Week 13

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Week 13

• Ethics

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Ethics

• Ethics Intentional misdirection
• Opaque language
• Needless complexity
• Using stereotypes
• Avoiding racial, ethnic, gender bias

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Intended Misdirection

• Deliberately hides behind language
• Misleads through using passive construction
• Conceals responsibility for actions
• Usually violates clarity principles to obscure
  responsibility for or impact of actions

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Intended Misdirection

• Example
• With dozens of software products in production at
  one time and tight deadlines to meet, programming
  errors may have occurred in the creation of our
  software. But Wordsmiths guarantees that we would
  never purposely damage the reliability of
  products that have enabled American businesses to
  work for thirty years.

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Intended Misdirection

• Example
• With dozens of software products in production at
  one time and tight deadlines to meet, programming
  errors may have occurred in the creation of our
  software. But Wordsmiths guarantees that we would
  never purposely damage the reliability of
  products that have enabled American businesses to
  work for thirty years.

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Opaque Language

• For example
• I expect each of you (and your department
  management teams) to have a zero tolerance
  attitude towards any factual revelation of
  mismanagement, malfeasances, misfeasances and
  public corruption.

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Needless Complexity

• The more complex your ideas, the more you need
  to express those ideas as clearly and simply as
  possible.
• Writing that is difficult to read ? brilliant
  or complex thinking.

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For Example...

• It is possible that every work language is
  superimposed upon itself in a secret verticality,
  where the double is exactly the same as the thin
  space in betweenthe narrow, black line which no
  perception can divulge except in those fortuitous
  and deliberately confusing moments when the
  figure of Scheherazade surrounds itself with fog,
  retreats to the origins of time, and arises
  reduced at the center of a brilliant, profound
  and virtual disc.
• - Michel Foucault, Language to Infinity.

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Inclusive Writing

• Dont point out peoples differences unless the
  differences are strictly relevant to your
  argument.
• Call people whatever they prefer to be called.
• Choose accurate, not broad, terms.

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Avoiding Stereotypes

• Assuming an engineer or politician is male.
• Depicting caring parents as exclusively female.
• Characterizing someone in terms of a
  disability, age, ethnicity, race, or sexual
  orientation when these descriptors are irrelevant
  to your argument.

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For example...

• Not elderly Crystal Glass but eighty-nine
  year-old Crystal Glass
• Not cancer victim but someone with cancer
• Not the deaf student but the student who is
  hearing-impaired
• Not the striking Sandra McKinney and her
  husband but Sandra McKinney and Eric Winter

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Gender Neutral

• Biased Gender-neutral
• Businessman Businessperson
• Workmen Workers
• Fireman Firefighter
• Stewardess Flight attendant
• Congressman Representative/
• Senator

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Avoiding gender-exclusive pronouns

• A true professional wont compromise his
  standards for anything.
• A true professional wont compromise their
  standards for anything.
• True professionals wont compromise their
  standards for anything.

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Handling Ethnicity

• Dont mention ethnicity unless its strictly
  relevant to your argument
• Use specific terms
• Puerto Rican, Dominican or Mexican are better
  than simply Hispanic
• Asian is better than Oriental, but Japanese,
  Chinese, or Korean are better

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Avoiding Stereotyping

• Avoid broad categories or stereotyping
• Depicting the unemployed as lazy
• Depicting people who dont share your religious
  values as sinful
• Characterizing individuals based on social
  class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age,
  gender

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Spot the Problem...

• 1. Although the McNallys are Irish Catholics,
  they only have three children.
• 2. Because Asian students are usually whizzes at
  math, we all wanted them in our statistics group.

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Spot the Problem...

• 1. Although the McNallys are Irish Catholics,
  they only have three children.
• 2. Because Asian students are usually whizzes at
  math, we all wanted them in our statistics group.

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Spot the Problem...

• 3. Wives of heads of state typically choose to
  promote a charity that benefits causes they care
  about.
• 4. We advertised for a new secretary because we
  needed another girl in the office.

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Spot the Problem...

