11 research outputs found
Speaking of Place
No full textEnvironmental communicators highlight the importance of local voices and concerns in naturalresource planning, but others argue that the provincialism of place-based discourse can undermine the common good. How do participants speak of place in a public process and to what end? To answer these question, the author analyzed transcripts from thirty public discussions on water use. Findings indicated a discrete orientation toward the environment, as people compared one place to another and failed to mention natural or social connections between locales. The author suggests ways to improve public participation in light of the findings.</p
Everyday Epistemologies: What People Say About Knowledge and What It Means for Public Deliberation
No full textPublic knowledge presents a persistent problem for democratic deliberation. While especially salient for public participation in technical decision-making, scholars agree that all deliberations are best informed by quality, shared information. But what kind of knowledge is required in deliberation? Can deliberative practices foster requisite learning? Through rhetorical analysis of 20 small-group, public conversations about water policy in Kansas, USA, I sought to describe cultural understandings of public knowledge to inform future research and deliberative practice. Discussants voiced three epistemologies, which I label cognitivist, sociocultural, and behaviorist, each with distinct implications for democracy. I argue that researchers and practitioners should further consider how and when to foreground epistemological assumptions in deliberation. I also question whether facts are the most critical information for community self-determination, and instead argue that deliberators be pushed to openly discuss their values
Who Needs to Know? Knowledge as a Resource in Public Deliberation
No full textQuestions of what the public knows burn hot, from global warming to fake news. We consider conflicting assumptions regarding what the public needs to know to effectively participate in deliberations about the environment
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The common style in American politics : a rhetorical analysis of ordinary, exceptional leadership
No full texttextU.S. political leaders must be meritorious to warrant elected office but they also should be average so that they may demonstrate empathy and win the trust of citizens. Rhetoric makes this contradiction work, but no scholarship yet describes it satisfactorily. Worse yet, public opinion now holds politicians in historically low regard. But without a systematic understanding of how elected officials discursively bind themselves to the people, it is impossible to say if or why the rhetorical model of exceptional-ordinary leadership is failing. In this study I describe this rhetoric, which I identify as the Common Style. By listening to politicians' language choices across four speaking situations, I discovered that the Common Styles consists of distinct registers, each appealing to a conventional value, thereby indicating that politicians share something in common with everyday Americans. When speaking to a national audience under expectations of relative formality, as did presidents when delivering a weekly address, chief executives mostly appealed to the American work ethic through a language of production, and in this way presented themselves as honorable laborers. When answering a special-interest group's invitation to speak at one their meetings, governors and mayors relied on a language of progress to show themselves to be concerned with improvement, as were the citizens who joined these voluntary associations. On the nationally broadcast television talk show, leaders shared stories of their uncommon experiences and thereby satisfied the universal need to know what others go through and subtly implied that they, like everyone else, were mortal. When leaders were expected to think on their feet in the presence of local constituents--as they must at town-hall meetings--they turned to a conventional language of deference to indicate their esteem for voters and a mutual desire for respect. I conclude that U.S. politicians seek to build relations with citizens based on the presumption of shared values, but the resonance of these ideals in a fractured society remains uncertain. Future studies must therefore investigate the effectiveness of the Common Style with different swaths of ever-changing Americans.Communication Studie
Developing Community by Engaging Students in Voter Registration
No full textThis presentation reports and reflects on a four-year voter registration service-learning project, undertaken in an undergraduate political communication course at Kansas State with several community and campus partners. While textbooks approach the political communication system as something separate from citizens, the activity asks students to directly communicate with their fellow students as political agents. The learning outcomes and limitations of the project, and the possibilities for true integrated voter engagement in Kansas, are considered
Words and Their Ways in Campaign ’08
No full text This study reports certain lexical patterns produced during the general election of campaign 2008 by Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. As such, it continues a series of tracings begun a dozen years ago under the rubric of the Campaign Mapping Project. This is largely a descriptive project employing computerized language analysis, making specific use of the DICTION 5.0 program. The authors examine some 700 speech passages delivered during the primaries of 2007 and the general election of 2008 and compare them to around 4,000 passages from the 1948 through 2004 presidential campaigns. Overall, they find that popular understanding of the Obama style—that he is fiery, poetic, optimistic, and grandiloquent—to be wrong. Instead, they find Obama to be cautious, grounded, and highly focused. McCain, in contrast, was personal in style, quite partisan (as are most losing presidential candidates), and highly embellished. Obama’s “cool” style differed dramatically from McCain’s “emotional” style, thereby providing both a political and rhetorical contrast for voters during the 2008 campaign. </jats:p
Putting powerfulness in its place: a study on discursive style in public discussion and its impact
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