On today’s show, Calvin and Alex analyze the rhetoric and politics of the 2024 presidential election in terms of a particularly significant job this cycle: the vice president, or veep! We begin by discussing Vice President Kamala Harris’s meteoric rise to the Democratic nomination following President Biden’s departure from the race, as well as Harris’s conspicuous similarities to HBO’s fictional Veep, Selena Meyer (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus). We then compare and contrast the aesthetics, rhetorical styles, and political stances of Harris’s vice presidential nominee and Minnesota governor Tim Walz, and Republican veep nominee and Donald Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance. 

Along the way, we discuss how the Democratic Party under Harris and Walz is embracing a rhetoric of normalcy vs. “weirdness” that is genuinely novel and effective as a strategy for delegitimizing GOP policy, and how this approach may help to expand the Democratic voting base in response to state-level crises over reproductive justice and public education. We theorize the Dems’ normalizing discourse as a way of forthrightly indexing liberal values and connecting to core American ideographs while also positioning themselves as outsiders fighting a noble cause against entrenched GOP power in state governments and the national judiciary. Nevertheless, we conclude on a cautionary note about the dangers of normalization rhetoric, particularly in a country with an ongoing legacy of structural racism and imperialist foreign policy – including the brutal and unresolved conflict in the Gaza Strip.

Textual Artifacts Analyzed

Harris-Meyer comparison text:

https://youtu.be/72vUngNA9RM?si=izGYEEFsBRjQrlXj

Walz artifacts:

https://www.msnbc.com/inside-with-jen-psaki/watch/-these-guys-are-weird-gov-walz-blasts-trump-vance-obsession-with-anti-freedom-agenda-215711813835

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7ajzMgbGsY

Vance artifacts:

https://x.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1820913476514279744

https://x.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1820913478808342571

https://x.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1820913483606901062

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/17/us/politics/read-the-transcript-of-jd-vances-convention-speech.html

Vance RNC speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8TlBHRtrvM

Vance’s TED Talk, “America’s Forgotten Working Class”

Scholarly Works and Concepts Referenced

Kiossev, A. (2008). The oxymoron of normality. Eurozine http://www.eurozine. com/the-oxymoron-of-normality/

Pollak, C. (2021). Legitimation and Textual Evidence: How the Snowden Leaks Reshaped the ACLU’s Online Writing About NSA Surveillance. Written Communication, 38(3), 380-416.

van Dijk, T. A. (2000). Ideology: A multidisciplinary approach. SAGE Publications Ltd, https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446217856

Kairos:

https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/28358

Ethos:

https://www.reverbcast.com/podcasts/2024/6/28/e94-reblurb-ethos

An accessible transcript of this episode can be found here

Have you ever wondered why you immediately gravitate towards some speakers and writers? How they form a connection with you and make you want to pay closer attention? Or why you react with disgust and revulsion to other kinds of communicators? What is it about strategic discourse that fosters and nurtures deep connections with some audiences while (intentionally or unintentionally) turning other kinds of people off right away?     

On today's re:blurb episode, we address these questions through a wide-ranging discussion of the classical rhetorical concept of ethos, one of the three classical appeals (along with logos and pathos). We begin by overviewing the origins of ethos in ancient Athenian courts of law, recounting debates between Plato and Aristotle about whether ethos is core to the corrupting (or liberating) influence of rhetoric in society. We then explain modern theories such as Kenneth Burke’s identification and Michael J. Hyde and Calvin Schrag’s notion of ethos as a “dwelling place” shared by speakers and audiences. Ultimately, we argue that the history of ethos theory is defined by attention to how credibility, trust, and persuasion are not accomplished unilaterally or unidirectionally, but rather occur in the dynamic, situated, dialogic interplay between communicators and their audiences. 

