Abstract
Animal activists made inroads against the fur industry, laboratory research, veal production, and horse slaughter during the 1980s and 1990s. While pork producers were not directly targeted, they nevertheless reacted, perceiving a dire threat to their own industry and a bleak future for pork production. This fear was magnified by their sense that activists were supported by a broad population of non/armers who were naively susceptible to irrational and emotional appeals. This case study points out the complexity of public discourse rippling outward from the animal rights movement. As animal activists raised their voices against fur ranchers, animal researchers, and others, pork producers reacted as though they had been directly attacked. It appears that pork producers responded to their own rhetoric rather than to the realities of the marketplace. The cohesion that developed among pork producers was generated through psychological reactance that magnified the differences between rural and urban dwellers. This study argues that the perception of external threat triggered rhetorical reactance. As the consequence of facing aa common enemy, either real or imagined, pork producers engaged in unusually cooperative rhetorical behaviors rooted in shared values.
Journal Title
Iowa Journal of Communication
Volume
51
Issue
1
First Page
125
Last Page
148
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
German, Kathleen and Rottinghaus, Adam
(2019)
"The Rhetoric of Rhetorical Reactance: Pork Producers' Responses to the Animal Activist Movement,"
Iowa Journal of Communication: Vol. 51:
No.
1, Article 9.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ijc/vol51/iss1/9
Copyright
©2019 Iowa Communication Association
