Lynda C . Olman

For decades, climate scientists have been producing data demonstrating that climate change is a real, urgent threat to humanity. Yet this has not translated into political action—or even widespread public concern—at the scale needed to tackle the problem in time. Has climate science failed us? This volume tackles the question of what role—if any—science can play in the future of the climate-change debate. Should science be centered when communicating about climate risks on the ground? Who is able to access and use the knowledge science produces, and to what ends? How does science relate to other ways of knowing the world around us? The pieces in this volume, predominantly by emerging scholars, approach these questions from different angles to ask how we know and experience the climate and, ultimately, how we can transform this knowledge into action.

In this essay, we propose a hack of existing models of environmental risk communication so that they will better address Anthropocene risks. We focus our discussion on a key area of risk communication: environmental risk visualization (ERV). Drawing on social-constructionist theories of risk and our own research on ERVs, we assemble criteria for designing and evaluating ERVs based on their hybrid collectivity---meaning their ability to collect agents around themselves over time and across traditional Modern divides between human/nonhuman, expert/nonexpert, and nature/culture. We test the criteria on two ERVs from the 2011 Fukushima disaster and discuss the resulting promises and challenges of an approach to risk communication motivated by hybrid collectivity.

Communicating weather-related hazards to the public can be a challenge for meteorologists, particularly given the nature of confidence levels in forecasting science. Despite these challenges, communicating high-impact weather remains extremely important because it has implications for the safety, health, and resilience of impacted communities. Because the dynamics of this issue are complex, solutions to weather hazard communication benefit from interdisciplinary solutions and multiple types of expertise. Our work demonstrates how rhetoric, a foundational communication discipline, can be applied to improving weather forecast communication. Applying a rhetorical framework allows the identification of communication strategies that not only invite public involvement but encourage users to act as conduits for weather information distribution. As a result, trust can be developed between the National Weather Service (NWS) and public audiences. The initial results support the hypothesis tha...

As infographics are implicated in racist policies like redlining, we need to decolonize the genre. But previous studies have found that infographics’ panopticism—their at-a-glance reduction of complex issues—makes them tend to support hegemonic power structures in spite of their designers’ intentions. A way out of this dilemma can be located in the first attempt to decolonize the infographic: W.E.B. Du Bois's series depicting Black life in the United States, created for the 1900 Paris Exposition. This topological analysis of Du Bois's decolonial project reveals both problematic and promising avenues for our own attempts to decolonize the infographic.

This report details the second phase of an ongoing research project investigating the visual invention and composition processes of scientific researchers. In this phase, four academic researchers completed think-aloud protocols as they composed graphics for research presentations; they also answered follow-up questions about their visual education, pedagogy, genres of practice, and interactions with publics. Results are presented first as narratives and then as topologies—visualizations of the communal beliefs, values, and norms ( topoi) that connect the individual narratives to wider community practices. Results point toward an ecological model of visual invention and composition strategies in the crafting of research graphics. They also suggest that these strategies may be underrepresented in scientists’ education. More explicit attention to them may help improve STEM visual literacy for nonexperts.

Scientists and policymakers alike frequently call for the elimination of rhetoric from discussions of climate science. These calls betray some fundamental misunderstandings about the 2500-year-old art of rhetoric. Once these are dispelled, it becomes apparent that what we need for effective climate-science debate is not less rhetoric but more: that is, more sensitivity to the political frame within which every debate takes place and how that frame shapes deliberation; more awareness of the unstated values and assumptions supporting statements made on all sides; more ways to link climate to stakeholders’ daily lives, values, and decisions. This article briefly introduces readers to the history and theory of rhetoric for two purposes: (1) explaining the various and sometimes contradictory ways in which this ancient discipline shapes the communication of climate science and (2) providing readers with a few simple but powerful tools for coping with climate debates. WIREs Clim Change 2017, 8:e452. doi: 10.1002/wcc.452 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

