Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher, Sara Doody, Carolyn Eckert, Brad Mehlenbacher
{"title":"Prolepsis and Rendering Futures in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Reports.","authors":"Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher, Sara Doody, Carolyn Eckert, Brad Mehlenbacher","doi":"10.1177/07410883231222882","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Rhetorical figures of speech provide important analytical frames to chart how arguments operate within genres and within genre ecologies. Varieties of the figure <i>prolepsis</i> allow for the rendering of future time or fact in the present, which can be a powerful rhetorical inducement toward social and political action. In this article, we examine how anticipatory arguments drawn from complex data shape a key genre for public and policy-facing work on the climate crisis-the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Synthesis Report's (SYR) Statement for Policy Makers (SPM). We examine how the rhetorical figure of prolepsis operates within this genre to understand the anticipatory arguments and logics emerging from the synthesis of scientific findings and their reporting. Pairing figural studies and Rhetorical Genre Studies, we further offer an approach to investigate how these patterned operations of language might intersect in their rhetorical workings.</p>","PeriodicalId":47351,"journal":{"name":"Written Communication","volume":"41 2","pages":"352-377"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10894086/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Written Communication","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07410883231222882","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/2/24 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Rhetorical figures of speech provide important analytical frames to chart how arguments operate within genres and within genre ecologies. Varieties of the figure prolepsis allow for the rendering of future time or fact in the present, which can be a powerful rhetorical inducement toward social and political action. In this article, we examine how anticipatory arguments drawn from complex data shape a key genre for public and policy-facing work on the climate crisis-the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Synthesis Report's (SYR) Statement for Policy Makers (SPM). We examine how the rhetorical figure of prolepsis operates within this genre to understand the anticipatory arguments and logics emerging from the synthesis of scientific findings and their reporting. Pairing figural studies and Rhetorical Genre Studies, we further offer an approach to investigate how these patterned operations of language might intersect in their rhetorical workings.
期刊介绍:
Written Communication is an international multidisciplinary journal that publishes theory and research in writing from fields including anthropology, English, education, history, journalism, linguistics, psychology, and rhetoric. Among topics of interest are the nature of writing ability; the assessment of writing; the impact of technology on writing (and the impact of writing on technology); the social and political consequences of writing and writing instruction; nonacademic writing; literacy (including workplace and emergent literacy and the effects of classroom processes on literacy development); the social construction of knowledge; the nature of writing in disciplinary and professional domains.