Mythologizing Change — Rhetoric & Composition

Business and Professional Communication Quarterly Dec 2014

Mythologizing Change

Jacob D. Rawlins

Abstract

This article explores how rhetorical myth can be used as a tool for persuading employees to accept change and to maintain consensus during the process. It defines rhetorical myth using three concepts: chronographia (a rhetorical interpretation of history), epideictic prediction (defining a present action by assigning praise and blame to both past and future), and communal markers (using Burkean identification and rhetorically defined boundary objects to define a community). The article reports on a 3-year ethnographic study that documents the development of a rhetorical myth at Iowa State University’s Printing Services department as it underwent changes to its central software system.

Journal: Business and Professional Communication Quarterly
Published: 2014-12-01
DOI: 10.1177/2329490614543136
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Topics: rhetorical theory

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

Cyphert (2024)

Taking a Rhetorical Perspective on Emerging Communication Practice: Pedagogy as…

Business and Professional Communication Quarterly

Cites in this index (1)

Wilson et al. (2007)

Boundary Objects as Rhetorical Exigence: Knowledge Mapping and Interdisciplinar…

Journal of Business and Technical Communication

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