As for my interest in driving (aka motorists in traffic), I did focus on this topic for the first three semesters of my doctoral study of communication at the University of Colorado. I took some heat from my faculty for this choice (it’s not what they studied, and, yes, that matters) and was “encouraged” (more or less forced) to change my focus to something my pre-eminent communication department was actually known for.
That focus became “dialogue” — which I did study with all my heart and with extraordinary guidance (including a one-on-one “independent study” with a world leader in communication theory). The result came in the form of my 415-page dissertation theorizing “Dialogue in Teaching and Learning,” but for those first three semesters (of my six years of doctoral study!), I studied and wrote about what I termed . . . “the rhetoric of the road”!
Adding to my lifelong obsession with this topic, for that first stage of my doctoral study at CU, I accumulated dozens and dozens of books and articles about driving – some coming from law enforcement, some from the insurance industry, and a handful from sociology.
I found that these three “literatures” present startlingly different perspectives and views on driving, and I also noticed that each literature seems unaware of the other two. I did my best to bridge all three, since I owed no allegiance to any of them.
From all that research and also my own data (gathered and analyzed for a course in statistical research), I did develop a pretty cool rhetorical theory named, yes, “The Rhetoric of the Road.” That paper (and one other) punched my ticket that year (2007) to the national convention of the National Communication Association. (That’s the “big dance,” in my academic world – happens in March, even, like the NCAA’s March Madness). Getting a paper accepted there is a big deal and legitimized my work, to a skeptical faculty.
So, yes, I do see “driving” as rhetorical, and from that perch, I propose this thesis: “A lot of ‘speeches’ are being made all around you on the road. Are you listening? Your life might depend on it.”
So this blog section will discuss this important form of “real-world rhetoric” – on the road. As always, I will strive NOT to harp on the same tired commentary (bad driver this, bad driver that) that you can read just about anywhere and everywhere.
For my Rhetoric of the Road paper (and one other significant research project and resulting paper), I needed a full and wide-reaching grasp on the literature (i.e., what’s out there on my subject).
Between scholarly articles, popular articles, printed website downloads, and multitudinous books, my basement office “houses” the most exhaustive “library,” on driving, in the lower 48 states. There’s a (now-retired) professor of “the psychology of driving” in Hawaii who likely has me beat – but that’s it.
Nobody else who has studied or written about “driving” is beholden to more than their own specific branch (of three) that make up “the literature,” as I was beholden, since not “belonging to” (writing from and for) any of the subject’s three main strains, which, again, include law enforcement, insurance, and sociology (the latter mainly concerned with bias/unfairness in law enforcement).
For the sake of scholarly legitimacy, I had to study and account for all three branches of this literature. Plus, I conducted my own, original “quantitative” research on the subject — soliciting, analyzing, and showing the statistical trends (and my conclusions) regarding a suitably substantial array (30+ stories) of first-person accounts of “driving while annoyed.”
Here’s my main finding of note on my quantitative study of “driving while annoyed”: Of the three main categories (of “what ‘annoys’ us on the road”) that emerged in analyzing the stories I collected, the one that we most easily “forgive” is the one that, by far, stands as the most dangerous (to the driver and everyone else on the road), namely “inattentiveness.” We forgive inattentiveness, although it’s far more dangerous than the other two “less forgivable” categories of “annoyance” while driving: rudeness, and (so-called) recklessness.
All of that research — and endless on ongoing “experimentation” out on the road, itself — have helped me to develop understandings and perspectives you won’t read anywhere else. The usual complaints and jokes are everywhere. My stuff on driving is available only here. Read it, think about it, adjust how you drive . . . and maybe save someone’s life – namely yours!