ABSTRACT
In large measure we differentiate among cultural groups in terms of recurring
patterns of relationship. Patterns of intimate relationships, gender, family life,
friendship, community ties, and social hierarchies, for example, are all used
as significant cultural markers. Because of their centrality to social life, com-
municative practices are pivotal to our understanding of any culture. My concern
in this offering is with the communicative practices that constitute the academic
or scholarly culture. The character of discursive practices within academic culture
has been the focus of intense concern in the social sciences. This concern has
largely grown from social constructionist scholarship and can be traced in its most
recent history to the sweeping ramifications of Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 volume, The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Although reflecting earlier lines of thinking
within the sociology of knowledge and history of science, Kuhn’s writing most
clearly articulated the importance of communicative practices in generating
knowledge claims and associated values and methods of study. In effect, as
scientific subcultures are formed through communication, so are paradigms of
understanding generated. This abiding concern with the social construction of
knowledge has stimulated a vast range of inquiry into the rhetorical, ideological,
and interpersonal processes characterizing knowledge-generating cultures.1
