ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the literature relating social constructionism to technical and scientific communication. Social constructionism is the understanding that our world of knowledge and experience is socially negotiated and ratified and therefore constructed rather than absolute, pre-existent, or simply given. Social constructionism is often defined by contrast to positivism in science. Positivism as a movement in philosophy and science sought the absolutely true, what could known positively and what was impervious to, even above, human opinion. The broadest works on social constructionism in composition and communication are those of K. B. LeFevre and K. A. Bruffee. In the last few years, several books relevant to social constructionism in scientific and technical communication have been published, most notably C. Bazerman’s Shaping Written Knowledge. Conditioned constructionism, additionally, offers an important venue for making the practice of science and technology more accountable and responsive to society in generally.
