Showing papers in "Quarterly Journal of Speech in 2006"
TL;DR: This paper examined the Young Lords Organization's 1969 garbage offensive and argued that the long-standing constraints on agency to which they were responding demanded an inventive rhetoric that was decolonizing both in its aim and in its form.
Abstract: Examining the nascent rhetoric of the Young Lords Organization's (YLO) 1969 “garbage offensive,” this essay argues that the long-standing constraints on agency to which they were responding demanded an inventive rhetoric that was decolonizing both in its aim and in its form. Blending diverse forms of discourse produced an intersectional rhetoric that was qualitatively different from other movements at the time. As such, the YLO constructed a collective agency challenging the status quo and, in some ways, foreshadowed more contemporary movement discourses that similarly function intersectionally. Examining the YLO's garbage offensive, then, presents rhetorical scholars with an opportunity to revise our understanding of how marginalized groups craft power through rhetoric.
83 citations
TL;DR: The authors argued that the advancement of populism is constituted by alterations in the focus and content, not the structure, of populist activism, and traced these themes through the rhetoric of the People's Party, Huey Long, and George Wallace.
Abstract: This essay argues that a sustained form can be located in the complicated history of populist rhetoric Despite its chameleonic qualities, the advancement of populism is constituted by alterations in the focus and content, not the structure, of populist activism This structure, or what I term its argumentative frame, positions a virtuous people against a powerful enemy and expresses disdain toward traditional forms of democratic deliberation and republican representation I trace these themes through the rhetoric of the People's Party, Huey Long, and George Wallace I conclude by analyzing the link between populism's persistence in US history and the nation's Founding
79 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that state eulogies on the first anniversary of September 11 exemplify the emergence of neoliberal epideictic, defining citizens involvement in partisan affairs and recognition of sociopolitical difference or inequity as irreverent means of sustaining civic memory.
Abstract: Public memorial services held in New York City on September 11, 2002, marked the most important U.S. civic commemoration of the present era. Numerous popular and academic critics excoriated speakers on that day for commemorating the occasion with commemorative declamations instead of offering original speeches. This essay contends that assessing these unusual public eulogies according to post-Romantic conceptions of rhetorical practice overlooks the often powerful role of formulaic speech in shaping the politics of civic commemoration. The essay accordingly argues that state eulogies on the first anniversary of September 11 exemplify the emergence of neoliberal epideictic. Ritualized public praise of neoliberal ideals increasingly constitutes the normative speech of our most important civic ceremonies. The essay concludes that neoliberal epideictic defines citizens’ involvement in partisan affairs and recognition of sociopolitical difference or inequity as irreverent means of sustaining civic memory, trad...
66 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that an appreciably different character of narration is underway, one that tactically deploys and directs frontier mythology as a fantasy theme at discrete audiences: to cope with a national crisis, reassure a partisan political base, and discipline international allies for a controversial war.
Abstract: The Bush administration's public discourse after September 11 weaves a new story embedded in the national myth of the Old West. Seen in its historical context of a frontier political mentality reaching back to the early 19th century, and in its broader communication context as the rhetorical narration of a defining cultural myth, the tactical narration of the frontier justice story gains its fullest gravity. Bush and Cheney's proliferation of this rhetorical vision is not merely a quantitative increase in frontier references from past presidencies. Instead, this essay argues that an appreciably different character of narration is underway, one that tactically deploys and directs frontier mythology as a fantasy theme at discrete audiences: to cope with a national crisis, reassure a partisan political base, and discipline international allies for a controversial war.
48 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on key slogans and catchwords used in top-down rhetoric by each post-Mao regime to facilitate economic/political reforms while legitimizing continued one-party rule.
Abstract: Since 1978 China's ruling Communist Party has moved China's economy increasingly toward capitalism and its foreign policy toward strategic partnership with its old enemies in the West. These changes have required Party leaders to reconcile the reforms rhetorically with continued homage to their predecessors, to Chinese traditions, and to Marxist/Maoist orthodoxies. This analysis focuses on key slogans and catchwords used in top-down rhetoric by each post-Mao regime to facilitate economic/political reforms while legitimizing continued one-party rule.
40 citations
TL;DR: The authors argued that popular representations of Lynch's natural femaleness rearticulate the seemingly biological distinctions between male and female bodies and suggest that women are inherently ill-suited for combat operations.
Abstract: Through a critical analysis of the public discourse surrounding the capture and rescue of Jessica Lynch, this essay investigates how Lynch's body “comes to matter” in political debates regarding women in combat. This article argues that popular representations of Lynch's natural femaleness rearticulate the seemingly biological distinctions between male and female bodies and suggest that women are inherently ill-suited for combat operations. Drawing on the theory of gender performativity, this project explores how Lynch's body becomes marked as innately female by her previous performances of femininity as well as by the norms of military culture, a culture that is always already gendered. In sum, this case study demonstrates how potentially transgressive performances (i.e. women performing the role of masculine soldier) are often recuperated back into a two-sex/gender schema for the purpose of “making sense” of those performances and of institutions that are founded upon the disciplining of gendered bodies.
39 citations
TL;DR: The pharmaceutical industry's response to the threat of bioterrorism following 9-11 invoked the rhetorical notion of kairos as an urgent and ongoing opportunity not only to protect the nation but also to improve the industry's reputation and fortify its political power as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The pharmaceutical industry's response to the threat of bioterrorism following 9-11 invoked the rhetorical notion of kairos as an urgent and ongoing opportunity not only to protect the nation but also to improve the industry's reputation and fortify its political power. Yet the notion of kairos as seizing an advantage—grounded in modernist assumptions about agency and control—is also complicated by the case history of big pharma's response, which left the industry vulnerable to heightened and additional risks. This case history suggests that kairos can be less about seizing an advantage than about indeterminately responding to shifting, unbounded, uncertain, unpredictable, and uncontrollable risks shaped by the processes of globalization.
