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
Link To Document