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Global Warming Wars: Rhetorical and Discourse Analytic Approaches to Exxonmobil's Corporate Public Discourse

Fordham University

This paper analyzes texts published by ExxonMobil on the issue of climate change by employing the related, yet distinct methods that have evolved under the rubric of rhetorical analysis and discourse analysis, as influenced by concepts from Ken neth Burke and Michel Foucault, respectively. My purpose is to compare these two approaches to show their uses and potential value in business communication research. I show how both reveal the socially constructed nature of "reality" and the social effects of language, but are nevertheless distinct in their emphases. For the rhetorical critic, the analytic interest is in the purposeful acts of the language user and the ethical effects of language use. Rhetorical criticism thus considers the devices by which texts frame meaning, create understanding, and promote (or fail to promote) identification between rhetor and audience, thus facilitating co-opera tive action. The Foucauldian approach, by contrast, focuses on the interplay of texts (intertextuality) and discourses (interdiscursivity) in order to illuminate the nature of socio-political struggle and show the relationship between texts and macro-sociological issues. These alternative methodological approaches offer the business communication researcher complementary means by which to illuminate the role of corporate public discourse in maintaining organizational legitimacy and influencing social and institutional stability and change.

Key Words: Research Methods • Rhetorical Analysis • Discourse Analysis • Business Environmental Discourse • Global Warming

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