Political Rhetoric

We aren't out of the woods when it comes to politicians' cliches

by Moira Byrne

Catholicism, Contraception, and Conscience: Church Imposed Teaching, God’s Gift of Free Will, and Political Rhetoric by Michele Stopera Freyhauf

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published on the Feminism and Religion project

ertainly one cannot turn on the news without seeing a story about the feud over the Catholic Church’s stance on... more ertainly one cannot turn on the news without seeing a story about the feud over the Catholic Church’s stance on forbidding the use of contraception and Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) that mandates free contraception to women.  In preparing this article, I took the time to review many articles from liberal and conservative news outlets, law professors who are experts on constitutional law, and statements from the USCCB and Bishops.  Before asking questions, I want to outline the following points:

    *In the literature reviewed, only two women, Sr. Carol Keehan and Sr. Mary Ann Walsh, made a statement against this policy stating that the government is interfering with the working of the Church.  Most voices heard and shouting the loudest are members of the clergy.

    *Hospitals considered “Catholic” hire people of all faiths and various beliefs.  They also treat patients of all faiths.  They are not exclusively “Catholic.”

    *Catholic identified Colleges hire professors and staff that are not Catholic.  Moreover, their student body is not totally Catholic.

    *Catholic Charities, once again, hire non-Catholics.

  * Insurance plans currently in place often offer contraception prescriptions at a zero to low co-pay price.  These plans are in-force at many Catholic Institutions.

    *Under HIPAA, healthcare of employees are protected and the Employer, even the Catholic Church cannot violate the privacy of the patient, even if it is an employee.

    *Birth Control Pills are often prescribed for women with endometriosis or other “female” reproductive disorders and not birth control.

    Women pregnant, carrying a dead baby, cannot have surgery due to risks are given medication to induce abortion are given

Rhetoric and Anecdotes in British Political Speech

by Alan Finlayson

Pupchek-Diplomacy-CCAJ

by Leanne Pupchek

ACLU & Net Neutrality

by Adam Knowlton

The purpose of this study was to explore the rhetorical constructions of the political discourse surrounding the 2010... more The purpose of this study was to explore the rhetorical constructions of the political discourse surrounding the 2010 Internet Neutrality debates. To do so, this paper first reviews the significant metaphors and worldviews present within the books Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think by George Lakoff, and Myths America Lives By by Richard T. Hughes, second this paper explores the background of the ACLU and shows how the metaphors identified by Lakoff & Hughes can be seen within a case study illustrating the debate surrounding a recent ACLU publication concerning first amendment concerns surrounding internet censorship, before finally drawing some conclusions.

Speech, script, and performance: Towards a public poetics of the political speechwriter’s role

by Tom Clark

Published in PRism 8 (1), 19/12/2011

This article brings together and contextualises some ostensibly disparate ‘readings’ of political speeches from... more This article brings together and contextualises some ostensibly disparate ‘readings’ of political speeches from Australia and the United States, both good examples and not-so-good examples, to examine a characteristic that prevails in all public communication, and which is especially noticeable in politics.  That characteristic is the nexus between the poetic and the political in all public language.  In this case, it is grounded in a distinction between political speakers-as-performers and the advisors who script many of their performances for them.  The dynamics of this relationship are critical influences on the more publicly explicit relationship between speakers and their audiences.  Consequently, these dynamics are critical to our understanding of political discourse, and of public communication more broadly.

Development, the Fate of the Nation and the Duty of Our Generation: Official Rhetorics of Time an d Progress in Contemporary Chile

by Marcos Gonzalez-Hernando

Public Poeisis: Theorising Contemporary Civic Uses of Poetry in Australia and the United States

by Tom Clark

Unpublished working paper available via SSRN.

Uses of poems and extracts from poems for ceremonial or ritual purposes within civic discourse reveal the inherently... more Uses of poems and extracts from poems for ceremonial or ritual purposes within civic discourse reveal the inherently aesthetic nature of all political language. We can read in these civil and stately appropriations of poetry a desire for validation or embodiment of the aesthetic qualities of the events they embellish, and of the public and political agendas those events carry. This paper argues that poetry as public language reveals how public language is poetry. It illustrates that proposition by a critical comparison of excerpts from Australia’s annual ANZAC Day dawn service and from the oath of office ceremony for USA president Barack Obama in 2008.

The Way Things Used to Be? William Tubman’s Rhetorical Legacy in Liberia

by David Mastey

Remembering Africa and Its Diasporas. Eds. Audra A. Diptee and David V. Trotman. Lawrenceville, NJ: Africa World P, 2012. Forthcoming.

THE POLITICS OF DEFENSE POLICY COMMUNICATION: THE "THREAT" OF SOVIET STRATEGIC DEFENSE

by Rodger A. Payne

Payne, R. A. (1989), THE POLITICS OF DEFENSE POLICY COMMUNICATION: THE “THREAT” OF SOVIET STRATEGIC DEFENSE. Review of Policy Research, 8: 505–526.

