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The Spurious Paternity of Business Communication Principles

Iowa State University

The few researchers who have investigated the matter date the advent of current business communication principles such as the "Seven C's" and reader adaptation from about 1906-1916. This article emends that research; demonstrates that principles supposed to have been specifically developed for the field are also found in English composition textbooks, several of which antedate 1906; and suggests that J. Willis Westlake, who enunciated similar principles in 1876, has as much right to the title of "pioneer" writer on business communication principles as do, say, A. G. Belding, Sher win Cody, or George Burton Hotchkiss. The article continues by showing that such principles belong to a 2000-year-old tradition of epistolographic writings. Suggestions for further research are offered, and the article concludes by questioning the viability of principles that depend for their validity only on rhetorical tradition.

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