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THE RHETORICAL ANALYSIS

It is time to give some serious attention to the rhetorical analysis and
criticism of the public discourse of business leaders, in particular, contemporary
corporate officers. When Herbert Wichelns defined rhetorical
criticism as a thing separate from literary criticism in 1925, scholars of
public discourse focused first on the statesmen already identified by historians
as important to public affairs (Wichelns, 1925/1993). That was not
an unreasonable place to start, but it was not long before reviewers complained
of “the omission of business addresses” in the literature (Curti,
1944, p. 485). By 1970, there had been a general move to rectify a wide
range of disciplinary omissions, expanding the study of rhetoric to include
“all the arts of changing men’s minds” (Booth, 1971 p. 95), which wouldencompass business’ use of “advertising and group dynamics and effective
management” (p. 112). Still, another full generation later, not a single
collection of business speeches, criticism or analysis had been created to
fill the void (Medhurst, 1989).
The past 35 years have been called a period of “renewal and recovery”
in public address scholarship (Medhurst, 2001), with the art of rhetorical
biography “no longer limited to great white men who served in public
office” (Medhurst, 2001 p. 500). Women and non-White speakers have
certainly been given more attention, but political speaking remains the
focus, and “the critical assessment of corporate rhetoric is a notable lacuna
in contemporary rhetorical criticism” (Cheney, 1992, p. 167). When a
group of public address scholars was asked to name the Top 100 Speeches
in the 20th century, their collective assessment was that not a single business
speaker deserved to be included “on the basis of social and political
impact, and rhetorical artistry” (Lucas & Medhurst, 1999).1
Meanwhile, corporations are increasingly recognized as having significant
influence on public affairs, and (to the distress of many commentators)
business representatives are demanding a role as participants in
political and social decision-making processes. The sheer scope of corporate
activity ought to be enough warrant for rhetorical attention. Consider,
for example, that of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporate
entities (Anderson & Cavanagh, 2002). There are many who would
argue further that while the growing power of private corporations “has
enormous economic consequences . . . the greatest impact may be political,
as corporations transform economic clout into political power” (Anderson &
Cavanagh, 2000 p. 7). Limiting attention to political speakers means limiting
research to only a portion of the world’s decision-making discourse.
The simple fact that a discourse exists does not guarantee that it is theoretically
interesting, but several critics have interrogated the scope and influence of corporate rhetoric (Conrad, 2003; Deetz, 1992; DeLuca, 2001;
May, Cheney, & Roper, 2007), and the proper role of corporate discourse
within the larger realm of public decision making has warranted critical
attention (Andriof & McIntosh, 2001; Kinsella, 2002; Matten & Crane,
2005; Morrison, 2003; Saiia & Cyphert, 2003). The most obvious goal of
rhetorical analysis might be simply to understand the influence of business
rhetoric in human affairs and, in particular, in contemporary economic,
social, and political processes.
The purpose of this article then is to collect and examine potentially
significant questions for study. I hope that these thoughts might serve as a
catalyst for future research as scholars of business communication work
together to define and refine the direction of the discipline. The exercise thus
takes on a somewhat self-reflective purpose. Not only do I make a claim that
rhetorical study will further the disciplinary aims of business communication
scholars, I also argue that attention to contemporary rhetorical theory can
guide the discipline toward a richer understanding of business speakers and
of business communication more generally. To this end, I propose nine questions
of rhetorical importance in the study of business speech.2
1. What Is The Canon of Excellent Business Speech?
If we accept that additional rhetorical scholarship on the public speechmaking
of business is needed, the discipline would benefit greatly from
developing a coherent body of research. There is some value, of course,
in a general call for any kind attention to business speakers. With so little
done to date, even random additions to the literature would be useful.
Cataloging failed business speeches along with the mediocre and the eloquent
would provide the discipline with a baseline from which to develop
both critical and theoretical insights.
