Ambiguous Rhetoric Research Articles

Varieties of Ambiguity: How do Voters Evaluate Ambiguous Policy Statements?

Scholars voice increasing interest in strategic ambiguity—a strategy whereby parties intentionally conceal their positions on divisive issues. Scholars contend that strategic ambiguity can help European parties broaden their electoral appeals. Although they identify several tactics and styles of position-blurring, the observational literature has yet failed to capture different variants of ambiguous rhetoric, let alone evaluate their effect on the vote. In this article, I rely on cross-country survey experiments that utilize representative samples of around 22,000 respondents from 14 European countries to evaluate the effect of four varieties of ambiguity: vagueness, ambivalence, flip-flopping, and negative messaging. I investigate the impact of ambiguous rhetoric vis-a-vis the context of competition facing the party. The findings reveal that the consequences of ambiguity vary by the actual form it takes and the context of competition facing the party. First, among the varieties, vague and ambivalent variants were superior to negative messaging or flip-flopping. Second, ambiguity helped the party in the absence of popular policy offers in the party system, while it backfired when competitors explicitly agreed with the voter. The findings imply that ambiguity is generally a useful strategy, but its benefits do not extend to rhetorical tactics that harm the party’s valence image.

Ambiguous Rhetoric and Legislative Accountability

Work on candidate positioning suggests that ambiguous statements help candidates by broadening their appeal and providing leeway to take different positions once in office. While experimental research has explored the electoral effects posited by the first, empirical testing of the second is lacking. As such, we use two original survey experiments (a national sample and a convenience sample) to show that contrary to conventional wisdom, ambiguity may not shield a legislator from the backlash that comes from eventually taking a position with which voters disagree. In addition, we find that a candidate’s rhetorical strategy matters most for social and cultural issues that represent core beliefs and values. In sum, our work makes important advances in the study of the longer-term effects of campaign rhetoric and suggests that if an issue cannot be avoided, there may be little to gain from attempting to obscure one’s intended position.

Eucharistic devotion and textual appropriation in post-reformation England

ABSTRACT This essay explores the forms of sacrament centred piety that developed in the late Elizabethan and early Stuart church. It does so by utilising Christopher Sutton’s “Godly Meditations”, first published in 1601. The text’s movement from Catholic mass book to Protestant communion guide, and Sutton’s amendments to later editions, are used to examine the ways texts were altered to fit different theological and pastoral requirements. Attention is paid to the ambiguous and flexible rhetoric of the “Meditations” and of avant-garde conformists more generally. It is shown that this ambiguity allowed such texts to be appropriated by Laudians who cast them as precedents for their innovations. In doing so, Laudians recast avant-garde conformity as something much narrower than it had been. Ultimately, it is suggested that a more nuanced approach to avant-garde conformity is required; one which recognises that anti-Calvinism was not an inherent part, or necessary consequence, of sacramental piety.

The effects of ambiguous rhetoric in congressional elections

Ambiguity -- whereby candidates make deliberately unclear position statements on key issues -- has long been touted by pundits and political scientists as a smart campaign strategy. In this manuscript, two experiments suggest the usefulness of ambiguous rhetoric on salient issues is overstated. Voters rely on well-publicized partisan positions on political issues as heuristics, a factor that has often been overlooked by the existing literature. This means that an issue will inform a voter's decision even if the candidate speaks ambiguously on it. Further, while ambiguity does not change the voters' perceptions of the candidate's position relative to silence, it does raise the salience of the issue that candidate is attempting to minimize. Hence, for candidates who wish to hide unfavorable positions, silence is a better rhetorical strategy than ambiguity.

Divergence in Community Participation Policy: Analysing Localism and Community Empowerment Using a Theory of Change Approach

The last two decades have witnessed a significant turn towards community participation in public policy around the globe, raising concerns that states are resorting to ‘government through community’, shifting responsibilities onto communities. In order to unpack the ambiguous rhetoric of policy statements, this article employs ideas from evaluation methodology to develop a generic theory of change for community participation policy. The model is then utilised to analyse and compare the UK Coalition Government’s Big Society/Localism agenda and the Scottish Government’s Community Empowerment approach, demonstrating the ways in which these represent a clear example of policy divergence, and potentially significant alternatives to state–community relations in the context of austerity. The article also demonstrates the potential wider applicability of ‘theories of change’ methodology for policy analysis.

