The Rhetoric of Social Intervention

An Introduction

Susan K. Opt, Mark A. Gring

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781412956901, 9781412956895
• eBook ISBN: 9781483342818
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Authors Susan Opt and Mark Gring present the first-ever thorough exploration and discussion of the rhetoric of social intervention model [RSI] (initially conceived by rhetorical theorist William R. Brown) for today?s students, scholars, and professionals. This unique communication-based model, compatible with traditional and non-traditional critical approaches, provides readers with a systemic framework for interpreting, analyzing, critiquing, and intervening in social and cultural change from a rhetorical perspective. It offers an easily accessible tool for critically reflecting upon the ongoing process of rhetorical intervention in people?s interpretations of needs, relationships, and worldview.

Readers will learn to use the RSI model to (1) reflect on their own symbolic natures, (2) identify rhetorical trends that generate social change, (3) critique social interventions, (4) initiate social interventions, and (5) anticipate the side effects of interventional choices.

The Rhetoric of Social Intervention: An Introduction includes these key features:

• A detailed, step-by-step approach to help readers develop their skills in analyzing the communication patterns of social interventions and writing their analysis as a critical essay
• Examples and exercises to promote an interactive, transformative learning environment and encourage the development of critical thinking skills
• Service learning activities in every chapter that can be completed as individual, group, or class projects
• Review questions, exercises, and an "Under the Lens" feature in every chapter to help readers deepen their understanding
• Student and scholar essays that demonstrate the model?s critical application

Intended Audience:
Ideal for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in Rhetorical Criticism, Rhetorical Theory, Persuasion, Public Address, Social Movements, and Advocacy Communication, the book?s focus on criticism as a tool for interpreting social change makes it an excellent supplement for courses in other communication sub-specialties, such as public relations and advertising, and in related disciplines such as marketing, sociology, political science, management, and not-for-profit management. The book also offers communication practitioners a useful guide for the strategic planning of interventions.

SECTIONI

The Rhetoric of Social Intervention Model

CHAPTER1

Rhetoric as Social Intervention

---

One afternoon you relax in front of the television and channel surf to catch up on world events. A reporter is interviewing not-for-profit organization leaders at an international AIDS conference about responses to the spread of HIV. A talk show host is attempting to help a young man confront his fear of clowns. A prominent senator is explaining how the president’s domestic policy, offered as a way to solve serious problems, will actually create more problems. A sales person is demonstrating a portable video system that can be attached to a treadmill.

You turn off the television and skim the day’s newspaper. A frontpage article describes disagreements over the legality of a proposed wind turbine farm to generate electricity for a local community. An editorial column applauds the school board’s decision to fund a remedial reading program. You set the newspaper aside and pop open your laptop to cruise the Internet. You peruse photos of adoptable animals posted on the Humane Society’s Web site. You glance at the new videos uploaded on a popular Web site. You read an email from a friend who complains about current politics. You put the computer to sleep and phone your parents. Your mother chats about a recent stock investment she has made. After you hang up, you reflect on your afternoon.

You realize that, despite the variety of people, media, and messages you encountered, one underlying commonality unites them all: Each has the potentiality to shape the meaning you give to the world around you. Regardless of whether the communicators are informative or persuasive, entertaining or serious, they all in some way attempt to intervene in how you interpret experience. They offer choices for making sense of the people, objects, and events of daily life. After interacting with these communicators, you might alter your interpretation of the president’s domestic policy from good to poor, or of treadmill exercise from boring to tolerable. You might become aware of a need to learn more about wind power or stock investments.

All of these potential interventions arise out of the rhetorical nature of the human being: in our talk or discourse, we interact in ways that attempt to influence others who, at the same time, attempt to influence us. In our symbolizing activity, we seem to practice a rhetoric of social intervention:

• rhetorical because it involves communication,
• social because our rhetorical acts occur in interaction with other people, and
• interventional because these acts potentially shift the way in which we (and others) interpret and respond to experience.

This book is about our lives as rhetorical creatures who create, maintain, and change the symbolically constituted world around us through our ability to symbolize. It examines how each of us acts as a social intervener, constantly interacting with others to shape interpretations of needs, relationships, and experience. To see the process by which we do this, we present a model for interpreting the rhetoric of social intervention. This model highlights the communication patterns that underlie our social interventions and provides a way for us to analyze and enact interventional activities. It empowers us to reflect on our own participation in the rhetoric of social intervention. In learning this model, you add to the choices that you have for making sense of and giving meaning to your own social interactions.

To communicate about the rhetoric of social intervention, we must agree on the meaning of some symbols—words—used in this book. These words will be important when we discuss the model, so we, the authors, need to explain how we use them. Take a moment to write down your definitions for these terms: intervention, systems, and rhetoric. Then, as you read this chapter, compare your way of naming these experiences to ours. Notice how we, the authors, define and give examples of intervention, systems, and rhetoric to illustrate our way of naming or symbolically categorizing these experiences—how we make these concepts “real.” Consider how we attempt to intervene in your interpretation of the symbols intervention, systems, and rhetoric!

After presenting some key vocabulary, we preview the Rhetoric of Social Intervention (RSI) model, which is the focus of this book. We describe its development and briefly compare it to several rhetorical criticism approaches. We also examine reasons for conducting rhetorical criticism and analyzing the rhetoric of social intervention. We close this chapter with an overview of the book’s objectives and structure—a glimpse of the exploration ahead. Let’s begin this journey by talking about intervention.