This particular understanding of ethos enlivens our sample analysis, which shows the concept’s enduring utility as a critical tool. We introduce and critique the pro-Biden X account @BidensWins, which has been strategically constructing Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign ethos. We describe how the posts’ recurring language patterns constitute an identity grounded in “win”-quantification and newsworthiness, and how their hyper-patriotism and policy stances seem to be targeting specific voter constituencies for persuasion (while ignoring or disavowing others). We question both the pragmatic wisdom of this ethos strategy and the moral consequences of it for various core Democratic voter blocs that Biden will need in order to defeat Donald Trump.  

@BidensWins X Posts Analyzed:

https://x.com/BidensWins/status/1802423240876331122

https://x.com/BidensWins/status/1803251566356426859

https://x.com/BidensWins/status/1803451317098074344

https://x.com/BidensWins/status/1778407786302341419

https://x.com/BidensWins/status/1797668724008489005

https://x.com/BidensWins/status/1798060384487948536

https://x.com/POTUS/status/1803176039603957883

Works and Concepts Referenced in this Episode

Baumlin, J.S. (2001) Ethos. In T. Sloane (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Rhetoric (pp. 209-217). Oxford University Press.

Burke, K. (1969). A rhetoric of motives. University of California Press.

Hyde, M. J. & C.O. Schrag (Eds.). (2004). The ethos of rhetoric. University of South Carolina Press.

Ridolfo, J., & DeVoss, D. N. (2009). Composing for Recomposition: Rhetorical Velocity and Delivery. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 13(2), n2.

An accessible transcript of this episode can be found here

On today’s show, Alex and Calvin are thrilled to be joined by Dr. Patricia Fancher, a Continuing Lecturer in the Writing Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In her fabulous new book Queer Techné: Bodies, Rhetorics, and Desire in the History of Computing, Dr. Fancher offers a groundbreaking history of how the Manchester University Computer and discourses about it were shaped by queerness, embodied gender performativity, and invisibilized gendered labor in the early 1950s. Some of the figures that Fancher’s book offers new understandings of include Alan Turing, Christopher Strachey, Audrey Bates, and Cicely Popplewell, with each case study capturing how technical communication and technology development are about more than just usability, efficiency, and innovation. 

A recurring theme in Dr. Fancher’s rhetorical reading of Turing and his colleagues is that there is something queer, performative, and playful about intelligence, and that these dimensions are mostly ignored by the hype around so-called “artificial intelligence” tools like large language models. To explore this theme, we chat about Christopher Strachey’s rudimentary love letter generation program, comparing its output to ChatGPT’s for similar prompts. We ultimately explore what Turing might have thought of LLMs, and how we can begin to ask queerer questions of our digital tools to produce more interesting and intelligent discourses and technologies. 

Works and Concepts Referenced in this Episode

Edenfield, A. C., Holmes, S., & Colton, J. S. (2019). Queering tactical technical communication: DIY HRT. Technical Communication Quarterly, 28(3), 177-191.

Fancher, P. (2024). Queer Techné: Bodies, Rhetorics, and Desire in the History of Computing. NCTE.

Fancher, P. (2016). Composing artificial intelligence: Performing Whiteness and masculinity. Present Tense, 6(1).

Haas, A. M. (2012). Race, rhetoric, and technology: A case study of decolonial technical communication theory, methodology, and pedagogy. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 26(3), 277-310.

Henrik Oleson exhibition about Turing.

Matt Sefton and David Link’s web version of Strachey’s love letter program

Rhodes, J., & Alexander, J. (2015). Techne: Queer meditations on writing the self. Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press.

On today’s show, Alex is joined by Olivia Wood, a lecturer in the English Department at City College of New York (CCNY) to discuss the recent escalations of force by the NYPD and campus administrators against student protesters in solidarity with Palestine over the past several weeks. In particular, we touch on the flashpoint raids by police - at the behest of campus administrators - at Columbia and CCNY on Tuesday, April 30th, the rhetorical strategies used by student organizers at the encampments to advocate for their causes of disclosure and divestment, and the problematic discourse that mainstream journalists have been circulating when discussing these movements. We conclude by reflecting on the ways that academic worker collectivities (including but not limited to unions) can help show critical support to student demonstrators exercising free speech on campus and advocating for justice in Palestine.