In this article, the author proposes a methodology for the rhetorical analysis of scientific, technical, mathematical, and engineering (STEM) discourse based on the common topics (topoi) of this discourse. Beginning with work by Miller, Prelli, and other rhetoricians of STEM discourse—but factoring in related studies in cognitive linguistics—she argues for a reimagining of topoi as basic schema that interrelate texts, objects, and writers in STEM communities. Then, she proposes a topical method as a stable, broadly applicable heuristic that may help fit the rhetorical dynamics of the much-studied research article (RA) into the wider context of written technical discourse—exactly the type of improvement that Gross, Fahnestock, and others have proposed. Finally, as an illustration of this argument, the author performs a pilot topical survey of 18 RAs representing six STEM disciplines. This survey yields a set of 30 topoi used samplewide that can form a starting point for future survey...

As rhetoricians turn increasingly to study non-Western rhetorics, they rely on postcolonial scholarship but sometimes encounter difficulties adapting its key methods—in particular, hybridity. While it is quite clearly a necessary concept for transnational rhetorics, nevertheless its literariness, ubiquity, and vagueness about agency limit its utility. In this paper I draw from relevant work in genre studies, sociolinguistics, and social constructivism to propose a new version of hybridity that can take account of hybrid rhetorical forms, account for their agency with audiences, and be accountable to stakeholders in transnational settings where rhetoricians work. I finish by applying this new method to a protestant sermon preached in Mali and noting both the successes and challenges of engaging an accountable notion of hybridity.

This article presents results from a qualitative pilot survey of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) researchers concerning techniques used to create graphics for research articles. The survey aimed to induce a methodological vocabulary for a larger project designed to describe and improve STEM visual literacy for nonexperts. However, the survey also revealed interesting problems for investigation—chief among them a mismatch between STEM visual pedagogy and praxis. In addition, participants supplied a handlist of STEM visual communication texts that have informed their praxis. Survey results are presented in the form of a topology—a frequency-based representation of the topics framing participants’ discussion of STEM visual invention.

This chapter employs a case in early American ecology to propose a topological approach to technical graphics. Tracing the topos/position of the scientific observer through Roscoe Pound, Frederick E. Clements, and Henry Cowles’s formative work in botanical geography from reveals a series of shifts starting from situated, human observation and culminating in synoptic or “god’s-eye” observation. These shifts indexed crucial political dynamics in American environmental discourse—namely, the initiation of biopolitics in treating ecosystems as bodies to be governed; and, the privileging of expert observers over lay observers. The chapter concludes by noting particularities of visual shifts to synopticism that may assist rhetoricians who wish to intervene in emergent biopolitical discourses.

... May 2003 Page 4. Dedication I give this work back to Him from whom I received it: Jeremiah 33:3 This is also for my father, Barbara Dover, and Nancy T. Harris. Page 5. Acknowledgements ... and science studies. In The Counterfeiters Hugh Kenner develops hypotheses ...

In this issue, we present a special forum on Bruno Latour, an amazingly eclectic and influential thinker whose work in philosophy, religion, anthropology, and sociology of science has been taken up with enthusiasm recently by scholars of rhetoric and writing studies. I am grateful to Lynda Walsh for offering to publish her September 2015 interview with Latour in RSQ and for her assistance in codesigning this forum and editing the responses. The forum begins with Walsh’s introduction: a comprehensive and incisive account of Latour’s career and the basis of his appeal for rhetoricians. In the interview itself—often more of a conversation than interview—Walsh queries Latour on his relationship to rhetoric: through his schooling, disciplinary attachments, choice of terminologies, and the potential applications of his ideas. There follows a set of invited responses by scholars whose work has been influenced by Latour. Finally, Carolyn R. Miller offers a provocative counterpoint on the wh...

