Using the Enthymeme to Emphasize Ethics in Professional Writing Courses

Abstract

Professional writing is often taught as a service course that sees writing as a set of dis crete skills, with no substantive relation to ethics or to students' future scientific, busi ness, or engineering activities. This perception derives from the adoption of scientiftc assumptions by writing teachers, and it produces two inadequate and conflicting ap proaches to writing contexts.

An adequate perception considers writing as a course in rhetoric, necessarily involving ethics and integrally related to students' other professional activities. Using the classi cal enthymeme helps students learn not only that ethical implications to writing exist but also how these implications can be managed to produce effective and socially responsible writing.