DOMINIC W. MASSARO, editor
University of California, Santa Cruz

Talking the Talk: Learning to Communicate Across Scientific Disciplines

Interacting With Audiences: Social Influences on the Production of Scientific Writing
By Ann M. Blakeslee. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2001. 141 pp. Cloth, $29.99.

Interacting With Audiences by Ann M. Blakeslee is an interesting book on the challenges confronted by scholars who want to introduce their research to colleagues in related disciplines. Blakeslee's year-long ethnographic study evaluated the steps physicists took in devising a plan to publish their work in biology and chemistry journals. The physicists she studied wanted a cross-disciplinary audience to read about their work because they believed scientists in allied fields would find it useful. The fundamental assertion advanced in this book is that audiences for scientific writing have significant influence over the content and structure of texts that are published in academic journals.