Abstract This essay uses affect theory to argue that Greta Thunberg's gestures, rather than the representational content of her speeches, innervates intense responses of admiration and contempt. In this essay, we depict these gestures, which includes Thunberg's school strike, speeches, and her refusal to fly, as shaming gestures. We then illustrate how Thunberg negotiates the rhetorical limits established by the affective dynamics of shame. Specifically, shaming demands rhetoric that is at once preeminently social but also individualizing or particularizing, since shame entails criticizing an individual for violation of a social norm or expectation. Shaming explains both the widespread identification and contagion Thunberg produces, as well as the heated contempt of detractors—both of which are common responses to shame. We conclude by discussing the limits and potentiality of shame, as well as gestures more generally, contending gestures become essential for social movements in a digital media ecology.

Abstract Greta Thunberg became a beacon of hope for many in the face of climate change. While journalists and social scientists attempt to know her influence through quantification popularized as the “Greta Effect,” we understand Thunberg through rhetorical fragments that compose a broader structure of feelings in the public—what we call the “Greta Affect.” Moving from effect to affect, we look to how Thunberg as a “leader of our time” inspires rhetorical leadership grounded in appeals of innocence. Through a rhetorical analysis of a popular mode of response to Thunberg's speeches, the meme, we investigate how comparisons of Thunberg to another popular culture figure, Lisa Simpson, invite a wider manner of engagement tied to a figure of the girl as publics converge around different investments in youth appeals to innocence.

Abstract The 1973 Battle of the Sexes tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs provides an example of what I call “sport spectacle.” I define “sport spectacle” as a staged encounter in which the institutions of sports and media conjoin with the activities of individual athletes and the gaze of interested audiences to co-produce narratives in which athletic endeavors reflect, shape, or intervene upon social will in material and symbolic ways. Sport spectacle involves a contested co-production of meaning about a sporting event's social importance that occurs before, during, and—through the rhetorical processes of public memory—after the sporting event. I analyze how King and Riggs understood the match within women's movement discourse and the cultural evolution of tennis, in addition to how King and others have treated the match as a cultural touchstone that can be redeployed in public memory. Recent films When Billie Beat Bobby (2001) and The Battle of the Sexes (2017) offer very different characterizations of King's role as a social movement actor and the Battle of the Sexes as a social movement act. While When Billie Beat Bobby credits King with wide-ranging transformation of women's lives in a universe largely devoid of political context, The Battle of the Sexes anachronistically champions King as a closeted LGBTQ+ icon with a more nuanced understanding of sport spectacle as a transformational gathering that prepares spectators for political contestation. This case study contributes to a growing body of scholarship that attends to the nuanced rhetorical dimensions and political contexts of spectacle.

Abstract This essay offers a rhetorical reading of Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation hearings to make sense of how widespread outrage over replacing the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a conservative idealogue was resolved through the invocation of postfeminist motherhood. I argue that GOP Senators and Barrett herself positioned her nomination as the achievement of feminist goals, justified through rhetorics of choice and the idealization of (white) motherhood. These strategies cement Barrett as the logical and defensible successor to both Ginsburg's seat and her legacy of feminist work. I conclude with the implications of this circulation of postfeminist motherhood, with focus on political movements for equality and treatment of women.

Abstract President Barack Obama faced very difficult electoral prospects in the summer of 2011. A slow economic recovery, along with Republican efforts to block his agenda, had undercut his message of hope and change. Obama's speech in Osawatomie, Kansas has been widely recognized as a crucial moment in his successful 2012 campaign. Obama's speech was important not because he supported new policies but because it corrected a major flaw in the community-oriented narrative at the core of his message. Obama reenergized his retelling of the American Dream by shifting the villain in his narrative from partisanship to the greedy rich.

AbstractAs a subfield of rhetorical studies, public address has been conservative and defensive from the start in its method, theory, politics, and even subject. Even as there has been an expansion of the subject (i.e., the “text” to be studied), the field has, on the whole, remained skeptical of new methods, all critical theories, and alternative political motives. Because of this, the subfield of public address has remained incredibly white and largely male. If the subfield is to continue to exist and, perhaps, thrive, it is time for a clear change in tack. Public address must open its gates widely to the critical methods and theories that can allow for more diverse knowledge production and reorient the field’s political goals. And in a reversal, public address should define itself solely around the study of speeches directed at publics.

