Rhetorical Strategies

We don’t always say what we mean …

In fact, we often avoid direct speech acts – saying what we mean – in the service of politeness and conflict avoidance, relying instead on indirect speech to communicate complex thoughts. An indirect speech act, according to linguist John Searle, …

Our expertise and resources are on display this month in The Institute, IEEE’s news magazine. A few weeks ago, Richard House, our society’s president, and Jessica Livingston, one of his co-authors on The Engineering Communication Manual, spoke with John R. Platt-a technical communication expert in his own right …