The Rhetorical Incompleteness of Written Instructions and Procedures

Within the Cycle of Technical Documentation within Large Regulatory Industries, the processes of rhetorical transformation that shape the construction of instructions and procedures are designed to strip away the site-specific 

The following examples demonstrate how written texts direct decision makers to sensory knowledge outside of written texts. While it is impossible to determine from textual evidence alone the degree to which the rhetorical inadequacy of these texts result from deliberate manipulation, careles.sness, or slavish adherence to institutional practice, these texts show how the standards for assessing familiar and conventional practices like instructions and procedures must be refigured in the context of risk.  

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The present analysis focuses on representations of roof support because roof control represents one of the most dangerous and uncertain aspects of safety in a coal mine. To help readers understand the uncertainties inherent in roof control, I have provided a brief overview of three methods of roof support in U.S. and British mines. This overview will set the stage for a more theoretical discussion of the nature of warrants grounded in experience, the effect of warrants on risk decisions and risk outcomes, the rhetorical incompleteness of written instructions and procedures, and finally, the textual dynamics of disaster. In the conclusion, I look at the implications of this analysis for writers and rhetorical theorists. 

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