Stephen W. Littlejohn

The day after: Rhetorical vision in an ironic frame

This essay presents a fantasy theme analysis of the issue of nuclear war as it emerges from a comparison of personal statements and the film The Day After. These forms of discourse resonate with one another and reflect a rhetorical vision consisting in part of actors as victims, the bomb as antagonist, the scene as one of rubble, and plot as one of acts of destruction, death, and attempts to survive. It is suggested that a new deep structure of irony underlies the rhetorical vision of nuclear war and the implications of this frame for the nuclear war issue are discussed.

Communication and Moral Conflict.

Moral conflict, a common problem in modern society, occurs when groups argue from incommensurate positions in fractious debate. Such conflicts are characterized by persistence, predictable structure, and morally attenuated discourse. Responses to moral conflict may involve rhetorical eloquence, or the application of standards of good persuasion from within the moral tradition, but such communication has little effect outside of the moral order from which it emanates. The frustration arising from this pattern often leads to reciprocated diatribe and the use of violence. A potentially more constructive approach is transcendent eloquence, in which interveners or the conflicting parties themselves develop a new framework for understanding and comparing such conflicts. The ideas in this paper are based on a number of case studies, and the case of the New Christian Right and its critics is featured.