Such a project has greater significance, however, in its aim to define a
canon of great business speakers and speeches, integrating the parameters
of their excellence with an understanding of the political, social, and economic
contexts in which they were rhetorically effective. Even its critics
admit the impact of business discourse on social and political events, and
there seems to be no question that a business person’s ability to speak is
vital to both individual and corporate success. Still, without a body of
literature to define and explain examples of excellence over the centuries,
it is impossible to identify common patterns of technique, content, or
responsiveness to an audience or situation that might form a theoretical
basis for understanding the phenomenon.2. Why Is Business Speech Absent From
the Study of Rhetorical Communication?
Given the demonstrable importance of economic entities in the rise of
Western civilization, the most obvious question to address might simply
be the absence of scholarly attention to business speakers. Just in the 20th
century, many thousands of speeches have been given by influential business
people, addressed to powerful business audiences on important business
topics. The question of why virtually none of them have been studied
by rhetorical scholars suggests several areas of inquiry regarding fundamental
assumptions about the nature of rhetoric and of rhetorical study.
To begin, it is well to realize that there is a considerable body of knowledge
about business discourse. The relevance of corporate rhetoric is no
longer challenged, but framed in terms of the “organizations and collectives
speaking” (Cheney, 1992 p. 166) and approached with the theories and
methodologies of public relations, organizational communication, and
management. This might suggest some questions worth answering before
even considering the speeches themselves. Why, for example, is the collective
“voice” of a corporate public relations effort deemed more theoretically
relevant than the public discourse of an individual, high-profile
corporate leader? How is it that communication that occurs within an
organization deserves more theoretical attention than the public statements
of those who communicate across organizational boundaries? At what
point do management and rhetorical theories intersect on the subject of the
public communication role of the corporate leader? The first step in a
comprehensive research agenda of business speech might be to unpack the
theoretical presuppositions that have precluded their rhetorical study in
the first place, which leads to several rather more complex questions.
3. What Is the Rhetorical Role of the Business Speaker?
With such extensive attention to business discourses at the collective,
organizational level, the dearth of scholarship on individual business speakers
is puzzling. An understanding of what is and what is not rhetorical is
a fundamental premise in any theory of rhetoric, although aspects of the
definition are often implicit. In the case of business speakers, several mainstream
assumptions seem to preclude their inclusion in the scope of rhetorical
discourse.
First, rhetoric is generally understood in terms of public communication,
whereas business, at least from the framework of free-market capitalism, is
idealized as an aggregate of private, self-interested transactions (Friedman& Friedman, 1980; A. Smith, 1787/1939). Across history, the actions of the
private business person have been largely invisible, and to a large extent
this has probably been a pragmatically desirable choice on the part of the
business community. One business historian noted that as of the early part
of the 20th century, there had yet to be written a history of the business
man. Although “aristocrats, dictators and priests have long appreciated the
beauties and uses of history” and turned to historians to justify and exalt
their actions,
Not so the business man; he still struggles on, unfathered and unhallowed,
lacking annals and allegories, a mellowed lineage, a shell of mythos in
which to creep. He is his own ancestor and, usually, his memory does not
reach back even to the last business crisis. (Beard, 1938, p. 1)
The result is both a lack of attention to businesspersons’ talk and practical
difficulties in studying it. Any published texts might be quite different
from anything actually presented to a live audience, and the listeners at a
closed business event might never divulge details of a speaker’s delivery
or extemporaneous remarks.3
The revolutionary notion that business could benefit from communication
to a general public audience found Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays working
with corporate clients in the early 1900s, and scholars in many areas
now study various forms of corporate communication with the public.
However, research in public relations (or its more contemporary formulations
as corporate communication, strategic communication, issues or image
management, or stakeholder communication) focuses on the corporate
message rather than on the messenger. The assumption seems to remain
that the role of the individual business speaker is fundamentally different
from the political candidate, the social activist, or the religious preacher.