Universal Jurisdiction is Not Disappearing: The Shift from 'Global Enforcer' to 'No Safe Haven' Universal Jurisdiction

The history of universal jurisdiction over core international crimes has often been framed as a story of rise and fall. Non-governmental organization (NGO) activism was regarded as a cause for both the rise and the fall; the rise culminated with the arrest of General Pinochet in 1998 and the fall came with the ‘amputation’ of the universal jurisdiction laws in Belgium in 2003 and Spain in 2009 and 2014. In this article, the author offers an alternative view of this history. He argues that universal jurisdiction is not necessarily on the decline since the number of universal jurisdiction statutes and trials has increased and the number of universal jurisdiction complaints has not substantially decreased in recent years. Rather, the trajectory of universal jurisdiction can be understood as an ongoing competition between two conceptions of the role states play in the universal jurisdiction regime. In the ‘global enforcer’ conception, states have a role in preventing and punishing core international crimes committed anywhere in the world, while in the ‘no safe haven’ conception, states should not be a refuge for participants in core international crimes. In recent years, the ‘no safe haven’ conception has made important inroads in legislation and prosecution of international crimes, but the ‘global enforcer’ conception is still present in the universal jurisdiction regime. Though NGOs prefer the ‘global enforcer’ conception, with its strong anti-impunity rationale, these organizations have (involuntarily) contributed to the advancement of the ‘no safe haven’ approach through their legalistic position and ambiguous rhetoric about universal jurisdiction.

The Martyr Pop Moment: Depoliticizing Martyrdom

ABSTRACTThe military regime that seized power in Egypt in July 2013 has suggested that the security personnel, rather than the unarmed protestors who died in the 25 January 2011 uprising, were the martyrs that the nation should celebrate. This rhetorical claim in support of authoritarian suppression of dissent must be understood in the context of the popular culture of the immediate post-Mubarak period, particularly the ‘martyr pop’ music video clips. This mass-media form disseminated a strategically ambiguous rhetoric that celebrated the martyrs but largely ignored the political cause for which they died. Such depoliticization of martyrdom suited the sensibilities of the intellectual class, whose economic and political investments in the hegemony of the neoliberal state outweighed their stated commitments to political change.

Textual Pragmatics in Early Chinese Madhyamaka

Academic studies of Chinese Buddhist views of language generally focus on issues such as paradox, contradiction, and the limits of expression and thought. However, such studies seldom seem to focus on the fact that many Buddhist texts deliberately use an ambiguous mode of linguistic expression, one that actually constitutes their compositional patterns and is designed to enhance and promote the Mahāyāna Buddhist soteriological goal, namely liberation from suffering via detachment from falseness. In fact, many of the treatises and exegetical commentaries of the Chinese masters develop a textual pragmatics rooted in the ambiguous and paradoxical rhetoric of early Madhyamaka scriptures translated by Kumārajīva (344–413). This essay discusses the philosophical and soteriological significance of such a linguistic-textual pragmatics as we find it in the early Chinese Madhyamaka scriptures.

Troubled Ascent Towards Perfection: The Myth of Amor and Psyche in Giovan Battista Marino’s L’Adone

The article demonstrates how the 4th canto of Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (1623) reflects the perennial, but recently augmented antagonism between moral concerns and aesthetic interests. It is argued, that this quintessential Counter-Reformation issue is discernible in the “Novelletta” canto’s ambiguous concern with the increasing amount of material obstacles perceived on the way to spiritual excellence, observable on different textual levels: in the thematic occupation with the notions of trial and discipline, in the excursive structure and ambiguous rhetoric, and in the use of stylistic devices, which obstruct the reading and interpretation of the text.

Кто виноват? (À qui la faute ?) dans le drame familial des Herzen : «Était-ce une prémonition de mon destin ?»

Кто виноват ? в семейной драме Герцена : «Неужели это было пророчество моей судьбы… ? » В статье высказывается предположение, что роман Герцена Кто виноват ? по-служил своеобразной «моделью » для Н. А. Герцен в ее романе с Георгом Гервегом. Во-первых, Натали проводит в жизнь идею «любви к двоим » , высказан-ную в романе, а во-вторых, использует риторические приемы герценовского по-вествователя, чтобы доказать себе, что в данной ситуации, как и в романе, «никто не виноват » (в том числе, и она перед Эммой Гервег). Неудача ее опыта «любви к двоим » , основанной на обмане одного из них, показывает онтологическую несосто-ятельность этой идеи. К статье прилагается несколько неопубли-кованных или частично опубликованных в переводах писем Н. А. Герцен к Георгу и Эмме Гервегам.

