College English - Volume 59, Issue 4, 1997

Examines the ways in which literacy functions in institutional encounters and focuses on the ways literacy interacts with power and authority. Examines the enactment of literacy in medical encounters. Finds that institutional encounters enacting the discourse system of American medicine reproduce power and dominance in fairly predictable ways.

Examines the roles of collaboration in the sciences and humanities by focusing on the complicated relationship between syntax and semantics. Uses scholarship on the social study of science to discuss strategies for collaboration in the humanities. Discusses why those studying language and literature are in a particularly good position to understand the nature of intellectual collaboration and its benefits.