All engage audiences across a wide range of contexts, but the business
speaker remains a private, rather than a public speaker, lying beyond the
range of contemporary rhetorical theory.A second assumption frames the business speaker as the voice of a collective,
corporate entity, something that is difficult to position within a
rhetorical theory that privileges the autonomous, individual author as the
proper subject of study. Granted, the importance of a single manager’s
public statements might be insignificant when considering the economic
clout of Dutch Royal Shell as a corporate whole or the social impact of
the Walt Disney Company’s media output. Still, there are easily as many
instances of corporate influence rooted in the visionary, motivational or
structuring words of individuals like Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, or Milton
S. Hershey who call forth and address publics, which thereby come to act
as corporate entities.
The business corporation represents a context in which the tensions
between individual and collective identity are apparent. Business speeches
are often created with collaborative processes of invention and delivery
that have yet to be addressed by rhetorical theory, and perhaps even more
significantly, the resulting discourse reflects accretive, narrative forms
that lie outside the norms of literate text, which has come to be Western
culture’s mainstream rhetoric. Theory that presumes individual voice and
values discourse that conforms to the norms of a literate culture finds it
possible to simply dismiss the corporate speaker as arhetorical.
Finally, corporate executives are perceived as merely managers who
serve the corporate owners’ collective interests while carrying no influence
or responsibility outside this mandate (Sethi, 1994). To some extent,
this is simply a misperception; a number of corporate leaders have played
critical roles in shaping this nation’s economic future and cultural values.
The implicit assumption, however, that a corporate leader is always a
mouthpiece for corporate action suggests a theoretical distinction between
individual and collective behavior that might say more about our Western
understanding of moral agency than about business practices per se. The
ethical roles and relationships among corporate shareholders, management,
and external stakeholders are the subject of significant debate among
management, political and social theorists (Anand, Ashforth, & Joshi, 2004;
Barton, 1994; Cohan, 2002; Feldman, 2002; Gibson, 1995; Jackall, 1988;
McCloskey, 2006; Wood, Logsdon, Lewellyn, & Davenport, 2006), but
the issues have remained largely unexplored by rhetorical theorists.
4. What Is the Rhetorical Impact
of Mundane Discourse?
The rhetorical importance of a discourse is often explained in terms of
subsequent political events or social change. Clearly, the importance of a
352 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
discourse can be similarly understood in terms of its effect on economic
events or outcomes, and on that basis alone it would seem that the words
of businesspeople ought to be considered worthy of study. There seems to
be a separate theoretical issue, however, that is not unique to the business
context. Bruce Loebs (1972, personal communication) encouraged us to
look at the “little guys” to create an understanding of rhetoric that was not
distorted by constant attention to only the famous, rich, and powerful
speakers of the day. Later, Michael McGee (1990) made the point that any
discourse is composed of myriad fragments. Still, there is much to be
learned about how, when, and why the discourse of the little guy or the
tiniest fragments of text are woven into the whole cloth of a social movement,
a grand oratorical moment, a hegemonic power structure, a cultural
myth, or an iconic visual moment. This is not to say there is no theoretical
work being done. In fact, some of the most well developed theory has
been in the context of business organizations (Poole, Seibold, & McPhee,
1996; Taylor & Van Every, 2000; Weick, 1995), but it is perceived as
scholarship in organizational or group communication rather than an element
of rhetorical theory, and the focus remains on the collective rather
than the individual business speaker.
The practical matter of studying lesser known speakers and discourse
fragments raises some additional issues worth mentioning. First, the mundane
communication that forms the day-to-day discourse of business is not
inherently exciting; the most important fragments might be overlooked
simply because they are buried in the minutia of the rhetorical landscape.
This point has been made to explain the lack of historical attention to businessmen
who tend not to provide much drama as they go about their business
(Beard, 1938, p. 3), but a lack of excitement is no indication that the
discourse lacks importance. A few scholars have demonstrated the value in
carefully deconstructing meetings (Cooren, 2004; Poole, Seibold, & McPhee,
1985), work conversations (Hutchins & Klausen, 1996), and team interactions
(Bales, 1950; Dyer, 1988; Weick & Roberts, 1993) to build group or
organizational discourse theories. Close textual analysis has demonstrated
the value of fine-grained detail in rhetorical studies (Leff, 1980). The application
of such analysis to the e-mails, work papers, and PowerPoint files
of a modern corporate figure is likely to be mind-numbingly tedious work,
but the results might go a long way toward explaining contemporary corporate
behavior and worldwide economic events.
