Just spoke on the telephone with Andrew Cline, the author of the redoubtable Rhetorica.net, about his fascinating project to deepen understanding of journalistic language as a form of rhetoric. In other words, journalists are always presenting a worldview and trying to persuade readers of some important things -- whether they are conscious of it or not.
As Cline says, "I contend that journalism is the most important discoursive practice in our culture." And yet how odd is it that journalists, not to mention ordinary citizens, have nowhere in their backgrounds any systematic study of the symbolic and rhetorical powers of language?
"Because journalists don't study language beyond conventions of language, they don't know they are playing with dynamite," Andy told me on the phone.
Playing with dynamite. That nails it exactly.
Watch this space for an interview with Andy next week, exploring how his views on how the rhetoric of journalism might overlap with the local-glocal notions we are exploring on Local Man.
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