Global warming wars: Rhetorical and discourse analytic approaches to ExxonMobil's corporate...

This paper analyzes texts published by ExxonMobil on the issue of climate change by employing the related, yet distinct methods that have evolved under the rubric of rhetorical analysis and discourse analysis, as influenced by concepts from Kenneth Burke and Michel Foucault, respectively. My

purpose is to compare these two approaches to show their uses and potential value in business communication research. I show how both reveal the socially constructed nature of "reality" and the social effects of language, but are nevertheless distinct in their emphases. For the rhetorical critic, the analytic interest is in the purposeful acts of the language user and the ethical effects of language use. Rhetorical criticism thus considers the devices by which texts frame meaning; create understanding and promote (or fail to promote) identification between rhetor and audience, thus facilitating co-operative action. The Foucauldian approach, by contrast, focuses on the interplay of texts (intertextuality) and discourses (i nterdiscursivity) in order to illuminate the nature of socio-political struggle and show the relationship between texts and macro-sociological issues. These alternative methodological approaches offer the business communication researcher complementary means by which to illuminate the role of corporate public discourse in maintaining organizational legitimacy and influencing social and institutional stability and change.

Keywords: Research Methods, Rhetorical Analysis. Discourse Analysis. Business Environmental Discourse. Global Warming

This paper examines two rich analytic approaches that have emerged within business communication research: new rhetoric, as influenced by the theories of language of Kenneth Burke, and discourse analysis, as influenced by the work of French social theorist Michel Foucault (see Gibson-Graham, 2000). Both draw from the rhetorical turn in 20th century theory in the social sciences and express a concern with the socially constructed nature of reality and language's powerful social effects (Moran & Ballif, 2000; Simons, 1990). In this paper, I seek to illuminate the overlaps, similarities, and differences in these distinct but related interpretive approaches by analyzing a set of corporate documents published by ExxonMobil on climate change from the perspectives of each method, in turn (cf. Stillar, 1998; Peterson, 1997).

I focus on the work of Burke and Foucault because of the influence rhetorical and discourse analyses have had on research in the fields of management communication (e.g., Cheney; 1983; Deetz, 1992; Heath, 1994; Kinsella, 1999; Livesey, 2001) and environmental communication (e.g., Cantrill & Oravec, 1996; Hajer, 1997; Killingsworth & Palmer, 1992). Moreover, Burke's and Foucault's theoretical leanings are complementary. Dean (1992), for instance, characterizes Foucault's purpose as being to produce a "methodical problematization of the given" (p. 216), words that could equally well apply to Burke (1961/1970), who reminds us that the proper use of language entails "discounting," or "remind[ing] ourselves that ... the word is not the thing" (p. 18, emphasis original). Despite such commonality, however, these two approaches have different emphases, as the examples set forth in my paper illustrate. That is, the distinct theoretical groundings of rhetorical and discourse analytic approaches, as applied in manageria l and business communication scholarship, translate into different, though possibly synergistic critical stances. Thus, they offer the business communication researcher unique entry points into the analysis of organizational texts and different perspectives on their effects.

My textual examples are four advertorials, or issue advocacy advertisements, on climate change published by ExxonMobil in The New York Times over consecutive weeks in March and April 2000. From the rhetorical perspective, these texts are situated examples of a corporate rhetor's intentional effort to influence the understandings of the policy-maker audience on an issue of public controversy and to motivate particular actions (or in this case, governmental inaction) vis-a-vis climate change. Thus, they promote particular corporate understandings of the problem of the natural environment and legitimate the corporate stance, thereby facilitating future action by the firm. Seen through the Foucauldian lens, these texts represent an instantiation of ongoing discursive struggle (in this case, between business and environmentalists). They draw on existing discursive repertoires (Wethereil & Potter, 1992) of sustainable development, which implicate a variety of institutional actors and social practices in the questio n of how the ecological crisis facing 21st century society should be defined and addressed. Through these examples, I hope to demonstrate to business communication scholars the values of these distinct analytic approaches and make the consequences of analytic choices more explicit.

To begin, I describe relevant theory from the work of Burke and Foucault. Of course, it is impossible within this space limitation to capture the rich complexities of the work of these two major scholar-philosophers. Hence, in this paper, I simply describe certain basic concepts that have informed the development of the two broadly different research methodologies that I illustrate here. Next, I provide the socio-political context of the climate change debate in order to situate my textual analyses. Then, using exemplary texts published by ExxonMobil, I perform a rhetorical analysis followed by a discourse analysis of the same texts. I end by comparing and contrasting my analyses and describing what I believe to be at stake in the critic's choice of theory and method.

