The US Intelligence Community's Mathematical Ideology of Technical Communication

Nate Kreuter Western Carolina University

Abstract

Reading historical intelligence community documents primarily through the lens of Kenneth Burke's essay "Semantic and Poetic Meaning," this article explores the history and stakes of the intelligence community's ongoing commitment to a problematic model of language use. The essay argues that the intelligence community's pursuit of a "mathematical" ideology of language is an attempt to render language "neutral" and to divorce rhetoric from ethics in ways that Burke anticipated, and with negative consequences for the generation of written intelligence reports and national policy decisions.

Journal
Technical Communication Quarterly
Published
2015-07-03
DOI
10.1080/10572252.2015.1044122
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Cited by in this index (2)

  1. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  2. Technical Communication Quarterly

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