INTERVENTION

Intervention is a symbol, or word, that frequently is used in conjunction with words such as drug, alcohol, suicide, crisis, addiction, and family. In popular and professional literature, intervention often means an intentional intercession or act to bring about change. The act might be designed to promote or encourage certain types of behavior (e.g., living alcohol free, solving a problem) as well as to prevent or impede certain kinds of behavior (e.g., killing oneself, falling behind in school). For example, a drug intervention might involve a health educator working with teenagers to promote intentionally a behavioral change—from taking cocaine to avoiding cocaine. A family intervention might entail a therapist counseling a family on how to shift intentionally its dynamics from dysfunctional to functional.

We also use the word intervention to refer to an act to promote or prevent change. More specifically, we define intervention as a communication act that attempts to encourage or discourage change. Our definition highlights communication because we assume that interventions are based on symbols. Through symbolizing activity, such as speaking, writing, or signing, we communicate our interventions. Suppose you have a sibling who smokes. You want to intervene in how your sibling interprets the experience of smoking—to shift the interpretation from fun and relaxing to risky and dangerous. Your intervention will involve some form of communication such as talking to your sibling about the health risks, showing your sibling a Web site with quitting strategies, or giving your sibling an antismoking brochure to read.

Multiple Outcomes and Interveners

Our definition of intervention emphasizes that our communicative acts are attempts. Although an intervention might be well planned and executed, the outcome might not be as we had hoped or anticipated. Despite your various appeals, your sibling might continue to smoke, avoid you rather than listen to your nonsmoking reasoning, or smoke more to irritate you. Your interventional attempt might not have the desired outcome of changing your sibling’s interpretation of cigarettes, and your sibling’s actions might intervene in your interpretation of the smoking experience. Maybe now you interpret it as hopeless!

Our interventional acts are always attempts because all interventions involve multiple interveners, which we define as people and groups enacting and responding to interventions. At the same time as you encourage your sibling to rename the act of smoking, other interveners—friends who smoke and cigarette companies—might communicate messages that emphasize maintaining the current interpretation of smoking. Interveners, then, both promote and impede change.

Intervention Intent

Our definition of intervention lacks mention of intention, although throughout the book we discuss the goals and purposes of intervention and give examples of intended interventions. Also, when we analyze social interventions, we typically focus on ones we consider intentional so that we can compare an intervention’s outcome and side effects to its purpose or intention. However, naming only communication acts that have been clearly defined as intentional as interventions might limit our knowledge and understanding of the rhetoric of social intervention. Besides, what an intervener names as intentional and what others around the intervener interpret as intentional may differ. Ultimately, all interventions can encourage and result in unintended change. Regardless of whether the intervener intended the effect, the influence is still there. Thus, the question of intent is relevant only when we attempt to measure what the intervener tried to accomplish and what actually took place.

Finally, our definition of intervention assumes that interventions take place within systems. Because system will be a recurring term, let’s consider a few features of systems.

SYSTEMS

To characterize a system, we must consider the meaning of the word system. Economist Kenneth Boulding (1985) defines a system as “any structure that exhibits order and pattern” (p. 9). We can identify ordered and patterned structures and processes all around us. A house is heated and cooled by a system of interconnected ducts and machinery. We drive across the country on an organized structure of roadways called the interstate system. System theorists suggest that a system includes several key features along with order and pattern. Besides system characteristics, we will also examine two types of systems—social and ideological—and catalysts that prompt system change.

System Characteristics

One important characteristic of a systemic structure is the interrelatedness or interconnectedness of its components (Boulding, 1985). A system’s components are the parts that we identify as constituting the system. The house’s heating and cooling system consists of components such as a heat pump, vents, ducts, thermostat, and forced air. The human circulatory system includes components such as the heart, blood vessels, and the blood itself. These systems are organized around a goal or purpose—to heat the house or to feed and oxygenate the body. All systems have a minimum of two parts (Hanson, 1995). These interrelated parts form an integrated whole (Laszlo, 1972).

Interdependence. A system’s components are interdependent. Interdependence, in terms of a system, means that each system component interacts with and affects the other system components. Any shift or change in one component of the system alters or influences all parts of the system (Hanson, 1995). When the room temperature reaches a selected point, it alters the thermostat and the air conditioning unit changes and switches on or off. Environmentalists often discuss how an increase in one component of the ecosystem—such as carbon dioxide—interconnects to changes in all ecosystem parts—such as global temperature and glacier size.

Causality. Another characteristic related to systemic interconnectedness is that system change is not based on a single cause-and-effect relationship among the parts. Sociologist Barbara Hanson (1995) explains, “Any action or inaction will reverberate through the entire system leading to unpredictable effects and sometimes effects that are precisely the inverse of the intended effect” (p. 27). She compares intervention in a system to pushing down on a waterbed: “Pushing on one corner leads to disruption in all areas, and possibly ultimately back onto the first corner we push” (p. 29). Thus, causality means that a change in one part of the system has side effects for change in all system parts.

Open or Closed. Systems can also be described as open or closed. An open system is one that is open to various inputs, which it processes in various ways. An open system is a dynamic system, and can adapt to changes within the system and within its environment. A company that alters its product line in response to changed customer demand exemplifies an open system.

A closed system is one that processes limited inputs in one patterned way. A company that refuses to listen to customer input and adapt to changes in customers’ needs would be a closed system. Closed systems tend to run down over time. An unchanging company (closed system) will probably fail (Laszlo, 1972).

Endurance. Systems vary in terms of how long they endure. Systems theorist Ervin Laszlo (1972) explains that some systems, such as political systems or live oak trees, are long lived. Other systems, such as butterflies or soccer games, are short lived. Laszlo notes that maintaining relationships among a system’s components is the key to its continued existence. Although a system’s c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• SECTION I: The Rhetoric of Social Intervention Model
• SECTION II: RSI CRITICISM ESSAYS
• Glossary
• Additional Readings
• References
• Index
• About the Authors