Terminology, Power, and Inclusive Language in Internet-Drafts and RFCs
draft-knodel-terminology-04
Network Working Group M. Knodel
Internet-Draft Center for Democracy & Technology
Intended status: Best Current Practice N. ten Oever
Expires: February 25, 2021 Texas A&M University
August 24, 2020
Terminology, Power, and Inclusive Language in Internet-Drafts and RFCs
draft-knodel-terminology-04
Abstract
This document argues for more inclusive language conventions
sometimes used by RFC authors and the RFC Production Centre in
Internet-Drafts that are work in progress, and in new RFCs that may
be published in any of the RFC series, in order to foster greater
knowledge transfer and improve diversity of participation in the
IETF.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on February 25, 2021.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2020 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
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Internet-Draft Terminology August 2020
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
1. Introduction
According to [RFC7322], "The ultimate goal of the RFC publication
process is to produce documents that are readable, clear, consistent,
and reasonably uniform," and one function of the RFC Editor is to
"[c]orrect larger content/clarity issues; flag any unclear passages
for author review." Documents that are published as RFCs are first
worked on as Internet-Drafts.
Given the importance of communication between people developing RFCs,
Internet-Drafts (I-D's), and related documents, it is worth
considering the effects of terminology that has been identified as
exclusionary. This document argues that certain obviously
exclusionary terms should be avoided and replaced with alternatives.
We propose nothing more than additional care in the choice of
language just as care is taken in defining standards and protocols
themselves.
This document presents arguments for why exclusionary terms should be
avoided in Internet-Drafts and RFCs and as an exercise describes the
problems introduced by some specific terms and why their proposed
alternatives improve technical documentation. The example terms
discussed in this document include "master-slave" and "whitelist-
blacklist". There is a final section on additional considerations
and general action points to address future RFCs and I-D's. Lastly,
a summary of recommendations is presented.
2. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
14 [RFC2119][RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
3. Terminology and Power in Internet-Drafts and RFCs
According to the work of scholar Heather Brodie Graves from 1993,
"one goal of the application of rhetorical theory in the technical
communication classroom is to assess the appropriateness of
particular terms and to evaluate whether these terms will facilitate
or hinder the readers' understanding of the technical material"
[BrodieGravesGraves]. This implies that in order to effectively
communicate the content of I-Ds and RFCs to all readers, it is
important for Authors to consider the kinds of terms or language
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conventions that may inadvertently get in the way of effective
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