The Construction and Functions of Value Arguments in Scientific Literature of the SARS and COVID-19 Pandemics

Abstract

The scientific community is a unique rhetorical ecosystem in which scientists argue for the value of their work to the larger scientific community through writing. Michael Carter developed a classification system for value arguments and compared the rhetorical moves used in scientific writing across a sample of various fields and journals (“Value Arguments”; “The Construction of Value”). In this essay, value arguments in fifteen papers, each from scientific literature published during the SARS and COVID-19 pandemics, were rhetorically analyzed to investigate the effects of public health crises on scientists’ communication strategies. Though both the pandemic literature and Carter’s corpus rely mainly on implicit value arguments, the pandemic literature uses more value arguments that situate the research topic within the larger crisis and also includes reverse semi-explicit value arguments, a new category that was absent in Carter’s corpus. This investigation suggests that the nature of the rhetorical situation profoundly impacts scientific value arguments. These insights have the potential to further an understanding of the ways scientific knowledge is constructed and improve the rhetorical education of novice and seasoned scientific writers alike.