George N. Dionisopoulos

Cop talk, police stories, and the social construction of organizational drama

This essay examines how police officers socially construct a sense of organizational drama when they label, valorize, and narrate their work experience. This social construction of organizational drama is illustrated with data collected from a four month observational study of a small police force, fictitiously named the “Valley View Police Department.”

“The meaning of Vietnam”: Political rhetoric as revisionist cultural history

Secretary of State George P. Shultz delivered a speech entitled “The Meaning of Vietnam” in April 1985. This essay suggests that Shultzs address provides an excellent case study for examining the rhetorical demands facing a politician offering a revisionist perspective on cultural history, potentially useful strategies for meeting those demands, and an opportunity to see how a troublesome past can be reframed to make it more “useful” in the present.

A struggle to contextualize photographic images: American print media and the “Burning Monk”

On June 11, 1963, Thich Quang Duc sat in a lotus position in the middle of a busy Saigon intersection and set fire to himself. His self‐immolation was caught in an award‐winning series of photographs by Malcolm Browne. The “Burning Monk”; photographs — now recognized as some of the most powerful visual images to have come out of this period of history — became a frame through which many Americans perceived the events unfolding in South Vietnam during the Summer and Fall of 1963. This essay suggests that although these visual images engaged the American audience, their meaning — and thus the frame they provided — was the subject of a dispute within the American print media. How this frame was constructed depended largely upon whether the images were situated against a backdrop of religious oppression, or a war for freedom against the communists.

Martin Luther King, the American dream and Vietnam: A collision of rhetorical trajectories

This essay explores the rhetorical complexity of Martin Luther Kings dual role as political and moral leader, particularly during his last years when he was attacked for his opposition to the Vietnam War. By: 1) discussing and developing the theoretical value and critical possibilities associated with the term “rhetorical trajectories,”; 2) tracing the trajectories present in Kings rhetoric in order to set the context for a speech he gave in 1967 at Riverside Church, and 3) analyzing the text of that speech, the essay offers insight into Kings rhetorical impact, and, as a result, into the possibilities and limitations for combining pragmatic and moralistic discourse in American society.

John F. Kennedy's civil rights discourse: The evolution from “principled bystander” to public advocate

This essay argues that President John F. Kennedys civil rights discourse evidences an important evolutionary pattern marking a transition from legal argument to moral argument, and highlights two speeches as exemplars of this change. Three rhetorical constraints are identified which help account for and explain this shift in the presidents public rhetoric. Finally, we offer implications of this essay for the study of contemporary presidential discourse during times of domestic crisis.

Presidential silence, C. Everett Koop, and the surgeon general's report on AIDS

On October 22, 1986, C. Everett Koop released the Surgeon Generals Report on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. This essay examines that report as a rhetorical watershed in the national dialogue about AIDS. We suggest that this report—and the media attention that attended it—dramatically shifted the socio‐political environment concerning AIDS and contextual‐izfd Reagans silence concerning the disease as a lack of presidential leadership on the issue.

The Abu Ghraib Images: “Breaks” in a Dichotomous Frame

President Bushs rhetorical justification for employing military force in Iraq was to frame “Operation Iraqi Freedom” through the Manichean dichotomy of good versus evil. However, as useful as the Manichean frame was for garnering initial public support, it was challenged by the images from Abu Ghraib prison. The images represented what Goffman (1974) termed a “frame break.” Consequently, the Bush Administration engaged in a frame repair strategy that involved blaming a small group of isolated soldiers, the only possible interpretation given the administrations previous rhetoric that the war in Iraq was part of the ongoing struggle between good and evil.

Transcending The Virgin/Whore Dichotomy: Telling Mina's Story in Bram Stoker's Dracula

This essay explores an alternative perspective on the virgin/whore dichotomy, a frame often used in feminist criticism of popular media. Past use of the dichotomy emphasizes how women are classified according to mens needs and experiences, a useful approach for examining the manifestation of patriarchal ideology. However, our approach asks instead how representations of sexuality might be decoded if womens needs and experiences are used as the foundation of inquiry. We offer a case study of Bram Stokers Dracula, interpreting representations of sexuality in the film and screenplay as experienced by the primary female character, Mina. In doing so, we suggest an alternative interpretation of the virgin/whore dichotomy, one that attempts to legitimize womens perspectives.

Framing the Cubas narrative: The American dream and the capitalist reality

This paper analyzes news coverage of Major League Baseball agent Joe Cubas and his clients, defecting Cuban ballplayers. Based on the political, economic and social orientation of the media, we argue that the stories about Cubas are framed in a way which reifies the dominant ideology of the materialist mythos of the American Dream. This analysis of more than 30 news stories suggests that the “Cubas Narrative”; presents anecdotal evidence justifying the American “rags‐to‐riches”; Dream, framed against a vilified Communist Cuba. We suggest that the processes of selection, emphasis, and exclusion are employed in the Cubas Narrative to marginalize any aspects of the story which call that Dream into question. An alternative framing for the Cubas Narrative would illustrate a reality in which freedom and opportunity are accorded to those who can advance a multi‐billion dollar business, while denied to those who cannot. We conclude that the Cubas Narrative provides a poignant example of how the news medias framing process can contribute to the reification of dominant ideology necessary to normalize and rationalize some inequitable aspects of capitalism.

The Dream of a Cyberpunk Future? Entelechy, Dialectical Tension, and the Comic Corrective in William Gibson's Neuromancer

We argue the comic frame, as described by Kenneth Burke, can serve as a vehicle for critical self-reflection and social critique. William Gibsons Neuromancer is a work of cyberpunk science fiction that details a future that closely resembles the present. The book exemplifies this process of encouraging self-reflection because it calls the trends of the present into question by imagining what kind of future they will construct. Gibsons future is simultaneously exciting and devastating. The dialectical tension between these oppositional ideas opens up a discursive space for audiences to begin the process of critical self-reflection about the technological trends of contemporary society. Gibson rhetorically constructs this tension through incongruity, irony, and casuistic stretching, thus fostering a corrective perspective.