Week 8: 3 points and a question

Is either communicative action or instrumental action really ideal if the underlying aim of instrumental action is the exclusion of the nonexpert audience in making decisions and the control of their perspectives through discourse created by experts, and communicative action considers input from many people with different perspectives, making it less cost effective and time efficient?

Great question Susan. I guess my question back is what is the alternative or the happy medium between the two? I would think that communicative action is maybe not ideal, but at least the most productive of the two. Instrumental action I would think would dispose of the rhetorical situation and would as a result, not be a user-centered document. I do not understand how the an instrumental document would have any control over the audiences perspectives if it ignores them in the first place. I do not think of communicative action as less time efficient or cost effective. I would consider communicative action as more empirically based while utilizing different heuristics. I would venture to think that they each have their place in the proper situation. It is like Carter's executive order to make federal documents readable to the users, but how is that accomplished? Clearly, the rhetorical situation that Killingsworth and Palmer emphasize is the cornerstone for all technical documents.

Kevin makes an excellent point when he faces the environmentalist against mainstream scientists. We clearly see a rhetorical debate that says there are two sides to every issue, and neither one is necessarily correct. I think this ties into Freire's discussion Aldous Huxley's "dissociating ideas." Freire, in so many words, describes it as a way to see through the bullsh*t; through his example of seeing the deceit in the cigarette ad. Like Kevin says, the environmentalist will have a completely different stance and evidence than that of mainstream scientists backed by corporate funders. The way in which the information is printed and displayed is going to be entirely different on both sides. The thing is, we know that each group has an agenda, so we can expect deceit in either camp. However, what about the Challenger article. I think it would be interesting to investigate the development of the visuals and how the information was displayed. I guess my thought process is, were there technicians and engineers pressured to get the launch off (as the notion of exploration and space travel was again revived) and as a result presented factual and truthful information in an ambiguous way purposely, OR, was the information presented factually and truthfully but ignored by the higher-ups who were certainly under monetary and reputable constraints?

Lupton discusses how types evolved during different eras for different purposes. In our professional writing seminar especially, we've been exploring how technical documents came to be. In Freire's example of the Labor Day example; a very logical, Aristotelian concept is employed: an enthymeme. He seems to have constructed two view points of the illiterate man in the same fashion: illiterates are marginal to society therefore "the literacy process reinforces the mythification of of reality..." and the second view point, illiterates are oppressed therefore the literary process is a "cultural action for freedom." Again, different perspectives will drastically change how the rhetorical situation is analyzed and solved.

Question: I think these article propel us towards the ever questionable debate regarding ethics. The writer obviously has an ethical responsibility to present factual and truthful information; however, the overall presentation can leave the interpretation of the information up to the audience.Where do you draw the line between the writer and audience's responsibility?