We review rhetorical studies of the public understanding of science that were published in journals since the last major review in this journal (1994–2011). Our review suggests that a vibrant and increasingly sophisticated body of research 1) has pursued Gross’s (1994) emphasis on contextual studies and studies emphasizing judgment of scientific rhetorics, 2) is producing a growing body of work designed to develop specific strategies for scientific rhetorics, and 3) has produced a host of studies exploring science–public interactions (rather than producing sustained fora for such interactions, as Gross argued for). It has, however, 4) produced only modest independent development of rhetorical theories.
BanningME (2009) When poststructural theory and contemporary politics collide: The vexed case of global warming. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies6(3): 285–304.
2.
BassJ (1998) Hearts of darkness and hot zones: The ideologeme of imperial contagion in recent accounts of viral outbreaks. Quarterly Journal of Speech84(4): 430–447.
3.
BennettJA (2008) Passing, protesting, and the arts of resistance: Infiltrating the ritual space of blood donation. Quarterly Journal of Speech94(1): 23–43.
4.
BrockBLScottRLChesebroJW (1989) Methods of Rhetorical Criticism: A Twentieth-Century Perspective, 3rd edn, revised. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
CeccarelliL (2011) Manufactured scientific controversy: Science, rhetoric, and public debate. Rhetoric & Public Affairs14(2): 195–228.
7.
ConditCM (2007) How culture and science make race “genetic”: Motives and strategies for discrete categorization of the continuous and heterogeneous. Literature and Medicine26(1): 240–268.
8.
ConstantinidesH (2001) The duality of scientific ethos: Deep and surface structures. Quarterly Journal of Speech87(1): 61–72.
9.
CrickNGabrielJ (2010) The conduit between lifeworld and system: Habermas and the rhetoric of public scientific controversies. Rhetoric Society Quarterly40(3): 201–223.
10.
DingH (2009) Rhetorics of alternative media in an emerging epidemic: SARS, censorship, and extra-institutional risk communication. Technical Communication Quarterly18(4): 327–350.
11.
DouglasRM (2009) The green backlash: Scepticism or scientism?Social Epistemology23(2): 145–163.
12.
DyehouseJ (2011) “A textbook case revisited”: Visual rhetoric and series patterning in the American Museum of Natural History’s horse evolution displays. Technical Communication Quarterly20(3): 327–346.
13.
EndresD (2009) The rhetoric of nuclear colonialism: Rhetorical exclusion of American Indian arguments in the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste siting decision. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies6(1): 39–60.
14.
EvansRKotchetkovaILangerS (2009) Just around the corner: Rhetorics of progress and promise in genetic research. Public Understanding of Science18(1): 43–59.
15.
FlemingCGoodallJ (2002) Dangerous Darwinism. Public Understanding of Science11(3): 259–271.
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GronnvollMLandauJ (2010) From viruses to Russian roulette to dance: A rhetorical critique and creation of genetic metaphors. RSQ: Rhetoric Society Quarterly40(1): 46–70.
17.
GrossAG (1994) The roles of rhetoric in the public understanding of science. Public Understanding of Science3(1): 3–23.
18.
HappeKE (2006a) Heredity, gender and the discourse of ovarian cancer. New Genetics and Society25(2): 171–196.
19.
HappeKE (2006b) The rhetoric of race in breast cancer research. Patterns of Prejudice40(4–5): 461–480.
20.
HassBKleineM (2003) The rhetoric of junk science. Technical Communication Quarterly12(3): 267–284.
21.
JackJ (2009) Lydia J. Roberts’ nutrition research and the rhetoric of “democratic” science. College Composition and Communication61(1): 109–129.
22.
JensenRE (2007) Using science to argue for sexual education in U.S. public schools. Science Communication29(2): 217–241.
23.
JohnsonD (2004) Selling Sarafem: Priestly and bardic discourses in the construction of premenstrual syndrome. Women’s Studies in Communication27: 331–351.
24.
JohnsonD (2006) Dawkins’ myth: The religious dominance of evolutionary discourse. Journal of Communication and Religion29: 285–314.
25.
JohnsonD (2008) Psychiatric power: The post-museum as a site of rhetorical alignment. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies5(4): 344–362.
26.
JordanJW (2004) The rhetorical limits of the “plastic body”. Quarterly Journal of Speech90(3): 327–358.
27.
JordanJW (2009) Reshaping the “pillow angel”: Plastic bodies and the rhetoric of normal surgical solutions. Quarterly Journal of Speech95(1): 20–42.
