“What Bush Said: The War on Terror and the Rhetorical Situation”

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About the Author

Ross Fitzpatrick is an undergraduate student at the University of Kansas, double majoring in English and Political Science. He is also a member of the university’s policy debate team and the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society.

Contents

Introduction

Methods: Rhetorical Analysis

Analysis/Results: Events Producing Speech

Analysis/Results: Speech Producing Action

Conclusion

References

Appendix A: Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework Graphic

Appendix B: Table of Speeches and Rhetorical Roles Identified

Introduction

Much has been said and even more written about the nature of the rhetorical situation and its connection to the “real” world. Going back as far as the late 1960s and early '70s, scholars embedded within a variety of disciplines have debated about the nature of what Lloyd Bitzer coined in his 1968 article as “the rhetorical situation” (1). Bitzer argued that certain material conditions or events necessitate a “fitting response” to the specific situation (5). Within half a decade another prominent scholar in the field of Rhetoric and Composition, Richard Vatz, responded directly with “The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation.” In this aptly titled piece, Vatz claimed there is never one “fitting response” to any situation and that “no situation can have a nature independent of the rhetoric with which [the rhetor] chooses to characterize it” (154). For Vatz, unlike Bitzer, “meaning is not discovered in situation, but created by rhetors” (157). The arguments forwarded by both Vatz and Bitzer have been carried through in academic circles within and beyond the field of Rhetoric and Composition.

Perhaps the greatest trend within all forums interested in dissecting and understanding the rhetorical situation has been its application to specific “real world” concepts and events. Over time, a contextual approach has overshadowed the theoretical approach established by Vatz, Bitzer, and others. For example, genre studies has incorporated the rhetorical situation as a scholarly artifact and investigated popular culture, new media, and politics through rhetorical analysis (Bazerman; Devitt; Miller). This seemingly interdisciplinary approach has, however, ignored other disciplines and theories highly embedded in the discussion of rhetoric and communication. The goal of this paper, then, is to introduce a specific theoretical lens through which one can evaluate the complexities of the rhetorical situation.

Politics in many ways operates as a sort of rhetorical game, in which policy makers, analysts, and even citizen observers manipulate rhetoric to serve their own ideologies and justify their political agendas. Although Rhetoric and Composition, as a field, has had much to say about politics, it has had little to say about political theory. This analysis aims to combine Vatz and Bitzer’s discussion of the rhetorical situation with John Kingdon’s multiple-streams framework to understand the relationship between political speech and political action, maintaining the current trend towards contextual analysis while providing a new theoretical analysis based in political science.

Ideally my analysis will not only provide some isolated response to the early debate between Vatz and Bitzer but also bridge the fields of Rhetoric and Composition and Public Policy. Each field has much to contribute to the other in order to understand both why certain policies succeed and others fail, and to comprehend the power of rhetoric as a tool for change. As alluded to previously, this paper pulls from John Kingdon’s multiple-streams framework first introduced in his 1984 book Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, and a more modern analysis of this framework by Daniel Beland and Michael Howlett (Appendix A).

Kingdon argues that three separate “streams” existed within politics that intersect to open “windows of opportunity” that result in political change (222). The first stream is the problem stream which “is filled with perceptions of problems that are seen as public in the sense that government action is needed to resolve them” (222). It is important here to emphasize the “public” nature of the problem, which filters how the government chooses to prioritize certain problems over others. The second is the policy stream which contains all of the potential measures the government could take to address the problem. And the last stream is the politics stream which includes the daily political climate including public opinion, legislative turnover, and advocacy by nongovernmental interest groups. When the three streams intersect, they open a policy window that can be exploited by a policy entrepreneur—an individual or a group of individuals—to set the agenda and enact policies (222). Here’s where the interesting part comes in (and what makes this theory uniquely relevant to a discussion of the rhetorical situation). Kingdon argues that these streams intersect due to certain “focusing events” that direct the attention of actors within all three streams towards a specific issue (222). This would suggest events determine rhetorical responses, but the presence of the policy entrepreneur within the framework contradictorily seems to align more with Vatz’s theorization that rhetoric determines action. Kingdon’s public policy framework, then, seems particularly apt for combination with an analysis of the rhetorical situation.

In order to facilitate that combination, I have performed a rhetorical analysis of seventeen speeches delivered by President George W. Bush between September 11, 2001, to May 1, 2003. The text of all speeches, along with audio, is pulled from American Rhetoric, a database compiling transcriptions from many American presidencies. The goals of this analysis are twofold: to understand how Bush recognized the opening of a potential policy window and to understand the rhetorical strategies the President used to exploit those policy windows and determine the course of political action pursued during the first two years of the War on Terror. Unfortunately, the answers to the first question are not as clear as the answers to the second. There does not seem to be a clear correlation between specific military operations and international events prompting speech other than the obvious example of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. If there is no clear relationship between events and the prompting of speech, there does seem to be some relationship between speech and the development of policy and initiation of action.

Through my own analysis of Bush’s speeches, supported by others’ previous secondary analysis, I have identified three major ways in which President Bush rhetorically manipulated the policymaking process and the opening of policy windows in the broader context of the War on Terror, and specifically in the context of the 2003 War in Iraq. First, by linking Iraq to terrorist networks and Al-Qaeda, Bush framed the invasion of Iraq as an extension of the War on Terror. Second, by appealing to an American sense of identity grounded in the history of the Nation and a Christian American ideal, Bush used a perceived ideal “Americanness” to cut off democratic deliberation and limit the efficacy of opposing rhetoric. And lastly, by defining certain political speech as terrorism and by defining the response to 9/11 as a “War on Terror,” Bush determined not only what response was expected from Congresspeople and policymakers but also from the American public, which further strengthened Bush’s ability to control the decision-making process.

Perhaps one can imagine my theoretical approach, which is derived from the work of Vatz, Bitzer, and Kingdon, as existing more in line with Jenny Edbauer’s more recent conceptualization of “rhetorical ecologies.” The point is not to confirm or deny the findings of any of the three, but to understand the rhetorical and material forces that contributed to the enactment of policy in a specific era. The sheer volume of speeches delivered demonstrates that there is no single exigence or audience, and therefore no singular rhetorical situation. However, there are certain rhetorical themes and tropes that tie those plural situations together. The aim of this theoretical frame is to account “for the amalgamations and transformations – the spread – of a given rhetoric within its wider ecology,” to understand what about Bush’s interpretation of events was conducive to its spread through policy making circles and the public writ large (Edbauer 20).