This paper suggests a technique for evaluating threat assessments when reliable data is unavailable. Previously,... more This paper suggests a technique for evaluating threat assessments when reliable data is unavailable. Previously, scholars have found that political leaders manipulated threat assessments to achieve desired defense policy outcomes. Yet contemporary communication about threats are not easily studied, leading some writers to call for new studies of Clausewitz's so-called “social” dimension of strategy – the efforts by governments to assure domestic support for defense policies. To apply the suggested technique, this paper examines the Reagan Administration's claim that the threats from Soviet strategic defenses justify the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative. The Administration's arguments are found to be unclear and internally inconsistent. Despite some fear appeals about Soviet threats, Reagan officials typically noted that American offensive forces will continue to render Soviet defenses impotent and obsolete for the forseeable future. Indeed, vague and inconsistent statements about Soviet forces may have undermined Administration efforts to fulfill SDI funding goals, to codify early deployment plans, and even to establish Manhattan or Apollo-type policy preeminince.

«The effectiveness of Reagan's" Star Wars" address»

by Rodger A. Payne

Robert C. Rowland & Rodger A. Payne, Political Communication, Vol. 4, Issue 3, 1987, pages 161-178.

This essay evaluates the effectiveness of President Ronald Reagan's ‘'Star Wars” address of March 23, 1983. The essay... more This essay evaluates the effectiveness of President Ronald Reagan's ‘'Star Wars” address of March 23, 1983. The essay identifies three main audiences for U.S. defense policy rhetoric—the general public, experts, and foreign governments—and examines the appeal of the speech for each audience. It concludes that the address was effective for the general public, primarily as a response to the nuclear freeze movement. However, the speech was much less effective, and perhaps counterproductive, as an appeal to expert and foreign audiences. Consequently, the long‐term prospects for the Strategic Defense Initiative may have been hurt by the speech. It focused unnecessary attention on strategic defense research and development efforts and triggered heated debates on these issues long before the deployment decision must be made.

The Context-Embeddedness of Political Discourse: A Re-Evaluation of Reagan's Rhetoric in the 1982 Midterm Election Campaign

by Rodger A. Payne

Robert C. Rowland and Rodger A. Payne
Presidential Studies Quarterly
Vol. 14, No. 4, Campaign '84: The Contest for National Leadership (Part Four) (Fall, 1984), pp. 500-511

Until recently, most political scientists downplayed the role of rhetoric in determining the outcome of election... more Until recently, most political scientists downplayed the role of rhetoric in determining the outcome of election campaigns. However, in the last few years a number of commentators have concluded that rhetoric is one of the crucial determinants of political success. In this view for example, much of the blame for Republican losses in the 1982 mid-term campaign lies with President Reagan for failing to deal with the unemployment issue. While rhetoric plays an undeniably important role in politics we believe that some analysts underestimate the importance of situational factors in influencing political rhetoric. The 1982 campaign illustrates this position. No President could have removed unemployment from the political agenda in 1982. Reagan recognized this fact and adapted his rhetoric to mitigating the impact of the unemployment issue on potential Republican voters. As a result, the Republicans avoided a possible Democratic landslide. The major theoretical conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that although rhetoric is a powerful political tool, its effectiveness is strictly limited by context.

Consuming Education: a Critical Discourse Analysis of Social Actors In New Labour's Education Policy

by Jane Mulderrig

The Marketplace of Ideas. A Corpus Study of Buy and Sell Metaphors in American Political Discourse.

by sanna franssila

Metaphor in discourse and metaphors as discourse events which join together grammar, context and political objectives... more Metaphor in discourse and metaphors as discourse events which join together grammar, context and political objectives were the principal interest in this study. The following research questions guided this study: how genre-specific are buy and sell metaphors, how are they distributed in partisan political news and what kind of metaphorization levels of buy and sell can be found in authentic discourse? Moreover, negative evaluation conveyed with these metaphors in the partisan news coverage of three presidential elections in the United States (2000, 2004, and 2008) was one aspect in this study. The data comprised four text corpora which represent American political news genre: election news (1.6 million words), news or opinion magazines (3.8 million words), cable TV news (4.1 million words) and radio news (4.3 million words). All corpora had a conservative and a liberal subcorpus.

On the question of genre-specificity, sell was found to be a genre-specific election news metaphor: there were on average 72% more sell metaphors in the election data than in the other subgenres. Moreover, the occurrence levels of metaphorical and literal "sell + [OBJECT]" -type expressions were nearly even in the election news. All other sell metaphor types were more frequent than their literal counterparts in the election data. Although neither buy nor sell were partisan as such, some types of them were more partisan than others. The "buy into" -type seemed to be characteristic for liberal political discourse. Sometimes there were reverse patterns in partisan use: conservatives preferred the" does not sell" –type metaphors and liberals the "tough sell" -type, and to some extent this applied also to the conservative use of the "buy + [OBJECT]" -type and the liberal use of the "buy into" -type.

