Intertextuality and the 24-Hour News Cycle: A Day in the Rhetorical Life of Colin Powell's U.N. Address

Appendix I. A Four- Phased Analytic Approach

271 Appendix I A Four-Phased Analytic Approach x I n this book, I have adopted a four-phased analytic approach. The first three phases include detailed verbal-visual discourse analysis and provide a foundation for the fourth phase, a rigorous intertextual study. Below I discuss what each analytic phase enables us to see. For convenience, I have also charted descriptions of the phases in tables (I.1–I.4). Phase 1 of the analysis is designed to uncover the lexical and grammatical choices that rhetors make as they construe reality and evaluate human actions (see table I.1). The investigation begins with a transitivity analysis that focuses attention on how rhetors encode happenings in the world, the people involved in them, and the surrounding circumstances . In short, transitivity analysis allows us to see the strategies that rhetors employ as they define the world for their audiences. Next, an attitude analysis investigates how rhetors reference shared values both 272 Appendix I to identify with audiences and to induce action. Finally, a study of legitimation devices shows us how rhetors position audiences to regard social actions as natural, rational, or necessary. In sum, phase 1 helps us to see how rhetors define reality, advance value positions, and promote their moral and political interests. Phase 2 entails examining how rhetors use language to enact relationships with their putative audiences (see table I.2). This phase begins with a survey of utterance types and the responses they imply. This initial survey helps the analyst see whether rhetors (1) offer services that they expect their audiences will accept (let me give you a closer look, UN/2.5/CP); (2) demand that their audiences perform some action (look at the image on the left, UN/2.5/CP); (3) state information that they expect their audiences will acknowledge (on the left is a close-up of one of the four chemical bunkers, UN/2.5/CP); or (4) pose questions that they expect their audiences will answer or consider (Where did Iraq take all of this equipment? UN/2.5/CP). The survey of statement types is followed with a more robust examination of the engagement resources by which rhetors seek to negotiate claims with their imagined addressees. This analysis focuses attention on the linguistic resources rhetors use to assume audience agreement (of course, this is a critical moment for the administration); close down debate on a given topic (Iraq is not telling the truth); open up space for epistemic possibilities (Iraq could equip UAVs with spray devices); distance themselves from others’ assertions (Iraq claims it has no weapons); endorse speakers and arguments (Powell spelled out the administration’s case); or counter audience expectations (Saddam Hussein is already doing damage control). Meanwhile, a graduation analysis shows how rhetors control the intensity of their vocabulary, maximizing their commitment to given attitudes (it’s a very compelling case) or endowing representations of the world with added rhetorical presence (showdown with Iraq). In general, phase 2 allows us to see the micro-linguistic devices rhetors employ to position audiences, conveying how they expect audiences to respond to their utterances and signaling their tolerance for alternative viewpoints. Phase 3 focuses on the interaction of different semiotic elements in multimodal texts (see table I.3). Video texts are transcribed and analyzed using Baldry and Thibault’s (2005) method of tabulating visual, kinesic, and sound data on a phase-to-phase basis. Meanwhile, static multimodal texts are studied using Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (1996) A Four-Phased Analytic Approach 273 Table I.1. Examining the Rhetoric of Representation and Evaluation Procedure Description Purpose Transitivity analysis • Focused SFL transitivity analysis of all verbal data (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004) with additional focus on representations of social actors and actions (Van Leeuwen 2008) • Identification of nominalizations and passivizations • Reveals how rhetors position audiences to accept as true particular representations of reality • Considers why rhetors choose to construe events one way rather than another Attitude analysis • Analysis of verbal inscriptions (and tokens) of attitude (Martin & White 2005) • Analysis covers affect (emotional language), judgment (evaluation of human behavior ), and appreciation (evaluation of semiotic or natural events). • Highlights micro-features of language that align audiences into communities of value, and dispose them toward action (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969) • Shows how rhetors assess certain social actions favorably and others unfavorably, i.e., one way that rhetors (de)legitimate social activity • Indicates how rhetors construe their...