References

Remembering Dr. Refaat Alareer (1979-2023)

The Killing of 6-year-old Hind Rajab

‘This machine bonks fascists’: US student protester’s water jug becomes symbol of resistance

Doctor in Gaza refuses to evacuate, pleads for Israel-Hamas war to stop

Links to some of Olivia’s reporting on academic and student organizing in solidarity with Palestine:

Faculty, Staff, and Students Must Unite Against Repression of the Palestine Movement (4/23/24)

Faculty at University of Texas Austin Strike in Solidarity with Student Protesters (4/25/24)

CUNY Students Occupy Campus in Solidarity with Palestine, Building on the University’s Legacy of Radical Organizing (4/27/24)

CUNY Rank-and-File Workers Stand With the Student Encampment (4/30/24)

An accessible transcript for this episode is available upon request - please send us an email at reverbcontent[at]gmail.com or DM us on Twitter / X

On today’s show, Calvin and Alex sit down with Dr. Robin Reames - Associate Professor of English at the University of Chicago - to discuss her new book The Ancient Art of Thinking for Yourself: The Power of Rhetoric in Polarized Times. 

In this book, Robin synthesizes rhetorical theories and concepts from Greek antiquity to the 20th century to deliver some of the most practical lessons that rhetorical knowledge can offer. In our conversation, we discuss what it means to be a rhetorical thinker, some of the key characters from ancient Greek rhetorical history who hold important lessons for our current era, and illustrate some examples of how thinking like a rhetorician can help us reason more critically in our day-to-day lives. We conclude with a meditation on how rhetorical knowledge can help us better understand disagreements - from those in our interpersonal relationships to the larger divides that seem to define and constrict our current political reality.

Robin Reames’s The Ancient Art of Thinking for Yourself is available now from Basic Books

Listen to our episode on Stasis Theory here

An accessible transcript of this episode can be found here

Spoiler Alert: This episode contains numerous plot spoilers for Civil War.

On today’s show, we inaugurate a new episode series called reel:verb, in which we rate, review, and analyze a recent movie from the perspective of politics, culture, and language in action. In the first installment, Alex, Olivia, and Calvin tackle the 2024 dystopian thriller Civil War, directed by Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation). Civil War depicts a near-future US torn apart by domestic warfare, as seen from the perspectives of a small group of journalists (played by Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, and Stephen McKinley Henderson, respectively) who are documenting the fighting and plotting to photograph and interview the besieged US president (Nick Offerman). 

We begin by providing our individual ratings of the film (out of 5 verbs), and then we recap the major plot points and set pieces that take place along Dunst et. al’s roadtrip from hell. We conclude with a wide-ranging analysis of the film’s politics and rhetoric, in which we unpack how it depicts journalism (and journalists) and consider its social significance in the midst of ongoing US-backed conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world. Ultimately, we argue, this film’s vision of civil war is too far-fetched, abstracted, and underdeveloped to serve as a true cautionary tale for US audiences – perhaps because Garland, like his cast of photojournalists, is apparently more invested in aestheticizing violence than cogently critiquing it. 

Works and Concepts Referenced In this Episode

Chouliaraki, L. (2005). Spectacular ethics: on the television footage of the Iraq war. Journal of language and politics, 4(1), 143-159.

Cloud, D. L. (2018). Reality bites: Rhetoric and the circulation of truth claims in US political culture. The Ohio State University Press.

Foucault, M. (1984). The Foucault reader. Vintage.

Our previous episode with Dr. Roger Stahl on US military cooperation in entertainment products

Reuters photographer [Mohammed Salem] wins World Press Photo of the Year with poignant shot from Gaza

Transcript of Pod Save America episode featuring Alex Garland (interview begins at 38:50)

An accessible transcript of this episode is available upon request. Please reach out to us via email (reverbcontent[AT]gmail.com), social media, or our website contact form to request a transcript.

