Archaeology Reports: When Context Becomes an Active Agent in the
Rhetorical Process
K. Baake. 2003. Technical communication quarterly 12:389-403.
"This article explores the writing of archaeologists to argue
that the metaphor of context-as-rhetorical-situation may understate
the
power that context has to shape scientific discourse. The author offers
instead the metaphor of context-as-active-agent in the rhetorical
situation--one that sometimes reifies values that are dangerous to the
archaeologists' belief systems. As scholars of technical writing,
we must develop a greater understanding of the subtle but powerful
influences that context wields on the writing we read and help to
produce."