Abstract
For many years, scholars of social movement rhetorics sought to define movement rhetorics according to broadly generalizable yet historically nuanced categories of analysis. In both theoretical proposals and case studies, scholars attempted to classify aspects of the rhetorical situation that are particular to movements, including, for example, the resources (human, financial, political, etc.) available for mobilization, the stages (inception, crisis, consummation) encountered in development, and the functions (i.e. mobilizing, influencing, resisting) provided by rhetorical practices.2 Despite a great proliferation of studies and theories, no consensus ever emerged on proper classification schemes. As one article lamented, "Place two movement theorists in a room together and they are likely to emerge with at least three typologies" (Simons, Mechling, and Schreier 794). The debates among social movement scholars concerning proper modes of analysis and classification were often contentious and in many cases could be boiled down to the basic theoretical question of whether social movements shaped or were shaped by their contexts. Objectivists argued that social movements resulted more from economic, technological, and natural causes than from rhetorical practices. Interactionists highlighted the importance of rhetoric in the creation of social movements by insisting that material causes were given social meaning by rhetorical practices. Among the scholars that accepted the interactionist view, perhaps the most influential were those who focused on those rhetorical functions that were deemed necessary to a movement's success such as attracting workers, gaining acceptance of their demands by the establishment, and responding to attacks on the movement (Simons, Mechling, and Schreier 807). Even though they often disagreed on exactly how social movement rhetoric shaped its context, functionalists generally agreed that close attention to rhetorical practices and their effects was the key to social movement analysis. Typical of the functionalist school was the statement by Charles Stewart that "Rhetoric is the primary agency available to social movements for satisfying a variety of functions" (301). Other functionalists, like Herb Simons, stressed that both historical situation and rhetorical practice were necessary for a thorough critical analysis of rhetorical functions of social movement rhetorics (Requirements 2-3). In any event, most functionalists assumed, along with other social movement theorists, that 1) the task of the critic was to find the generalizable characteristics of social movement rhetorics and 2) that the rhetorical practice and the historical situation were two distinctive types of phenomena. While the latter assumption remains as yet uncontested among social movement scholars in speech communication, the former assumption was undermined by social movement theorists in our discipline who took what came to be called the "meaning-centered" approach to rhetorical criticism.3
Journal Title
Iowa Journal of Communication
Volume
28
Issue
2
First Page
74
Last Page
99
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Biesecker-Mast, Gerald J.
(1996)
"How to Read Social Movement Rhetorics as Discursive Events,"
Iowa Journal of Communication: Vol. 28:
No.
2, Article 6.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ijc/vol28/iss2/6
Copyright
©1996 Iowa Communication Association