Theoretical Framework

Oravec and Salvador (1993) suggest that the field of rhetorical studies must be viewed from both a "vertical," systematic, idealist perspective as a unified discipline with an evolutionary history that emphasizes commonalities, and from a "horizontal," historical, particularist orientation that emphasizes difference and the effects of local institutional and political contexts on the development of theory and practice. Adopting this dual perspective, they identify three prominent streams of theory and research in American communication studies. The functional perspective focuses on "how speakers [influence] audiences through the intentional use of speech" (p. 183). (1) The symbolic-construction perspective relies heavily on Burke's theories of symbolic action and focuses on the role of language in producing (or obstructing) human cooperation. The ideological-critical perspective, influenced by European social theory as embodied in the work of Jurgen Habermas and Michel Foucault, extends the symbolic-construct ionist perspective by explicitly addressing issues of social power and emphasizing "the political 'positionedness' of reality" (p. 186). Given their interests in English studies and writing theory, Moran and Ballif (2000) have produced three slightly different categories that nonetheless overlap with those of Oravec and Salvador: a) current-traditional, the dominant mode for the teaching of rhetoric through the 1960s, which was committed to 19th century positivist notions of reality; b) new rhetorics, some forms of which are also referred to as social-epistemic rhetoric; and c) post-structuralist and postmodern rhetorics, including Derrida, Foucault, and other European social theorists. In each case, the second and third categories describe the two approaches I am concerned with here.

Moran and BaIlif (2000) recognize that the new rhetorics themselves resist definition. Yet, new rhetorics can be generally distinguished from current-traditional rhetorical traditions and are social-epistemic in that they depend on the notion that language is "doing something, specifically constructing and modifying reality and social conditions and relations" (p. xx). In this respect, new rhetorical approaches rely on theories of philosophy (e.g., Rorty, 1979) and the philosophy of science (Kuhn, 1970) and are consistent with Burke's view of the fundamentally social nature of meaning-making. Postmodern and post-structuralist theories adopt a similar social constructionist view. According to Moran and Ballif (2000), however, the latter are distinguished from new rhetorics by their commitment to uncover the power relations implicit in all symbolic systems and the institutions that support them (cf. Cheney, Garvin-Doxas, & Torrens, 1999). They complement and extend social-epistemic rhetoric by taking a view of discourse as including institutions, social norms, and practices and by making explicit the circular links between power and knowledge (Deetz, 1992; see also van Dijk, 1997/1998a & 1997/1998b).

With this overview as context, I next consider key concepts in Burke's theory of language as symbolic action and Foucault's social theory as relevant to my examples below.

Burke: Language as Symbolic Action, Communication as Ethics

Countering the dominance of empirical scientific inquiry and materialist philosophies of his time (Warnock, 2000), Burke (1950/1962b) focuses instead on understanding moral controversy or "the Wrangle of the Market Place, the flurries and flare-ups of the Human Barnyard" (p. 547) where there is no true or false. Ultimately, he suggests that science itself is caught up in such controversy, despite its seeming objectivity and neutrality. For Burke, symbolic action, including language use, plays a central role in shaping social relations and, used wisely, promotes human co-operation.

While focusing on the "persuasive aspects of language, the function of language as addressed, as direct or roundabout appeal to real or ideal audiences, within or without" (Burke, 1950/1962b, p. 567-8, emphasis original), Burke, nonetheless, revises classical notions of rhetoric as persuasive argument. In his theory, identification between rhetor and audience becomes the pre-condition and primary means of persuasion; effective persuasion is speech "in the language of a voice within" (p. 563). Further, rhetoric is entailed in all socialization, which Burke considers "a moralizing process (p. 563). Analysis from this perspective describes how "the members of a group promote social cohesion by acting rhetorically upon themselves and one another" (p. 522). According to Burke, the urge to identify derives from the human ability to respond to symbols and from an intrinsic biological need of human beings to overcome division--from each other, from nature, and from their own bodies. Identification, however, entails a complex, ambiguous, and contradictory process, where opposites co-reside: "one need not scrutinize the concept of 'identification' very sharply to see, implied in it in every turn, its ironic counterpart: division" (p. 547).

The contradictory aspects of identification are related to the nature of language and symbolic action itself. In Burkean theory, symbols, which are dialectically related to the material world, are the only reality accessible to humans, and only means we have to interpret the world to ourselves. Symbolic action is nevertheless an "abstraction from a situation" or "the adopting of various strategies for encompassing a situation" to make it manageable (Burke, 1931/1968a). Symbols, thus, do not mirror the world, but rather, in giving it meaning, constitute it. In Burke's (1950/1969) words, "Wherever there is 'meaning,' there is 'persuasion'" (p. 172). In naming "reality," symbols thus prescribe particular orientations toward the world and other social actors. Language use is thus not neutral in its effects. Rather it is per se a rhetorical act, which indexes and constructs the world, including social relationships. "'Belonging,'" says Burke (1950/1962b), "in this sense is rhetorical" (p. 552). The other side of belonging, however, is division and hierarchy.

Burke's theory of identification understands the relationship between the individual and society as dialectical. Individuals constitute "unique aggregate[s] of mutually re-enforcing and conflicting 'corporate we's'" (Burke, 1984a, p. 289). They are shaped by scenic, or contextual, constraints (see Warnock, 2000), but also possess agency. Communication-- symbolic action--serves an inherently ethical function insofar as it permits and involves choice (the purposeful use of symbolic forms) within given contexts, although choice is governed to a degree by the social-symbolic systems to which humans belong. The ambiguities and paradoxes inherent in language open opportunity for resistance and change. The motive for change, on the other hand, derives from the confluence of historical conditions and intrinsic elements of human nature, including human striving toward "piety," or a propensity to seek integrity in both self and the world (1935/1984b, p. 74).

