Reading homework help

Read Katz twice. It’s worth it. Katz’s article is probably the most seminal of the selections thus far. His argument is particularly dependent on two texts that you may not have encountered yet – Aristotle’s Rhetoric, and a short article by Kenneth Burke called “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s ‘Battle,” which you will probably encounter in the Rhetorical Theory course.

Sullivan’s article in JAC in 1990 is notable for how it engages with Miller’s work (we’ve read one of hers) and how it anticipates the social justice turn in the field right now. Herndl is a forerunner of now-typical analyses of medical discourse. But I don’t think either is as strong as Katz’s piece, or the more comprehensive overview of ethical theory in Markel in 2000: worth reading if you want a better layperson’s overview of what they are talking about:

Markel, M. (1997). Ethics and Technical Communication: A Case for Foundational Approaches. IEEE: Transactions On Professional Communication, 40.4, 284-298.

In any case, there’s a reason Katz is still widely cited nearly 30 years later and the other two are more obscure. Speculate.