• 3. Wives of heads of state typically choose to
  promote a charity that benefits causes they care
  about.
• 4. We advertised for a new secretary because we
  needed another girl in the office.

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Spot the Problem...

• 5. The students at this high school dont need to
  understand how to write persuasively because
  theyre all going on to become secretaries,
  anyway.
• 6. Everybody had his way.

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Spot the Problem...

• 5. The students at this high school dont need to
  understand how to write persuasively because
  theyre all going on to become secretaries,
  anyway.
• 6. Everybody had his way.

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Spot the Problem...

• 7. D.H. Lawrence and Mrs. Woolf met each other,
  but Lawrence did not like the Bloomsbury circle
  that revolved around Virginia.
• 8. Its every man for himself.

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Spot the Problem...

• 7. D.H. Lawrence and Mrs. Woolf met each other,
  but Lawrence did not like the Bloomsbury circle
  that revolved around Virginia.
• 8. Its every man for himself.

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Spot the Problem...

• 9. These two skaters are different from you and
  me they live in a trailer.
• 10. He had to work harder than normal climbers
  in his ascent of Mt. Fuji because hes a
  paraplegic.

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Spot the Problem...

• 9. These two skaters are different from you and
  me they live in a trailer.
• 10. He had to work harder than normal climbers
  in his ascent of Mt. Fuji because hes a
  paraplegic.

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Spot the Problem...

• 11. A defect which involves the possible failure
  of a frame support plate may exist on your
  vehicle. This plate (front suspension pivot bar
  support plate) connects a portion of the front
  suspension to the vehicle frame, and its failure
  could affect vehicle directional control,
  particularly during heavy brake application.

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Spot the Problem...

• 11. A defect which involves the possible failure
  of a frame support plate may exist on your
  vehicle. This plate (front suspension pivot bar
  support plate) connects a portion of the front
  suspension to the vehicle frame, and its failure
  could affect vehicle directional control,
  particularly during heavy brake application.

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Spot the Problem...

• 11, cont. In addition, your vehicle may require
  adjustment service to the hood secondary catch
  system. The secondary catch may be misaligned so
  that the hood may not be adequately restrained to
  prevent hood fly-up in the event the primary
  latch is inadvertently left unengaged. Sudden
  fly-up hood beyond the second catch while driving
  could impair driver visibility. In certain
  circumstances, occurrence of either of the above
  conditions could result in vehicle crash without
  prior warning.

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Spot the Problem...

• 11, cont. In addition, your vehicle may require
  adjustment service to the hood secondary catch
  system. The secondary catch may be misaligned so
  that the hood may not be adequately restrained to
  prevent hood fly-up in the event the primary
  latch is inadvertently left unengaged. Sudden
  hood fly-up beyond the second catch while driving
  could impair driver visibility. In certain
  circumstances, occurrence of either of the above
  conditions could result in vehicle crash without
  prior warning.

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Spot the Problem...

• 11. Translated
• Some consumers have reported defects in the model
  of car you purchased. As a result, your cars
  front suspension could fail and its hood may fly
  up without warning. Please call your dealership
  to arrange for an inspection and/or repair to
  avoid potential accidents that may result from
  these defects.

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Spot the Problem...

• 12. The burglary suspects, two black men, are
  being held for questioning by police.
• 13. The forty-something Meg Ryan is bravely nude
  in In the Cut.

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Spot the Problem...

• 12. The burglary suspects, two black men, are
  being held for questioning by police.
• 13. The forty-something Meg Ryan is bravely nude
  in In the Cut.

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Spot the Problem...

• 14. "I really believe that the pagans, and the
  abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and
  the lesbians who are actively trying to make that
  an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For
  the American Way, all of them who have tried to
  secularize America. I point the finger in their
  face and say 'you helped this happen.'" Jerry
  Falwell, referring to the attacks of September
  11, 2001.

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Reading

• For more on ethics and writing, see Style,
  Chapter 10, pp. 125-145
• and Faigley, Handbook Chapter 30, pp. 354-361

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Next Week

• Visual Design