Rhetoric is an ancient discipline with its roots in public speech of law courts and politics in Greece. It can be defined as the study of persuasion and influence through public communication. As public communication can take many forms the study of rhetoric, in some sense, is the study of motivation.
The website Rhetoric for engineers and other practical people, at http://www.tcnj.edu/~rgraham/rhetoric/ is hosted by Ron Graham, an Engineering Consultant, with the members of the Rhetoric for Engineers mailing list. This website explains and explores Oral and Written Communications Skills for Engineers.
It is essentially an online book written by engineers for engineers. This book isn't a narrative, it may not do much good if you read it cover-to-cover. However, it can be found more useful if the book is treated more as a desktop reference. The book contains the combined knowledge and experience of hundreds of engineers and specialists in certain areas of persuasion. It is organised by subjects, and in alphabetical order, and covers many concepts, including contracting, brainstorming and engineering judgement. There are dozens of chapters, and they include: abstraction, accuracy, acronyms, advocacy, anger management, assumptions, audience, axioms, bottlenecks, brainstorming, business etiquette, business plans, CAD, CGI, CSS, chart readability, citing sources, claims, conclusions, conflict, context, contracting, conversation, cover letters, creativity, credibility, customer service, Diversity, document management, e-commerce, e-mail, engineering judgment, enumeration, equations, ethics, experiment design, FAQs, failures, fallacies, graphic design, HTML, hand calculations, human error, human factors, idioms, imperatives, innovation, instructions, intellectual property, interviews, investors, jargon, knowledge management, licensing agreements, management, manufacturing plans, marketing brochures, marketing plans, measurement, media relations, meetings, memory, mentoring, mission statements, mistakes, motivation, negotiation, netiquette, nomenclatures, note-taking, organization charts, paraphrasing, performance appraisals, plagiarism, PowerPoint, press releases, progress reports, project management, proposals, quality, quality assurance, resumes, reverse engineering, risk, role-playing, sanity checks, self-esteem, service calls, shop methods, simplicity, simulation, software manuals, specifications, speeches, speech distractions, spreadsheets, start-ups, statistics, storyboarding, summaries, surveys, systems engineering, table readability, teams, time management, trade shows, "two-minute-drills," vendors, videoconferencing, viewgraphs, Warnings, Web design, Web reliability, Web usability, work orders and workplace distractions.
Ron Graham passionately urges engineers and others to acquire strong rhetoric skills as "tech writing" alone would not be enough. He says that writing is an isolated act, and cuts off from tools that could help the engineers enhance their ability to practice the gentle art of persuasion in all these areas: the way to collect, organise, and interpret data; the way to design new products; the way to make decisions; and the way to inform (or warn!) the public.
Further, says Ron Graham, Rhetoric skills can help sort out problems in many areas, including Hiring the right people, Training new people, Motivating people, Finding and developing ideas, Entering a new market, Communicating with customers, Finding out what data is revealing, Getting technology to work, Bouncing back from mistakes, and Anticipating problems.
His book Rhetoric for Engineers and Practical People can be perused online at http://www.tcnj.edu/~rgraham/rhetoric/ . And, to receive a copy of the e-book you could email your request to the author at rgraham@tcnj.edu.
The study of rhetoric is fast becoming a "very vibrant and lively discipline" and does have a strong presence on US campuses says Jennifer MacLennan, Academic Director, Ron & Jane Graham Centre for the Study of Communication at the College of Engineering, University of Saskatchewan. "Anybody who has to talk to people in order to get ideas implemented – as engineers do – needs rhetoric, needs to be able to understand what the audience is looking for, what the audience is interested in, and where the audience is going in order to forge a connection with what is being promoted " she says.
Ron Graham holds a Doctor of Engineering degree from the Cleveland State University. He helped to open the floodgates for Engineering Communication over the Internet by forming the usenet newsgroup sci.engr in 1988.