A key theoretical concept developed by Burke (1966) for recognizing the intrinsically rhetorical nature of language and its powers to promote identification/division is that of "terministic screens." These are the filters or blinkers inherent in any term or set of interpretive vocabularies: "whatever terms we use, they necessarily constitute a corresponding kind of screen; and any such screen necessarily directs the attention to one field rather than another" (p. 50), producing one particular view of "reality" as opposed to another. On the one hand, this creates the bases for identification; on the other, it has fundamentally separating and hierarchizing effects.

Burke (1945/1962a) provided a dramatistic method for analysis of texts. His approach focuses on the dynamic and constitutive aspects of language as a "species of action, or expression of attitudes, rather than an instrument of definition" (Burke, 1968b, p. 445). The method provides the means to analyze the relationship among features of texts in terms of the rhetorical situation, or what Burke called "the pentad." These elements--act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose--mutually constitute and call one another forth. For example, a scene "requires" a particular act or agent; an agent is embued with a particular agency (see Stillar, 1998, for extended examples). Thus, the dramatistic method reveals how particular "realities" come into being and how texts thus motivate or block particular understandings, attitudes, and pre-dispositions toward identification and cooperative action. The central function of the dramatistic method, as well as language-based textual analysis using Burkean concepts and theories, (e.g ., terministic screens, identification) more broadly, is to demonstrate how words become meaningful in context, and how meaning and identity itself are not fixed, but contextually and relationally derived. "Reality" is thus always subject to revision and revisioning. In my example of rhetorical analysis of the ExxonMobil texts, I adopt Burkean-influenced methods of analysis to show how the corporate rhetor uses language to redefine the elements of the climate debate and thus produce a particular "reality" related to this aspect of the environmental crisis.

Burke, in many ways, anticipates concepts developed by Foucault. Burkean-influenced criticism, however, tends to focus on language per se, while analytic approaches inspired by the French social theorist seek to link language to social and institutional practice, as I describe next.

Foucault: Discourse and Power

Foucault (1969/1972; 1984) focuses on language's constitutive effects on knowledge, subject identity, and social (power) relationships (see Fairdough, 1992). As with Burke, subjectivity (in Burke, identity or "we-ness") and knowledge (how we know 'reality") are products of social construction. Importantly, however, in Foucauldian theory, discourse is not to be confused simply with language; rather the term is seen to include symbolic systems, institutional structures, and social rules and practices--wholes that constitute various discursive orders or domains (Foucault, 1970; 1969/1972). For example, the discourse of law refers not only to the language of particular judicial decisions. It also includes, among other things, the system of courts and judges that interpret the laws, the rules that establish what counts as precedent, the law schools where lawyers are trained, and the police and prison systems through which the laws are carried out.

In his early work, Foucault takes the position that human beings do not create 'their history, their economies, their social practices, the language (langue) that they speak, the mythology of their ancestors" but rather are "governed by rules that are not all given to their consciousness" (Foucault, 1969/1972, pp. 210-11). Foucault's work here was primarily descriptive; he saw the task as one of mapping discursive orders and their regulatory or controlling functions through a process that he referred to as archeology. Foucault's epistemological approach here may seem analogous to Burke's: both challenge humanism's assumptions of purely neutral forms of knowledge. Foucault, however, can be distinguished, insofar as his optimism respecting the human condition is guarded (Frank, 2000) and his attitude toward the agentic subject is more ambivalent. This is especially true of his early work, which focuses on the autonomous nature and disciplinary effects of discourses and emphasizes the historical force of discou rses as regulatory systems.

This distinction between Foucault and Burke becomes even more pronounced in Foucault's (1976/1978; 1975/1995) later work, called genealogy, where his goals changed. "My main concern,' Foucault writes, "will be to locate the forms of power, the channels it takes, and the discourses it permeates" (1976/1978, p. 11). As Frank notes, "Whatever the names of [Foucault's] well-known interests as his thought evolves-dividing practices, knowledge in the human sciences, ~pist&mes, discursive formations, truth, games of truth, individualization, normalization, identity, the subject, technologies of the self, surface discourses, nondiscursive social practices, institutions, disciplines and disciplinary spaces, governmentality--they are forms and effects of power' (p. 173, emphasis original). According to Foucault, powerful knowledge systems produce and legitimate particular taken-for-granted "truths," institutions, rules, and practices, which in turn sustain and extend the systems producing them (see, e.g, Kinsella, 199 9). Foucault (1984) calls this circular link between knowledge and power "A 'regime' of Truth" (p. 74). His late work thus demonstrates how discursive practices situate actors (including both individuals and organizations) in matrices of power, which privilege some interests and marginalize others.

Because of Foucault's emphasis on the regulatory effects of discourse, many of his followers also emphasize the processes by which discourses achieve disciplinary and tyrannical control (see Frank, 2000). From Foucault's own perspective, however, hegemonic control can never be complete because meaning can never be fixed. Instead, it must be constantly reproduced and reconstituted in a political process that sometimes has arbitrary and accidental effects as texts reactualize one another and discourses from different domains (e.g., environment and economic development) overlap and intersect (see Deetz, 1992; Chouliaraki & Fairciough, 1999/ 2001). Contradiction and ambiguity allow spaces for resistance and change, for new ways of imagining and constituting reality, and for subjects to be empowered as well as enslaved. Discourses are thus dynamic as well as coercive (see Livesey, 1999; 2001).

