Journal of Technical Writing and Communication Apr 1989

The Ethics of False Implicature in Technical and Professional Writing Courses

Arthur E. Walzer University of Minnesota

Abstract

In taking “existing practice” in the workplace as their standard, technical and professional writing courses risk leaving students with the impression that whatever is done and is rhetorically effective is right. One way of countering the sophistry of this tendency is to raise questions about the ethics of common but suspect rhetorical practices. This article examines the ethics of one such practice: fostering false inference. Out of H. Paul Grice's analysis of how participants in a conversation correctly interpret what is only implied, it evolves a framework for judging the fostering of false inference. The article presents and discusses a hypothetical case in which a firm's proposal seems intended to mislead, while actually stating nothing that is not literally true.

Journal
Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Published
1989-04-01
DOI
10.2190/jv07-r2tc-n4hq-mnca
CompPile
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
rhetorical criticism writing pedagogy professional writing
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (6)

  1. DeJeu (2022)
    The Ethics of Delivering Bad News: Evaluating Impression Management Strategies …
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  2. Dombrowski (2000)
    Ethics and Technical Communication: The Past Quarter Century
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  3. Riley et al. (1998)
    Parallels between visual and textual processing
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  4. Dragga (1997)
    A Question of Ethics: Lessons from Technical Communicators on the Job
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  5. Herrington (1995)
    Ethics and graphic design: a rhetorical analysis of the document design in the …
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
Show all 6 →
  1. Sauer (1993)
    Demand modeling, new mode problems, and the $64 (sic) question: technological u…
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication

References (22) · 2 in this index

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    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
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CrossRef global citation count: 9 View in citation network → Build reading path →

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