Out of the Laboratory and Down to the Bay

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Abstract
This article offers a personal view of some developments in science and technology studies that may be important to researchers on writing and to writing teachers. The field has emerged from laboratory studies to engagement with broader issues of power and change. Frameworks developed in the sociology of scientific knowledge have been applied to the analysis of things (not just people and facts), of social boundaries (not just specialist disciplines), and of organizations (not just individual writers). The article draws on approaches from critical discourse analysis to show how we might read noun phrases, clause structure, discourse representation, and discourse practices in terms of this new perspective on texts. Throughout the article, the implications are illustrated with the example of a news article reporting the temporary shutdown of a nuclear power plant.