The politics of patriotism in France (1770-1788)

—This article focuses on the language of patrie as it was employed from the 1770s to the 1780s in relation to the parlements. It was a complex and ambiguous rhetoric with roots in classical republicanism that was significantly modified in the 1740s and put to many uses. The study seeks to show how and why the parlementaires moved in public opinion from being patriotic heroes in the early 1770s to the decidedly unpatriotic agents of aristocracy in late 1788. The premise is that language in the courts is employed rhetorically and involves an attempt to convince auditors and readers of the arguments on both a rational and an emotional level. The discourse was thus appropriated by actors rather than dominating them. Patrie was evocative of emotions on several levels, from austerity to sensibility. On the other hand, the courts were not supposed to employ emotional arguments but judicial ones based upon the corpus of existing legislation. It is therefore instructive to trace their relationship to this idiom, particularly in the crisis periods of 1770–74 and 1787–89.

Advertising Agency: Print Culture and Female Sexuality in “Nausicaa”

Did Gerty MacDowell have an abortion? “Advertising Agency: Print Culture and Female Sexuality in ‘Nausicaa’” uncovers historical material long overlooked by Joyce scholars to indicate that she very well may have: Widow Welch’s Female Pills, a patent medication to which Gerty explicitly refers, was widely believed to have abortifacient properties during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. This essay draws upon Joyce’s familiarity with the discourses of birth-control movements and turn-of-the-century advertising to argue that critics have too easily dismissed Gerty as an unthinking and passive consumer of the fashion, fiction, and fantasy offered by ladies’ magazines. Instead, this essay contends, Gerty, like her creator, employs the deliberately ambiguous rhetoric of advertising, seizing control of her body and reproductive health from a legal system that seeks to circumscribe her.

Darwin's Ambiguity: The Secularization of Biological Meaning

Darwin is well known for his wondrously ambiguous rhetoric. The author who used an ‘entangled bank’ as his metaphor for Nature and its complex relationships built up the substance of his text from a corresponding entanglement of unresolved theoretical relations. Ambiguous positions, arguments that seem to fold in on themselves, vacillations, contradictions, and pluralities of explanation suffuse Darwin's science and its constituent metascience. TheOriginabounds in ambiguities with regard to the technical features of evolutionary biology. But the domain of ambiguity I wish to address is Darwin's metaphysical stance. I want to approach the question of Darwin and secularization through what might be called the trope of ambiguity. My principle concern is with the origins of that ambiguity. These lie in the conflicting cultural and ideological resources Darwin used to construct the theory of natural selection.

The role of ambiguity in manipulating voter behavior

In the standard account of ambiguous political rhetoric, ambiguity is equated with voter uncertainty: a politician takes an ambiguous stance on an issue by announcing to the voters a lottery over the positions he might take on that issue. The present account equates ambiguity with multiple meanings: a politician takes an ambiguous stance on an issue if his rhetoric admits of different meanings in different contexts. The linguistic account of ambiguity is based upon the formal logical concept of a piecewise definition. Piecewise defined terms provide the politician with the means of uttering statements each of which has seperate meanings for different voters. This paper formalizes the multiple-meaning account of ambiguity and traces the implications of the formalization for political strategy. The findings are: ambiguous rhetoric is often optimal; the conditions under which it is optimal are simple; and the selection of optimal ambiguous rhetoric is rarely simple.

Infinite Jest: Interpretation in Sterne's A Sentimental Journey

STERNE9S A Sentimental Journey, through its ambiguous rhetoric, subversions of literary convention, and its complicated narrative technique, has provoked widely divergent readings by its critics. Gardner Stout has called it triumph of communication between his own [Yorick's] and foreign sensibilities, in traveling through France and Italy, and in traveling with the reader, and sees Yorick as persuading us that the benefits of travel derive from carrying on a sentimental commerce in the benevolent affections with our fellowmen and from participating in all the joys of a beneficent universe.' John Dussinger, in direct contrast, asserts that Yorick's happiest moments and main security are in the awareness that discourse is finally a solipsistic game of language and gesture; whatever happens on his journey does not really happen to him.2 The contradiction between these two accounts centers on the nature of the communication that is occurring in and through the novel, both between the narrator and the other characters, and between the narrator and the reader. My own contention is that neither Stout's analysis nor Dussinger's is wholly unjustified, that the former is accurate with regard to Sterne's purpose in the novel, while the latter more adequately characterizes his means. Their positions mark the epistemological and psychological poles of what Coleridge (speaking on Steme) defined in moral terms as certain oscillation in the individual's own mind between the remaining good