Accommodating Death: An Examination of the Role of Scientific Accommodation in Forensic Anthropology
Date of Award
5-2009
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Legacy Department
Professional Communication
Committee Chair/Advisor
Katz, Steven B
Committee Member
Walters , Shannon
Committee Member
Temesvari , Lesly
Abstract
Scientists have strong motivations to communicate with the public, yet this communication is often ineffective. As Ann Penrose and Steven Katz explain in Writing in the Sciences, there are three major reasons why scientists communicate with the public: moral, economic, and political (177). Despite these reasons for scientists to communicate with the public, it is not always easy for this communication to take place, due to divisions of audience and discourse community, as well as the scientists’ biases against communicating with the public. Scientific accommodation helps to bridge this gap.
In some fields, like forensic anthropology, scientists write their own accommodation. This analysis, unlike others, will include these accommodations and seeks to determine the role the author plays in accommodation. If the scientist is the accommodator, does the text still undergo the same changes? With a combination of Fahnestock's analysis of scientific communication, Latour and Woolgar’s Statement Types, and Toulmin et al.’s method of diagramming scientific arguments, this analysis examines the discourse of forensic anthropology to determine what effect the author and the accommodator (or author/accommodator), have on the text and how these changes relate to forensic anthropology as a discipline.
Recommended Citation
D'elia, Christina, "Accommodating Death: An Examination of the Role of Scientific Accommodation in Forensic Anthropology" (2009). All Theses. 563.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_theses/563