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Article Excerpt
Since the rhetoric of science emerged as a field of inquiry, there have been at least two possible areas for investigation: the study of how science is used in public discourse and the study of how scientists argue and persuade within their professional communities. But, as the field developed, research in the latter area outpaced that in the former, leaving 'the professional discourse of scientists ... as the "prototypical" form of text studied in the [rhetoric of science]' (Ceccarelli, 2001, pp. 314-315). Often, rhetorical work in the first area has concerned itself with how scientific information is changed or distorted as it is accommodated for the general audience (e.g., Fahnestock, 1986) and has thus tended to reify the notion that scientific and public discourse occurs in two separate spheres (Locke, 2002). This traditional view of science communication, often called the deficit model, holds that public or social knowledge is external to, and inferior to, scientific knowledge, and that communication between these spheres is unidirectional, from science to the public (Myers, 2003).
However, as Beacco, Claudel, Doury, Petit, and Reboul-Toure (2002) argue, scientific discourse is not limited to popularizations or accommodations from scientists to the general public via journalist mediators. Instead, scientific discourse is part of a great deal of public discourse, both in the news media and in everyday talk. This overlap is apparent in news reports and everyday talk about topics ranging from health issues, such as rates of cancer and prevention of HIV/AIDS, to technological issues, such as energy policy and genetic engineering, to social issues such as whether there are gender differences in brain structure and whether homosexuality is a heritable trait (and the implications of such research on debates about civil rights). Although science is frequently implicated in public discourse, it often requires, as Darsey (2002) notes, 'the public to accept ]scientific] explanations that are non-obvious, even counter-intuitive' (p. 471). Although such communication has not replaced more traditional accommodations of expert discourse for lay audiences (Moirand, 2003), the increasingly important role of science in communication about controversial political issues has problematized the division between technical and public spheres (Myers, 2003). For example, in many science stories in the news media, the role of expert is no longer limited to the scientist, but can also include citizens or advocates (Beacco et al., 2002; Conrad, 1999).
In this paper, I show how theoretical and methodological insights from discourse analysis and rhetorical theory can be applied to public communication, specifically news discourse, about controversial science. In particular, I discuss how studies of the structure of news discourse map onto Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's notion of Presence as well as their discussion of selection and presentation of data in argumentative discourse. I then review recent discourse studies of news discourse about controversial science. I show how the linguistic choices that discourse analysts orient toward in studies of scientific discourse can be described as appeals to scientific ethos motivated by topoi derived from an idealized vision of science. Finally, I apply this framework to a set of news texts and press releases reporting and responding to a controversial study on 'reparative therapy' for homosexuality.
This analysis shows how the structure and conventions of news discourse may accomplish the rhetorical goal of demarcation (of good science from bad). This demarcation, or boundary-work, is accomplished both at the level of framing, and at the level of specific 'micro-rhetorical' linguistic choices (Johnstone, 2002) that can be made throughout a news text. In other words, the detailed textual analysis reveals some of the ways in which rhetorical strategy and audience design (Bell, 1991; Tracy, 2002) affect news discourse at the micro-level, as well as how these micro-rhetorical choices, when viewed through the lens of rhetorical theory, may affect how audiences interpret and understand what is being reported.
Discourse Analysis and Rhetorical Theory
Framing is a concept that has been used by communication scholars, discourse analysts, and cognitive linguists to investigate media from a number of perspectives-to study both the construction and reception of particular media texts and to analyze both the sociological (i.e., dominant flames or agenda-setting) and cognitive effects of flaming (Scheufele, 1999). Although there is a diversity of approaches to flaming research, Entman (1993) offers a frequently cited definition:
To flame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described (p. 52).
This definition calls to mind Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's notion of presence. As they state, 'By the very fact of selecting certain elements and presenting them to the audience, their importance and pertinency to the discussion are implied. Indeed, such a choice endows these elements with presence ...' (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969/ 1958, p. 116). Presence, according to Gross and Dearin (2003), is a 'second-order effect that relies on a synergy of first-order effects' (p. 135).
What are the first-order effects that combine to create presence in news discourse? As Pan and Kosicki (1993) note, in print news, much of the work of framing is accomplished in the headline and lead paragraph of the story. Thus, these features of news discourse have been the object of many social science studies. Valkenburg, Semetko, and de Vreese (1999) identify four common news frames in this literature on framing: conflict, human interest, responsibility and economic consequences. The conflict frame makes present a 'conflict between individuals, groups, or institutions' (p. 551). The human interest frame makes present 'an individual's story or an emotional angle to the presentation of an event, issue, or problem' (p. 551). The responsibility frame makes present an individual's or group's 'responsibility for causing or solving a problem' (p. 552). Finally, the economic consequences frame makes present 'the economic consequences [a news item] will have on an individual, group, institution, region, or country' (p. 552).
Frame analysis of course is not limited to the headline and lead paragraph. As Pan and Kosicki (1993) further note, there are a number of structures that frame a news story: the syntactical structures, which include the inverted pyramid structure of news stories and conventions to establish objectivity. These conventions include quoting numbers and official sources, as well as 'marginalizing certain points of view [by attributing them] to a social deviant' (p. 58); script structures, which include the 'who, what, when, where, why and how' that guide the journalist's practice and create a sense that a news story 'is a relatively independent unit' (p. 60); thematic structures, where a hypothesis suggested in the lead may be supported by evidence in the body of a story (pp. 60-61); and rhetorical structures, which include 'metaphors, exemplars, catchphrases, depictions, and visual images' (pp. 61-62). Finally, as Pan and Kosicki argue, '[these] four structural dimensions contain only slots with varying power of signification when filled with lexical elements' (p. 62); thus, lexical choices, are 'a clear and sometimes powerful cue signifying an underlying frame' (p. 63).
Likewise, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969) argue that lexical Choices are important rhetorically. For example, the presentation of data in rhetorical discourse includes making choices about qualifiers, such as epithets, proper or common nouns, classifications and the conjunctive phrases that are used to put a term in a classification (pp. 126-129). I argue that the structures discussed by Pan and Kosicki also present important sites for rhetorical as well as linguistic analysis. As Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca state, 'the various aspects of a reality are situated on different planes, and a more complete vision of reality can consist only of a progressive multiplication of aspects to which attention is drawn' (p. 126). Attention is drawn in discourse both at macro- and micro-levels, and discourse analysis is sensitive to the smaller, micro-rhetorical choices, such as those described by Pan and Kosicki (1993), that together create presence for a speaker or writer's interpretation of 'the real in the social and material universe and the significant in the realm of values' (Gross & Dearin, 2003, p. 135). Thus, discourse analysis is a method that can help rhetoricians investigate media and news discourse, as well as everyday talk (e.g., McCormick, 2003).
Discourse Studies and Rhetorical Analysis of Science Communication
As van Dijk (2001) states, a complete account of the linguistic features of even a short text 'might take months and fill hundreds of pages' (p. 99) so such an account...
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