Many scientists tout the importance of storytelling (or, more often, narrative) when it comes to the presentation of science (e.g. Bickmore & Grandy, 2014; Cormick, 2019b; Krzywinski & Cairo, 2013; Olson, 2015; Schimel, 2012). Yet many such advocates are not STEM scholars presently engaged in STEM research. From a Goffmanian perspective of frames, we can therefore argue that the balkanization of STEM and its related disciplines (Knight, 2003) have also produced a complex landscape of (inter)disciplinary participation frameworks between STEM, science and technology studies (STS) and science communication.
“Whenever an individual participates in an episode of activity, a distinction will be drawn between what is called the person, individual, or player, namely, he who participates, and the particular role, capacity, or function he realizes during that participation. And a connection between these two elements will be understood. In short, there will be a person-role formula” (Goffman, 1974, p. 269).
Within this interdisciplinary field of science, story, and narrative, STEM scholars often consider storytelling an important (though controversial) activity in the communication of results, but do not conduct empirical research on such questions – especially when it comes to the scientific process (Latour & Woolgar, 1986 [1974]). Latour (1987) calls this gap between process and results the black box of science. STEM research-practitioners therefore perform roles in the production of science, but do not work in disciplines that produce research on such role-playing performances. Or as Knight (2003, p. 377) puts it, “Scientific papers tell stories about experiments and data, not scientists.” I therefore also draw from STS and scientific communication to provide a more complete picture of storytelling discourse and practices among STEM practitioners. This section explores (1) what STEM practitioners say about storytelling in science, (2) what STS scholars say about the storytelling practices of science[1], and (3) what science communicators say about the role of narrative and storytelling for science[2].
[1] The linguists receive their turn in Section 3.2
[2] One caveat, however, is many researchers in STEM, STS, and science communication transition or shuttle between such disciplines, rendering this separation as a somewhat problematic but temporarily useful heuristic rather than as a fundamental ontological distinction.
Ontogenetic Reflection:
I decided to keep this section short because the next section is about a thousand words and I did promise 500 to 1,000 word excerpts at a time. So this might be more of a preview than a morsel for you to dig into.
As I listen to this, I’m intrigued by the notion of frame. Lately, I’ve been reading Latour’s 2005 book, Reassembling the Social, and there he repeats a point that he also made in Laboratory Life with Steve Woolgar, which is that overall many people in the STEM community were very skeptical if not hostile toward his attempt as a sociologist to capture this relationship between science as a truth apparatus — I say “truth” in a Foucauldian sense, in other words a regime of truth — but also the notion of the social and material constraints that scientists also navigate in this truth-seeking enterprise. Latour (1987) distinguishes this between the technogram, the sort of internal truth-seeking practice of science, and the sociogram, the grant-seeking and the public communication aspect of science. In other words, storytelling.
And I do see myself as taking on my own role as I think about the dissertation that I will write, namely that I am an outsider. But unlike sociologists of science, who oftentimes seem to show an agonistic relationship with STEM scholars due to the productive yet also often stultifying tensions of social constructionism versus empirical realism, I wonder what it would be like to approach scientists from an applied linguistics perspective, namely a pedagogical perspective. This is not to assume a K+ expert role to mediate scientists to become better storytellers. After all, I believe that before one intervenes one needs an understanding of what is going on. My question is, however, what if we could unpack storytelling in science as scientists aim to, as conversation analysts would say, do being scientists, or how they do producing science?
Thinking about the fold argument laid out in the ontogenetic reflection in the last post, I think that understanding this productive folding tension that exists between scientists as truth seekers and scientists as public communicators could hopefully provide not only new ontologies of storytelling within STEM communities, but also productive pedagogical tensions in which potential barriers or roadblocks within the storytelling process can be addressed, navigated, or transcended.
This was a mouthful, but I’m curious where folks agree and disagree. Let me know below.
And until next time, cheers!
Leave a Reply