Journal of Technical Writing and Communication Jul 2015

The Evil in Technical Communication

Matthew Boedy University of South Carolina

Abstract

Ethics and technical communication have a long history. Much of the discussion has ignored, though, the evil in language—overnaming. We see clearest this evil in what some have called “administrative evil.” Technical communicators, like all good rhetoricians, need to understand how to respond to it. Overnaming as part of “administrative evil” is that evil which grounds all other evils. It is a certain understanding of language and what naming can do. When we overname, we try to control words to mean one thing eternally. Rhetoric is a move of renaming those words that have been overnamed. Such invention is needed as part of any rhetorical education for technical communicators.

Journal
Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Published
2015-07-01
DOI
10.1177/0047281615578844
Open Access
Closed
Topics
technical communication

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Balzhiser et al. (2019)
    Matters of Form: Questions of Race, Identity, Design, and the U.S. Census
    Technical Communication Quarterly

Cites in this index (5)

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    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
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    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
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Also cites 6 works outside this index ↓
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CrossRef global citation count: 3 View in citation network →

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