In his recent examination of The Discourse o f Musicology Giles Hooper poses the question ‘What should one say about music?’ and it is clear that the use of the word should here covers a moral dimension.1 Unlike, say, physicians and engineers, whose activities are assessed in terms of outcomes such as health of patients and robustness of physical constructions, what musicologists do must primarily be considered in terms of the words they produce. Given that this is the case, and that speech acts (understood to cover inscriptions - the normal mode of scholarly discourse - as well as utterances) may be examined for whether they are true or false, appropriately informative or deceptive, perspicuous or vague, questions of truth, honesty, and intellectual integrity, can become important issues for musicologists.