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This essay offers a dilemma-centered rhetorical history of the Iraq debacle, beginning with the president's melodramatic crisis narrative in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, continuing with the unraveling of that narrative in the run-up to war and during the prolonged occupation of Iraq, and culminating in situational entrapment, or quagmire, wherein the Bush administration's reputation for "staying on message" has lost its rhetorical glow.

Since 1978 China's ruling Communist Party has moved China's economy increasingly toward capitalism and its foreign policy toward strategic partnership with its old enemies in the West. These changes have required Party leaders to reconcile the reforms rhetorically with continued homage to their predecessors, to Chinese traditions, and to Marxist/Maoist orthodoxies. This analysis focuses on key slogans and catchwords used in top-down rhetoric by each post-Mao regime to facilitate economic/political reforms while legitimizing continued one-party rule.

In his apologia following a day of grand jury testimony on August 17th, 1998 President Clinton faced a number of rhetorical dilemmas stemming from his illicit relationship with Monica Lewinsky and his subsequent, ill‐fated attempts at covering it up. This essay offers a dilemma‐centered analysis of Clinton's rhetorical situation and provides an assessment of the strategic appropriateness of the speech in light of a theory of the rhetorical event. In so doing it makes frequent reference to the extensive CRTNET commentary on the speech, this both for purposes of assisting in the assessment and for illuminating problems with rhetorical theory and method.

Alan G. Gross and William M. Keith (Eds.) Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1997. SUNY Series in Speech Communication. Dudley D. Cahn Jr. Editor. ISBN 0–7914–3109–6. 371 pp.

On November 9, 1993, Vice‐President Albert Gore debated Ross Perot on the subject of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. That Gore triumphed in the debate and succeeded thereby in winning pivotal votes in Congress for NAFTA has been widely acknowledged by the news media. The argument of this essay is that, from a rhetorical as opposed to a dialectical or logical perspective, viewer decisions to move toward the pro‐NAFTA position on the basis of judgments of source credibility in the debate were rational. The essay proposes a conception of rhetorical rationality and illustrates a method by which norms of rhetorical rationality may be derived.

In the face of widespread cynicism as regards the possibilities for reasoned and reasonable adjudication of ethical differences in the postmodern age, this essay proposes a dialogic, reconstructive rhetoric as a vehicle for jointly arguing about the ethics of past actions, and looks to the friendship circle as a model arena for the playing out of such a rhetoric. Analyzed by way of illustration is a conversation among four good friends about the ethics of another, surreptitiously taped, conversation between two of those friends.

Among the most memorable encounters in recent history are those in which one political actor “went meta” to another during a high stakes, high visibility political confrontation. Maneuvers of this sort break with routines by making prior communications the subject of communication. They are thus reflexive reframings. While the potential gains from going meta may be enormous, they may also be quite risky, hence requiring a delicate sense of rhetorical balance. This essay first explicates a general conception of “going meta,” applicable to a wide variety of communicative interactions, and then brings it to bear exclusively upon political confrontations.

This essay offers a commentary on the case studies of movement rhetoric by Stewart, Condit and Lucaites, Darsey, and Nelson. It proposes a modified definition of “social movement” in light of the apparent evidence of “top‐down” movements but nevertheless insists on the centrality of the variable of institutionalization in analyses of the rhetoric of social movements.

We have only recently started to challenge the notion that "serious" inquiry can be free of rhetoric, that it can rely exclusively on "hard" fact and "cold" logic in support of its claims. Increasingly, scholars are shifting their attention from methods of proof to the heuristic methods of debate and discussion-the art of rhetoric-to examine how scholarly discourse is shaped by tropes and figures, by the naming and framing of issues, and by the need to adapt arguments to ends, audiences, and circumstances. Herbert W. Simons and the contributors to this important collection of essays provide impressive evidence that the new movement referred to as the rhetorical turn offers a rigorous way to look within and across the disciplines. "The Rhetorical Turn" moves from biology to politics via excursions into the rhetorics of psychoanalysis, decision science, and conversational analysis. Topics explored include how rhetorical invention guides scientific invention, how rhetoric assists political judgment, and how it integrates varying approaches to meta-theory. Concluding with four philosophical essays, this volume of case studies demonstrates how the inventive and persuasive dimensions of scholarly discourse point the way to forms of argument appropriate to our postmodern age.

THE STRATEGY OF SOCIAL PROTEST. By William A. Gamson. Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press, 1975; pp. 217. $5.95. SOCIAL CONFLICT AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS. By Anthony Oberschall. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice‐Hall, Inc., 1973; pp. 371.

Presented here are the findings from a quasi‐experimental comparison of three network treatments of “A New Beginning,” a campaign film that aroused considerable controversy when the Republicans substituted it for a speech at the 1984 Republican National Convention as a way of getting the networks to air it. Of paramount interest in the study were the effects on viewers of one network's critical preview of the film. Of the three major networks, only NBC elected to air the entire film, but they preceded its showing with a commentary on the film that was far more critical than those by CBS and ABC. Surprisingly, Ss predisposed toward Ronald Reagan did not derogate the NBC treatment of the film, but neither did NBC's criticisms adversely affect perceptions of the film. To the contrary, ratings of the film and network treatments of the film were highest for NBC viewers. The findings are discussed with a view toward assessing the uses and limitations of rhetorical criticism in television coverage of political c...

(1978). The rhetoric of science and the science of rhetoric. Western Journal of Speech Communication: Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 37-43.

Designed initially as a way of understanding the often anomalous rhetoric of those who lead social movements, Simons' “Requirements‐Problems‐Strategies” approach has been applied in recent years to other collective rhetorics and other leadership roles. Presented here is an extension and elaboration of RPS framework and a review of illustrative scholarship.

This essay presents a defense of situationalist approaches to study of the rhetoric of social movements in the face of criticisms by McGee and Zarefsky.

There are a variety of factors associated with confrontation which serve to make the tactics weak in some respects, strong in others.

It is argued here that students of rhetoric and communication, along with scholars in other disciplines, have tended to reflect “Establishment” biases in treatments of persuasion in social conflicts. As a result, we have often failed to come to grips with the nature of conflict, the needs of “OUTS” and “HAVE‐NOTS,” and the utility of conflict for societies. In the place of prevailing “system orientations,” a “dual perspective” is proposed—one which would examine persuasion in conflicts from the viewpoint of both the actors attempting to maximize their interests in conflict situations and the system attempting to regulate conflict in the collective interest. The concept of “coercive persuasion” is introduced, and several suggestions for research are offered.