Introduction [to The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Communication]

This handbook approaches the study of scientific communication from a primarily rhetorical perspective, though some chapters also contain some linguistic and narrative analysis as well. A rhetorical perspective is a form of textual analysis that focuses on the purpose(s) of a text, bearing in mind the text’s effectiveness with respect to one or more target audiences. A rhetorical perspective, like other forms of textual analysis, is informed and shaped by organizational, national, and cultural contexts. Additionally, this handbook largely considers scientific communication—communication among scientists, including, in some cases, citizen scientists who participate in the scientific process—rather than science communication—communication between scientists and nonscientists. Finally, this handbook considers science as the largely inductive, experimental process that is characterized in general by partition, measurement, and quantitative analysis and that has evolved since the Scientific Revolution, centered mostly in Europe, in the late 1600s. It is fair to say that today no rhetoric defines our lives more than scientific rhetoric. As the form of rhetoric most commonly perceived as a source of knowledge, reality, and truth, scientific rhetoric occupies a dominant, privileged position among the types of rhetorics that shape human experience. Scientific rhetoric creates and consumes vast amounts of discursive energy for issues from the monumental to the mundane. Given its enormous epistemological and ontological potential, then, scientific rhetoric deserves careful, continual analysis from scholars of rhetoric and communication. Additionally, scientists need to be aware of the powerful role that scientific rhetoric plays in our culture and attend to their work with this discourse assiduously and ethically.