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Promoting risk communication in early design through linguistic analyses

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Abstract

The concept of function offers significant potential for transforming thinking and reasoning about engineering design as well as providing a common thread for relating together product risk information. This paper focuses specifically on risk data by examining how this information is addressed for a design team conducting early stage design for space missions. A fundamental set of risk elements is proposed based on a linguistic analysis of the risk information needs of the design team. Sample risk statements are then decomposed into a set of key attributes that are used to scrutinize the risk information using three approaches from the pragmatics sub-field of linguistics: (1) Gricean, (2) Relevance Theory, and (3) Functional Analysis. Based on the deficiencies identified in this analysis, a format for the communication of risk data by explicitly accounting for five risk attributes developed in this work is formulated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Interdisciplinary Engineering, University of Missouri-Rolla, Rolla, USA

    Katie Grantham Lough, Michael Van Wie & Robert Stone

  2. Department of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, USA

    Irem Y. Tumer

Authors
  1. Katie Grantham Lough
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  2. Michael Van Wie
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  3. Robert Stone
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  4. Irem Y. Tumer
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Correspondence to Katie Grantham Lough.

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Lough, K.G., Van Wie, M., Stone, R. et al. Promoting risk communication in early design through linguistic analyses. Res Eng Design 20, 29–40 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00163-009-0063-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00163-009-0063-8

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