When Politeness is Fatal

Journal of Business and Technical Communication Jul 1992

PATRICK MOORE

Abstract

Severe icing on the space shuttle Challenger's launch pad should have halted the launch on the morning of January 28, 1986. One Rockwell International manager told his subordinates to be sure NASA knew that Rockwell thought a launch was not safe. When the Rockwell subordinates spoke directly to NASA managers, however, they used politeness strategies like those enumerated by Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson to blur the directness of the Rockwell manager's message. The NASA managers interpreted the politeness of the Rockwell subordinates as meaning it was safe to launch. The Rockwell subordinates did not mean it that way, but the Challenger was launched.

Journal: Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Published: 1992-07-01
DOI: 10.1177/1050651992006003001
Open Access: Closed
Topics: multilingual writers

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (9)

Pflugfelder (2018)

Failure Matters: Conflicting Practices in a High-Tech Case

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Friess (2013)

“Bring the Newbie Into the Fold”: Politeness Strategies of Newcomers and Existi…

Technical Communication Quarterly
Friess (2011)

Politeness, Time Constraints, and Collaboration in Decision-Making Meetings: A …

Technical Communication Quarterly
Knievel (2008)

Rupturing Context, Resituating Genre

Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Dombrowski (2006)

The Two Shuttle Accident Reports: Context and Culture in Technical Communication

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication

Show all 9 →

Dombrowski (2000)

Ethics and Technical Communication: The Past Quarter Century

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Grant‐Davie (1997)

Rhetorical situations and their constituents

Rhetoric Review
Mirel (1994)

Debating nuclear energy: Theories of risk and purposes of communication

Technical Communication Quarterly
Moore et al. (1993)

Gestalt Theory and Instructional Design

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication

Cites in this index (4)

ANSON et al. (1990)

Moving Beyond the Academic Community

Written Communication
HAGGE et al. (1989)

Linguistic Politeness in Professional Prose

Written Communication
Pace (1988)

Technical Communication, Group Differentiation, and the Decision to Launch the …

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
HARRISON (1987)

Frameworks for the Study of Writing in Organizational Contexts

Written Communication

Also cites 5 works outside this index ↓

10.1177/108056998805100404

↗
10.1016/0378-2166(88)90020-3

↗
10.1080/10510978609368213

↗
10.1080/10510978609368214

↗
10.1109/47.7814

↗

CrossRef global citation count: 18 View in citation network →