"Engineering Writing/Writing Engineering" by Dorothy A. Winsor

First and foremost, this article is a very nice example of an easy-to-read discourse analysis. Winsor traces the means of text production within Engineering starting with the text itself and moving backwards to the shared ideologies that guide the social actions of these Engineers (well one in this study). These shared ideologies (beliefs about knowledge) beget shared ideas of how knowledge is created (shared methodology) and how knowledge transmited (shared rhetoric or shared genres). In the article, she points too Data sheets, graphs, progress reports and technical reports. To choose which genre is used when, situational rhetorical decisions are made to determine the best modes of delivery and style. So, the discoures determines the available means of communication (appicable rhetorics and thier corresponding genres) and then situational rhetoric specifices the choice.

This is the process through which Phillips wandered when faced with a presentation to give at an Engineering conference about an engine (go figure). So, there were certain things to consider about Engineering when this process all started. First knowledge for the report had be constructed. So their was a certain methodology for creating this knowledge that would be accepted in the discourse community of Engineering. In this case lab testing and certain procedures for collecting and recording data. The data was then recorded (memoria) in a data sheet (an acceptable genre for recording data). But it is not an acceptable genre for transmitting data. So, to present the knowledge gained, he turned to graphs and Progress Reports and Technical Reports (344). But, he had to only choose the best genre for transmitting the data. The decision was made based on a situation analysis: they used all three. But they used each one in specific way for a specific end.

So it seems the flow goes like this: ideology, discourse, methodology, rhetoric, genre, text.

Winsor also throws agency into the mix. She says that Engineers refelct and reaffirm their own agency as engineers by participating in these ideological, discursive, methodological, and rhetorical processes. Also, she comments on how Engineering as a discourse is reaffirmed through these processes due their repititon and they manners in which that repitition is stored as knowledge.

Works Cited

Winsor, Dorothy A. "Engineering Writing/Writing Engineering" in Central Works in Technical Communication. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.