Rhetorical Framing Research Articles

Designating Opponents in Empirical Research Reports: The Rhetoric of ‘Interestingness’ in Consumer Research

Numerous studies have called attention to the importance of rhetoric inscientific writing by focusing on arguments presented in scientific debate articles. In contrast, citation analysis studies indicate that empirical research articles are generally nonconfrontational in criticizing the work of other researchers. How do empirical research reports establish opposing perspectives to argue against? One rhetoricalstrategy is to be ‘interesting’, which, according to Davis (1971), is the author’s attempt to contradict a taken-for-granted assumption of the reader. Scholars in management, marketing, and consumer research have also cited Davis’ conception of ‘interestingness’ as a characteristic of research that is more influential and intellectually creative. This article presents textual evidence from a volume of the Journal of Consumer Research demonstrating that a majority of researcher-authors of these articles use ‘interestingness’ as a rhetorical framing device in the abstracts, introductions, and concluding sections of empirical articles. However, an analysis of article citations and references suggests that these ‘interesting’ articles are neither more influential nor more innovative than other articles in the same volume.

Who Speaks for the Poor?: National Interest Groups and Social Policy By R. Allen Hays. 277p. New York: Routledge, 2001. $75.00. Declarations of Dependency: The Civic Republican Tradition in U.S. Poverty Policy By Alan F. Zundel. 178p. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. $50.50 cloth, $17.95 paper.

The new monographs by R. Allen Hays and Allen F. Zundel are welcome additions to our effort to understand the processes by which Americans make social welfare policy. Hays's work looks at the set of interest groups that testified before Congress on poverty policy during the 28-year period from 1970 to 1997, a period characterized by both incremental change and major upheaval in poverty policymaking. Zundel's work examines the rhetorical frames that have driven major social welfare reform efforts over the past century and a half.

Glasgow Unity Theatre: The Necessary Contradictions of Scottish Political Theatre

The modern study of drama and theatre making in Scotland emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s, and was significantly influenced by the impact of Marxist criticism on British cultural studies and nationalist cultural politics on Scottish studies. Accounts of Glasgow Unity Theatre (1941–1951) were at the centre of the new specialism, and they were structured and written within this contemporary rhetorical and critical frame. With reference to a range of primary and secondary materials, this essay reviews our knowledge of this mid-century, left-wing theatre company. It argues that not only have the production, performance, and dramaturgical activities of Glasgow Unity influenced subsequent Scottish theatre companies, but also its critical and academic recovery—which took place during a crucial period in the establishment of the discipline—has fundamentally shaped a critical orthodoxy within Scottish theatre studies that prefers a history of working-class and broadly naturalistic drama and theatre. The essay suggests that it is only in recent scholarly activity that this prevailing view has begun to be questioned, revealing a range of gaps and opportunities for a now rather more mature and self-reflective subject area.

Building the Clinton Legacy Through Frame Alignment

This article examines Clinton’s rhetorical strategy for creating a legacy in light of the imminent end of his second and final term as president. By examining Clinton’s public discourse from 1997 to 1999, with special attention to the period from September 1998 to June 1999, this article argues that Clinton used the frame of his race initiative to centripetally incorporate varied events and policies to redefine and bolster his legacy in the aftermath of scandal and political polarity. Specifically, President Clinton, with an eye on the legacy of the president and the identity of the Democratic Party, gathered the war in Kosovo and the shootings in Littleton, Colorado, along with their attendant disparate policies into one rhetorical frame, thereby supplying a conception of what Clinton’s 6 years as president had been about, a vision and mission for America, and an identity for the Democratic party distinct from the Republicans.

Can You Dig It? Audiences, Archetypes, and John Shaft

This article explores the role of cinematic violence as a rhetorical frame in mediated communication. Its central argument is that violence is used to frame a film's hero. The purpose and intention of this violent frame is to attract a particular audience to that film. It uses Jung's and Campbell's discussions of archetypes in fantasy formations to explain how violence is framed in media as a tool of a warrior, rather than as an act of destruction. In an attempt to understand the framing of violence, a comparative analysis of Shaft and Shaft Returns is performed. These films were chosen because they appealed to substantially different audiences. The construction of violence in each film allows the warrior, John Shaft, to serve different functions for each audience. The violence in Shaft challenges structural racism through a paladin-warrior archetype (a hero committed to the protection of a people or culture), while the violence in Shaft Returns employs a state-supportive frame through its use of a knight-warrior motif (a hero committed to protecting the state). This article offers implications and directions for further study of the rhetorical role of violence and archetypes in mediated communication.

