Rhetoric Research Articles

Kierkegaard, Social Media, and Despair

ABSTRACTThis essay offers a Kierkegaardian analysis of and response to the harmful effects of destabilization that can be caused by engaging with certain technological media. It argues that the intellectual technological ethic that is at work in social media platforms reflects two types of despair discussed in Søren Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death. It advises using a Kierkegaard‐inspired Socratic rhetorical strategy of communication that ironically employs technology for depicting this despair and awakening individuals to its presence in their lives. Moreover, this essay suggests that the edifying themes of “misery” and “guilt” can be communicated indirectly and thereby offer one intervention that could possibly help the current technological age move from the immediate aesthetic sphere of existence to the religious sphere. Considering the important role of upbuilding in Kierkegaard's oeuvre, the final portion explores how even someone who does not identify with a religious tradition or community may encounter what Kierkegaard terms the paradox of the eternal in time in ways that foster the development of authentic selfhood.

Algorithmic Attention Systems and Writing-as-Content

This article considers the influence of algorithmic attention systems on writing and human interaction within digital environments. Building on existing scholarship in writing studies on rhetorical strategies and critical literacies for algorithmic contexts, the author discusses how algorithmic attention systems and the conventions of writing-as-content reinforce a particular view of human attention. This approach to attention is especially problematic within forms of social media that involve interpersonal communication. The article discusses the possible future directions for writing teachers and researchers to continue conversations about the ethics of algorithmic attention systems and alternatives to thinking of writing as content.

Strategic Judicial Empowerment

Abstract When courts seek to strengthen their own institutional power, they often need to be strategic. In many fraught political contexts, judiciaries lack a history of asserting authority against powerful political actors. How can courts with fragile authority establish and enhance judicial power? This Article explores the phenomenon of strategic judicial empowerment, offering an account of how and when courts deploy various strategies aimed at enhancing their institutional position vis-à-vis other branches of government. Drawing on examples from apex courts in Pakistan, Malawi, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom, it explores the ways in which judges use tools of statecraft to increase the effectiveness of their decisions and enhance their role in the constitutional order. The Article explores the particular strategies that courts might employ in service of self-empowerment: first, a strategy of maxi-minimalism features Marbury-style maximalist reasoning that expands judicial power while issuing a narrow ruling to avoid political backlash; second, an inverse strategy of mini-maximalism involves formalistic, orthodox doctrine that downplays the expansion of judicial power, even as a court delivers a decision of immediate consequence; third, a strategy of coalition-building that aids a judiciary in seeking allies in other institutional stakeholders; fourth, a rhetorical strategy that courts may use to craft a constitutional narrative of popular salience; and, fifth, a unanimous, single-voice decision that provides the optics of a unified judicial front. This Article also considers the conditions that tend to give rise to instances of judicial self-empowerment. Courts in diverse contexts tend to assert themselves, for example, when their own institutional turf is threatened, during moments of political or constitutional crisis, when judges can capitalize on popular support for the outcome of a ruling, and under an influential judicial leader mindful of establishing a legacy.

Retorika Krisis: Analisis Pidato Presiden Indonesia dan Korea Selatan pada Tragedi Kanjuruhan dan Itaewon

This study compares the responses of the Indonesian and South Korean presidents to man-made disasters and investigates the presence of shift-blaming in their speeches. Utilizing Rhetorical Analysis (RA) to examine how speeches are constructed to achieve specific objectives, and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to explore historical and social contexts, the study focuses on President Jokowi’s speeches following the Kanjuruhan tragedy and President Yoon’s speeches after the Itaewon disaster. RA delves into the rhetorical strategies, including invention, disposition, style, and delivery, to analyze how each president uses ethos, logos, and pathos to construct their messages. CDA further examines the discourse of shift-blaming characteristic of autocratic tendencies. The findings reveal differences in how each president addresses responsibility and accountability. While the trace of shift blaming is prominently evident in Jokowi’s speeches, Yoon’s speeches are characterized by a strong emphasis on image-saving. This comparative analysis provides insights into the distinct communication strategies employed by leaders in response to man-made disasters.

