Holland, Winford E. and B.A. Stead. "Exploring the Scientist-Engineer Conflict: A Form and Content Analysis of Their Written Communication." Journal of Business Communication, vol. 9 no. 3, 1972 : 25-35.
In this journal article, the authors discuss a study of the real and perceived differences between a group of engineers and scientists at the same organization, including a textual analysis of their written communication. Interviews were used to establish the perceived differences between the engineering and scientist groups. A questionnaire that required feedback from both the engineering and scientist groups on the same topic was used for a content-based textual analysis. In their analysis, the authors determine that while the actual differences between the groups may be fewer than what was perceived, there was significant difference in the written communication of each group. The engineers were found to be prone to brevity and the use of incomplete sentences in comparison to the scientists. And although both groups tended to draw similar conclusions, the vocabulary used in their responses varied between the engineers and the scientists.
I thought this study was very interesting in that people can often lump engineers, scientists, IT professionals and others into the same group of "smart, but bad communicators," and yet each domain has their own genres and unique communication style. One potential issue with this study as a source is that it is a bit out of date, having been performed in 1972. I do like that they were able to find a document which was written by both sample groups in a very structured format, which enabled easier comparison and analysis. In my own research, one of the problems is that because I’m comparing published engineer to engineer communication versus communication to the general public, it would be almost impossible to find such directly comparable texts. I need to somehow normalize my analysis of each type of text, such that I can compare the two styles.
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