Framing through temporal metaphor: The “bridges” of Bob Dole and Bill Clinton in their 1996 acceptance addresses

This essay argues that Bill Clinton's 1996 Acceptance Address enacted rhetorical framing through skillful use of metaphor. Dole's Acceptance Address contained an off‐handed suggestion that he would be a bridge to an earlier time of tranquility; essentially, a bridge to the past. Two weeks later Clinton insistently proposed that he would help build a “bridge to the future,”; rejecting what he represented as Dole's “bridge to the past.”; Clinton's metaphors effectively functioned as frames for favorably interpreting himself and his agenda—as well as for unfavorably interpreting Dole and his agenda. A new form of framing transformation (“metaphoric”) is identified and suggestions for effective use of metaphors are derived from the evaluation of Clinton's discourse. This case study illustrates now rhetorical critics can support claims of effects from rhetorical discourses.

The process of direct democracy: Colorado’s 1996 parental rights amendment

Why are some statewide citizen initiatives in the American states successful at the polls and others not? Quantitative studies tend to emphasize the aggregate spending of the proponents and opponents of ballot measures when explaining ballot results. Substantial evidence, though, indicates that an array of nonmonetary variables also influence the outcomes of ballot measures. Through a critical case study of the failed 1996 Parental Rights Amendment in Colorado, we examine the impact of several variables typically ignored in more quantitative studies. We find that three variables in particular—the kind and size of financial contributions, grassroots support, and the rhetorical framing of the measure—are significant when explaining why some citizen initiatives succeed and others fail. These findings suggest that future quantitative analyses of the initiative process should take these variables into consideration.

Identity and Persuasion: How Nations Remember Their Pasts and Make Their Futures

Identity struggles are once again a salient problem in world politics. This article aims to throw light on the sources, dynamics, and consequences of identity formation and mobilization. It makes two theoretical arguments. First, because collective memory is both a seemingly factual narrative and a normative assessment of the past, it shapes a group's intersubjective conceptions of strategic feasibility and political legitimacy. This is why collective identity is above all an expression of normative realism: a group's declaration to itself and to others about what it can or cannot do; what it will or will not do. Second, at critical junctures competing actors assert or contest the normative realism underlying collective identity. They do this through rhetorical politics, deploying their powers of persuasion in order to engage the constitutive elements of the group's shared identity. In practical terms, rhetorical politics is structured by a dominant frame: a historically shaped discursive formation that does two things. It articulates in readily accessible ways the fundamental notions a group holds about itself in the world and allows or disallows specific strategies of persuasion on the basis of their presumptive realism and normative sway. Within this frame, rhetorical politics engenders acollective field of imaginable possibilities:a restricted array of plausible scenarios about how the world can or cannot be changed and how the future ought to look. Though circumscribed, this field is vulnerable to endogenous shifts, precisely because actors' rhetorical struggles introduce conflicts over the descriptive and prescriptive limits of what is “realistically” possible. Such conflicts may in fact produce a new dominant rhetorical frame and profoundly influence a nation's political and economic development. Two contrasting cases from Latin America offer empirical support for these arguments. The article shows that the sharp developmental divergence between Costa Rica and Nicaragua can be properly understood only through close analytical scrutiny of the different rhetorical frames, fields of imaginable possibilities, and collective identities that rose to prominence at critical points in these countries' colonial and postcolonial histories.

From Innocent Children to Unwanted Migrants and Unwed Moms: Two Chapters in the Public Discourse on Welfare in the United States, 1960-1961

In June 1961, a stringent set of welfare cutbacks in Newburgh, New York, received widespread public support and incited a racist backlash against welfare throughout the nation. Less than one year earlier, however, an even harsher set of cutbacks aimed specifically at black recipients of Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) in the state of Louisiana provoked a mainly critical public response. This article illustrates how the rhetorical framing and historical context of these two sets of cutbacks shaped the divergent public reactions to them. In 1960, many northerners sympathetically described ADC in Louisiana as "child aid," a grant targeting poor black children in the civil rights-torn American South. In the Newburgh case, however, ADC was referred to as "unwed mother aid," a grant supporting the supposedly lazy and luxurious lifestyles of African-American women who migrated to the North. By examining the language and issues of these cutbacks, this article reveals a crucial moment in the evolution of our contemporary antiwelfare discourse.