On today’s show, Calvin and Alex sit down with the co-authors of a hot-off-the-presses article in Discourse & Society about journalistic reporting on US drone strikes in the Middle East: Dr. John Oddo (Carnegie Mellon University), Dr. Cameron Mozafari (Cornell University), and Alex Kirsch (MA Professional Writing graduate, CMU). In their article, entitled “Sustaining or overcoming distance in representations of US drone strikes,” they examine deictic language - words and phrases that “point” to contextual elements construed as “close” or “far away.” Specifically, they analyze how this type of language is used to make US audiences feel sympathetic or apathetic toward the US drone war and the suffering it caused to ordinary civilians in the 2000s and 2010s.

In our conversation, we talk with the authors about how deictic language can position a reader audience as “near” or far” from descriptions of suffering in terms of space, time, veracity, sense perception, emotion, and perspective. They take us through the major findings in their article’s comparison between how the Associated Press and The American Prospect used this language - to different extremes - in order to render people suffering from US military violence as immediate, worthy of attention and sympathy, or distant, opaque, and foreign. We also discuss the implications for how this language is used in reporting on other policy issues both foreign and domestic, and the affordances of this model for helping us understand how language in news reporting creates mental images.

John, Cameron, and Alex’s co-authored article:

Oddo, J., Mozafari, C., & Kirsch, A. (2024). Sustaining or overcoming distance in representations of US drone strikes. Discourse & Society.

Works & Concepts Referenced in this Episode:

Bloom, P. (2017). Against empathy: The case for rational compassion. Random House.

Boltanski, L. (1999). Distant suffering: Morality, media and politics. Cambridge University Press.

Cap, P. (2008). Towards the proximization model of the analysis of legitimization in political discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(1), 17-41.

Chilton, P. (2004). Analysing political discourse: Theory and practice. Routledge.

————. (2014). Language, space and mind: The conceptual geometry of linguistic meaning. Cambridge University Press.

Chouliaraki, L. (2013). The ironic spectator: Solidarity in the age of post-humanitarianism. John Wiley & Sons.

Kopytowska, M. (2015a). Covering conflict: Between universality and cultural specificity in news discourse, genre and journalistic style. International Review of Pragmatics, 7(2), 308-339.

————. (2015b) Ideology of ‘here’ and ‘now’: Mediating distance in television news. Critical Discourse Studies 12(3): 347-365.

Do you consider yourself to be a rational person? If so, Scott Adams (a.k.a. “The Dilbert Guy”), has some bad news for you.

On today’s show, we attempt to surmount our various cognitive dissonances and confirmation biases to better understand “How to See Reality in a More Useful Way,” according to the third chapter of Scott Adams’s 2017 pseudo-rhetorical quasi-treatise, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter. This chapter takes us headlong into Scott’s psychology, charting his journey through various “filters” he developed to help him “predict the future” at various stages in his life: among them, the “Santa Claus filter,” the “Alien Experiment filter,” and most ridiculous of all, his self-proclaimed current “Moist Robot filter.” This one has to be heard to be believed, trust us.

Among other topics covered in this chapter are Scott’s “two movie” theory of reality, and his assertion that beliefs are really just “mass delusions” that determine how we react to new events and information. As usual, this chapter uncovers yet another layer of Scott’s solipsistic nihilism toward the world and its social dynamics. It also contains a whole section on how to become a trained hypnotist. He’s a man of many talents, folks.

An accessible transcript of this episode can be found here

Disclaimer: This episode covers sensitive issues related to suicide and self-harm. If this topic makes you uncomfortable, we recommend skipping this episode. If you or someone you know is in crisis, in the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor.

On the morning of February 25, 2024, Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old US Air Force service member, posted a link to his Twitch channel on Facebook, commenting: “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.” Several hours later, around 1pm Eastern, Bushnell live-streamed himself walking toward the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. carrying a metal bottle without a lid. Bushnell recorded himself saying: “I am an active duty member of the United States Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.” After setting up his camera several feet away, still live-streaming, he poured the liquid from his bottle over his head, and lit himself on fire from his feet, shouting “Free Palestine,” over and over, with increasing agony. 

