Metaphor and the rhetorical invention of cold war “idealists”

Abstract

This paper presents a five‐step procedure for identifying metaphorical concepts guiding the rhetorical invention of three Cold War idealists”;: Henry Wallace, J. William Fulbright, and Helen Caldicott. The source of their collective failure to dispel threatening images of Soviet savagery is located in a recurrent system of metaphorical concepts (including MADNESS, PATHOLOGY, SICKNESS, AND FORCE) that promotes a reversal of the enemy‐image rather than its transcendence. By decivilizing America's image, “idealists”; turn the victimage ritual inward upon a self‐righteous nation and provoke “realists”; to regress further into decivilizing images of the Soviet Union.

Notes

Robert L. Ivie is Professor of Speech Communication, Texas A&M University. This paper was presented in 1985 at the annual meeting of the Speech Communication Association, Denver. This paper was accepted for publication by the previous editor, Gerald R. Miller.