Clocks, Calendars, and Claims: On the Uses of Time in Social Problems Rhetoric

ABSTRACT Social problems claims use rhetoric and other tools of symbolic communication to persuade audiences that some troubling condition is important and needs to be addressed. This paper considers how common measures of social time are employed as rhetorical elements in social problems claims. It is argued that time units operate as temporal frames that contribute to the structure of claims, articulate core meanings, and facilitate spread into relevant public arenas. A typology of three general ways that social problems claims incorporate temporal frames is offered; these include metered time units, attention maintenance mechanisms, and epochal markers.