Shifting frames and rhetorics: a case study of the Christian Coalition of New York

In their struggle to realize their goals, social movements must develop a rhetorical frame that resonates with the world-view of potential adherents. This cultural dimension of social movement activity is addressed by exploring how movements construct meanings and, in the process, make sense of events both for their supporters and for wider audiences. This essay outlines a typology of “master frames” that provide a discursive grounding for classifying events and creating a coherent social order. The typology is then used to chart the evolution of rhetorical frames adopted by the Christian Coalition of New York in the debate over public school curriculum. Content analyses and interviews conducted for this study suggest that, despite a group’s underlying world-view, the effectiveness of master frames is governed largely by the discursive grounding of the arena in which the conflict is taking place.

The Rhetoric of International Drug Control

The Commission on Narcotics Drugs, a United Nations political organ, meets every year in Vienna. Country statements from the Commission's general debate in 1994 and 1995 are analyzed in terms of their rhetorical framing. The dominant frame is of drugs as a scourge or menace against which a war must be waged. There is consensus that the war is being lost. International cooperation and solidarity are proposed as what will turn the tide; in the context of a losing battle, calls for decriminal-ization are seen as an unacceptable surrender. Fairly uniformly, this rhetorical framing is put forward by a majority of countries, and no clear alternative framing is presented. Historical resonances of the framing and possible future developments are considered.

Global Issues: Rhetoric Reconsidered-Here and Abroad

Describes a project in a third-year Latin class in a high school in the Appalachian foothills in which students (1) identified and analyzed classical rhetorical devices in speeches by Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King Jr.; (2) used rhetorical frames; and (3) wrote their own speeches as part of a year-long writing exchange with senior-level English students in England.

Global ideals, local realities: the development project and missionary management in Russia

Since the break‐up of the Soviet Union, the Western media and Western academics have used the benign rhetorical frames of “democratization”, “privatization”, “transition to a market economy” and “the management revolution” to explain events in post‐Soviet Russia. Reframes the rhetoric from these global ideals to the local reality of the “development project” in Russia, interpreting events as a continuing pattern of Western violence in which Americans are implicated as “missionary managers”.

Constructing the Public Good: Social Movements and Cultural Resources

This essay argues for the usefulness of approaching social movement ideology as a set of “cultural resources” that can be understood in many of the same ways as are conventional structural resources. One important type of cultural resource is the rhetorical frame with which movements make public political claims. Using a specific substantive example of a cultural resource — rhetoric about the “public good” — I focus on the linkages between collective action frames and the wider cultural repertoire from which movements adapt their meanings. Three ideal-typical versions of public good rhetoric appear: the covenant; the contract; and the stewardshi

The Speaking Subject in Russian Poetry and Poetics since 1917

IF FOR THE WESTERN WRITER a baffling abundance of rhetorical frames is discouraging, by contrast what has frustrated the Soviet writer is the difficulty of knocking chunks off a monumental single discourse. We now observe the crackup and dispersion. Soviet writing and literary scholarship begin to join the world. This essay is a narrative of turning points in the making of the postrevolutionary speaking subject. Those points are defined by describing the counterdiscourse that arose to qualify, extend, and contradict Socialist Realism. discourse of dissent was not one but many, but not so many that types and trends cannot be identified. If the narrative is plausible, the logic of an opposition between the speaking subject and discursive frames has been ruled out. Subject and discourse are not in contradiction, if we may define the speaking subject as being literature's propositions of subject in Soviet time, Soviet national tradition. Subject and discourse fit together, precisely because the concept of the speaking subject diversifies and multiplies the traditional human subject, displaces the untenable notion of the unified self without rendering the subject a hollow container for ideologies. In fact, counterdiscourse East and West is always in the process of expressing and resisting what it knows of the language of control. We gain explanatory power when we bring together, in a stereoscopic way, the concepts of speaking subject and of counterdiscourse. What we better explain is the historical momentum and the speech genre of literary resistance to social power. We need not call this resistance imagination, freedom, or self to be able to grant this resistance its own power. Marina Tsvetaeva: The poet takes up her speech from afar.' Far enough to represent other social selves, other rhetorics.

“No Japs allowed”;: Negation and naming as subject‐constituting strategies reflected in contemporary stories of Japanese American internment

This essay offers a perspective on how discourse reflects underlying systems of meanings that structure definitions of self and society and hence, on how rhetoric frames or delimits possibilities for human self‐understanding. In specific this study investigates discursive strategies and modes of address that delimit self‐definitions, as reflected in Japanese American World War II internment narratives. Analysis of representative stories, derived from the 1981 Los Angeles field hearings conducted by the U. S. Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, revealed two intertwined discursive strategies: negation and naming.

Controlled Rhetoric Frames

Controlled Rhetoric Frames