Expanding the Discipline's Debate Contributions: New Potentials, Beyond Effects

Abstract

This response to Kathleen Hall Jamieson's “The Discipline's Debate Contributions” brings forth, via a sampling of existing literature, those research trajectories about political debates ignored or minimized by Professor Jamieson as those trajectories hold true to the values and traditions of the Communication discipline and as they operate alongside the literature she surveys about debate effects. In particular, we suggest that political debates provide fascinating material for a range of rhetorical analyses that examine (1) the production and creation of political debates as rhetorical/political artifacts; (2) the language and arguments put forth in these events; and (3) the circulation of political debates as rhetorical texts in and through U.S. political culture. In so doing, we resist the hegemony of Professor Jamieson's “effects” approach to political debates both as that hegemony demarcates research about political debates and as it describes the limits and scope of Communication research generally.

Keywords:

• Political Debates
• Research Agenda
• Rhetoric
• Public Address

Notes

[1] “September 26, 1960 Debate Transcript,” Commission on Presidential Debates, available at http://www.debates.org/index.php?page=september-26–1960-debate-transcript

[2] Smith also announces that the discussion will only occur between the two major candidates—at least seven other individuals received votes for president in 1960.

[3] The Racine Group, “White Paper on Televised Political Campaign Debates,” Argumentation and Advocacy 38, no. 4 (2002): 201.

[4] The Racine Group, “White Paper,” 212–15.

[5] Julian E. Zelizer, Governing America: The Revival of Political History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 29.

[6] Austin J. Freeley, “The Presidential Debates and the Speech Profession,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 47, no. 1 (1961): 60.

[7] J. Jeffery Auer, “The Counterfeit Debates,” in The Great Debates: Background, Perspective, Effects, ed. Sidney Kraus (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962), 148.

[8] Theodore Clevenger, Jr., Donald W. Parson, & Jerome B. Polisky, “The Problem of Textual Accuracy,” in The Great Debates: Background, Perspective, Effects, ed. Sidney Kraus (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962), 341–42.

[9] Bitzer and Rueter note that The Great Debates “say little about the debates themselves.” See Lloyd Bitzer and Theodore Rueter, Carter vs Ford: The Counterfeit Debates of 1976 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980), xi.

[10] See Robert V. Friedenberg, ed., Rhetorical Studies of National Political Debates (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1990); Robert V. Friedenberg, “The 1992 Presidential Debates,” in The 1992 Presidential Campaign: A Communication Perspective, ed. Robert E. Denton, Jr. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994), 89–110; Robert V. Friedenberg, “The 1996 Presidential Debates,” in 1996 Presidential Campaign: A Communication Perspective, ed. Robert E. Denton, Jr. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998), 101–22; Robert V. Friedenberg, “The 2000 Presidential Debates,” in The 2000 Presidential Campaign: A Communication Perspective, ed. Robert E. Denton, Jr. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 135–66; Robert V. Friedenberg, “The 2004 Presidential Debates,” in The 2004 Presidential Campaign: A Communication Perspective, ed. Robert E. Denton, Jr. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 93–130; and Robert V. Friedenberg, “The 2008 Presidential Debates,” in The 2008 Presidential Campaign: A Communication Perspective, ed. Robert E. Denton, Jr. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 68–98. See also Ben Voth, “Presidential Debates 2012,” in The 2012 Presidential Campaign: A Communication Perspective, ed. Robert E. Denton, Jr. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), 45–56.

[11] In her affiliation with the Commission, Carlin frequently appeared in the news media and at public discussions to comment on the presidential debates. See http://www.c-span.org/person/?dianacarlin for examples of this public intellectual activity.

[12] See Diana Carlin, et al., The Third Agenda in U.S. Presidential Debates: DebateWatch and Viewer Reactions, 1996–2004 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2009).

[13] “League Refuses to ‘Help Perpetrate a Fraud,’” League of Women Voters, October 3, 1988. Retrieved from http://www.lwv.org/press-releases/league-refuses-help-perpetrate-fraud.

[14] Bitzer and Rueter, Carter vs Ford.

[15] Bitzer and Rueter, Carter vs Ford, 5.

[16] Jamieson cites a representative example of this line of research: William Benoit and Allison Harthcock, “Functions of the Great Debates: Acclaims, Attacks, and Defense in the 1960 Presidential Debates,” Communication Monographs 66, no. 4 (1999): 341–57.

[17] A recent offering is Shelly S. Hinck, Robert S. Hinck, William O. Dailey, and Edward A. Hinck, “Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of Any Fellow Republicans? Politeness Theory in the 2012 Republican Primary Debates,” Argumentation & Advocacy 49, no. 4 (2013): 259–74.

[18] Jane Blankenship, Marlene G. Fine, and Leslie K. Davis, “The 1980 Republican Primary Debates: The Transformation of Actor to Scene,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 69, no. 1 (1983): 25.

[19] Diana Prentice Carlin, “Presidential Debates as Focal Points for Campaign Arguments,” Political Communication 9, no. 4 (1992): 252.

[20] Alan Cienki, “Bush's and Gore's Language and Gestures in the 2000 US Presidential Debates: A Test Case for Two Models of Metaphors,” Journal of Language & Politics 3, no. 3 (2004): 409–40.

