Early Engineering Writing Textbooks and the Anthropological Complexity of Disciplinary Discourse

Abstract

The evolution of technical communication conventions in America is more anthropologically complex than the traditional linkage to the scientific plain-style tradition suggests. Analysis of leading ideas in early 20th-century engineering writing textbooks and other primary sources demonstrates that disciplinary discourse conventions develop from an intricate nexus of human motivations, beliefs, and social activity. This article explores currents in American social and intellectual history that explain this complex, sophisticated view of language, which combines a rhetorically sensitive formalism with the ideas of professional literacy and cultural reading to facilitate communication with various audiences and to reinforce the status and dignity of the emerging profession.

Ideas About the English Language in Early Technical Writing Textbooks

“…Many articles I have mentioned also restrict the function of technical communication solely to the transmission ofinformation, implicitly adopting the linguistically discredited Conduit Model of communication (Reddy, 1979). However, the authors of the textbooks in my study argue that the language of engineers-which (again) at the time often was referred to as "technical writing" (Connors, 1982;Hagge, 1995)-functions in ways that most of the extant historical research has ignored. I will argue that the selfstyled technical writing conventions developed during the first decades of this century and collected in my sources resulted from engineers' unique position in American society as applied scientists who often became managers of extensive private or public organizations.…”

“…Thus, what the textbooks in this study say about engineering writing perforce applies to technical writing as well, and one of my objectives in the larger project (Hagge, 1995) of which this paper is a part is to extend Connors's work by showing how these textbooks institutionalized ideas about technical language already current in professional engineering circles. Textbook authors took great pains to base the discourse conventions they codified on the real-world written work of actual engineers and on writing standards developed by professional engineering societies and promulgated in professional engineeringjoumals, reference books, and style guides (Hagge, 1995). That is, these earlytextbooks serve as reliable indicators of the profession's concep(ualizations of technical language, which, in turn, are inextricably connected to broader trends described by American social and intellectual historians.…”

“…Aydelotte's reader for engineering students contains essays by some of America's most eminent engineers, such as John Lyle Harrington, John Butler Johnson, and George S. Morison. The Sample Textbooks do appear to reflect the conventions and practices of the emerging engineering profession (Hagge, 1995) and thus are important sources of information concerning the institutionalization of ideas about engineering language.…”

“…237, 259-260, 279), suggests that its users considered it distinctive. Constituents of this language variety are codified as formal conventions and promulgated and institutionalized in specialist publications of engineering societies, which textbookwriters often exhort their readers to peruse (Hagge, 1995):…”

“…The engineering societies to which the Sample Textbooks refer many times (Hagge, 1995) were of the utmost importance in a practicing professional's life. Why this should be so appears from a brief analysis of broader historical trends.…”