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ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Displays of Knowledge: Text Production and Media Reproduction in Scientific Practice

Wickman, Chad
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1247068612

Abstract Details

2009, PHD, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English.
A growing body of scholarship in writing and rhetoric studies has explored the relationship between everyday writing activity and the broader systems within which texts organize and reproduce local action. Broad in scope, studies have specifically shown that the concept of writing tends to be as diverse in form and function as the cultural settings within which it is enacted as a literacy practice: whether in urban communities, academic disciplines, or professional workplaces. This dissertation builds on and extends existing scholarship through a qualitative study of writing and multimodal text production in a scientific research setting. Three case studies form the core of my dissertation and were developed systematically over the course of approximately one year I spent studying scientists at work. The first examines the inscriptions and texts that a chemist brings to bear on the production of materials used in physics experimentation; the second examines the distributed processes through which experimental physicists characterize materials and display their work visually and textually; and the third examines the multiple media and written forms that theoretical physicists deploy to model and simulate material systems. Individually, each case provided unique points for data collection and analysis in my study. And together, these cases illustrate the ways in which writing shapes the production, circulation, and legitimization of knowledge in a modern scientific workplace.
Christina Haas, Dr. (Committee Chair)
Raymond Craig, Dr. (Committee Member)
Pamela Takayoshi, Dr. (Committee Member)
Peter Palffy-Muhoray, Dr. (Committee Member)
John Stalvey, Dr. (Committee Member)
245 p.
Literacy; Rhetoric; Social Research
Scientific writing; rhetoric of science; writing in the disciplines; multimodality; semiotics; visual rhetoric; technical writing; ethnography; workplace literacy.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Wickman, C. (2009). Displays of Knowledge: Text Production and Media Reproduction in Scientific Practice [Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1247068612

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Wickman, Chad. Displays of Knowledge: Text Production and Media Reproduction in Scientific Practice. 2009. Kent State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1247068612.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Wickman, Chad. "Displays of Knowledge: Text Production and Media Reproduction in Scientific Practice." Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1247068612

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

kent1247068612
664
© 2009, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.