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Motives for Metaphor in Scientific and Technical Communication
Timothy D. Giles
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Baywood's Technical Communications Series, Series Editor: Charles H. Sides
You can read the
Introduction for free right now, just click here.
IN PRAISE OF. . .
“Giles reminds us of the power of metaphor to shape scientific thinking and its development. This is an important book for anyone interested in practicing or teaching technical communication.”
—Stuart A. Selber, Associate Professor, Penn State University
“Motives for Metaphor presents an important and detailed account of metaphor as a key epistemological strategy for
scientific and technical disciplines. In detailed historical accounting and in case studies on the definition of he atom and
the representation and debate over cloning. Giles shows us how metaphor is crucial for invention, meaning making, and
stabilizing knowledge within scientific practices.”
—Brenton Faber, Professor, Author, Discourse, Technology & Change
"Motives can aid those learning to use metaphors effectively in science communication,
especially when communicating to a lay audience. Giles has reinforced crucial points in every chapter and thus made the learning process easy. Each chapter ends Giles gives readers a clear idea of what metaphor is, why it is such a crucial tool in scientific and technical Communication,and how it improves the understanding of scientific theories and evolves as the
theories change. Understanding how to use metaphor correctly means wielding an effective communication tool, and Motives can help science communicators and scientists
in this process."
—Misha Kidambi, Graduate Student in Science and Technology Journalism, Texas
A&M University,Science Editor, November – December, 2008, Volume 31, No 6
ABOUT THE BOOK
Examination of the work of scientific icons-Newton, Descartes, and others-reveals the metaphors and analogies that
directed their research and explain their discoveries. Today, scientists tend to balk at the idea of their writing
as rhetorical, much less metaphorical. How did this schism over metaphor occur in the scientific community?
To establish that scientists should use metaphors to explain science to the public and need to be conscious of how metaphor can be useful to their research, this book examines the controversy over cloning and the lack of a metaphor to explain it to a public fearful of science's power. The disjunction between metaphor and science is traced to the dispensation of the Solar System Analogy in favor of a mathematical model. Arguing that mathematics is metaphorical, the author supports the idea of all language as metaphorical-unlike many rhetoricians and philosophers of science who have proclaimed all language as metaphorical but have allowed a distinction between a metaphorical use of language and a literal use.
For technical communication pedagogy, the implications of this study suggest foregrounding metaphor in textbooks and in the classroom. Though many technical communication textbooks recommend metaphor as a rhetorical strategy, some advise avoiding it, and those that recommend it usually do so in a paragraph or two, with little direction for students on how to recognize metaphors or to how use them. This book provides the impetus for a change in the pedagogical approach to metaphor as a rhetorical tool with epistemological significance.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Timothy D. Giles has been involved in technical communication for more than 20 years. His articles on metaphor and other technical communication topics have appeared in the Journal of Technical Writing & Communication and other publications. He teaches technical communication and other writing courses for Georgia Southern University's Department of Writing and Linguistics. His Ph.D., in Rhetoric, Scientific, and Technical Communication, is from the University of Minnesota, St. Paul, and his M.A., in English, Technical and Professional Writing, is from East Carolina University, where he first began reading about metaphor in scientific and technical communication.
Intended Audience: Professors and students of technical communication; technical communication professionals; scientists and engineers.
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