Applications of Kinneavy's Theory of Discourse to Technical Writing

Abstract

A GREAT DEAL of what is written and said about writing is evangelical rather than analytic, and the evangelical approach does not provide writing instructors with much beyond moral support. As Professor Dwight Stevenson recently observed, surprisingly little work has been done to develop a valid rhetoric of scientific and communication.1 Professor Stevenson doubts that traditional rhetorical theory will help, and thinks, rather, that a valid rhetoric of scientific and communication can be developed only inductively, by researchers who go into the places where . . . scientific and communication are being carried out (p. 9). I anticipate with interest the development of the rhetoric that Professor Stevenson is talking about. But I suspect that an inductive rhetoric of scientific and communication will also be comprehensible in terms of an inductive theory of discourse that takes traditional rhetoric into account. Moreover, I wonder just how useful such a rhetoric of scientific and communication will be in teaching writing to students who are not headed professionally for those places where scientific and communication are carried out. Students at many colleges and universities in basic courses called Technical Writing are, in fact, in a wide variety of disciplines: business, communications, pre-law, architecture, government, the social sciences. We might well look to existing discourse theory for useful analytic approaches to writing courses in which students from such disparate disciplines are enrolled. In particular, Professor James Kinneavy's Theory of Discourse seems to me to provide useful ways of thinking about a number of problems of such a course. To begin with, there is the problem of defining technical writing. The commonest traditional definition seems to me inadequate-not only on practical grounds for the kind of course I am talking about, but also on theoretical grounds.2 Techni-