The ambiguity of Foucauldian terms and techniques has produced a broad and layered set of methodological approaches, some of which are designed to link analysis at the micro and macro levels (cf. Alvesson & K~rreman, 2000). (3) In my example of discursive analysis below, I loosely follow the methods of Fairclough (1992) and Wetherell and Potter (1992). These approaches relate textual and sociological levels by examining, a) formal features of text; b) discursive practice, which includes the means by which texts are produced (and reproduced), circulated, and interpreted; and c) social practice.

I turn next to the sociopolitical factors relevant to the corporate texts on climate change that will provide the examples for my rhetorical and discursive analyses.

Context

The ups and downs of the oil industry's struggle with image and identity over the decades have been described in detail elsewhere (e.g., Crable & Vibbert, 1983; Livesey, 2001; Yergin, 1991), including in this volume (Prasad & Mir). Suffice it to say here that the oil industry has been periodically threatened by public perceptions as monopolistic, greedy, and, in the later part of the century, insensitive to the natural environment. Thus, the oil and chemical industries (into which the oil companies diversified) have often found themselves on the defensive and, more often than not, in a position antagonistic to regulatory control. Starting in the 1970s and reaching a highpoint in the late 1980s, environmental activist groups, helped by sophisticated communication technologies as well as by environmental disasters stemming from the negligence of the industry itself (e.g., the Exxon Valdez spill), increased public eco-awareness and pushed for legislative restrictions. Laws passed during that period (see Appendi x) either to limit pollution or make the industry responsible for cleaning up its environmental impacts proved costly for the industry.

In 1987, a watershed document produced by the UN World Commission for Environment and Development, Our Common Future, known as the Brundtland Report (World Commission on Environment and Development [WCED], 1987), made sustainable development part of the global agenda. With Brundtland, this concept entered public discourse and began to inform the domain of public policy. In one of its dimensions, sustainable development raised the issue of climate change, an issue greater in magnitude and potentially more threatening to oil companies than anything that had gone before. Climate change is not as overtly dramatic in its effects as the accident at Three Mile Island was to the nuclear energy industry (see Dionisopolous, 1986). Nor is it as obviously threatening to the oil industry's image as was the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil embargo of 1973 (see Crable & Vibbert, 1983; Prasad & Mir, this volume). Nevertheless, it presents a potentially more critical challenge to the industry's core b usinesses of gas and petroleum and, concomitantly, to consumer lifestyles, which depend on them. Specifically, restriction of [CO.sub.2] emissions, seen as the primary culprit in global warming, portends an end to the era of oil (Leggett, 2001) and, in the US, an end to cheap fuel, which has been fundamental to the American way of life.

The first inklings of the problem for oil emerged in 1979, when the UN World Climate Conference established the World Climate Program (see Appendix for timeline of events). In 1988, the UN General Assembly further institutionalized this program by establishing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to advise governments on issues of global warming. The IPCC, in turn, drew scientists and governmental ministers from around the world to study the problem. By the time of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, oil faced a substantial threat as a scientific and political consensus on the existence and potentially adverse impacts of climate change began to solidify. The link between global warming and greenhouse gas emissions, most notably 002 produced by the burning of fossil fuels, had been established to the satisfaction of many scientists and government policy makers.

At Rio, witnessed by the biggest media gathering in history (Leggett, 2001, P. 95), governmental ministers from all over the world negotiated the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). The FCCC provided the basis for ongoing global negotiations over how to define and address the issue of global warming. Despite resistance by the US, the largest single producer of greenhouse gases, the FCCC was signed by most nations. The third Conference of the Parties (as the subsequent negotiation sessions were called) met in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997. Here, the negotiators developed the Kyoto Protocol, which enjoined industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gases to 5% below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012 through three mechanisms: a) emissions trading; b) joint programs among industrialized countries; and c) clean development mechanisms involving joint projects between industrialized and developing countries. The Protocol required ratification by 55 nations responsible for 55% of total 199 0 greenhouse gas emission production. Effectively, this meant ratification by the US was necessary; so far, however, the government, backed by U.S. multinational oil companies, oil-dependent industries such as automobile production, and oil-producing economies such as Saudi Arabia and parts of the former Soviet Union, continues to oppose the Protocol.

The Framework Convention negotiators were government representatives advised by IPCC scientists. Like environmentalists, the oil companies were observers with no direct role in negotiations. Nevertheless, these battling groups articulated their interests by lobbying government representatives and making known their views in the media. Until 1996, the oil multinationals maintained a united front, downplaying the threats of global warming and insisting that fossil fuels were the only available, economically feasible means to support economic development for the foreseeable future. They worked together under the banner of a lobby group, the Global Climate Coalition. In 1996, however, British Petroleum (BP) abandoned the industry coalition. Modifying its position on Kyoto, BP supported the principle advocated by IPCC climate scientists that "precautionary" measures were necessary; it committed to reduce its own emissions voluntarily. In March 1997, the Royal Dutch/Shell Group (Shell) followed suit, promising to meet or exceed Kyoto guidelines. Both Shell and BP also instituted new businesses in renewable energy and mounted public relations campaigns to announce strategies based on responsible corporate citizenship as "the new fulcrum of competition" (BP, quoted in Common Financial Strategies, 1998, P. 100). This posture distinguished the European companies from the U.S. industry segment, especially their primary competitor Exxon, which in merging with Mobil Oil Corporation in 1999 became the largest oil company in the world.

