This article suggests a perspective on rhetoric of technology as discursive exploitation of the margins of indeterminacy affecting the development of technologies and technical artifacts. It examines such margins by examining the development of an aircraft auxiliary engine in a California aerospace company, focusing especially on how engines are tested. It examines technical documents associated with testing as arenas for rhetorical transactions involving various factors and interests vested in a technology and as residua of compliance and negotiation. It suggests that margins of indeterminacy in technology development provide critical rhetorical spaces for agency and decision making, spaces that engineers and technical communicators must be trained to appreciate and exploit appropriately.
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