Should Scholars Delineate a Data Set Apart from a Research Project? Considering Objects, Methods, and Purposes for Studying Presidential Rhetoric

Abstract

At first glance, phrase may appear as a readily understood and transparent phrase that identifies a clearly bounded and delineated body of discourse and an attendant area of scholarship. Presumably, refers to rhetoric of presidents--their persuasive, speeches and statements. While terms persuasive and public may generate different interpretations among scholars, presidential rhetoric putatively avoids many of difficulties involved in identifying, say, a rhetoric of science or a visual rhetoric, since both categories suggest more porous and less established boundaries. On this basis, move to identify presidential addresses, as Kevin Coe and Rico Neumann (2011) have done, ought to entail a comparatively straightforward process of articulating and justifying various criteria that scholars may evaluate in terms of their suitability. Initial appearances notwithstanding, presidential rhetoric references a fluid field of study, even if we set its boundaries as rhetoric of presidents. Presidential speeches and statements invite scholarly questions about how they should be understood and studied. Any effort to identify a body of discourse implicates questions of use--whether or not we explicitly pursue these questions. Coe and Neumann (2011) hold that we should study addresses by modern presidents to generalize about addresses by modern presidents. Unanswered in this somewhat circular rationale is question of just what we hope to generalize from these I do not raise this issue to discredit Coe and Neumann's project, since articulating a common scholarly endeavor and engendering more expansive and sustained scholarly conversations are potentially important contributions. However, I am wary of efforts to answer questions of use--and thus to identify suitable texts for study--in advance of articulating a clearer research program. question of which presidential speeches and statements to study raises questions of how scholars of presidential rhetoric understand their objects of study, methods, and purposes. I do not hope to answer these questions conclusively, since I do not believe that a single scholar or study could offer a definitive statement. Rather, I shall suggest some of ways that texts we select for analysis may differ depending on how scholars answer these questions when studying presidential rhetoric. Objects Speeches have beginnings and endings, but meaning and significance of what presidents say in their speeches may be understood as arising from speeches as discrete texts and/or as texts that make meaning in connection with other presidential and nonpresidential discourses. Moreover, presidential speeches may be understood as meaningful and significant in terms of their parts and wholes. These issues do not compel mutually exclusive choices, nor do they compel scholars to pledge allegiance to one or another theory of signification and textuality. Rather, we may glean alternative insights by focusing on single speeches or larger sets, and our selections may or may not include major addresses. A focus on single speech texts as important sites of meaning has been advanced importantly by project of close textual analysis. A leading proponent of this approach, Michael Left justifies a focus on singular texts in radically particular quality of speech, since the action in an oration is bound to moment of its utterance, even as specific speeches may establish more general rhetorical standards (1986, 382). Particularity reveals ineluctably time-bound character of presidential rhetoric, as speeches and statements make meaning in moments. For Left, temporality signals work of rhetorical scholar, who should consider how a speech appears in time and shapes audience understandings of time: The timing in discourse mediates our perception of time in world (1986, 385). …