Second, there is an implicit focus on exemplars within traditional
rhetorical studies, which has largely been for pedagogical purposes. From
the classical attempt to describe and train eloquent orators, to the medieval
inclusion of rhetoric in the educational trivium, to modern studies in
Cyphert / RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF BUSINESS SPEECH 353
eloquence, the aim has been to locate and learn from those whose rhetoric
is demonstrably effective or stylistically pleasing. Across time, that search
has ignored the ranks of the business class. The classical perspectives were
“formed by Greeks and Romans who despised the trader” (Beard, 1938,
p. 2) and saw no particular value in the merchant’s discourse. Throughout
the middle ages and Renaissance, the Christian church continued “subduing
the profit-maker” (Beard, 1938, p. 30), and rhetorical theorists focused
on political aristocrats as the only rhetors worthy of study.
Even as rhetorical pedagogues were urged to take on the new role of
rhetorical criticism, Wicheln’s (1925/1993) initial emphasis was on addressing
the “persuasive purpose” of oratory, which in his own historical and
academic context was presumed to be “intimately associated with statecraft”
(p. 2). In that era, commercial interests lay outside the purview of
those aristocrats with an opportunity to participate in the English parliament,
where so many in the traditional rhetorical canon displayed their art.
Contemporary scholars are more careful to look beyond the political elite,
seeking out the voices of women, minorities, and working or lower classes.
Ironically, business leaders are now members of that elite cadre of political
decision makers, and their voices remain outside the range of popular
subjects for rhetorical study.
This is not to say there is no place for pedagogical criticism in the realm
of business communication. Much of what we do as teachers involves the
examination of mundane business documents, routine office conversations,
or internal meetings to determine the rhetor’s (or rhetor-in-training’s)
adherence to equally mundane rules of rhetorical appropriateness and
effectiveness. The danger is in confusing an application of theoretical
terminology with the development of theory. Discovering that a given
business speaker exhibits rhetorical behaviors, for instance, offers nothing
to further understanding of how those rhetorical behaviors function. Similarly,
rhetorical criticism that does nothing more than compare business discourse
against well-developed normative standards has little to offer theory.
A call for rhetorical study of business discourse is not meant to encourage
a proliferation of pedagogically oriented articles that simply apply
rhetorical vocabulary in the normative evaluation of commercial discourse.
The larger point is to recognize those areas where the rhetoric of
business is uniquely situated to answer questions of theoretical interest,
not merely illuminating the rhetoric of business but also expanding the
understanding of rhetoric more generally. It is this challenge that I find
the most intriguing for the discipline, and the next few questions address
some potential directions for scholarship.
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5. Is There a Discernable Scope of Business Rhetoric?
One might ask why this was not the first question, but I hope the reader
has by now developed a sense that this might be a relatively nuanced query,
depending for its answer on both a deeply contextualized historical understanding
of business discourse and a sophisticated understanding of rhetorical
theory. Over the past quarter century, an ongoing thread of discussion in
our journals has addressed the definition and scope of the field of business
communication (see especially Carmichael, 1996; Kostelnick, 1998; Krapels
& Arnold, 1996; Reinsch, 1991; Rentz, 1993; Shaw, 1993; Shelby, 1993;
Smeltzer, Glab, & Golen, 1983; White-Mills & Rogers, 1996; Zorn, 2002).
While the impetus has most often been a political and pragmatic attempt to
gain institutional legitimacy and support for a recognized position within the
academy, the underlying theoretical issues bear closer examination.
