It is a basic insight of communication studies
since classical rhetoric that language and
other signs and symbols lend shape to human
knowledge. The form is (part of) the message
of science, bearing witness to distinctive procedures and purposes of inquiry. The prototypical
social-scientic journal article, for example,
implies that research questions, their operationalization in empirical research designs, the
resulting ndings, and the subsequent interpretive discussion can and should be separated
into stages of inquiry and sections of reporting.
In comparison, the equivalent humanistic essay
typically moves more freely across the various
stages of collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and
presenting evidence and arguments. The two
publication formats can be seen to mimic two
classic communication models: social scientists ‘transmit’ their ndings to the audience;
humanistic scholars invite their readers into a
‘ritual’ of communal deliberation.