28.
KeränenL (2005) Mapping misconduct: Demarcating legitimate science from “fraud” in the B-06 lumpectomy controversy. Argumentation and Advocacy42(2): 94–113.
29.
KoerberAArnettEJCumbieT (2008) Distortion and the politics of pain relief: A Habermasian analysis of medicine in the media. Journal of Business and Technical Communication22(3): 364–391.
30.
KoteykoNThelwallMNerlichB (2010) From carbon markets to carbon morality: Creative compounds as framing devices in online discourses on climate change mitigation. Science Communication32(1): 25–54.
31.
KuypersJ (2000) From science, moral-poetics: Dr. James Dobson’s response to the fetal tissue research initiative. Quarterly Journal of Speech86(2): 146–167.
32.
LarsonBMNerlichBWallisP (2005) Metaphors and biorisks: The war on infectious diseases and invasive species. Science Communication26(3): 243–268.
33.
LesslTM (1999) The Galileo legend as scientific folklore. Quarterly Journal of Speech85(2): 146–168.
34.
LesslTM (2002) Gnostic scientism and the prohibition of questions. Rhetoric & Public Affairs5(1): 133–157.
35.
LesslTM (2007) The culture of science and the rhetoric of scientism: From Francis Bacon to the Darwin fish. Quarterly Journal of Speech93(2): 123–149.
36.
LittlefieldM (2009) Constructing the organ of deceit: The rhetoric of fMRI and brain fingerprinting in post-9/11 America. Science, Technology, & Human Values34(3): 365–392.
37.
LopezJJ (2007) Notes on metaphors, notes as metaphors: The genome as musical spectacle. Science Communication29(1): 7–34.
38.
LynchJA (2009) Articulating scientific practice: Understanding Dean Hamer’s “gay gene” study as overlapping material, social, and rhetorical registers. Quarterly Journal of Speech95(4): 435–456.
39.
McClureK (2009) Resurrecting the narrative paradigm: Identification and the case of young earth creationism. Rhetoric Society Quarterly39(2): 189–211.
40.
MechlingEWMechlingJ (1995) The atom according to Disney. Quarterly Journal of Speech81(4): 436–453.
41.
NerlichBJamesR (2009) “The post-antibiotic apocalypse” and the “war on superbugs”: Catastrophe discourse in microbiology, its rhetorical form and political function. Public Understanding of Science18(5): 574–590.
42.
ParkHJ (2001) The creation-evolution debate: Carving creationism in the public mind. Public Understanding of Science10(2): 173–186.
43.
ParoskeM (2009) Deliberating international science policy controversies: Uncertainty and AIDS in South Africa. Quarterly Journal of Speech95(2): 148–170.
44.
PaulD (2004) Spreading chaos. Written Communication21(1): 32–68.
45.
RattoM (2006) Foundations and profiles: Splicing metaphors in genetic databases and biobanks. Public Understanding of Science15(1): 31–53.
46.
ReevesC (1998) Rhetoric and the AIDS virus hunt. Quarterly Journal of Speech84(1): 1–22.
47.
ScottJB (2002) The public policy debate over newborn HIV testing: A case study of the knowledge enthymeme. Rhetoric Society Quarterly32(2): 57–84.
48.
SidlerMJonesN (2008) Genetics interfaces: Representing science and enacting public discourse in online spaces. Technical Communication Quarterly18(1): 28–48.
49.
SkinnerC (2009) “She will have science”: Ethos and audience in Mary Gove’s lectures to ladies. Rhetoric Society Quarterly39(3): 240–259.
50.
SpoelPGoforthDCheuHPearsonD (2008) Public communication of climate change science: Engaging citizens through apocalyptic narrative explanation. Technical Communication Quarterly18(1): 49–81.
51.
TilleryD (2003) Radioactive waste and technical doubts: Genre and environmental opposition to nuclear waste sites. Technical Communication Quarterly12(4): 405–421.
52.
VäliverronenEHellstenI (2002) From “burning library” to “green medicine”: The role of metaphors in communicating biodiversity. Science Communication24(2): 229–245.
53.
WanderPC (1976) The rhetoric of science. Western Speech Communication40(4): 226–235.
54.
XiaoX (1995) China encounters Darwinism: A case of intercultural rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech81(1): 83–99.
55.
XiaoX (2004) The 1923 scientistic campaign and Dao-discourse: A cross-cultural study of the rhetoric of science. Quarterly Journal of Speech90(4): 469–492.
