My project analyzes several sites of discourse related to a military training accident that resulted in the death of the first female military pilot assigned to a combat position. The purpose of my research is to add to knowledge regarding the interactions of technology, gender, and organizational (i.e., military) culture. I analyze communicative texts and interview Navy aviators to describe the Navy's response to a critical rhetorical situation. In addition, I examine Navy accident reports and show how organizational values, ethos (i.e., character), and communicative systems are tied to the Navy accident report genre system. My work explores how language may be influenced by organizational values, including tacit assumptions about gender and technology, which lead to claims of gender neutrality; and how blame shifts to non-human technological agents. Issues my study addresses are related to forms of knowledge: how knowledge is constructed, the role of gender, the interaction of closely woven human/nonhuman networks, and the shifting of agency between elements of these networks. My analysis also follows research into the communication surrounding incidents such as the Tailhook Symposium, the Challenger space shuttle explosion, mining accidents, and the shutdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. The common thread tying those analyses to my work is the critical role played by communication. I am not suggesting that faulty communication resulted in the accident, but I do believe that studying this case will result in a deeper understanding of the complex interactions between technology, gender, organizational culture, and communication.

The particular situation I analyze surrounds the 1994 death of US Navy Lieutenant Kara S. Hultgreen, who died while attempting to land her F-14A Tomcat fighter jet on the deck of an aircraft carrier during a training exercise. The day following the crash, assertions were made that Hultgreen crashed because the Navy provided preferential treatment to her based on her gender by pushing her through fighter jet training despite her poor performance. The Navy conducted an in-depth investigation of the accident and announced that a malfunctioning engine caused the crash, not pilot error. In subsequent public statements, Navy officials characterized the accident as "gender neutral," resulting not, as had been anonymously asserted, from Hultgreen's being a woman, but from Hultgreen's being a pilot whose aircraft had an engine malfunction "at the worst possible time." Although many outside and within the Navy were pleased by the announcement, various media have reported doubts, some charging the Navy with "disingenuous" handling of her death. These doubts were strengthened by a leaked internal Navy report that blamed Hultgreen for ultimately causing the accident.

In order to explore the complex interaction of technology, gender, and military culture, I draw on concepts from rhetoric and from studies of science and technology. My methodology consists of performing qualitative textual analyses on communicative texts - such as reports, print and broadcast accounts, and Navy professional journals - related to this accident. In performing a textual analysis, I focus on language, such as the words blame, responsible, and gender neutral, and how their meaning differs when used by the Navy and the media. The texts, including workplace and professional communication, also represent what Berkenkotter (forthcoming) describes as a genre system or genre set: a conceptual or methodological tool for examining institutions. The Navy's accident report genre system represents, structurally and via symbolic practices, the interrelations of people, written texts, technologies, and institutional practices. Because the Navy publicizes its findings, and the report is releasable under the Freedom of Information Act, this genre system may extend to forums such as public newspapers, television reports, and Navy periodicals, so I include these types of texts in my analysis.

I show how the texts help us understand the following theoretical concepts: kairos (timing or opportunity), a critical concept for identifying a rhetorical situation; Kenneth Burke's concept of identification; and a perspective from Actor Network Theory (ANT), a growing and somewhat controversial area of sociology of scientific knowledge. This perspective allows me to treat technologies as participants in the complex interaction within the sociotechnical networks described in Navy accident reports. Borrowing this perspective also offers a fuller examination of the interactions of human and nonhuman entities surrounding the accident and acknowledges the agency of nonhuman (i.e., technological) actors. In addition, I employ studies of military culture and gender. Military culture, in most instances, rewards strength, aggression, and a desire to win, all of which are generally associated with masculinity, not with femininity. In addition, societal views of technology as erasing or diminishing physical differences between women and men are held by military members.

My findings so far indicate the following: 1) the Navy capitalized on the opportunity presented by Hultgreen's death to project a new image of itself, including being blameless for her death; and 2) selected communication within the Navy reflects what Carolyn Miller (1978) has called a technological ethos, contributing to a shifting of blame from human to non-human agents. Characteristics of a technological ethos include a focus on efficiency; closed (as opposed to open) system thinking; and, like much bureaucratic and hierarchical organizational communication, manifests itself in language that is impersonal, nonresponsible, and turgid. Alone, my second finding is not surprising, but it is important, because a conflation of beliefs about technology (finding #2) and about gender (finding #1) resulted in the Navy's characterizing the accident as gender neutral. And by separating blame from responsibility, the Navy made Hultgreen responsible for the accident but did not blame her for it, causing criticisms of the Navy's credibility. So what can a communications professional take from my study? Although the specific context of this case is unique to the Navy, lessons learned may benefit both organizations and individual communicators who find themselves faced with similar situations to which they must respond.

Understanding the situation as both existing and constructed by the communicator/rhetor is crucial to producing effective discourse; we cannot respond without understanding how that response changes the situation. Also, we should examine discourse in order to uncover complex interactions among people, technologies, and gender, both existing in and fostered by organizations. Finally, the assumptions people carry about technology and gender, which reflect complex interactions, are often articulated in routine/generic communications (e.g., an accident report), thereby offering an opportunity to learn more about organizational culture and about how that culture is transmitted and reinforced through generic communications.

References

Berkenkotter, C. (Forthcoming). Core concepts in genre theory: Intertextuality, genre systems, recontextualization, activity systems. In T. Dudley-Evans & M. Reynolds (Eds.), Genre analysis: Three schools. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Miller, C. R. (1978). Technology as a form of consciousness: A study of contemporary ethos. Central States Journal, 29,228-236.