In 1998 and 1999, further Conferences of the Parties were convened in Buenos Aires and Bonn, respectively, and negotiators continued to work out details for implementing the Kyoto Protocol. In Bonn, objections by Canada, Japan, and Australia were addressed, leading them to abandon the U.S. holdout position. At the time when the ExxonMobil advertorials were produced, a subsequent Conference of the Parties was planned for November 2000 in The Hague. Additionally, a Clinton White House Panel on Climate Change was scheduled to release a report assessing the potential negative effects of climate change on geographic regions and economic sectors in the US. These events continued to keep the issue in the media and thus, in the public eye. The increasing

isolation of the US government and the American oil industry meant that maintaining a public counter-discourse was crucial to shore up the US position in international negotiations and to bolster the legitimacy of ExxonMobil's anti-Kyoto, anti-regulatory position wit h US policymakers and the citizenry.

The Data

ExxonMobil published its advertorials on climate change in The New York Times Op-Ed page on four consecutive Thursdays in March and April 2000. These texts were part of a much larger corporate public relations campaign on issues relating to the natural environment generally, and on climate change in particular. In 2000 alone, for instance, 25 of ExxonMobil 52 Op-Eds addressed environmental issues, and others mentioned the environment tangentially. Topics included the need for a balanced approach to environmental policy; discussion of specific environmental technologies and energy efficient fuels such as natural gas; complaints about the anti-competitive, wasteful, and costly (to the consumer) aspects of environmental regulations; and corporate charitable support of environmental causes. Seven advertorials focused specifically on climate change. In addition, one text, entitled Facts and fundamentals [sic] (August 24, 2000), argued for the central role of fossil fuels in economic development in the foreseeable future and the need for a national energy policy based on this premise. The company also published a booklet, Global Climate Change: A Better Path Forward, to which it referred interested readers of its April 6th advertorial. In the period preceding the December 1999 merger of Exxon and Mobil, both companies communicated independently on topics related to the environment, through their websites, in executive speeches, and in Mobil's case, through its advertorials that were a regular feature in The New York Times.

ExxonMobil Advertorials from the Rhetorical Perspective

ExxonMobil presented its March/April 2000 four-piece set of advertorials as its contribution to the 'debate" over "climate change" and the Kyoto Protocol. With climate change, ExxonMobil confronted a common rhetorical situation for companies opposing regulatory control. In its plea to U.S. opinion-makers, the corporation was not attempting to induce action, but rather to maintain the status quo. Although pitched to policy makers, the ads address the complex issue in a colloquial style, with a view to offsetting, in terms familiar in public discourse, the increasingly dire warnings of climate scientists urged at international climate negotiations and appearing in the popular press (see Leggett, 2001).

In terms of Burkean dramatism, ExxonMobil faced a "scene" of environmental crisis constructed by a growing coalition of scientists and world governments. For environmentalists and many in developing countries, "agents" and guilty "acts" had already been found: the oil companies (as well as auto makers) had supported and encouraged the wasteful and polluting consumption habits of the energy-guzzling nations of the industrialized North. Appropriate action was indicated: regulation by government to reduce greenhouse gases, particularly [CO.sub.2] produced by burning fossil fuels. To counter this momentum, ExxonMobils' rhetorical task was to turn environmental protection, of the kind envisioned in Kyoto, into the enemy, business and technology into saviors, and environmentalists and governments into incompetent meddlers who would do no good. In the ExxonMobil texts, the corporate rhetor performs this task by wrapping the environmental issue in paradox. From this emerges a "responsible" course of action. This requ ires that government move to the subordinate role of supporting technology development and more scientific research, if not altogether bowing out. Meanwhile, ExxonMobil is to continue with what it already does voluntarily: contributing to the cause of the natural environment by producing energy-efficient fuels.

The texts achieve their effect by altering linguistic meanings and

relationships in ways that reshape ExxonMobil's own and other actors' identities. "Prudence" and "responsibility" (and their implied opposites) are moral terms used in the ads rhetorically to characterize/construct the agents (scientists, economists, environmentalists, government regulators, energy suppliers, and consumers), acts (government regulation, production of energy-efficient fuels), and agencies (science and technology, climate science, economics, public policy) variously interposed in the dramatic scene. Shifting characterizations promote different identifications and identities, blurring and confusing the capabilities, responsibilities, and effects of agents and acts. ExxonMobil also treats its own identity as protean, drifting from persona to persona (the scientific powerhouse and technological leader, the vulnerable human entity in a natural scene too complex to be encompassed, the responsible citizen). In this way, it manages to skirt any particular identity for itself around which its critics can rally, yet in each guise promotes identification between itself and the public (and policy-makers representing them) by suggesting that the corporation variously identifies with their interests.

The metaphorical shifts operate by co-opting the very language and rhetorical positions of the environmental movement itself. This is demonstrated by the title of the first text, Do No Harm, published in The New York Times on March 16, 2000. This clever appropriation of the Hippocratic Oath co-opts the call for responsibility that Oil's critics, seeking to protect the health of the planet, might have seemed to be making on the industry itself. Establishing a context of uncertainty about the wisdom of any proposed environmental action, this injuction calls up a health/harm binary, which structures the argument of the entire four-piece set of texts and is central to the verbal drama that ensues. The health/harm metaphor constitutes a site of tension and ambiguity, which the corporate rhetor exploits in counterposing the terministic screen of economics to that of environmentalism.

