Reason and rhetoric in climate communication
Author(s)
Dryzek, John S.
Lo, Alex
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2015
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Rhetoric can facilitate movement beyond impasse on whether and how to confront climate change, enabling more effective public reasoning. Our evidence comes from a small deliberative group that contained climate-change deniers. We show how, in this setting, bridging rhetoric (capable of reaching those who do not share the speaker’s perspective) managed to bring deniers and others into accepting that particular greenhouse-gas mitigation measures were in the range of acceptable policy choices – even as deniers continued to dispute the existence of anthropogenic climate change. What we observed drives home the need for rhetorical ...
View more >Rhetoric can facilitate movement beyond impasse on whether and how to confront climate change, enabling more effective public reasoning. Our evidence comes from a small deliberative group that contained climate-change deniers. We show how, in this setting, bridging rhetoric (capable of reaching those who do not share the speaker’s perspective) managed to bring deniers and others into accepting that particular greenhouse-gas mitigation measures were in the range of acceptable policy choices – even as deniers continued to dispute the existence of anthropogenic climate change. What we observed drives home the need for rhetorical bridges in broader public debates on climate change.
View less >
View more >Rhetoric can facilitate movement beyond impasse on whether and how to confront climate change, enabling more effective public reasoning. Our evidence comes from a small deliberative group that contained climate-change deniers. We show how, in this setting, bridging rhetoric (capable of reaching those who do not share the speaker’s perspective) managed to bring deniers and others into accepting that particular greenhouse-gas mitigation measures were in the range of acceptable policy choices – even as deniers continued to dispute the existence of anthropogenic climate change. What we observed drives home the need for rhetorical bridges in broader public debates on climate change.
View less >
Journal Title
Environmental Politics
Volume
24
Issue
1
Subject
Environmental management not elsewhere classified
Policy and administration
Political science
Strategy, management and organisational behaviour
Rhetoric
Climate change
Climate sceptics
Climate-change deniers
Deliberative democracy