I came about it completely through serendipity. A colleague who I've never met called me to wax about the challenges of school and get some advice on how I manage.
Me: "Great!" I said, "What are you studying?"
Her: "It's an online degree program through Boston University in Health Communication."
Me: (angelic "hallelujah!" in my ears and lit overhead by a ray of heavenly light)
The two classes I registered for this quarter are Ethics in Science Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of Science. The coursework is very similar (although I've only had two classes of each thus far) and I like that I can apply one to the other, but the latter has way too many undergrads in it for me and is so like the former that I told the prof tonight that I was dropping it. The undergrads were great: very engaged, did the homework, etc. But they're too early in their education for the conversation to get very advanced. Maybe that's selling them short to say that (generalizations are dumb), but since the content between the classes overlaps I don't think I'll miss much. Plus, now I can use that cash to find a Health Communications class!
While I've enjoyed the discourse on rhetoric, I knew it wasn't quite what I was looking for. A discussion of the use of rhetoric in science is so theoretical. It reminds me of critical writing: looking for symbolism and subtexts where none exists. Sometimes a conch shell is just a conch shell. Yes, scientific papers are written in passive voice and that can be interpreted as an intent to deceive or shirk responsibility for the work, I guess, but that certainly is not the intent of most scientists. Scientists write in the passive voice because they're imitating every other research paper out there. Who knows where the convention started.
Thank you, Providence!
What *is* the difference between rhetoric and communication? Is rhetoric an analysis of the words, where communication is an analysis of the effectiveness of the words?
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