ABSTRACT
Terms like profession, professional and professionalism carry a whole variety of meanings; in some contexts they are simply descriptive (e.g. a professional writer), in some they are commendatory (a professional piece of work), and in some they are pejorative (a professional foul). Furthermore, there is a subtle difference between the activities included in the term the professions, which is1 usually taken to include a rather limited range of employments in the Church of England, the law, medicine and the armed forces, and the use of the term profession in phrases such as “ the engineering profession” or “ the medical profession” . In this chapter we shall try to give a precise meaning to this latter usage, particularly in the context of the engineering profession.
