Understanding how context can lead to different interpretations of written communication is important to the field of Rhetoric and Technical Communication since issues concerning how we communicate are central to our treatment of written communication in the workplace as well as in academia. Rationalization is the process by which controlling societal structures, through use of empirical reason, gain power. Purposive-rational action which is oriented within a powerful societal structure and leads to a specific goal, supports the continuation of that structure. Habermas, although pointedly opposed to Richard Rorty's assessment of philosophical reason as dead, sees the positivistic control of science and technology as an inhibitor to freedom of marginalized voices in society. For Habermas, as the technologically based constructs of knowledge grow, so does subtle domination by political power structures.
Rational choice is based on strategies of analytical knowledge.
The validity of social norms would be governed by intersubjective understanding by the parties to the communication. According to Habermas, use of communicative action as a basis of power in society would eliminate the character of domination inherent to social structures which maintain themselves through purposive-rational action. Communicative action would move the locus of societal control from the capitalists to the populous. The latter is oriented not to the social results of the institution of the market but to those of government action designed to compensate for the dysfunctions of free exchange. This policy combines the element of the burgeoise ideology of achievement . . .