The simplest approach to the question has been the superglue theory: if
we can glue together the terms business and communication then we can
claim a disciplinary scope to earn a legitimate place in the academy. A
more nuanced approach quickly recognizes the complexity of a field that
crosses, crisscrosses, and triple-crosses academic fields. The resulting
multidimensional scope, which claims elements of organizational theory,
communication theory, rhetorical theory, public relations practice, management
theory, composition theory, and linguistics, offers no clear blueprint,
however, for its own unique ivory tower. In the end, we spend more
time and effort on defining the platform on which the business speaker
stands than on investigating his or her rhetoric. This unsatisfactory result
suggests that reframing the question in more theoretical terms might yield
a more useful outcome.
The proper scope of rhetorical study has been contested since the invention
of the term. To the ancients, the problem was to distinguish the rhetorical
realm of the “discussable” from those things that were known to be
true (Aristotle, trans. 1991, ca. 335 BC), a problem that continues into the
20th century with discussion of the inherently epistemic nature of rhetoric
(Goodnight, 1982; Gross, 1990; Scott, 1967). Traditional distinctions between
purposeful rhetoric and the imaginative discourses of poetry or fiction
were called into question (Benson, 1978; Bryant, 1953), with theorists not
only recognizing the rhetoricity of narrative but also building on the
insights gained from that recognition (Fisher, 1987). Similarly, claims that
the scope of rhetoric included all manner of symbolic performance (Bower
& Ochs, 1971) led to some of the most theoretically important discussions
of the 20th century (Bitzer & Black, 1971).
Cyphert / RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF BUSINESS SPEECH 355
In each case, theoretical strides were made when something outside the
scope of rhetoric was reexamined, locating its capacity for performing rhetorical
work and recognizing the degree to which the discourse played a role
in the community’s ability to decide its collective course of action. With this
in mind, there seems little to gain in debating which parts of current knowledge
belong within the scope of business communication. That is mere territorial
quibbling. The more interesting question is what we might learn about
rhetorical theory by accepting the rhetoricity of business discourse. The scope
of business rhetoric is not a territory to claim and defend; it is a question about
the unique methods by which business discourse performs rhetorically.
The scope of business rhetoric is not a
territory to claim and defend; it is a question
about the unique methods by which
business discourse performs rhetorically.
There is no shortage of projects that might illuminate the scope of business
rhetoric. One might examine, for instance, the unique venues within
which corporate speakers influence U.S. economic policy—interviews on
MSNBC, analyst phone calls, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
filings—and learn something about mediated rhetorical forms. The analysis
of financial statements, generally accepted accounting practices (GAAP), or
international financial reporting standards (IFRS) disclosures could illuminate
the rhetorical use of numerical data across a range of political and
personal decisions. The conceptualization of a price as a value argument
suggests that business transactions themselves function rhetorically in a
community that makes its economic decisions by way of a free-market
economy. The challenge is to move beyond a simplistic observation that
business people behave rhetorically and go on to ask how the rhetoricity
of business practices informs our understanding of rhetoric.
6. Is There a Discernable Style of Business Rhetoric?
Direction to adopt the “clear, concise, and direct” communication style of
business is a truism that can be found in virtually any business communication
textbook. Most instructors are quick to recognize, however, that student
questions involving the application of a style rule are most often truthfully
356 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
answered, “It depends.” So, is there, in fact, a discernable business style?
Or, is the direction to be clear, concise and direct merely good advice that
could be applied in any communication endeavor? The distinction here
might be best understood in terms of the ancient distinction between grammar
as the mechanics of clear and comprehensible language and rhetoric,
which involves the adaptive use of language in a particular context with a
goal to instruct or persuade.
The pedagogical question as to a discernable style of business grammar
can be readily answered; the expectations of clear, concise and direct language
are well documented (Kallendorf & Kallendorf, 1985). The question
of rhetorical style, however, deserves greater attention. Not only can greater
attention to style locate more effective ways to reach the unique goals of
business rhetoric (Kallendorf & Kallendorf, 1985), but it is through a critical
study of rhetorical style that we are able to learn about a discourse community’s
beliefs, examining their “stylistic proclivities” to uncover “the
qualities of mental life of which those proclivities are tokens” (Black, 1976,
p. 85). Examination of a discernable style of business rhetoric could lead us
to ask a host of questions about the moral character, epistemological presumptions,
and social relationships inherent in the business community.