Stigmatizing ‘evildoers’: how beliefs about evil and public stigma explain criminal justice policy preferences

ABSTRACT Characterizations of offenders as ‘evil’ appear in popular entertainment, political rhetoric, and scholarship and may be rooted in widely endorsed cultural narratives. Integrating psychological and criminological literatures, we argue that endorsement of good-and-evil myths may be associated with criminal justice policy support via stigmatizing attitudes about those who engage in crime. We partially tested these hypotheses in a preliminary study using an online convenience sample (recruited using Amazon MTurk in 2015), then tested the full theoretical model using more comprehensive measures in a survey of American adults conducted via Qualtrics Panel in 2021 (N = 1,162). We found that both belief in evil (i.e. belief in evil forces) and belief in redemptive violence (i.e. belief in a clash between good and evil) were positively associated with punitive policy support, and stigmatizing attitudes partially mediated the effects of both. While belief in redemptive violence was negatively associated with rehabilitative policy support and stigmatizing attitudes mediated that relationship, belief in evil was not associated with support for rehabilitation. We consider the implications of our findings for mitigating the harms of public stigma and punitive criminal justice policy.

This proposal is racist: the (muted) consequences of invoking racism in policy arguments

ABSTRACT Using an original vignette survey experiment, we explore how white Americans’ evaluations of policy arguments in the local context change depending on the rhetoric used to criticize the policy. We compare the effects of three rhetorical frames used by critics of a policy: inefficiency, unfairness, and racism. We find that respondents use political rhetoric as a strong ideological cue: criticisms that invoke both unfairness and racism make respondents perceive policy critics as more liberal and policy supporters as more conservative. The effects of rhetoric on criticism evaluations are moderated by partisanship: Democrats find criticism about unfairness and racism more persuasive, while for Republicans the effect is opposite. We are unable to establish reliable effects of rhetorical framing on the respondents’ support for the policy itself or their readiness to engage in local political action.

Post‐tropical cyclone Fiona and Atlantic Canada: Media framing of hazard risk in the Anthropocene

AbstractPost‐tropical cyclone Fiona made landfall in Nova Scotia, Canada, in September 2022 with the force of a Category 2 hurricane. Using ‘risk society’ as an analytical framework, and Thomas A. Birkland's ‘focusing event’ concept, this paper seeks to understand how publics construct risk in the context of climate change and how institutions engage with those narratives. A qualitative content analysis of 439 newspaper articles from across Canada reveals that most media provide a superficial description of hazard impacts. When media are critical, they connect Fiona to climate change, other extreme events, social vulnerability, and systemic inequality. In response to Fiona and industry trends, insurance representatives indicate a withdraw from covering low‐probability, high‐consequence events owing to ambiguity in risk analysis and financial interests, complicating hazard relief. Political actors' rhetoric is strong—delivering relief in unprecedented ways and offering new adaptive policy. However, a history of unfulfilled political promises to act on climate change elicits scepticism from media sources.

Platform Convergence or Divergence? Comparing Political Ad Content Across Digital and Social Media Platforms

When it comes to the study of the messaging of online political campaigns, theory suggests that platform divergence should be common, but much research finds considerable convergence across platforms. In this research, we examine variation across digital and social media platforms in the types of paid campaign messages that are distributed, focusing on their goals, tone, and the partisanship of political rhetoric. We use data on the content of paid election advertisements placed on YouTube, Google search, Instagram, and Facebook during the 2020 elections in the United States, examining all federal candidates who advertised on these platforms during the final 2 months of the campaign. We find that YouTube is most distinct from the other platforms, perhaps because it most resembles television, but convergence better describes the two Meta platforms, Facebook and Instagram.

Kierkegaard’s Descriptive Philosophy of Religion: The Imagination Poised between Possibility and Actuality