The March 16 piece begins by comparing "the different views on the climate change debate" to weather forecasts that are constantly being changed. At one level, the metaphorical affiliation of climate scientists with their front man and fall guy, the weather forecaster, suggests a homely image for the scientists. More obliquely, this metaphor belittles the "evidence"-namely, destructive and unusual weather patterns, including heat waves, droughts, and storms-that environmentalists have been using to make the complex, abstract, and remote issue of the risks posed by climate change more palpable and immediate to the general public (e.g., Leggett, 2001). ExxonMobil argues that there is no provable link between its activities and ecological harms, either presently manifested or anticipated. This uses a strategy by now made familiar in other cases where corporate products or production processes have been alleged to cause toxic effects (e.g., asbestos and tobacco). From the commercial perspective, therefore, any p roposed change in business practices, which would impose costs, is unwarranted and said to threaten to "harm" the "health" of the economy.

ExxonMobil's argument here produces the conclusion that the problem is not global warming, but the wrong-headed, if not arrogant, views of climate scientists (and the misguided government representatives and public who trust them), who "believe they can predict changes in climate decades from now." The paragraph continues, "Advocating 'precaution,' and despite scientific uncertainty, they believe actions should be taken immediately to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by mandating severe restrictions on energy use." The ironic quotation of the word "precaution" here signals the inversion of terms about to take place. "Precaution," usually associated with conservative and measured approaches, and in the climate debate characterized by environmentalists as necessary to safeguard the "health" of the planet, suddenly becomes hasty, if not hysterical action, and an instrument of "harm." Rather than precaution, the company calls for a prudent approach, saying: "a prudent approach to the climate issue must recognize that there is not enough information to justify harming economies and forcing the world's population to endure unwarranted lifestyle changes by dramatically reducing the use of energy now."

Prudence, justification, and harm are value-laden terms. Implicitly, they introduce here a balance of competing interests-the very balance called for in Brundtland and the concept of sustainable development between interests of environment and economic development. Left ambiguous, however, is how the balance of competing interests (prudence) has been, or should be, achieved (cf. Patterson & Lee, 2000). The agents and means remain shadowy here. The arbiters of these competing social interests are the "[m]any [unnamed] scientists and economists" (but see Leggett, 2001) with whom the company agrees. To make this argument, for instance, the ad takes at face value predictions of the US Department of Energy and other unnamed economists-whereas, in other contexts, predictions by economists are as much the butt of popular jokes as those of weather forecasters. Moreover, the climate scientists on whom the company relies represent a tiny minority of their discipline (Leggett, 2001). In ExxonMobil's view, however, thes e truth-knowers are to be distinguished from imprudent and zealous "do-good" doctors of the environment and their unwitting government dupes. In fact, by choosing its experts, the company becomes judge and jury in this social debate.

As the drama turns, "lifestyle" now becomes the central "act" (motive) and object of protection, while the economy is both an object of protection and (if healthy) the agency or means by which "lifestyle" can be achieved. Exactly whose economies and lifestyles need to be most protected against threatened policy changes becomes clear in the succeeding paragraphs. The Kyoto Protocol exempts-unfairly, in this point of view- developing economies from emission reductions. In the US, however, such measures will lead to a predicted "dramatic (30 percent) near-term reduction in projected energy use," "damage [to] our economy," "almost certainly ... large increase in taxes on gas and oil," and "enormous transfers of wealth to other countries." Moreover, says the corporate rhetor, by deflecting resources from "more immediate and pressing needs . . . all critical to the well-being of future generations," emission regulation will hurt even developing nations and defeat the very goals of sustainable development itself. H ere, the corporate rhetor deploys the famous language of the Brundtland report by referencing the "well-being of future generations." According to this argument, by putting economic development at risk, Kyoto proposals threaten social progress itself. On the one hand, these arguments play to the popular premise that the American habits of cheap fuel and low taxes (lifestyle) are an inherent right and need protection. By implication, this lifestyle should extend to all nations, and will do so, as economic development takes hold. On the other hand, the arguments privilege the US position of economic hegemony and reflect the antagonistic relationship played out in the IPCC climate negotiations between developing economies and industrialized ones.

By the end of the ad, the rhetorical transformation that ExxonMobil has set out to accomplish is complete. "We know with certainty," says the ad in closing, that proposed reform policies, "unless properly formulated[,] will restrict life itself." Through a neat inversion, "life itself" has come to mean "life-style" or what is accepted in the industrialized parts of the world as a taken-for-granted standard of living, instead of meaning nature's gift and the foundation of human existence. Uncertain knowledge about nature has thus been exchanged for certain truths, from ExxonMobil's commercial perspective, about what constitutes basic social necessity.