With the second half of the 20th century, the issues of an ethical relationship
between business and its natural and social environment has been
at the top of the agenda in management research (Andriof & McIntosh, 2001;
Carroll, 1996; Wood et al., 2006) and practice (Savitz & Weber, 2006; U.N.
World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987; Waddock,
2001). Meanwhile, rhetorical critique and analysis remains relatively rare.
A few examples of corporate advocacy have been examined (Crable &
Vibbert, 1983; Livesey, 2002; G. L. Smith & Heath, 1990), but more often
business is critiqued in terms of power relationships within the firm (Deetz,
1992; Mumby, 1988; Tompkins & Cheney, 1985) or between the corporation
and its public stakeholders (Heath, 1994; May et al., 2007). There is a
consensus that business discourse is rhetorical in several important ways,
but the critical question of a distinctive rhetorical style remains unanswered,
along with the foundation the answer would offer for ethical judgment
(Black, 1965/1978).
7. What Method of Rhetorical Criticism Is
Suitable for the Study of Business Rhetors?
This is obviously a trick question as it implies that business speeches might
be appropriately assessed from only one critical perspective. Interestingly,
Cyphert / RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF BUSINESS SPEECH 357
rhetorical criticism in the business communication journals has been limited
almost exclusively to normative pedagogical critique, determining
whether a corporate CEO performed according to the principles of effective
crisis communication, for instance, or a business document met the
generic expectations of its format. Meanwhile, ideological critique of business
discourse predominates in the general literature of rhetorical studies,
often involving negative assessments of a firm’s behavior or of business
organizations more generally.
A panel of scholars recently demonstrated a range of useful critical
methods at a conference of the Association for Business Communication,
examining a speech by Ford Corporation Executive VP Mark Fields with
close textual analysis (Warnick, 2008) and empathic critique (Cyphert,
2008). Similar efforts presented to conferences of the National Communication
Association have demonstrated the utility of Burkean analysis (Hart &
Coopman, 2006), postmodern critique (Adams, 2005), theories of religious
rhetoric (Bailey, 2006; French, 2005), stylistic examinations (Elichirigoity,
2005; Iden, 2005), and classical theories (Creel, 2006) in the analysis of
business speakers. The equally tricky answer to the trick question is obviously
“all of the above.” The more serious task is to continue to develop
this line of work. Certainly many critical methods will turn out to be useful,
but we have taken only a few small steps toward learning what these
methods will discover.
8. How Does the Study of Business
Speakers Inform Rhetorical Theory?
Within the discussion of a proper domain of study with the designation
of business communication, there has also been a sense that academic
legitimacy requires an authentic theory of business communication (Smeltzer
& Suchan, 1991). Perhaps it does. Perhaps we will even develop such a
theory, given sufficient attention to developing a canon of business eloquence,
defining the rhetorical role, impact, scope, and style of business
discourse, and critically examining the rhetoric produced by businesses
and businesspeople. In the meantime, we should not lose sight of the contributions
scholars of business communication might make toward understanding
rhetoric more generally.
Our first contribution might be simply to convey contemporary developments
in rhetorical theory and practice to our close colleagues in business
and management studies. The looseness with which rhetorical terms are
used by business and management theorists (Hartelius & Browning, 2008)suggests that there is much work to be done just in clarifying how contemporary
rhetorical theory can be used in the analysis of business discourse.
It might be pointless to concern ourselves with developing new theories
when the first few thousand years of foundational work are still being
ignored, misunderstood, or misused by those who are attempting to apply
theory in the practical understanding of management and business discourse.
Certainly, as Hartelius and Browning (2008) conclude, there is a
possibility of “fruitful cross-pollination between rhetoric and management
science” (p. 33), but there is much work to be done before we have fully
realized the potential of our most obvious interdisciplinary connections.
