.
KoppelsonK., Rhetoric on the Edge of Cunning: Or the Performance of Neutrality (re)Considered as a Composition Pedagogy for Student Resistance, College Composition and Communication, 55: 1, pp. 115–146, 2003.
13.
PophamS. L. and GrahamS. L., A Structural Analysis of Coherence in Electronic Charts of Juvenile Mental Health, Technical Communication Quarterly, 17: 2, pp. 149–172, 2008.
14.
AtkinsonD., Combining Diverse Approaches in the Analysis of Scientific Discourse, in Discourse Studies in Composition, BartonE. and StygallG. (eds.), Hampton, Cresskill, New Jersey, pp. 201–227, 2002.
15.
PophamS. L., Forms as Boundary Genres in Medicine, Business and Science, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 19: 3, 2005.
16.
PophamS. L., A Rhetoric of Pragmatism: An Analysis of Medical-Business Letters, Rhetoric of Health: A New Disciplinary Inquiry, HeifferonB. and BrownS. C. (eds.), Hampton, Cresskill, New Jersey, 2008.
17.
PophamS. L., An Exploration of Community Engagement in a Learning Community Using Wireless Laptops, Journal of Learning Communities Research, 5: 2, 2010.
18.
PophamS. L., Assessment of Online Professional Writing Programs, Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication, 2011.
19.
PophamS. L.ArduserL.CookCargile K.HovdeM.KoerberA.MogullS., and ZemlianskyP., Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Network of Communication Channels: Lessons Learned from a Communication Survey, Programmatic Perspectives, 4: 1, 2012.
20.
ThrushE. A. and PophamS. L., Teaching Technical Communication to a Global Online Student Audience, in Online Education 2.0: Evolving, Adapting, and Reinventing Online Technical Communication, CookCargile K. and Grant-DavieK. (eds.), Technical Communication Series, Baywood, Amityville, New York, 2013.