[21] Jerry L. Miller and Raymie M. McKerrow, “Political Argument and Emotion: An Analysis of 2000 Presidential Campaign Discourse,” Contemporary Argumentation and Debate 22 (2001): 43–58.

[22] Jeffrey A. Nelson, “The Republican Rhetoric of Identification with Gay and Lesbian Voters in the 2000 Presidential Campaign,” Atlantic Journal of Communication 17, no. 2 (2009): 53–71.

[23] Zoltan P. Majdik, John M. Kephart, III, and G. Thomas Goodnight, “The Presidential Debates of 2004: Contested Moments in the Democratic Experiment,” Controversia 6 (2008): 13–38.

[24] Sandra Zichermann, “Bush's Straight Talk Erases Kerry's Scholarly Chalk. The U.S. Presidential Debate of 2004: Who Won the Image War?” Semiotica no. 162 (2006): 323–39.

[25] Denise M. Bostdorff, “Judgment, Experience, and Leadership: Candidate Debates on the Iraq War in the 2008 Presidential Primaries,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 12, no. 2 (2009): 223–78.

[26] Eric Morris and Jessica M. Johnson, “Strategic Maneuvering in the 2008 Presidential Debates,” American Behavioral Scientist 55, no. 3 (2011): 284–306.

[27] Joseph M. Valenzano, III, and Jason A. Edwards, “The Debate Confessional: Newt Gingrich, John King and Atoning for Past Sins,” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 2, no. 2 (2012): 30–38.

[28] Roderick P. Hart, Campaign Talk: Why Elections are Good for Us (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 116–26.

[29] Hart, Campaign Talk, 126.

[30] John A. Gardner, What are Campaigns For? The Role of Persuasion in Electoral Law and Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 1.

[31] See, for example, http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frank_Luntz for links and resources about Luntz's consulting and analytical work.

[32] J. Michael Hogan, “Public Address and the Revival of American Civic Culture,” in The Handbook of Rhetoric and Public Address, eds., Shawn J. Parry-Giles and J. Michael Hogan (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 437.

[33] David L. Swanson, “And that's the Way It Was? Television Covers the 1976 Presidential Campaign,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 63, no. 3 (1977): 240.

[34] Jennifer Brubaker and Gary Hanson, “The Effect of Fox News and CNN's Postdebate Commentator Analysis on Viewers’ Perceptions of Presidential Candidate Performance,” Southern Communication Journal 74, no. 4 (2009): 339–51.

[35] Robert K. Tiemens, “Television's Protrayal of the 1976 Presidential Debates: An Analysis of Visual Content,” Communication Monographs 45, no. 4 (1978): 363. Tiemens et al. continued this line of research in an analysis of the verbal/visual connections in the 1980 presidential debates: Robert K. Tiemens, Susan A. Hellweg, Philip Kipper, and Steven L. Phillips, “An Integrative Verbal and Visual Analysis of the Carter–Reagan Debate,” Communication Quarterly 33, no. 1 (1985): 34–42.

[36] Goodwin F. Berquist and James L. Golden, “Media Rhetoric, Criticism and the Public Perception of the 1980 Presidential Debates,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 67, no. 2 (1981): 125–37.

[37] John T. Morello, “Argument and Visual Structuring in the 1984 Mondale–Reagan Debates: The Medium's Influence on the Perception of Clash,” Western Journal of Speech Communication 52, no. 4 (1988): 277–90.

[38] Janis L. Edwards, “Visual Literacy and Visual Politics: Photojournalism and the 2004 Presidential Debates,” Communication Quarterly 60, no. 5 (2012): 681–97.

[39] William P. Eveland, Jr., Douglas M. McLeod, and Amy I. Nathanson, “Reporters vs. Undecided Voters: An Analysis of the Questions Asked During the 1992 Presidential Debates,” Communication Quarterly 42, no. 4 (1994): 390–406. This same theme was also explored in J. Michael Hogan, “Media Nihilism and the Presidential Debates,” Argumentation & Advocacy 25, no. 4 (1989): 220–25; and John T. Morello, “Questioning the Questions: An Examination of the ‘Unpredictable’ 2004 Bush–Kerry Town Hall Debate,” Argumentation & Advocacy 41, no. 4 (2005): 211–24.

[40] Steven A. Clayman, “Caveat Orator: Audience Disaffiliation in the 1988 Presidential Debates,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 78, no. 1 (1992): 34.

[41] Mary Stuckey, “On Rhetorical Circulation,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 15, no. 4 (2012): 609.

[42] James Jasinski, “A Constitutive Framework for Rhetorical Historiography: Toward an Understanding of the Discursive (Re)constitution of ‘Constitution’ in The Federalist Papers,” in Doing Rhetorical History: Concepts and Cases, ed. Kathleen J. Turner (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998), 74.

[43] James Jasinski and Jennifer R. Mercieca, “Analyzing Constitutive Rhetorics: The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions and the ‘Principles of ’98,’” in The Handbook of Rhetoric and Public Address, eds., Shawn J. Parry-Giles and J. Michael Hogan (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 319.

[44] Hart, Campaign Talk, 231.

[45] American Academy of Arts & Sciences, The Heart of the Matter: The Humanities and Social Sciences for a Vibrant, Competitive, and Secure Nation (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2013), retrieved from http://www.amacad.org.