As an interdisciplinary field, we have a unique opportunity to undertake
the task of synthesizing theories developed across a wide range of
fields. Our diversity has been noted as a disciplinary strength, with the
admonition that we do a better job of reading each other’s work, understanding
the underlying theories, and translating them for each other with
accuracy and integrity (Kostelnick, 1998; Sherblom, 1998; Smeltzer &
Suchan, 1991). The result would be much more than a mere paraphrase of
knowledge into the vocabulary of a new domain. Serious comparisons of
underlying premises, epistemological assumptions, and empirical results
across disciplines can yield a better understanding of differences across
specific contexts as well as more robust principles of a blended theory.
Dean Kruckeberg’s theories of public relations as a community building
(Kruckeberg & Starck, 1988) might be usefully compared and integrated
with Saiia and Cyphert’s (Cyphert & Saiia, 2004; Saiia & Cyphert,
2004) work in corporate ecology, for example, to yield a better understanding
of business’s role in the public sphere. Similarly, it could be
theoretically fruitful to determine whether Kuhn and Ashcraft’s (2003)
explanations of scandal in terms of a communicative theory of the firm are
inherently contradictory to the more traditionally rhetorical discussions of
apologia (Ware & Linkugel, 1973) or management-oriented research in
stakeholder (Mitchell, Agle, & Wood, 1997) and issues management
(Wartick & Mahon, 1994). A host of theories from multiple disciplines
inform our pedagogy, and it would seem that we have a scholarly obligation
to conduct whatever research is necessary to resolve the underlying
contradictions among the models used across those separate disciplines.
Without ever building any theory that is unique to business discourse,
we will accomplish much by applying rhetorical theory to understand
managerial and business discourse and by exploring the contrasts and
contradictions in various theoretical models. Along the way, it will not
hurt, though, to keep our minds open to the possibility that there might be
Cyphert / RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF BUSINESS SPEECH 359
an authentically different system of rhetoric functioning within the collaborative,
corporate, organizational entity that was invented largely by
commercial interests and has now evolved into the contemporary business
firm.
Richard Crable has argued that the “three great systems of rhetoric”
identified by Douglas Ehninger (1968) have been succeeded by a fourth,
which is characterized by rhetors who do not speak as individuals but as
the voice of “a constituency” (Crable, 1990, p. 118). Our seeming inability
to reconcile the dual role of the corporate rhetor as both individual
speaker and voice of the corporate whole might amount to an implicit
recognition that postmodern beings can be better understood as “organizational
beings” (Crable, 1990, p. 118). The corporate speaker functions
in ways that simply cannot be fully explained by the classical attention to
a grammar of rhetorical rules, the 18th-century focus on the psychology
of the speaker and audience, or the contemporary understanding that all
rhetoric is socially constructed. The business speaker is still subject to
rules, psychology, and social influences, but is also a functioning part of
a complex corporate entity that itself has the ability to perform rhetorically.
We might find that adequately explaining the rhetorical landscape of
contemporary business does indeed qualify as theory that “has evolved into
a fourth great system” (Crable, 1990, p. 127).
9. How Can Rhetorical Theory Illuminate
the Relationship of Business to Society?
Regardless of the benefits that theory building can offer to pedagogy,
disciplinary status, and academic vitae, the ultimate goal of any theoretical
work must be to better understand some aspect of ourselves or the
world around us. The final question, then, moves from an inward focus on
building better rhetorical theory toward the ultimate use of that theory to
ask whether we can more accurately describe, understand, and evaluate
the role of business within the larger realm of human society. This project
requires moving beyond an analysis of business speakers as they perform
within the norms of Western rhetoric to ask how and why those norms
dictate that economic decisions be made in a particular way. Similarly to
the way postmodern theorists have interrogated the discursive construction
of education (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1991), science (Foucault, 1973;
Lakatos, Worrall, & Gurrie, 1978), and political institutions (Jameson,
1991; Lyotard, 1979/1984), rhetorical theorists are positioned to examine
360 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
the implications of an economic decision-making apparatus that is held to
be distinct from both political institutions and the moral realms of religious
or ethical decision making.