Rethinking the powers of the imagination, Søren Kierkegaard both anticipates and challenges contemporary approaches to a descriptive philosophy of religion. In contrast to the reigning approaches to religion in his day, Kierkegaard reconceives philosophy as, first of all, descriptive of human, including specifically ethical and religious, existence. To this end, he develops conceptual tools, including a descriptive ontology of human existence, a “pluralist epistemology” exploring both cognitive and passional dimensions of religion, and a role for the poetic in philosophy, strikingly expressed in his observer figures who “imaginatively construct” “thought projects” to explore human existence. While this new descriptive account anticipates subsequent approaches to the philosophy of religion, it could be interpreted as another “objectivist” endeavor, yet Kierkegaard attempts more in this descriptive philosophy. He imaginatively deploys conceptual and rhetorical strategies maieutically to both describe and elicit self-reflection aimed at transformation, thus expanding the imagination’s uses for his readers. Comparing Kierkegaard to Pierre Hadot’s recovery of ancient Greek philosophy as “a way of life” will show how Kierkegaard also engages the particularity of “the Christian principle”, with implications for how philosophy can both describe and elicit the pathos of other religious traditions as well.

The essence of conservatism in modern Russian political and journalistic discourse

The article is a study of the nature of conservatism in modern political rhetoric. The author analyzes the key concepts of conservatism, its inherent features, approaches, and the main provisions defining the content of its ideology, as set out in the works of Russian scientists.

Polarizing the Donorate: Charitable Giving and Negative Political Advertisements

ABSTRACT Does inflammatory political rhetoric undermine the voluntary provision of public goods? This paper addresses this question by combining Form 990 data on charitable giving with Wesleyan Media Project data on political advertising and a text-based measure of charity ideology. Attack advertising creates political polarization, which discourages giving to ideological charities, and encourages giving to non-ideological charities. These results suggest that divisive political rhetoric may actually strengthen nonpartisan civil society.

Cicero’s maledicta: the darker side of Cicero’s arguments

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE) is widely praised for his brilliant oratorical arguments; in fact, his performance of casuistry is regarded as a model of Roman rhetoric. The accolades that Cicero has received are well deserved but these achievements in rational argumentation do not reveal the spectrum of Cicero’s rhetoric, nor do they fully explain why his orations were so persuasively effective. Explanations of the brilliance of Cicero’s rational arguments do not normally encompass the darker side of the effectiveness Cicero’s suasory strategies. His tactics of denigrating the opposition with ethnic slurs, mockery, ridicule, sarcasm and other forms of ad hominem/ad personam attacks—what is collectively termed here as maledicta—were persuasive weapons that contributed to his success. Cicero was well aware of the persuasive power of his biting ridicule and sarcasm and even tempered its use on occasion (e.g. Pro Sulla 47). This essay examines Cicero’s use of maledicta in his legal rhetoric in order to better understand the range of his rhetorical strategies, the effectiveness of his performance, and the rationale for employing such tactics in the courts of the Roman Republic.

The Reliant (2019) and the rhetoric of necropolitical Christianity

ABSTRACT This essay examines the manufactured controversy over the independent Christian film The Reliant (2019), a film advertised as a pro-gun action-adventure. Despite receiving virtually no attention from the political left, the filmmakers’ engaged in a public relations campaign to spotlight the putative opposition to the film as evidence of a broader effort by secular progressives to persecute Christian ideas and values. In this essay, we argue that such manufactured controversies are a rhetorical strategy of contemporary Christian nationalists to construct progressive secularism as a mortal threat to the survival of Christianity. Analyzing the promotional materials and staged events surrounding this film, we illustrate how Christian nationalism increasingly relies on contrived public controversies and faux outrage against its products, policies, and discourses to craft a warped impression that Christians face violent enmity and persecution at every turn. We advance the concept of necropolitical Christianity to name how Christian nationalists mimic forms of state sovereignty premised on the right to kill or maim in the name of collective self-defense. We conclude that manufactured enmity conjures a violent Other who despises and persecutes conservative Christians to bolster the case for more radical measures to ensure the defense and survival of the Christian nation.

Discursive Representation of Social Actors in Selected Speeches of the Former Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe

This study investigates the discursive devices deployed by the late former Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe, to represent social actors in his speeches, in order to unveil how these devices and the ideologies in them are mobilized to maintain political power and garner popular support. The data for the study comprise his: 2002 world summit on sustainable development speech in South Africa, 2005 party manifesto speech in Zimbabwe, 2003 Non-aligned speech in Malaysia, and 2007 UN speech in New York. These were subjected to qualitative analysis with insights from Teun A. van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model of Critical Discourse Analysis. The study reveals that Mugabe uses discursive polarization strategies to emphasize positive things/de-emphasize negative things about his in-group (himself, Zanu-PF, the majority black, majority Zimbabwean supporters, and the third-world country allies), but emphasizes negative things/de-emphasizes positive things about the out-group (the minority white Zimbabwean land grabbers, the USA, the UK, Tony Blair, George Bush, etc.). The discursive strategies identified were used to pursue land ownership, anti-imperialist, revolutionary, and Marxist ideologies. The study concludes that these strategies were employed by Mugabe as linguistic, rhetorical and political strategies to maintain power and mobilize the support of majority black Zimbabweans for years.