With regard to negative evaluation, negative metaphors were found in the election news data more than non-negative metaphors: there were 36% more negatively evaluative buy and sell metaphors than non-negative in the election news. The increase of negative buy metaphors (78%) in the conservative election news was especially great from 2000 to 2008. Liberals used negative buy and sell metaphors of their own candidates and party much more than conservatives of theirs.

This paper reveals several future research topics, such as:
1. How are metaphor use, especially negatively evaluative use, and ideological identity linked with each other?
2. Can the genre-spcifity of sell metaphors be confirmed in further studies?
3. Is the "buy it/this/that" phrase characteristic of mediated spoken discourse?

Finding Hope in the Lady of the Stars: An Exegetical Analysis of Revelation 12:1-5

by Michele Stopera Freyhauf

This Paper was presented at the Eastern Great Lakes Biblical Society, March 2009.

This paper utilizes the history of traditions and social scientific exegetical approach to examine the passage in the... more This paper utilizes the history of traditions and social scientific exegetical approach to examine the passage in the Book of Revelation that deals with the Lady in the Stars. Through this examination, the historical landscape is examined and the importance of tradition and symbolism - a symbolism that is often reinterpreted, even in today's world.

Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2011. Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies. Political Geography. 30 (2), 90-98.

Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that... more Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that violence is 'irrational' marks particular cultures as ‘other’. Neoliberalism exploits such imaginative geographies in constructing itself as the sole providence of nonviolence and the lone bearer of reason. Proceeding as a ‘civilizing’ project, neoliberalism positions the market as salvationary to putatively ‘irrational’ and ‘violent’ peoples. This theology of neoliberalism produces a discourse that binds violence in place. But while violence sits in places in terms of the way in which we perceive its manifestation as a localized and embodied experience, this very idea is challenged when place is reconsidered as a relational assemblage. What this re-theorization does is open up the supposed fixity, separation, and immutability of place to instead recognize it as always co-constituted by, mediated through, and integrated within the wider experiences of space. Such a radical rethinking of place fundamentally transforms the way we understand violence. No longer confined to its material expression as an isolated and localized event, violence can more appropriately be understood as an unfolding process, derived from the broader geographical phenomena and temporal patterns of the social world.

Choice, Loyalty, and Safety in the Construction of a Distinctly American Imagined Nationalism …

by Jennifer Mercieca

The Logos of the Blogosphere: Flooding the Zone, Invention, and Attention in the Lott Imbroglio

by Damien Smith Pfister

This essay examines the significance of a particular metaphor, flooding the zone, which gained prominence as an... more This essay examines the significance of a particular metaphor, flooding the zone, which gained prominence as an account of bloggers' argumentative prowess in the wake of Senator Trent Lott's toast at Strom Thurmond's centennial birthday party. I situate the growth of the blogosphere in the context of the political economy of the institutional mass media at the time and argue that the blogosphere is an alternative site for the invention of public argument. By providing an account of how the blogosphere serves as a site of invention by flooding the zone with densely interlinked coverage of a controversy, this essay theorizes how the networked public sphere facilitates invention with speed, agonism, and copiousness. The essay then identifies how flooding the zone has been adopted by corporations and the state in order to blunt spontaneous argumentation emerging from the periphery of communication networks. Key Words: networked public sphere, blogging, invention, Habermas, astroturfing

On the Rhetoric of Second Amendment Remedies

by Brett Lunceford

Lunceford, Brett. “On the Rhetoric of Second Amendment Remedies.” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, 1, no. 1 (2011): 31-39.

The current political landscape seems rife with partisanship and toxic rhetoric. Although this is certainly nothing... more The current political landscape seems rife with partisanship and toxic rhetoric. Although this is certainly nothing new, there has been an increase in rhetoric that suggests that citizens take up arms against the government. In the wake of the shooting at a political rally held by Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the media began asking whether violent rhetoric could lead to violent acts and politicians began to call for greater civility in political discourse. This essay examines the rhetoric of Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle to explore the rhetorical implications of a worldview that deeply distrusts the government and considers armed insurrection as an appropriate corrective to a government run amok

Must We All Be Rhetorical Historians? On Relevance and Timeliness in Rhetorical Scholarship

by Brett Lunceford

Lunceford, Brett. “Must We All Be Rhetorical Historians? On Relevance and Timeliness in Rhetorical Scholarship.” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, 1, no. 1 (2011): 1-9.

Rhetorical scholarship, if it is to remain relevant, must be actively applied to current events. This essay proposes... more Rhetorical scholarship, if it is to remain relevant, must be actively applied to current events. This essay proposes an alternate mode of scholarship, one that takes advantage of the online medium and integrates the speed of journalism with the rigors of scholarly analysis. Such a mode of scholarship dissemination is not meant to replace the current journal system; rather it serves a different end—that of providing scholarship to the public as a whole. I argue that scholarly analysis of current events will enrich the dialogue that is already taking place in the public sphere and help citizens to more fully take part in democratic practice.