Business and society scholars have pointed out that the Enlightenment
philosophers who posited the existence of economic laws that could both
explain and govern a society’s commercial transactions had the effect of
positioning the business community in “a kind of moral low ground in
society” (Freeman & Gilbert, 1992, p. 11), lying beyond the contaminating
influence of political demagoguery and subjective personal values
(Friedman, 1970), but also lying outside the realm of both responsible
political discourse and moral decision-making. Three hundred years later,
we comprehend the global interrelationships of economic, social, environmental
issues, as well as the inevitability of a moral aspect to virtually any
choice a community makes. The realm of rhetorical discourse can no
longer be limited to the political issues relevant to the governance of independent
nation-states; a sustainable global society will require robust
rhetorical systems with which to make increasingly complex collective
decisions that simultaneously involve economic, environmental, social,
political, and moral issues.
A sustainable global society will require
robust rhetorical systems with which to
make increasingly complex collective
decisions that simultaneously involve
economic, environmental, social, political,
and moral issues.
Perhaps such a system can develop by chance. There is some evidence,
in fact, that an evolving corporate rhetoric is already moving
toward the practical reintegration of the economic, political, and moral
spheres (Cyphert & Saiia, 2004). Still, we might hope that our efforts are
useful and that a better understanding of rhetorical cultures and of the
ways in which human communities are best equipped to make their collective
decisions will speed up the process, yielding more effective
methods of decision making on a global level in time to prevent our own
self-destruction.
Cyphert / RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF BUSINESS SPEECH 361
THE UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS
Can we conclude, then, that there are multiple reasons to study the
rhetoric of business speakers? Can we agree that there are at least nine
important questions that might be answered with additional attention to
corporate speakers? The temptation is to end this essay with marching
orders, expecting that the field will respond with an energetic research
agenda, rather like the field of mathematics took on David Hilbert’s
(1900) 23 unsolved problems. I wonder though, whether even mathematicians
in the 21st century would be as responsive to the centralized control
of a discipline that such an exercise implies.
Nevertheless, there is much substantial scholarship to be done, and
some political and pedagogical reasons to coordinate our efforts. If we
are, in fact, a professional discipline with the motivation and ability to
move forward, we must show a willingness to encourage and support
research that best serves the discipline, favoring substantive work that
answers fundamental questions over trivial results that have no particular
relevance to the field. There are many areas that deserve our scholarly
attention, but I hope I have demonstrated the value in the rhetorical analysis
and criticism of business speakers.
NOTES
1. The published rhetorical analysis of business speakers is so limited that a comprehensive
bibliography can fit into a footnote. While the speaking styles of Anita Roddick,
Jan Timmer, and Matthew Barrett (Den Hartog, 1997), and Carly Fiorina and Rupert
Murdoch (McCarthy & Hatcher, 2004) have been examined, Chrysler Corporation’s former
CEO, Lee Iacocca, is the only businessperson to have been the subject of multiple
published analyses (Dionisopoulos, 1988; Seeger, 1986, 1994). A few CEOs have been
examined while serving as the corporate voice, such as Peter Bijur of Texaco (Brinson &
Benoit, 1999) and Don Carty of American Airlines (Downing, 2007), but the CEO is
typically treated as an anonymously interchangeable voice of the corporation (e.g., Myers
& Kessler, 1980; Park & Berger, 2004; Rogers, 2000).
2. For historical reasons, the focus here is on the public address of business speakers,
but similar questions could presumably be developed surrounding the rhetorical analysis
of both written business discourse and informal, interpersonal modes of communication.
To a large extent, the contemporary business organization was made possible by advances
in written communication technologies (Yates, 1989), and the rhetorical presumptions and
norms of corporate writing practice are clearly unique (Bargiela-Chiappini & Nickerson,
1999; Beaufort, 1999; Matalene, 1989; Spilka, 1993). Similarly, the rhetorical presumptions
of personal and private conversation can be dysfunctional in the workplace (Kramer
& Hess, 2002; Molinsky & Margolis, 2005; Spano & Zimmerman, 1995; Tannen, 1995)
and the contradictions are worthy of study.

By Dale Cyphert