In the next week's piece, ExxonMobil (March 23, 2000) takes a different stance, questioning the potency and viability of science itself. Unsettled Science again opens with the weather forecast metaphor. This time, however, the emphasis is not simply on those who claim to be in certain possession of an uncertain future, but on the "enormous challenge" that faces anyone trying to predict anything at all. Though acknowledging "everyone's desire for clear answers," the ad focuses instead on "unanswered questions" of whether "human activity [has] already begun to change temperature and the climate" and "how significant ... future change" may be. In this ad, the company identifies not with right-minded scientists, but with "humans," tiny specks on the vast landscape of "earth's history," tossed by the whims of "natural variability" and faced with the confusing evidence of nature. Here, "science is a new, groping effort to quantify the unfathomable; it has been able to offer no more than halting hypotheses to the st ubbornly complex and inscrutable questions of climate change. Moreover, such science as there is (e.g., less than accurate computer models) suggests that "human activity" is a tiny, probably insignificant, element within a much larger system. In any case, climate change may be beneficial (e.g., promoting crop and forest growth), says the company, echoing arguments raised by US representatives in climate negotiations and neatly eliding the fact that benefits to some regions would produce disasters in others (Leggett, 2001). In the corporate view, calls for short-term action to limit emissions based on scientific claims amount to no more than "empty rhetoric."

This formulation of science in terms of the limits of human understanding in the face of complex natural systems, however, has the potential to shape an active, partisan conclusion that might work against other interests of the company. That is, insofar as ExxonMobil appears as helpless as the rest of us, we might question the authority and control over natural resources that the corporation has come to command and upon which its visions of social "progress" are based. To arrest any potential momentum in this direction, ExxonMobil ends the ad with references of the need for "responsible action" on environment, specifically, support for development of lower-emission energy technologies. Thus, the ad anticipates the corporate rhetor's abrupt about-face in the following week's ad, where it confidently extols the "power" of science and technology.

In The Promise of Technology (March 30, 2000), all metaphors about weather forecasting uncertainty are cast aside. Instead, the piece opens with a heroic ode to human achievement. "Human activity" is not only no longer pitted against "natural variability," but has become synonymous with the accumulated product of "a world that has conquered polio and put a man on the moon." In the two previous texts, attempts at "near-term" (i.e., short-term) solutions were dismissed as folly and hubris. Here, suddenly, by contrast, they represent the potentially "effective" and specifically viable project of "corporations, universities, and government laboratories." Transformed in a week's time from one of "us" observing the struggles of science to "one of the world's leading science and technology organizations," ExxonMobil presents itself as "confident that technology will reduce the potential risks posed by climate change." But again, lest the audience take these promises too seriously, expecting these earth-saving techno logies to materialize too immediately, the corporate rhetor deflects action by constructing a new scene and source of action. Now the market is constituted as an irresistible force, which calls forth particular acts and provides the means by which to live the good life. According to the corporate rhetor, ExxonMobil can provide the products, but "markets ... will inevitably decide which products are successful." The market, however, is too slow and too cautious to accept new technologies in a timely fashion or on a "widespread" basis. Now that "technology organizations" such as ExxonMobil are leading the push for environmentally responsible energy use, the public is no longer depicted as they were on March 16 as the potential dupes of unreliable, emotional, and over-eager radicals; instead, it has become sluggish, conservative, and wed to business-as-usual. Paradoxically, in this process, business and climate scientists advising the IPCC, the former antagonists in our drama, are pushed to the wings, and the co nsumer and consumption are brought to the fore as the central moral agent and act in this emerging scene.

The final text of the set, The Path Forward on Climate Change (ExxonMobil, April 6 & April 7, 2000), was published not only in The New York Times on April 6th but also a day later in USA libday. To begin, this ad states, "climate change may appear as confusing as a maze." Thus, it describes the very condition the earlier ads have served to create and reiterates anew a tangle of previously established paradoxical positionings, which blend into an indistinct remote, yet seemingly comfortable landscape. Science here is said to face "enormous challenges" and uncertain success, but "gaps" in knowledge are already "being filled" by some unspecified force. Mandatory reductions in energy use would represent "policy mistakes [that] can be serious," but reduction on a voluntary basis is the natural pursuit of all companies and is already underway. Technology holds "promise," but new energy technology in particular "faces enormous challenges." Nevertheless, we can rest assured that entrepreneur-ship and technology will provide solutions (i.e., health), if government plays a supporting role to industry instead of throwing up barriers by "targeting programs that support particular [i.e., environmental] views."

The April 6 text centers around (literally, since this is the pull-out caption printed in the middle of the ad) the citizens' "right to know." In ExxonMobil's use of the term, conventionally associated with the environmental legislation lobby, what is to be known is not the detrimental impacts of toxic emissions produced by corporate activity, the primary focus of "right-to-know" laws won by environmentalists and vigorously opposed by corporations. Rather, through an ironic twist what is to be known is the potential harm to the economy that can be inflicted by governmental policy. This rhetorical reversal not only mimics the linguistic strategy of the first (March 16) ad, but circles back to the theme of its Hippocratic injunction to do no harm. In this last ad of the set, fuel efficiency is described as "the responsible path forward" and one that will bring "real changes in emissions trends" while doing no "harm . . . to economies and lifestyles." Here ExxonMobil espouses a form of win-win environmentalism, which is good for the natural environment and bottom line cost savings. With this new sleight of hand, ExxonMobil has assumed the mantle of the Hippocratic Oath, becoming the agent/protector of "life itself" through the agency of technology. Voluntary corporate action is all that is required. In the eyes of this corporate rhetor, then, Americans need not worry: a healthy environment and unfettered consumption, upon which growth in business depends, are compatible. Americans, and perhaps others, can have it all.

