Durable Research, Portable Findings: Rhetorical Methods in Case Study Research

ABSTRACT

Case studies have been a central methodology employed by scholars working in the rhetoric of science and technical communication. However, concerns have been raised about how cases are constructed and collected, and what they convey. The authors reflect on how rhetoricians of science and technical communication researchers can – and do – construct a variety of case-based mixed-methods studies in ways that may make our research more portable and durable without undercutting the important and central role of case-based analysis.

KEYWORDS:

• Case studies
• history of technical communication
• research methods
• rhetoric of science

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Rhetorical studies of science have used broader data sets, including Bazerman’s own work (1988). Technical communication research, drawing from allied fields such as human-computer interaction (HCI), has likewise relied on a range of methods, including case studies and more qualitative approaches.

2. The title of Harris’s (1997) edited collection itself, Landmark Essays on Rhetoric of Science: Case Studies, is clever for its deployment of the figure of metalepsis, implying that case studies are the defining criteria of the rhetoric of science. But more so, the collection has stood the test of time, suggesting that case studies are the intellectual anchor in our field. Movement in the field over the past 20 years has warranted an expanded second edition, a demand that Harris responded to in 2018.

3. See, on different forms of case studies, Stake (2000).

4. An overview of the Gaonkar affair is detailed in Harris’s (2002) “Knowing, Rhetoric, Science.”

5. We have obtained ethics approval for this research through the Office of Research Ethics (ORE #21110) at the University of Waterloo.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Research and Innovation [Early Researcher Award program; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [Insight Grant program.

Notes on contributors

Devon Moriarty

Devon Moriarty is a PhD Candidate in English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. She has research interests in the rhetoric of science and political communication, especially in the context of online communities like Reddit.

Paula Núñez De Villavicencio

Paula Núñez de Villavicencio is a PhD student in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. Her research interests include the political economies of wearable technology and the rhetoric of emerging digital media.

Lillian A. Black

Lillian A. Black is a Master’s student in English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. Her research interests include the implementation and pedagogical implications of multidisciplinary postsecondary education.

Monica Bustos

Monica Bustos is an undergraduate student in the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo.

Helen Cai

Helen Cai completed her undergraduate studies in the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo. She is currently a first year medical student at the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary.

Brad Mehlenbacher

Dr. Brad Mehlenbacher is an Associate Professor in English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. He is the author of Instruction and Technology: Designs for Everyday Learning (The MIT Press).

Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher

Dr. Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher is an Assistant Professor in English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. She is the PI of the Networked Expertise as a Novel Approach to Complex Problem Solving project, author of Science Communication Online: Engaging Experts and Publics on the Internet (The Ohio State UP), and coeditor of Emerging Genres in New Media Environments (Palgrave).