Sophists Rule!

Outline
Thesis: The historical rhetorical and philosophical tradition concerning truth makes embracing postmodern communication theory difficult for both applied rhetoricians i.e. those who create useful texts like technical communicators as well as the culture at large. Embracing this new view of communication is critical for rhetoricians and audiences to produce and use texts that work in the information age.

I. Tragic ramifications of miscommunication
a. Challenger, Three-Mile Island Mining Accidents
b. Texts create organizations.
c. How miscommunication happens.
d. Professional communicators necessary to create safer, consumer-friendly environments and products
II. Why technical communicators aren’t more empowered.
a. Culture at large doesn’t value their work.
b. Technical communicators don’t value their work.
III. Historical relationship of truth and knowledge to language.
a. Sophists and empowered view of language
i. Language has incredible power to persuade
ii. No absolute Truth only conditional truth.
b. Plato, Truth and rhetoric
i. Rhetoric not based in Truth unethical for Plato
ii. Truth was a felt-sense that philosophers could feel but not communicate.
c. For 2000+ years Western culture defines truth as something outside language, although language can define truth.
i. Aristotle on Truth
ii. St. Augustine on Truth
iii. Bacon on Truth
iv. Locke on Truth
v. Nietzsche on Language
IV. The string that ties language to truth snaps: in the Twentieth Century philosophers grapple with relationship of language to truth; Foucault and others begin to understand that Truth is irrelevant—there’s only language.
a. Wittgenstein tries to create a view of language that ties language to truth but he can’t do it and abandons the effort.
b. Foucault finally declares an end to “the tyranny of the signifier.”
V. Modern communication theory and applied rhetoric (technical communication): the more practically minded apply the end of Truth to texts and language.
a. Brief history of technical communication and communication theory
b. How such theories empower both technical communicators and their audiences.
VI. Strategies for adopting 21st Century communication theory despite 2000 years of history.
a. Research that demonstrates relationship between knowledge and language.
b. Education
1. Curriculum must emphasize 21st Century articulated theory of communication.
2. Teach foundational knowledge not transient skills like software programs.
3. Management training.
c. Professionalization
1. Develop professional standards.
2. Supply workforce with enough professionals so that employers will never hire non-professionals.