Bushnell’s is the second nationally documented instance of self immolation in response to the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza. In December, a protester - whom the media has refused to name - set themselves on fire outside of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta while holding a Palestinian flag. 

How can we best understand these cases: as noble and heroic protests? Or irrational acts of self-harm and self-destruction? To help us think through these questions, we are joined by Dr. James Chase Sanchez, Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Middlebury College and eminent scholar of racism, white supremacy, and social movements. James has published two relevant books: the co-authored collection Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods, and Salt of the Earth: Rhetoric, Preservation, and White Supremacy, both published in 2021. He also produced the 2018 documentary film Man on Fire, which tells the story of Charles Moore, a 79-year-old minister who self-immolated in protest against racism in his hometown of Grand Saline, Texas. We discuss Moore’s and Bushnell’s acts in the context of the history of social movement rhetorics, and consider how to reframe current conversations away from Bushnell the individual and towards issues of collective and internationalist solidarity.

You can find more information on James’s documentary Man on Fire at this link

James’s 2021 book Salt of the Earth can be purchased at this link

On today’s show, Alex and Calvin continue to break down the concept of “Manipulation” in rhetoric and political discourse, recapping part one of this series, demonstrating strategies for identifying and critiquing manipulation, and discussing how this kind of large-scale “mind control” is affecting contemporary foreign policy discourse in the US.

The term manipulation, as we define it, comes from a school of linguistic and discourse analysis known as Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), which is primarily concerned with the ways language is used to reinforce inequality and power differentials in society. We walk through how the term is defined by CDS scholar Teun van Dijk, from his landmark 2006 article “Discourse and Manipulation.” In it, van Dijk gives us a toolkit for understanding 3 different levels of manipulation: (1) social, which designates the human relationships, power positions, and organizational and political resources required to effect manipulation at scale; (2) cognitive, which designates how manipulative language forms mental models that influence people’s thoughts and actions in the world; and (3) discursive, which captures the various linguistic, stylistic, and rhetorical strategies that tend to recur in manipulation.

This time, to put this term in context, we analyze an example of discourse manipulation surrounding US foreign policy, specifically as it relates to Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza: President Joe Biden’s November 18 opinion article in the Washington Post, entitled “The U.S. won’t back down from the challenge of Putin and Hamas.” We closely analyze how President Biden uses manipulation strategies straight out of Van Dijk to persuade WaPo-reading liberals to ignore both the US’s constant and substantial material support for Israel’s war and its own military’s history of bloody and destructive imperialism throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere in the world. We also note various tactics that the president deploys to naturalize inequality and normalize bigotry, all while touting the US’s role as the “essential” peace-loving, freedom-spreading nation. 

“The U.S. won’t back down from the challenge of Putin and Hamas” - Joe Biden

Link to Part One of this Series

Works and Concepts Cited in this Episode:

Azoulay, A., & Ophir, A. (2012). The one-state condition: occupation and democracy in Israel/Palestine. Stanford University Press.

Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. Psychology Press.

Fifield, A. (19 March 2013). “Contractors reap $138B from Iraq war.” CNN.com. 

McGee, M. C. (1980). The “ideograph”: A link between rhetoric and ideology. Quarterly journal of speech, 66(1), 1-16. [Our 2018 re:blurb on Ideographs can be found here.]

Oddo, J. (2019). The discourse of propaganda: Case studies from the Persian Gulf War and the War on Terror. Penn State University Press. [Our September 2021 episode with CDS scholar John Oddo can be found here.]

Perelman, C. & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. (1969). The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation. Trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver. University of Notre Dame Press.

Schneider, T. (8 Oct 2023). “For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces.” The Times of Israel. 

Van Dijk, T. A. (2006). Discourse and manipulation. Discourse & society, 17(3), 359-383.

An accessible transcript of this episode is available upon request. Please reach out to us via email (reverbcontent[AT]gmail.com), social media, or our website contact form to request a transcript.