Abstract The struggle over credit for the discovery of insulin serves as one of the ugliest examples of the tensions and rivalries inherent in the growth of large-scale laboratory science. An understanding of this historic controversy also lends insight into the use of informal self-narratives directed to the scientifıc community in the negotiation of credit for discovery. Such informal accounts constitute a distinct form of argumentative address that is separate both from formal oral and written presentations of research, also aimed at a scientifıc audience, and popularized accounts aimed at a lay audience. In providing informal self-narratives to their scientifıc peers, the four insulin principals discussed in this article apparently shared a tacit understanding of the narrative grounds on which they could base their claims for discovery credit. In this study, we uncover widespread thematic similarities within these narratives, possibly indicating a common set of criteria within the scientifıc community for judging not only formal scientifıc proof but also the narrative proof found in informal discovery accounts.

Abstract Opioid addiction and overdose are widely recognized as a contemporary “crisis” across the United States. To address rapidly increasing mortality rates related to this substance use epidemic, the Philadelphia Mayor’s Office announced in January 2018 that it would encourage the development of supervised injection sites or “Comprehensive User Engagement Sites” within city limits. Official communications cited select moments from the region’s past to frame these sites as urgent while constituting a supportive, unified public. Through remediating disidentification, a mode of rhetorical contestation and reformulation, local community members used an alternate historical framing to resist dominant ideology and revise the terms of the related public discourse. By further developing the concept of rhetorical disidentification, this essay demonstrates how the deployment of historical analogy in response to proposed public health interventions can enable the public recognition and potential address of systemic racial inequities.

Abstract Despite consensus that Russia’s interference in the 2016 election did not extend to actual hacking of voting technology, Russian efforts to intervene on behalf of the Trump campaign have been defined as “hacking” by elements of the liberal media. This definition is broadly accepted in liberal circles, and there is now a widespread misperception that Russia tampered with voting technology to alter the outcome of the election. In this essay, we trace the emergence of this definition of Russia’s role in the 2016 election and explain the factors that led to its acceptance, arguing that the debate over Russia’s “hacking” illustrates that definitional arguments may operate differently than scholars have previously conceived. Traditional studies of definition emphasize the role of political leaders in crafting salient definitions, adopting a top-down approach. We argue that definitions also emerge from the bottom up, moving from media sources toward institutional centers of power. Our findings both illustrate the dangers of efforts to define Russia’s influence campaign as “hacking” and extend previous scholarship on definitional argument.

AbstractThough rhetorical critics have been very attentive to John F. Kennedy’s rhetoric during the 1960 campaign, less attention has been paid to that of his conservative Protestant antagonists. To address the omission, this essay considers W. A. Criswell’s July 3, 1960 address, “George Truett and Religious Liberty,” portions of which were reprinted and widely distributed as a pamphlet titled Religious Freedom, the Church, the State, and Senator Kennedy. These texts, we argue, are exemplary of a larger Protestant strategy during the 1960 race. Because Kennedy’s candidacy had prompted fierce vitriol from the anti-Catholic Right, conservative Protestant leaders from across the denominational spectrum tempered their attacks so as not to alienate centrist voters. Their measured adoption of religious freedom arguments allowed them to occupy the respectable middle, assailing Kennedy’s Catholicism while parrying charges of religious bigotry. In Criswell’s rhetoric, we find a pure distillation of this strategy, identifying it as a species of respectability politics with enduring appeal—this time from the Right.

AbstractIn 2010, LeBron James, “The Chosen One,” humiliated Northeast Ohio by announcing on nationwide television that he was leaving the Cavaliers to play for Miami. James announced his return to Cleveland four years later through an open letter that set off euphoria in the region. This essay offers a postsecular framework to explain: (1) how James’s messianic image established a context in which his departure, in tandem with the way he announced his decision, made James a “sinner” in the eyes of Cleveland fans, and (2) how his open letter adapted the parable of the Prodigal Son to depict him as the son of Northeast Ohio who had made mistakes, rather than sinned and, simultaneously, as the wise father who was forgiving of others. James portrayed his departure as a necessary step in gaining maturity, yet—much like the Prodigal Son—admitted to a revelation about his relationship with Northeast Ohio.

