Abstract

This study explores two cases of professional communication among U.S. and South American personnel in one multinational organization in Quito, Ecuador. The results suggest that implicit in U.S. rhetorics of professional communication are valorizations of writing as a mechanism of regulating behavior, of universalism and individual reference points as rhetorical strategies, and of common‐law or precedent‐setting logic as compositional and interpretive strategies. However, many South American personnel seem predisposed to think of personal interactions as a mechanism of regulating behavior, of particular and collective reference points as rhetorical strategies, and of civil law logic as compositional and interpretive strategies. Thus, widespread claims about the roles of writing to “construct,”; mediate, or regulate organizational behavior need to be contextualized in the predominant rhetorical values of the organizational context.