List of figures List of tables List of contributors Introduction: Sociocultural approaches to language and science David R. Gruber and Lynda C. Olman PART I History and Development of Language and Science Language and Science from a Rhetorical Perspective Leah Ceccarelli Social semiotic approaches to language in science: A history of engagement with language & science Kimberly Gomez Public Understanding Of Science: Popularisation, Perceptions and Publics Jenni Metcalf and Michelle Riedlinger Science, journalism, and the language of (un)certainty: A review of science journalists' use of language in reports on science Lars Guenther and Antonia Weber Language and Science in Science and Technology Studies Sheila Jasanoff PART II Language and Power Language, Power and Public Engagement in Science Melanie Smallman Rhetoric's Materialist Traditions and the Shifting Terrain of Economic Agency Catherine Chaput Accounting for 'Genetics' and 'Race' Requires a Use-Focused Theory of Language Celeste Condit Encomium of the Harlot, or, a Rhetoric of Refusal Davi Thornton Gender and the Language of Science: The Case of CRISPR Jordynn Jack PART III Language and Pedagogy Rhetorical Invention and Visual Rhetoric: Toward a Multimodal Pedagogy Of Scientific Writing Molly Hartzog Use of Personal Pronouns in Science Laboratory Reports Jean Parkinson Dialogic Approaches to Supporting Argumentation in the Elementary Science Classroom Emily Reigh and Jonathan Osborn The 'objective truths' of the classroom: Using Foucault and discourse analysis to unpack structuring concepts in science and mathematics education Anna Llewellyn Iterative language pedagogy for science writing: Discovering the language of Architectural Engineering Maria Freddi PART IV Language and Materiality Of Matter And Money: Material-Semiotic Methods For The Study Of Science And Language S. Scott Graham Anatomical Presencing:Visualisation, Model-Making, and Embodied Interaction in a Language-Rich Space T. Kenny Fountain Narrative, Drama, and Science communication Emma Weitkamp Language, Materiality, and Emotions in Science Learning Settings Elizabeth Hufnagel The Materialist Rhetoric about SARS Sequelae in China: Networked Risk Communication, Social Justice, and Immaterial Labor Huiling Ding PART V Language and Public Engagement Exploring Public Engagement in Environmental Rhetoric Aimee Roundtree Heuristics for Communicating Science, Risk, and Crisis: Encouraging Guided Inquiry in Challenging Rhetorical Situations Katherine E. Rowan and Andrew S. Pyle When Expertises Clash: (Topic) Modeling Stasis about Complex Issues Across Large Discursive Corpora Zoltan Majdik Blasting for Science: Rhetorical Antidotes to Anti-vax Discourse in the Italian Public Sphere Pamela Pietrucci Exploring Conversations about Science in New Media Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher PART VI Futures for Language and Science Rhetorical Futures For The Study Of Language and Science: Theorizing Interpublics In/For Healthcare Jennifer Malkowski Ecologies Of Genres And An Ecology Of Languages Of Science: Current And Future Debates Carmen Perez-Llantada Becoming the Other: The Body in Translation Helene Mialet Science Communication on Social Media: Current Trends, Future Challenges Miguel Alcibar Language and Science: Emerging Themes in Public Science Communication Sarah R. Davies Bibliography Index

Preface Chapter 1-Prelude: Scientists as Prophets and the Rhetoric of Prophecy Chapter 2-The Delphic Oracle and Ancient Prophetic Ethos Chapter 3-The Natural Magician and the Prophet: Francis Bacon's Ethical Alchemy Chapter 4-Confirming Signs: The Prophetic Ethos of the Early Royal Society Chapter 5-Interlude: Competing Ethical Models and a Catch-22 Chapter 6-J. Robert Oppenheimer: Cultic prophet Chapter 7-Rachel Carson, Kairotic Prophet Chapter 8-Media, Metaphor, and the " Chapter 9-Climate Change and the Technologies of Prophecy Chapter 10-Postlude: Problems and Solutions Appendix: Key Reception and Constitution Sources Notes Selected Bibliography

... May 2003 Page 4. Dedication I give this work back to Him from whom I received it: Jeremiah 33:3 This is also for my father, Barbara Dover, and Nancy T. Harris. Page 5. Acknowledgements ... and science studies. In The Counterfeiters Hugh Kenner develops hypotheses ...