Abstract The experiences of defeat and occupation by Germany and liberation by the Allies wrought considerable gender damage upon France during the Second World War. In this essay, I examine appropriations of “Quand Madelon,” a popular World War I song that reemerged during the early weeks of France’s liberation, arguing that these appropriations offered one discursive resource by which patriots reasserted the manly strength of their nation. By reviving old archetypal notions of eroticized, subservient femininity and tough, virile masculinity, the tunes exerted discipline over “wayward” French women and eased gendered anxieties about the nation’s ability to reclaim its status as a sovereign nation. Courting widespread favor, even among French women, the songs made this gender discipline more palatable by pairing it with visions of a sexualized, civically engaged womanhood.

Abstract This essay investigates the authenticity of Geraldine Hoff Doyle’s widely accepted status as the model for the World War II–era “We Can Do It!” poster. After considering the rhetorical nature of the so-called woozle effect, the analysis endeavors to counter this particular woozle by plotting a reverse narrative. Taking the form of a quest that moves backward through a metaphorical forest of visual rhetoric, the essay initially traces the sources of Doyle’s tale into the recent past and, subsequently, into the original visual context. At length, it debunks Doyle’s claim while identifying Naomi Parker as a previously unknown figure in the controversy surrounding the poster.

Abstract In 1951, the American Federation of Labor produced a map of the Soviet Union showing the locations of 175 forced labor camps administered by the Gulag. Widely appropriated in popular magazines and newspapers, and disseminated internationally as propaganda against the U.S.S.R., the map, entitled “‘Gulag’—Slavery, Inc.,” would be cited as “one of the most widely circulated pieces of anti-Communist literature.” By contextualizing the map's origins and circulation, as well as engaging in a close analysis of its visual codes and intertextual relationships with photographs, captions, and other materials, this essay argues that the Gulag map became an evidentiary weapon in the increasingly bipolar spaces of the early Cold War. In particular, “‘Gulag’—Slavery, Inc.” draws on cartography's unique power of “placement” to locate forced labor camps with authenticity and precision, infiltrating the impenetrable spaces of the Soviet Union as a visually compelling mode of Cold War knowledge production.

Abstract Following a democratic uprising in 1998, the Muslim-majority nation of Indonesia embarked on a transition from four decades of authoritarian rule to become the world's third largest democracy. A recent surge in religious intolerance, however, has sparked concern over an apparent backlash against the political and religious pluralism of the new democratic era. As the world looks to this vast country of 237 million as a model for other Muslim nations now rebelling against their own dictatorships, it is important to understand this political turn marked by a growing incapacity to deal with otherness. This article examines public discourse surrounding accelerating attacks on religious minorities in Indonesia to provide insight into a similar rise in intolerance worldwide, and to address a pressing question for many rhetoric scholars: how does religion work to legitimate or eliminate violence?

Abstract Barack Obama’s "A More Perfect Union" speech was widely viewed as a key rhetorical moment in the 2008 presidential campaign. The purpose of this essay is to unpack reasons why the speech was significant, focusing particularly on the complex historical and contemporary dynamics of African American oratory black churches, race relations, and American politics. largue that the significance of the speech lies in the specific rhetorical challenges posed by the immediate context, the rhetorical strategy that Obama used to negotiate those challenges, and the way in which this strategy resonated more broadly with the rhetorical themes underlying Obamas candidacy.

Abstract President George H. W. Bush was widely criticized for not publicly denouncing the apartheid regime in South Africa. His silence was attributed to a lack of understanding or caring about the issues at hand. However, President Bush was firmly aware of the situation and made an intentional strategic choice not to speak. In this paper, I argue that remaining silent was the best available strategic choice. In addition to the strategic question, I examine the role that silence plays in a democratic system where people expect their leaders to speak on critical issues.

Abstract In the House Divided Speech, Lincoln warned that the country was tending toward nationwide slavery because of the work of a conspiracy in which Stephen Douglas was involved. A close reading of the speech text reveals how Lincoln sought to establish this seemingly outlandish claim and how doing so responded to the volatile nature of Illinois politics in 1858. The speech placed Lincoln in a position that enabled him to begin his rise to national prominence.