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Overview of the History of Professional/Technical Writing English 8115 Technical Writing Baotong Gu

Overview of the History of Professional/Technical Writing English 8115 Technical Writing Baotong Gu. Aristotle: Artistic vs. Inartistic Proof. Artistic ethos, pathos, logos (stuff the rhetor creates) Inartistic witnesses, testimony, evidence (stuff the rhetor does not make up).

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Overview of the History of Professional/Technical Writing English 8115 Technical Writing Baotong Gu

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  1. Overview of the History of Professional/Technical Writing English 8115 Technical Writing Baotong Gu ENGL8115

  2. Aristotle: Artistic vs. Inartistic Proof • Artistic • ethos, pathos, logos (stuff the rhetor creates) • Inartistic • witnesses, testimony, evidence (stuff the rhetor does not make up) ENGL8115

  3. Renaissance: Francis Beacon • Two types of invention: • Invention of arts and sciences • Invention of speech and arguments • Two kinds of topics • General topics • Special topics • “places or directions of invention and inquiry in every particular knowledge, as things of great use, being mixtures of logic with the matter of sciences” ENGL8115

  4. 1900s to 1950s • Early 20th Century • technical writing classes began to be taught • 1940s • big growth • readability formulas • English professors began to be consulted • 1950s • first programs in professional writing ENGL8115

  5. 1950s to 1960s • 1952 • RPI summer program • Carnegie-Melon: weekend program • 1955 • RPI began the first graduate program in TW • 1966 • first PhD program in RPI (PhD programs established in many universities in late 80s and early 90s) ENGL8115

  6. 1970s: Focus on Text • Style, rules + recipes, modeling of generic forms • Positivism: writer translating reality to the reader • Research: personal experience, anecdotes, surveys • Plain English movements • Readability formulas ENGL8115

  7. Late 1970s and Early 1980s: Focus on the Writer • Invention • Cognitive psychology principles • Document design guidelines • Research: surveys, the first qualitative studies ENGL8115

  8. Mid to Late 1980s: Focus on the Reader • Audience • Reader-response theory • Research • 2nd wave of qualitative studies • writer + reader interactions • usability studies ENGL8115

  9. Mid 80s to Early 90s: Focus on Context • Rhetorical situation • Social construction theory • Social accommodation + innovation ENGL8115

  10. Late 80 to Present: Expansion • Socio-cognitive approach • Postmodern approaches • Oral + written texts • Visual + written • Computers + everything ENGL8115

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