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Essay on corporate communication
Essay on corporate communication
Essay on corporate communication
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All employers occasionally must deliver bad news to their employees, but few bad news situations can compete with the delicate task of announcing layoffs. In an electronic age, when layoff notices delivered via email are quickly leaked to outsiders, CEOs must take into account not only the employees who will be affected by the layoffs, but also the reporters, bloggers, and stock analysts who will undoubtedly see the emails. In an attempt to please these multiple audiences, employers—like the three CEOs who wrote the memos that are the focus of this column—often downplay the negative news or sandwich it between hopeful predictions about the future. While this strategy may mitigate the short-term effects of announcing bad news, it can also backfire, angering employees who feel they have been deceived.
A multi-pronged approach to studying these memos (and others like them) can reveal a multitude of rhetorical features that will be useful to academics and practitioners alike. In this article, I discuss and apply close textual analysis (CTA) to the three corporate layoff memos, focusing particularly on the use of euphemism to mask bad news messages.
Close textual analysis: A brief overview
Close textual analysis as a method of rhetorical criticism, advocated by scholars such as Michael Leff (1986, 1988) and Stephen E. Lucas (1988, 1990), asserts that a “close reading” of a text can “reveal and explicate the precise, often hidden, mechanisms that give a particular text ... rhetorical effect” (Burgchardt, 2005, p. 563). Employing this method can make explicit how a text can affect its audience in particular ways. Proponents of close textual analysis suggest that its power lies in its simplicity, which nonetheless leads to importa...
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Lucas, S. E. (1990). The stylistic artistry of the Declaration of Independence. Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives, 22, 25–43.
Slagell, A. R. (1991). Anatomy of a masterpiece: A close textual analysis of Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. Communication Studies, 42, 155–171.
Heinrichs had previously worked as a journalist before becoming a full time writer and advocate for rhetoric. He utilizes illustrative examples to convey rhetorical concepts. Furthermore, chapter four reveals the most valuable logos and pathos tactic. Lastly, this book’s use should be continued in this course.
Olson, Annie. “An Introduction to Rhetoric.” Le Tourneau U, May 2006. Web. 6 Dec. 2011.
Palmer, William. "Rhetorical Analysis." Discovering Arguments: An Introduction to Critical Thinking, Writing, and Style. Boston: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2012. 268-69. Print.
Lincoln secondarily accused slavery for chaos in the United States. He concluded that there needed to be a “political religion” emphasizing laws in the US, including citizenship. Lincoln’s speech was one of the earliest speeches of its time to be published. The Lyceum Address was published in the Sangamon Journal. The speech helped to establish Lincoln’s reputation as an orator.
Lloyd F. Bitzer’s article, “The Rhetorical Situation”, is an account of what he calls the “rhetorical situation” as what he believes to be the conditions necessary for compelling a rhetorician to engage in rhetoric (35). It is Bitzer’s position that a work of rhetoric comes into existence as a response to the call of a certain state of affairs in the world (32). Furthermore, Bitzer claims that when we find ourselves in such “situations”, we are compelled to engage in rhetoric in order to restore the balance that we find lacking (34). He identifies three interconnected elements of situational rhetoric: exigence, audience, and constraints (35). Bitzer argues that a rhetorical discourse, which consists of an engagement with an audience for the purpose of compelling that audience to modify the world so as to repair the problem which is presented (35), is required to solve the problem as the world presents it (34). This lack of balance in a rhetorical situation or state of affairs in the world leads to what Bitzer calls exigence, which he defines as “an imperfection marked by urgency” (36). Bitzer also expands on the notion of a rhetorical audience, which is central to his theory of situational rhetoric. Bitzer defines a rhetorical audience as persons who, through discourse, are subject to influence and as persons who can be compelled to bring about the change called for by a rhetorical situation (37). Bitzer also identifies constraints as being a vital component to his theory, which he defines as anything within the rhetorical situation which has the power to “constrain decision” (38).
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The impact and effectiveness of using proper rhetoric was a strategy of “good” writing that I was not aware of until my senior year of high school. While taking AP Language and Composition my junior year, my fellow students and I believed that we had survived countless essay workshop activities and writing assignments with emphasis on word choices, grammatical structure, syntax, punctuation and spelling. By the time we had entered AP Literature our senior year, we felt we could achieve success; we already knew how to write in the correct format and structur...
'With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.' In the delivery of Lincoln's 'Second Inaugural,' many were inspired by this uplifting and keen speech. It had been a long war, and Lincoln was concerned about the destruction that had taken place. Worn-out from seeing families torn apart and friendships eradicated, he interpreted his inaugural address. It was March of 1865, and the war, he believed, must come to an end before it was too late. The annihilation that had taken place was tragic, and Lincoln brawled for a closure. The 'Second Inaugural' was very influential, formal, and emotional.
In this essay, I will be analyzing the Traditional method of rhetorical criticism and the Narrative method of rhetorical criticism.
Student's Book of College English: Rhetoric, Reader, Research Guide and Handbook. Boston: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2012. 402-405.
In analyzing McBride’s essay the rhetorical devices found to be used were logos and pathos. First, it will be sho...
Clark (2016) suggests that rhetoric isn’t limited to oral communication, but currently has a permanent foothold in written works: magazine or newspaper excerpts, novels, and scientific reports. Not only written
Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. 5th ed. New York: Longman, 2011. Print.