En medieprovokatør bliver til: Personakonstruktioner og -transformationer i Eva Selsings retorik

With the concept media provocateur, a personification of Olivier Driessens’ concept media provocation, we refer to debaters who use provocative rhetoric and social media circulation to gain a prominent speaking position in traditional, journalistic mass media. In a close reading of selected texts by Eva Selsing, whom we regard as a paradigmatic case, we show how Selsing constructs and transforms her provocative persona across journalistic genres and thereby establishes herself as a media provocateur in a hybrid media system. In continuation of this, we discuss how provocative style may function as a catalyst for rhetorical agency for media provocateurs, the media they work for, and potentially the general public. However, as we see it, the public’s agency is dependent on publicist mass media to not only offer media provocateurs a platform and fortify the provocateurs’ self-presentation; public mass media must also take responsibility for and play an active role as curators of the public debate that the media provocateurs’ rhetoric creates

Fremragende om skrivefrihetens ytringskultur

Recension: Henrik Horstbøll, Ulrik Langen & Frederik Stjernfelt: Grov Konfækt. Tre ­vilde år med trykkefrihed 1770-73. Bind I & II. København: Gyldendal, 2020

‘How dare you!’ – anklager og mot-anklager på Facebook knyttet til Greta Thunbergs FN-tale 23. ­september 2019

The contribution analyzes accusations related to Greta Thunberg’s speech in the UN on September 2019, posted on public Facebook pages in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The accusations we analyze are of three types: 1. Accusations that amplify and mirror Thunberg’s accusations, 2. Accusations against Thunberg, her followers, and supporters, and 3. Accu­sations against people who are bullying Thunberg and her ­followers on­line. None of the accusations is the first move in an apologetic discourse. We argue that the rhetorical functions of accusations that are not met with an apology have two important characteristics: 1. they attribute responsibility to the ­accused by expressing a reactive attitude towards his or her action, 2. they express a judgement that the action is blameworthy. We use these perspectives to analyze the accusations related to Thunberg’s speech on the public Facebook pages and characterize the rhetorical functions of the three types of ­accusations

Den anklagade tittaren. Strategiskt publiktilltal i satiriska anklagelser

Public accusations often lead to controversy. Accusations have been studied as causing certain types of defense, as well as for how accusing parties persuade audiences of guilt, and amplify an act’s offensiveness. We investigate a satire programme as a strategic act, with a specific focus on how its accusatory rhetorical structure strategically invites certain responses, and counteracts others. We show how a segment in the news satire programme ‘Swedish News’ constructed a complex accusation against the Swedish private school queue system, and against the character of the educated middle class who tend to use it. The segment’s structure places the accused middle class as an addressed audience in three different subject positions, wherein the relationship between them motivates penance rather than defense. The analysis shows how a changing positioning of the same group as judge, victim and accused can perform certain functions in accusatory speech, indicating roads to redemption and opening up for possibilities of reconciliation

“Men så skedde inte i Sverige” – om anklagens anatomi

Despite the fact that defense and apology have been studied thoroughly in rhetoric and communication research in recent decades, their counterpart; the accusation has received ­surprisingly limited ­attention from rhetorical criticism. This essay sets out to remedy parts of these shortcomings by suggesting to define the accusation as a situated act where somebody ascribes guilt to a group or individual. The definition ties the accusation to the representation of acts considered to be in violation of ­existing norms and the essay argues that the logic of narra­tive determines the forms and functions of an accusation. The essay tests the definition through close readings of accusations from the debate about the proper handling of the corona-virus, as this debate has played out in the Scandinavian countries during 2020. Two extreme examples of accusations – one situated in the ­formal legal system, one situated in an informal, private conversation – are briefly analyzed before the essay turns to its main case in the form of an article from Dagens Nyheter, in which Swedish scientists accuse the Swedish health authorities and the Swedish government for neglect

Generationsanklager – konflikt, følelser og ungdomsaktivisme

Compared to rhetorical defenses the rhetoric of accusations has not garnered much attention from rhetorical critics over time. Two common threads in existing approaches to accusatory rhetoric are a link to an underlying affirmative motive and a view of accusations as a rhetorical genre. However, these threads have not been fully developed so far. This article takes its point of departure in Carolyn Millers rhetorical theory of genre and Celeste Michelle Condit’s work with angry public rhetorics in order to reveal the social motive of the accusatory genre. The argument here is that the main motive can be found in a desire for corrective action, but is further supported by a definitory and moral motive. This is then used as a basis for treating generational accusations as a specific form of accusation as well as analyzing it in relation to Greta Thunberg’s rhetorical accusations of older generations in the climate change debate

Karaktermord, angreb og selvanklager omkring Knausgårds Min kamp

This article studies the effects of the ambiguous accusations around Karl Ove Knausgaard’s novel in six parts, My struggle (2009-11). The novel’s portrait of a number of named individuals and family members brought the relationship between artistic freedom and defamation, responsibility, guilt and shame up for discussion, and initiated negotiations of collective norms and values in connection with autobiographical novels. An analysis of the rhetorical strategies behind the family’s accusations at the time of the publication, initially illuminates the ethical dilemmas the family helped to raise in the public debate. Next, the accusations in the novels themselves are studied and the article shows a need to consider how differently the accusations appear in and outside the novels, because the autobiographical novel establishes an ambiguous statement that is not found in the media coverage

Reelle, offisielle beklagelser

Anmeldelse: Lisa S. Villadsen & Jason A. Edwards (red): The Rhetoric of Official ­Apologies. Lexington Books, 2020.

Intro: TEMA Kategoria: anklagens retorik

Under overskriften “Kategoria: anklagens retorik” sætter dette temanummer af Rhetorica Scandinavica fokus på anklageretorik som en central del af offentlig debat og deliberation på tværs af tid, rum og medier. Anklageretorik eller kategoria er i ­stigende grad blevet en afgørende faktor i forhandlinger, opretholdelsen eller nytænkningen af kollektive normer og værdier, men som kontrast til fænomenets allestedsnærværelse står mængden af retorikfaglig teori, der behandler konkrete udsigelser eller udvikler de teoretiske rammer, man som retorisk kritiker kan forstå anklagen inden for. På trods af en betydelig interesse i apologiastudier og krise­kommunikation, som de seneste årtier har optaget både retorikforskningen og kommunikationsforskning i bredere forstand, beskæftiger overraskende få studier sig med anklageretorikkens former og funktioner. Faglitteraturens begrænsede interesse står i kontrast til det faktum, at det allerede i antikken stod klart, at persua­sive forsvar (apologia) ikke opstår ex nihilo, og at forsvaret derfor bør analyseres og vurderes i lyset af sit modstykke, anklagen