MAGA to the Maxson: Apocalyptic America and Fallout 4’s Brotherhood of Steel

American political rhetoric has become increasingly zealous in its use of right-wing, Christofascist and apocalyptic imagery. While its contemporary moment is deeply connected to the current Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, it has a much longer history in American popular culture. This article specifically links this contemporary movement to the Fallout franchise, a popular post-apocalyptic video game series to illuminate cultural patterns of America’s apocalyptic political rhetoric. The video game series begins as a trope-laden post-apocalyptic western of survival by the gun. Later and more recent iterations have emphasized settler-colonialist nation building, and other forms of troubling American exceptionalism in a post-nuclear world. The explicit connections between these militaristic and political conceits is so ubiquitous in American media that it has become a cultural point of identity.

Memetization of the president’s speeches to the nation in South Africa as popular rhetoric elements

The proliferation of political memes in recent years allows us to assume that they are a new tool of political communication and that social networks increase the possibilities for civil society to express opinions and intervene in the debate on matters of public interest. This article aims to examine the memes that have been disseminated on Twitter since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa in the wake of the president’s speeches to the nation to discover whether one can speak of a political rhetoric in memes and their argumentation. To this end, the research uses a qualitative-quantitative approach to classify the taxonomy of memes according to their content, combining the thematic classification of memes and the typology of images in digital discourse to discover the existence of the use of popular political rhetoric. The final sample comprises 351 memes, and the analysis shows that they used humour as a means of escape rather than as an effective way of sending political messages. Thus, the results reflect the existence of a resignification of popular culture that transcends memes as persuasive elements based on the inertia of popular rhetoric in contemporary political communication.

Presuppositions in Steve Job’s Commencement Address at Stanford University on June 12, 2005

This study explores the utilization and impact of various types of presuppositions in Steve Jobs' Commencement Address at Stanford University on June 12, 2005. The data were analysed according to the models proposed by Karttunen, L. (n.d.). The analysis reveals that presuppositions are used extensively in this commencement address, which significantly contributes to the success of the speech. The data suggested that existential presuppositions predominate, comprising 63% of the analysed segments, thereby underscoring their integral role in the address. Structural triggers and lexical items were also significant, constituting 23% and 14% of the data, respectively. These findings reveal the nuanced and strategic deployment of presuppositions by Jobs to foster a deeper connection with his audience. The extensive use of presuppositions, especially existential ones, highlights a deliberate rhetorical strategy. By embedding assumed truths within his narrative, Jobs not only enhanced the speech’s relatability and engagement but also steered audience perception with minimal resistance. This tactic of embedding presuppositions allowed Jobs to convey his messages more effectively, ensuring they were received with open minds and minimal critical resistance.

Справедливость для детей и подростков: критическая теория и антиэйджистские веб-сообщества в соцсети «ВКонтакте»

This article discusses the production of a critical anti-ageism project. In this case ‘anti-ageism’ is an emic name for a small-scale web community of several readerships and groups that emerged in 2012 in VK social media. Its participants aim to stand against ageism, meaning discrimination against children and adolescents based on their age. Anti-ageists identify themselves as innovators who produce new ways of imagining children’s roles and challenging the social order. In 2015 their rhetorical strategies changed from producing evidence about personal trauma to formulating texts in the technique of critical social theory. The last ones include condemning ageism as a total system, and various situations and social relations as oppression, exploitation, or domination of children and adolescents, whatever the forms in which they occur. With oppression as a key strategically deployed rhetorical trope the discourse of anti-ageist VK web communities invites comparison with the tendencies of the academic and activist critique of dominant and repressive categorical apparatus. At the same time, the anti-ageists redefine the collective understanding of justice by proposing new visions of children’s agency and scenarios of children’s behaviour. The mechanisms of transfer of interpretive techniques of critical theory, especially the choice of cultural allies of anti-ageism, are presented from the perspective of digital ethnography and placed in the context of sociopolitical changes with attention to the material or technological landscapes and the modes of sociality of specific web fragments. The second part of the article demonstrates how anti-ageism is not only articulated on the internet but also embodied in the social imagination of participants in anti-ageist web communities. Transferring the oppression of children and adolescents from a textual motif into a technique that anti-ageists use in imagining and representing themselves and others opens up the prospect for a discussion about the place of critical theory in the scenes of everyday life.

Book bans in political context: Evidence from US schools.

In the 2021-2022 school year, more books were banned in US school districts than in any previous year. Book banning and other forms of information censorship have serious implications for democratic processes, and censorship has become a central theme of partisan political rhetoric in the United States. However, there is little empirical work on the exact content, predictors of, and repercussions of this rise in book bans. Using a comprehensive dataset of 2,532 bans that occurred during the 2021-2022 school year from PEN America, combined with county-level administrative data, multiple book-level digital trace datasets, restricted-use book sales data, and a new crowd-sourced dataset of author demographic information, we find that (i) banned books are disproportionately written by people of color and feature characters of color, both fictional and historical, in children's books; (ii) right-leaning counties that have become less conservative over time are more likely to ban books than neighboring counties; and (iii) national and state levels of interest in books are largely unaffected after they are banned. Together, these results suggest that rather than serving primarily as a censorship tactic, book banning in this recent US context, targeted at low-interest children's books featuring diverse characters, is more similar to symbolic political action to galvanize shrinking voting blocs.

Accounting for biodiversity and extinction: virtue rhetoric to change the world for the better

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the biodiversity and threatened species extinction reporting of 54 biodiversity-indexed companies on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX). The primary objectives are to explore the rhetoric of biodiversity disclosure as a practice of virtue ethics and to identify instances of emancipatory extinction accounts on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.Design/methodology/approachThe research sample comprised 54 biodiversity-indexed companies on the IDX. A content analysis of the narrative text of their annual and sustainability reports for 2020 was conducted to discern the rhetoric of biodiversity disclosure as an ethical practice using Aristotle’s rhetoric (ethos, logos and pathos). The identification of extinction accounts listed on the IUCN Red List was conducted based on criteria established in the conceptual framework of Atkins and Maroun (2018).FindingsAll 54 companies used ethos, logos and pathos in their biodiversity disclosure as a virtuous practice. These disclosures improve the tone of corporate communications and enhance accountability and transparency. Low-profile companies showed a greater propensity for reporting biodiversity disclosures compared to high-profile companies. Additionally, the authors identified 14 companies informing extinction accounts that qualify as emancipatory accounts, with high-profile companies disclosing extinction more frequently than low-profile ones. Emancipatory accounting highlighted species such as turtles, orangutans, elephants, rhinos, turtles and medicinal plants. These accounts are intended as a form of accountability to the species.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitation of this research is the observation of annual reports in one period. Future studies can add more observation periods to see the consistency of companies in disclosing biodiversity and extinction.Practical implicationsCompanies can adopt the rhetorical strategy of ethos, logos and pathos in disclosing their biodiversity. For policymakers, it is important to establish regulations to encourage companies to disclose biodiversity. The implications for accountants, to contribute more to biodiversity and extinction reporting, considering that previously sustainability accounting reporting was mostly carried out by nonaccountants.Social implicationsRegarding social implications, emancipatory accounts aimed at preventing the extinction of animals such as birds, orangutans and rhinos will have significant social and natural impacts.Originality/valueThis research represents the first use of Aristotelian rhetoric and virtue to understand biodiversity disclosure as virtue rhetoric and extinction disclosure as emancipatory accounting. This rhetoric is a benevolent persuasion tool that can shape the audience’s thinking and behavior in a more ethical manner concerning biodiversity issues. It provides evidence of the role of accounting as a social and moral practice, which is particularly relevant in the face of a complex reality and increasing concerns, notably regarding the threat of biodiversity loss and extinction.