Chapter 8: New Ways of Reading: Making Sense of Complex Biomedical Writing Using Existing Guidelines

Technical communication scholarship often seeks to critique or intervene in powerful medical and scientific discourses. Yet differences in what Carolyn Miller referred to as the communal rationality of scholarly fields may require new ways of reading to make such work possible. This chapter examines guidelines for regulatory documentation that make visible the intellectual framing of biomedical research. Regulatory documentation includes an array of materials that health authorities and government agencies use to authorize and evaluate biomedical research as well as the technical aspects of developing and manufacturing medicinal products. Publicly available guidelines illustrate how those who compose and evaluate regulatory documentation constitute communal rationality within their various specialty areas. Technical communication scholars can use such guidelines to examine the strengths and limitations of the discourses prescribed therein. The author outlines the current place of regulatory documentation relative to technical communication scholarship and offers methods for interpreting these complex discourses using theoretical framing from rhetorics of science, health, and medicine.