Ideology and poetics in public issue construction: Thatcherism, civil liberties, and “terrorism” in Northern Ireland

This essay explores the relationship between ideological commitments, or “ideographs,”; and poetic structures of meaning in the construction of public issues through rhetorical discourse. It maintains that public issues are constructed by rhetors through the use of ideological commitments as such commitments are fused with narratives of contingencies, exigencies, and/or controversies emplotted according to familiar and powerful poetic structures. Ultimately the analysis suggests that such a rhetorical construction of public issues is central to the constitution of political unity and the configuration of collective commitments. As an illustrative example, the essay examines the rhetoric of Margaret Thatcher, indicating how Thatcherism intensified existing ideological tensions within the British context, how Thatcherism constructed the public issue of “terrorism”; in Northern Ireland as an “epic tragedy,”; and how such a construction materially shifted and ensnared commitments to “freedom”; and civil liberties.

Key concepts:

• Rhetoric
• ideology
• public issues
• poetic structures of meaning
• Thatcherism
• British civil liberties
• terrorism
• Northern Ireland
• freedom