Communication,accountability and professional discourse: The interaction of language values and ethical values

This paper examines the ideas of Communication and Accountability in relation to professional discourse and the teaching of Professionals. Language does not merely express values, but embodies values, without which it could not function as a medium of communication — Grice's Cooperative Principle. In practice communication and accountability have become separated, as have ethics and communication in the schools, and this is reflected in assumptions about science and scientific language which characterise professional discourses.The modern professions exist on a continuum between two extremes of collegiate and corporate values, with a trend toward the latter. The place on this continuum determines what stance an organisation takes in its attempts to communicate with its publics. An analysis of the assumptions which underlie the discourses of academic economics and public relations shows how the dissociation of values and communication works in practice.The implications of this are that a greater awareness of the values of language through interpretive skills and an understanding of rhetoric and informal logic would go some way to reunite communication and accountability in practice.H. W. Love, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., has a background in English, Classics and Philosophy, and has taught English and theatre studies in universities in Britain, Ireland and New Zealand. His publications have been in the area of literary and theatrical epistemology. Currently he is a lecturer in Ethics and Communications in the Division of Commerce, University of Otago, New Zealand.