Introduction: “Rhetoric and the Environmental Dilemma”
- M. Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer suggest that environmental concerns can be addressed from a rhetorical perspective— a practical application of rhetoric that helps us understand rhetoric at work and apply it to different environmental issues.
- In their introduction, they highlight the complexity of tackling the environmental debate from a rhetorical perspective since many competing discourse communities are involved and each comes to the table with a different agenda to influence the decisions of policy makers and affect the opinions of the general public.
- They propose a rhetorical model which is based on the following four concepts: hegemony, opposition, tension, and direction.
- K& P’s Horseshoe configuration of perspectives: (click on image to enlarge)
Chapter 1: “Varieties of Environmentalism: A Genealogy”
- K&P present an historical narrative of the different approaches and discourse communities that have been involved in the environmental debate and the changes in their rhetoric.
- They trace the evolving definitions of environmentalists, conservationists, and those in favor of industrialization. It is interesting to see how these labels are used in modern politics and how being an environmentalist has always been associated with “otherness” and minorities.
- Using their rhetorical model, K&P provide a detailed analysis of how different discourse communities such as the Sierra Club use environmental rhetoric to appeal to the public and how presidents like Reagan and George H. W. Bush utilized environmental discourse to serve their own agenda, which undermined the environmentalist ethos.
Introduction: “Rhetorical Criticism and the Environment”
- Carl G. Herndl and Stuart C. Brown examine a variety of issues related to the environment and policy making. As their collection demonstrates, their goal is to highlight the concept that “the emerging field of rhetorical analyses of environmental discourse” can improve our ability to analyze environmental problems and think of possible solutions (18).
- They present a rhetorical model which is adopted from Ogden and Richard’s rhetorical triangle and Killingsworth and Palmer’s continuum of perspectives on nature to facilitate our understanding of environmental discourses.
Marilyn Cooper’s “Environmental Rhetoric in the Age of Hegemonic Politics”
- Using the radical democratic theory, Cooper compares the rhetorical strategies employed by Earth First! and Nature Conservancy.
- She believes that “the problem within the environmental movement lies not in the lack of agreement over how to pursue the goal of protecting biodiversity but rather ‘in the absence of healthy interaction between the more radical groups and the mainstream groups, or even between the pragmatic reformers and the accommodators'” (256).
- Important Definitions from Cooper’s article:
- Radical democratic theory is “a theory that focuses on how the various groups in a society struggle to gain acceptance” (237).
- Hegemony: “sets up a hierarchal relationship between groups in which the dominant group attempts to subordinate the interests of other groups to its own interests” (241).
- Counterhegemony: “a new common sense and with it a new culture and a new philosophy which will be rooted in the popular consciousness with the same solidity and imperative quality as traditional beliefs” (241).
- Domination: “is the naked exercise of power, the use of the law or armed forces to 'liquidate' or 'subjugate' opposing groups” (241).
- Leadership: “is the winning of power through building an intellectual and moral consensus, the establishment of hegemony” (241).
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