• DocumentCode
    1520539
  • Title

    Do not grind armadillo armor in this mill

  • Author

    Dobrin, D.

  • Author_Institution
    Organ. Commun., Consultants, Cambridge, MA, USA
  • Issue
    4
  • fYear
    1985
  • Firstpage
    30
  • Lastpage
    37
  • Abstract
    Some instructions for a coffee mill fail to take the reader´s common sense seriously and so violate some basic rules for communication, called speech act rule. When the instructions violate the rules, the reader either gets confused or feels justified to stop reading. By writing the instructions this way, the company tried to protect itself from lawsuits. It is shown that these instructions do nothing about liability. The better, less expensive, and only way to write instructions is to respect the reader´s common sense.
  • Keywords
    linguistics; speech; armadillo armor; coffee mill; common sense; communication; lawsuits; speech act rule; Companies; Games; Home appliances; Pragmatics; Safety; Speech; Writing;
  • fLanguage
    English
  • Journal_Title
    Professional Communication, IEEE Transactions on
  • Publisher
    ieee
  • ISSN
    0361-1434
  • Type

    jour

  • DOI
    10.1109/TPC.1985.6448846
  • Filename
    6448846