39 citations
TL;DR: The 2003 Iraq prewar intelligence failure was not simply a case of the U.S. intelligence community providing flawed data to policy-makers, but also involved subversion of the competitive intelligence analysis process, where unofficial intelligence boutiques "stovepiped" misleading intelligence assessments directly to policy makers and undercut intelligence community input that ran counter to the White House's preconceived preventive war of choice against Iraq.
Abstract: The 2003 Iraq prewar intelligence failure was not simply a case of the U.S. intelligence community providing flawed data to policy-makers. It also involved subversion of the competitive intelligence analysis process, where unofficial intelligence boutiques “stovepiped” misleading intelligence assessments directly to policy-makers and undercut intelligence community input that ran counter to the White House's preconceived preventive war of choice against Iraq. This essay locates historical precursors to such “Team B intelligence coups” in the original 1976 Team B exercise and the 1998 Rumsfeld Commission report on ballistic missile threats. Since competitive intelligence analysis exercises are designed to improve decision-making by institutionalizing the learning function of debate, their dynamics stand to be elucidated through critique informed by argumentation theory. Such inquiry has salience in the current political milieu, where intelligence reform efforts and the investigations that drive them tend t...
37 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that postmodernism does not offer a viable independent alternative to modernism, as a perspective founded primarily on critique and opposition, post-modernism is always parasitic on that which it critiques.
Abstract: Postmodernism’s critique of modernism [as a misguided positivism] is well-taken; unfortunately, postmodernism does not offer a viable independent alternative to modernism. As a perspective founded primarily on critique and opposition, postmodernism is always parasitic on that which it critiques. In presenting a world where public discourse is nothing but deceit, postmodernism precludes the possibility of any community whatsoever.
30 citations
TL;DR: This somatic genealogy of Dramatism's core terms (symbolic action, attitude, identification) argues for the importance of keeping rhetoric, rhetorical theory, and rhetorical pedagogy more closely tie.
Abstract: This somatic genealogy of Dramatism's core terms—symbolic action, attitude, identification—argues for the importance of keeping rhetoric, rhetorical theory, and rhetorical pedagogy more closely tie...
23 citations
TL;DR: This article examined how Roosevelt justified his dismissal of the soldiers and increased the definitional power of the presidency and highlighted the importance of the Presidency's constitutive and rhetorical power, especially as that power pertains to ideologically based definitions of national identity.
Abstract: Theodore Roosevelt was an important figure in the development of the presidency as a primary and authoritative source for definitions of national identity. Through an analysis of three specific rhetorical moves Roosevelt made in arguments over the “proper” interpretation of the Brownsville Raid, this essay examines how Roosevelt both justified his dismissal of the soldiers and increased the definitional power of his institution. Brownsville highlights the importance of the presidency's constitutive and rhetorical power, especially as that power pertains to ideologically based definitions of national identity and the role of minorities within that identity, and illuminates the argumentative forms that undergird that constitutive power.
TL;DR: In this article, Roman Mailloux, four years old, asked: "There's only one question: Are we the good guys or the bad guys?" And he answered: "Bad."
Abstract: I smell a bad word. —Roman Mailloux, four years old There's only one question: Are we the good guys or the bad guys? —Retired Brigadier General, U. S. Marines, at author's 35th anniversary high sch...
TL;DR: The authors found that it was a really hard job to compose a response to Mailloux's paper on politics and institutions, for two reasons: (1) Steve is that rarest of beings, a truthful and humble admini...
Abstract: I found that it was a really hard job to compose a response to Steve Mailloux's paper on politics and institutions, for two reasons: (1) Steve is that rarest of beings, a truthful and humble admini...
TL;DR: Omar Swartz, In Defense of Partisan Criticism: Communication Studies, Law, and Social Analysis (New York: Peter Lang, 2005), xvii+nbsp.
Abstract: Omar Swartz, In Defense of Partisan Criticism: Communication Studies, Law, and Social Analysis (New York: Peter Lang, 2005), xvii + 292 pp. $32.95 (paper). Omar Swartz, ed., Social Justice and Comm...
TL;DR: Frank Bryan, Real Democracy: The New England Town Meeting and How It Works (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), xviii++ 320 pp. as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Frank Bryan, Real Democracy: The New England Town Meeting and How It Works (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), xviii + 320 pp. $49.00 (cloth), $19.00 (paper). Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding Poli...
TL;DR: Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005), 348 pp. $13.95 (paper) as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005), 348 pp. $13.95 (paper). R. Marie Griffith, Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in ...
TL;DR: In 2003, the newly formed Alliance of Rhetoric Societies (ARS) sponsored a conference on the status and future of rhetorical studies as discussed by the authors, with the goal of stimulating an interdisciplinary conversation among rhetorical scholars, and its organizers sought to open as many lines of communication as possible on matters of common concern.
Abstract: In September 2003, the newly formed Alliance of Rhetoric Societies (ARS) sponsored a conference on the status and future of rhetorical studies. The goal of this meeting was to stimulate an interdisciplinary conversation among rhetorical scholars, and its organizers sought to open as many lines of communication as possible on matters of common concern. For practical reasons, however, they found it necessary to frame the conference around a finite number of themes, and they ultimately settled on four: