Rhetorical Analysis Research Articles

VISUAL AND DIGITAL RHETORIC: THE EXPERIENCE OF COMPREHENSION

Research on rhetoric is often limited to the history of the question and the analysis of rhetorical techniques from the classical rhetorical canon. However, in the modern world, this is not enough. This article is devoted to the study of questions about visual and digital rhetoric: your interrelated areas that play a key role in the modern information world, because with the help of rhetoric, various models of reality are tested, mastered and constructed. Because rhetoric by its very nature acts as a mechanism for constructing and interpreting models of reality, performing a key role in the formation of public consciousness. Within the framework of this abstract, we will consider the main aspects of the study of these disciplines, as well as their impact on the formation and perception of messages in modern society. Due to the rapid development of technology and constant changes in the media environment, philosophical analysis of visual and digital rhetoric is becoming a necessary tool for understanding the essence of new challenges. Visual rhetoric can create specific frames of perception, controlling the audience's attention and influencing their interpretation of events and phenomena. Digital rhetoric studies the impact of digital technologies on communication methods, language use, and the effectiveness of persuasion in a digital environment. Philosophical analysis of these areas becomes particularly important in light of the rapid development of technology and dynamic changes in the media environment, and therefore in the human consciousness. The philosophy-based approach allows for a deeper understanding of the nature and differences between visual and digital rhetoric, their roots, and ethical aspects. The philosophical approach allows us to ask solid, fruitful questions about how visual and digital media influence our beliefs, values, and cultural norms. Philosophy manifests the potential challenges and risks associated with the use of visual and digital means of communication, as digital rhetoric faces a number of challenges, such as excessive amounts of information, ephemeral messages, awareness of falsehood-authenticity, technical limitations, and others. The article justifies the importance of philosophical analysis in the context of the modern information landscape, helping us to interact more consciously and effectively with these powerful means of communication and expression. The article provides a framework for critical thinking that allows society to adapt to constant changes and develop in conditions of information saturation.

Finnish supervised probationary freedom as support for a desistance from crime

Electronic monitoring enables different, more transparent and open ways of enforcing sentences. This study examines Finnish Supervised Probationary Freedom (SPF) from the perspective of a desistance from crime. We analyze what meanings sentenced people give to SPF in terms of their desistance from crime, adopting the viewpoints of moderate social constructionism and rhetorical analysis. The research data was collected from interviews of 26 people who had experience with SPF. According to the results, SPF supervision and participation in SPF activities can create a framework for practicing a crime- and drug-free life. The person’s own desire to desist is the starting point. Support provided by prison and probation employees appears to be central to the construction of a new identity. Support from social work is necessary to complete SPF, and NGO support enhances reintegration into society during the SPF. However, the opportunities on offer for reentry are limited.

The Concept of Cultural Revolution, and Its Indian Ocean Travels during the Cold War

For most of the 1960s, Kweupe served as the official printed mouthpiece of the Zanzibari Revolution. Appearing in Swahili, the newspaper repeatedly claimed the revolution would only succeed if islanders were willing to transform their thoughts, values, and routines. Through analysis of such rhetoric, this article sheds new light upon the relationship between nationalism and socialism in the Indian Ocean during the Cold War. It argues that nationalists frequently perceived in socialism a series of anchoring principles by which to obtain meaningful as opposed to illusory sovereignty. And while socialism proposed ways to resist and reshape global structures faulted for perpetuating neocolonial domination and inequality, it also presented cultural solutions to poverty and powerlessness on the world stage. Indeed, the socialist concept of cultural revolution appealed to nationalists of the 1960s because its effectiveness appeared to be indisputable—and because the concept licensed nationalists to critically evaluate inherited cultural norms in terms of their perceived conduciveness to national progress and sovereignty. Such critique was not exceptional to nationalists of the Indian Ocean searching for means by which to complete the process of decolonization. Rather, it was inherent to nationalist thought since at least the early nineteenth century and was inspired by a series of sentiments and emotions that call for further scholarly examination.

Visualising state biographical narratives: A rhetorical analysis of Chinese and North Korean propaganda photographs

Biographical narratives generate a continuous sense of political community across the state’s past, present and future, and provide the state with ontological security. Building on growing International Relations scholarship that highlights the power of visuals in shaping global politics, our article proposes visual rhetorical analysis as a tool to interrogate how governments employ images to tell their biographical narratives. The rhetorical approach transcends the methodological divide in the current ‘visual turn’ literature between the cognitive psychological and poststructuralist perspectives. We illustrate the analytical value of the rhetorical approach through an empirical study of how the totalitarian regimes of China and North Korea communicate their biographical narratives – the ‘rightful great power’ narrative and the ‘family state’ narrative, respectively – through propaganda imagery of their leaders. To this end, we develop a close semiotic reading of selected photographs of Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un in different narrative settings.

Supplements as symbols: Public arguments against natural health product regulation in Canada

After Canadian lawmakers proposed legislation in 2008 to better enforce existing regulations of the supplement industry, Canadians mounted significant public protest, including an online petition that garnered more than 24,000 signatures and 8585 comments over several months. In this article, we offer a rhetorical analysis of a randomized sample of those comments to track the range of topics and arguments advanced by signatories against the legislation. We identify five primary topics that recur throughout the dataset, freedom, choice, health, greed, and nature, which in turn furnish sixteen core arguments that together illuminate the signatories' primary concerns about potentially losing access to supplements. Ultimately, the topics and arguments reveal deep and persistent public anxieties not only about individuals’ health but also about their agency and autonomy. This study both provides insight into why people reject government oversight of health in favor of alternative, natural health interventions and illustrates the utility of qualitative analysis of public commentary about health and health policy in texts such as petitions, public comment periods, and social media responses, all of which are rich sites of discourse that merit further study from both scholars, policy-makers, and health researchers and practitioners.

The Worth of Nature: Valuations of Glaciers in Alaskan and Norwegian Media Discourse

ABSTRACT This article presents a comparative case study of public valuation of glaciers in Alaska and Norway. The first case examines Alaska’s Mendenhall Glacier, which has been central in public debate over the US Forest Service’s proposed expansion of the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area. The second case centers on Norway’s Svartisen glacier, which garnered international attention when the startup company, Svaice, announced its intent to extract glacier ice cubes for cocktail coolers at high-end bars and restaurants. A rhetorical analysis of newspaper coverage relevant to each case reveals that in both debates, instrumental, relational, and intrinsic values are attributed to the respective glaciers, and that government, business, and community actors hold the most power in these conversations. However, nuances within articulations of instrumental value suggest that Norwegian actors strive to balance human and glacier needs, whereas Alaskan actors largely prioritize human needs by constituting the glacier as a utilitarian object.

"Talk to Your Doctor:" A Rhetorical Analysis of Burkean Identification in Direct-to-Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertisements

"Talk to Your Doctor:" A Rhetorical Analysis of Burkean Identification in Direct-to-Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertisements

Slogans, Pragmatism, and Crisis Response at the Grassroots Level: An Analysis of Anti-Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Anti-COVID-19) Slogans in China

While slogans have been an indispensable propaganda and mobilisation tool in Chinese political life for a long time now, the unprecedented pressure brought by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic made them take on a totally new appearance. What, then, do these slogans look like? How do they work? By conducting a rhetorical analysis of 228 anti-COVID-19 slogans used by grassroots governments in China, this study further finds multiple persuasion strategies embedded in them. On the one hand, at the grassroots level eye-catching language and expressions are used to attract public attention, linking individuals’ behaviour to the interests of their families, as well as those of society and the country as a whole. On the other hand, those who violate government policies are negatively portrayed through a series of authoritative discourses. Behind these persuasion strategies lies a political pragmatism with regard to crisis response, attempting therewith to demonstrate and expand the legitimacy of the party-state. However, some slogans also contradict the Communist Party of China's advocacy of modernising the country's governance system and capacity, even though they may have been useful in slowing down or containing the spread of COVID-19.

A rhetorical-political framework for multilingual and translingual scholarship

ABSTRACT Societies around the world are multilingual, but scholarship is increasingly monolingual. Dominant global languages, which serve as link languages for scholars who share them, can restrict access to and application of knowledge in life and society for the majority of the world population. This article seeks to answer how scholars might be able to advance multilingual and translingual scholarship, making knowledge more accessible. We use the case of Nepal to account for a typical global south languaging condition, which helps us offer useful perspectives and practical solutions toward the above goals. To do so, we develop a rhetorical-political framework that foregrounds language agency and choice of scholars: while rhetorical analysis helps to identify factors fostering (or undermining) rhetors’ agency in language choice and use, political assessment helps to account for power dynamics affecting the rhetorical agency and choice. We finally highlight how scholarship that uses such a framework could help transcend monolingual worldviews and mobilize all languages toward greater linguistic and epistemic justice. We use two languages we are fluent in, English and Nepali, to illustrate and practice what we propose and discuss, often going beyond direct translation to engage the multilingual and translingual audiences that we envision.

Effective argumentation for action in health policy: a case study of the UK’s review on antimicrobial resistance

This article is a rhetorical analysis of an influential report on antimicrobial resistance in the context of national and global health policymaking. Through a textual-intertextual analysis, it examines how the report’s argumentation structure, grammatical moods, and use of strategic ambiguity direct multiple audiences to debate policy action, without becoming mired in manufactured scientific controversy about the existence or extent of the problem. The report successfully deploys a “beachhead” argumentation strategy by moving swiftly past arguments of scientific fact, definition, and quality, to focus public debate more effectively on matters of procedure. This analysis reveals promising strategies for future reports arguing on behalf of scientific consensus and seeking to stimulate policy action.

Care and Constraints in the Climate Crisis: An Intersectional Rhetorical Analysis of News Comments about the El Dorado Fire

In September 2020, a gender reveal party started the El Dorado Fire in southern California. We analyzed comments on news coverage of the fire from two outlets with different political leanings to evaluate how the rhetorical process of assigning guilt is influenced by interlocking systems of power, making an intersectional lens useful for analyzing responses to environmental crises. Some comments evoked scapegoat ecology, which is a response to guilt that narrows the scope of climate change to the igniters of the wildfire. Other comments evoked what we call ecological transcendence, which replaces scapegoating with attention to systems-level concerns. In analyzing ecological transcendence, we outline differences between collective action mobilized by inclusive care and seemingly unifying discourses of selective care that foster marginalization and oppression. We contribute to environmental rhetoric and feminist studies by emphasizing the importance of attending to intersectionality in analyzing rhetorics of guilt in ecological contexts and through our proposal of ecological transcendence as an alternative to scapegoat ecology.

The unnerved and unhoused: a rhetorical analysis of save Austin now’s campaign to disband unhoused individuals from Austin, Texas

Over half a million people in the United States enter homelessness every night. These rates rise in large metropolitan cities with intolerable outdoor living weather conditions. We blame the impoverished for their position and punish them as a society. For example, some states would instead treat homelessness as a criminal offense to wipe it clean from the city. In Spring 2021, Austin, TX, passed Proposition B, legislation treating homelessness as a criminal offense (Austin City Manager, 2021). This paper will analyze Save Austin Now’s (SAN) website through a rhetorical critique utilizing Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm and The Five Faces of Oppression by Iris Marion Young. These theories provide a lens to analyze the languages of hate and oppression SAN uses on its website to sway Austin voters to pass Proposition B and further displace Austin’s ever-growing homeless population. It was discovered SAN’s campaign was successful because of narratives around violence, crime, and personal deficits toward those experiencing homelessness. We can shift this narrative with public information and awareness campaigns, humanizing unhoused people. This research provides new insight into changing public opinion, altering policy, and creating common values. We promote a more humanizing engagement when we have a more informed citizenry.

Corruption, Conspiracy and Collusion: Anti‐Monopoly Petitioning in the Parliament of 1621*

AbstractIn the Jacobean period, monopolies were central to crown financial policy. Through petitions, subjects protested the effect of these grants on their trades and livelihoods. In the parliament of 1621, the Commons’ standing committee for grievances emerged as an important recipient of anti‐monopoly petitions. Moving beyond the current historiographical focus on institutional and procedural developments in parliamentary petitioning practice, this article offers a close rhetorical analysis of anti‐monopoly petitions and counter‐petitions in 1621, highlighting the dialogic nature of petitioning disputes. An emerging language of corruption and modes of politic reasoning will be shown to have shaped petitionary appeals, as subjects used the concepts of faction and conspiracy to oppose and defend monopolies. The article argues for the need to consider the close interrelation between the economic and political in 1620s England.

Rhetoric, Research, and Revolution: Analyzing Cultural Rhetorics to Rethink Pedagogical Frameworks

This essay explores the results of a dissertation research project on the effective communication and rhetorical practices of sommeliers and wine professionals. Through rhetorical analysis of this industry’s discourse, frameworks for teaching communication in the Humanities have been reenvisioned in light of recent cultural revolutions. Potential methods for recomposing teaching and learning structures are discussed to illuminate more opportunities for reflection on the rhetorical situation and enjoyment of the process of developing ourselves as communicators. The overarching goal of this research is to show how Humanities researchers can use the affordances of cross-disciplinary education to revitalize learning about traditional concepts by pairing unconventional and sometimes contrasting perspectives & to reveal new ways of thinking.

Let’s face it, the racial politics are always there: A critical race approach to policy implementation in the wake of anti-CRT rhetoric

School communities across the United States are experiencing increasing calls to remove the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) from their curricula despite not actually doing so in practice. This anti-CRT push is part of a larger, conservative agenda to ban teaching “divisive” topics in public schools and exemplifies the underlying racial politics existent in educational policy implementation. In this article, we analyze the legal efforts to ban CRT and anti-racist teaching in one state through a framework that situates policy implementation within CRT, which seeks to advance how whiteness, interest convergence, racial realism, and the erasure of people of color are continual to policy implementation. Through a critical discourse analysis of anti-CRT rhetoric, we illustrate how predictable patterns such as white backlash, overt racism, racial violence, and racial trauma are brought to light in policy implementation. We then offer an example of CRT as critical race praxis (CRP) in another state that works to counter racism and create anti-racist change in policy design and implementation. CRP is perhaps one tool school leaders have at their disposal to subvert whiteness and white supremacy in policymaking, especially policy implementation.

Les poèmes de Mao Zedong : Fleurs du mâle ou sublime prométhéen

Abstract Some sixty authenticated poems written by Mao Zedong were the subject of studies that highlight the relationship between the statesman and his literary talent, through rather socio-political or psychological approaches. The present paper intends to focus on his poetic creation, by scrutinizing from the inside the textual and scriptural tension that animates the process of reappropriation and reinvention in relation to classical Chinese poetry, in particular to the “heroic and free” or fiery style (haofang 豪放). Thematic and rhetorical analyses aim to show how the Promethean sublime nourishes a virile poetics in Mao Zedong’s work and an unusual verbal dynamic, which has the potential to transform conventions into speech, and poetry into a principle of action.

Playing on distance: a relational rhetorical analysis of Viktor Orbán's Euroscepticism

ABSTRACT Viktor Orbán has been a key figure in increasing the role Euroscepticism plays in European integration. By developing a new relational approach to rhetorical political analysis, this article examines how Orbán uses Eurosceptic rhetoric to move the largely pro-EU Hungarian public towards an EU-critical position. By analysing the Hungarian Prime Minister's speeches and interviews, it identifies three strategies of Eurosceptic positioning, political, cultural, and democratic, by which Orbán strategically creates distance between the EU and Hungarian voters regarding the EU's migration policy. Orbán's dynamic positioning expressed through his Eurosceptic rhetoric allows him to be pro- and anti-integrationist simultaneously.

Being an expert in pandemic times: negotiating epistemic authority in a media interaction

Since the so-called phase one of the Coronavirus pandemic, media professionals have shown great attention to communication about the epidemic, so much so that a “glottology of COVID-19” has even been advocated to reflect on war metaphors referring to the disease. Despite media solicitations, however, reflection on communication at the time of COVID was not immediately the subject of linguistic analysis, at least in the Italian context. However, the issue of the relationship between language and culture, society, and thought has recently been explored in the face of the limitation of only formal analyses on language at the time of COVID. In the first stage, it quickly became apparent that the people in charge of institutional communication were used to talking mostly with experts on public health problems or research results, without the necessary training to modulate their language according to the degree of specialization of the audience. Instead, it is currently possible to detect an improvement in communication skills, and to observe the emergence of opposing factions with respect to the new resources of both preventive and therapeutic medicine, respectively the pro-vax and no-vax movements. These issues have been the focus of many Italian TV talk shows, such as the program “Non è l'Arena.” In the episode of 9/25/21, which is the subject of this article, the positions expressed in favor of one argument or the other would seem to adopt different mechanisms for managing the epistemic mode of certainty/uncertainty, such as semantic-syntactic and rhetorical-pragmatic devices, as well as conversational moves. This paper is aimed at describing the management of certainty/uncertainty in a media context through the qualitative fine-grained analysis of the interactional exchanges between host and representatives of opposite views in the dual theoretical framework of classical rhetoric and conversational analysis (CA), which, although starting from different scientific paths, share the vision of the centrality of speech in human action. The CA analysis indicated that, whilst the interviewer maintained a neutral stance in conducting the interview, he showed a position of affiliation toward the doctor who recommended therapies not in line with the Italian medical guidelines. This was evident through the space provided to him to explain his expertise, as well as through the repetition and emphasis of the evaluative elements expressed. The rhetorical analysis, focusing on the participants' ethos, reveals that the interviewer deliberately intervened in the construction of the epistemic authority of the representatives of the two positions. The rhetorical analysis, focusing on the ethos of the three participants in the interaction, shed light on selected strategies and argumentative chains used to gain credibility and to prevail in the discussion. The linguistic-rhetorical mechanisms used do not pertain to the field of dialectical discussion and aim at a direct attack on the opponent's thesis. Nevertheless, the clash remained balanced without any epistemic authority overpowering the other: both the rhetorical and conversation analyses demonstrate a polarized dialogue, wherein the two sides are portrayed as representatives of two distinct and incompatible perspectives.

Performing financial communication as professional practice: The interplay of consensus and tension in earnings calls

Abstract Financial communication is a form of organizational communication that links strategic and managerial views on the firm with the surveilling gaze of investors and the financial market, thereby functioning as a practice of transparency. In this article, we focus on the interaction between corporate managers and market analysts in an institutionalized, professional genre of financial communication: the earnings call. Our goal is to increase understanding of how the earnings call as a public and interactional genre contributes to the enactment and constitution of financial communication as a professional practice. We conduct a close analysis of four earnings calls, combining a term-based analysis of the conceptual structuring of the calls with a discourse–rhetorical analysis of manager–analyst interaction. The analysis shows how communication of consensus, based on evoking a common body of expertise, alternates with expressions of potential tension in ways that have complex and contradictory effects on transparency. While the evocation of expertise signals common ground and boundaries around the professional practice, the rhetoric of tension constructs boundaries between the professional roles, producing a relation of surveillance. We consider both the ideational consensus and the role-related tension as performative achievements and constitutive elements of the earnings call. Their combination functions to perform earnings call as a site of both specialized expertise and transparency, thus lending legitimacy to financial communication as a professional practice. Through applying a communication-centered theoretical lens, the study adds to the understanding of professions as constructed in and through professional relations, and through the communicative practices that structure and stabilize these relations.

Bhandari’s Rhetoric in the 1990s Political Dynamics: Institutionalizing Democracy in Nepal

Rhetoric can be described as an art of persuasion, encompassing both words and actions. It is associated with the relationship between an addresser and an addressee in the process of communication. In the early post-1990 era in Nepal, CPN (UML) Secretary General Madan Bhandari emerged as a popular leader with his political philosophy of People’s Multiparty Democracy (PMPD), effectively employing the art of rhetoric to connect with a diverse audience. The rhetorical analysis of Bhandari’s speeches, which covered topics such as monarchy, constitution, parliamentary elections, and the Tanakpur Treaty, had a profound impact on shaping the Nepali psyche. Using rhetorical appeals – logos, pathos, and ethos – Bhandari brilliantly persuaded the intended audience in the post-democracy Nepali society early in the 1990s. Exploiting myths and metaphors, and repetitions and parallelism, Bhandari skillfully projected a sense of hope and expectation amidst contemporary political exigencies. Bhandari’s rhetoric contained substantial democratic values and ideas for socio-economic transformation, which deeply inspired the newly liberated Nepali psyche. With a high level of respect for his audiences, he envisioned a future course of progress and prosperity for Nepal embedded in the principles of People’s Multiparty Democracy, all within the context of global political dynamics. Through a perfect balance of rhetoric and reality, Bhandari not only instilled new hope in the Nepali people but also created an image of an iconic leader dedicated to the welfare of the country and its people. As an innovative political philosophy, PMPD resonates with democratic practice in the Marxist philosophy for the masses that earned him the status of a hero in contemporary Nepali politics, relevant now, and directed to continue for decades in the South Asian geopolitical sphere.