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Abstract
This essay responds to the keynote address by Cox by discussing the ways in which critical rhetoric is implicated in environmental communication (EC) as a crisis discipline, as well as the ways in which EC, so positioned, is implicated within a broader coherentist epistemology. Issues of exigency, representation, and sustainability are considered, along with an examination of the concepts of nominalism and doxa as they relate to the enterprise of EC research. The critical cultural politics embedded in much EC scholarship are also addressed in terms of their intersections with the increasingly unscrupulous abuse of language within antienvironmental administrative rhetorics.
Notes
1. DeLuca's (Citation1999) Image Politics includes a succinct summary of these critiques in relation to EC (pp. 149–151).
2. Robert Hariman (Citation1991) argues that McKerrow take too traditional and conservative a definition of episteme in rejecting the epistemic for the doxastic view of rhetoric. I'm inclined to agree with Hariman's critique, but choose the term “doxa” over “episteme” because it better characterizes the contingent and subjective quality of knowing.
3. The Luntz memo is a now widely circulated report to the Bush Administration that presents recommendations for effective deception and manipulation of environmental policy through discourse. I pluralize the term here to refer to the numerous public (government) and private (corporate) texts that enact similar strategies in the interests of hegemonic elites. The Luntz memo “The Environment: A cleaner, safer, healthier America” is available widely on the internet and through the webpage of the Environmental Working Group, who also publishes an analysis of the memo (http://www.ewg.org/briefings/luntzmemo/).