In summary, in these texts, ExxonMobil enacts a role of responsible corporate actor by refraining the public interest in the environment within the terms of the market, a symbolic god-term here. Using the ter-ministic screen of the market, these texts elevate economists, demonize all but a few climate scientists, sideline government and re-constitute the citizen as consumer. Social well-being becomes a matter of consumption, instead of a complex mixture of changing, sometimes contradictory needs and desires that have to be negotiated within a political process and public space (cf. Patterson & Lee, 2000).

In the following section, I consider these same texts from a Foucauldian discourse analytic perspective before moving to a comparative discussion of these analyses.

Discourse Analysis from a Foucauldian Perspective

A discourse analysis relates texts to social practice as found within particular discourses, broadly defined to include institutions, norms, knowledge systems, social practice, and language. It starts by identifying formal features of text (e.g., metaphors, patterns of language and argument) and discursive practice in order to show how language reflects and reproduces the taken-for-granted realities that govern practice in the wider social arena. In the analysis that follows, I first examine patterns of metaphors and argumentation employed in the ExxonMobil advertorials to illuminate the social and institutional practices--the "regimes of trut" (Foucault, 1984)--that they reflect and legitimate. Second, I discuss the advertorial as a discursive production that serves to support and extend institutional power/knowledge. Using the Foucauldian lens, I thus map the terrain of socio-political discursive struggle over the natural environment, which has been shaped by and had constitutive effects upon the ExxonMobil texts.

At the level of language, I take as my primary example the health! harm binary exploited throughout ExxonMobil's argument and introduced by the metaphor/mandate, Do No Harm, of the title of its first advertorial. The health/harm binary is not only at the heart of ExxonMobil's linguistic transformation of terms, as described in my rhetorical analysis above; it also provides a clue to the wider sociopolitical conflict between environmentalists and business interests. Health and harm are social constructs employed in the discourses of both economics and environmentalism. They constitute sites of rhetoricity and thus of contradiction and discursive struggle. From the commercial perspective, the metaphor of health is reflected in everyday expressions employed in news reports about the stock market, unemployment, and other forms of financial discourse (e.g., annual reports). The metaphor helps to constitute "the economy" as a "whole," of sorts, with a necessary integrity that requires protection and particular kind s of action. It thus imbues the term with a common-sense, taken-for-granted reality and assumes that the economy's sickness or health is something we can readily recognize. The very suggestion that an economy can be in a state of health or sickness constructs a "healthy economy" as the natural state and thus has a subtle disciplinary force.

An alternate discourse, that of environmentalism, is also invoked by the "health/harm" metaphor. Radical environmentalists treat the spiritual and moral health of humans, as well as their material well-being, as dependent on the health of the earth, which sustains life of all forms. Even if the laws of nature are not entirely fathomable, an implicit assumption of this discourse is that living in harmony with nature, an encompassing system beyond human control, with laws that society ignores at its peril, is a fundamental and necessary goal.

Beginning most famously in the 1960s with Rachel Carson's (1962/1994) Silent Spring, environmentalists sought to make visible the "unhealthy" dimensions of economic development-the "poisons" produced by industrial processes. This notion of a "healthy planet" regulates social action and institutional relationships in a manner distinct from neo-classical economic discourse and deconstructs the narrowly held economic view of progress that governed society in the industrial age. Environmentalism calls for "limits to growth" (Meadows, Randers, & Behrens, 1972) and suggests "blueprints for survival" (Goldsmith & Allen, 1972), which require government regulation of private corporate action. By bringing to light the "unhealthy" aspects of development, the discourse of environmentalism thus disrupted the. "natural order" of things.

The Brundtland Report (WCED, 1987) captured these twin aspects of environmental and economic health in its call for action to protect "the well-being of future generations." By articulating-joining-the discourses of the distinct domains of business and environment, sustainable development thus sought to bridge the gap between two kinds of health necessary to modern society. Viewed through the lens of discourse analysis, Brundtland illustrates Foucault's concept of the interplay and mingling of discursive orders: interdiscursivity. Joining discourses of economic development and environment, it constituted, for example, new objects of understanding--here, notions of sustainable development and market environmentalism--and new subject identities-here, responsible capitalists and reform environmentalists. Within this emergent discourse, "health" (i.e., "well-being") requires a balance between economic development and the protection of natural resources.

Business discourse has not been unaffected by the political struggle over environment over the last 30 years. By arguing in its advertorial that Kyoto proposals would divert necessary human and financial resources from "more immediate and pressing needs" and thus imperil things "critical to the well-being of future generations," ExxonMobil (March 16, 2000) showed its awareness of the discourse of sustainable development and its need to situate business within it. This does not represent, however, a simple paradigm shift (Hajer, 1997). That is, the discursive conflict between environmentalism and economic development does not disappear within this emerging discourse, but rather finds a new focus. Now, the conflict is not over how the interface should be constructed between human beings and nature (i.e., nature as resource is a given), but on how the balance should be struck between development and environmental protection and by what institutions sustainable development should be regulated. In arguing that th e Kyoto proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions "unless properly formulated will restrict life itself" (March 16, 2000), the corporate rhetor implies that governmental/environmentalist proposals are extreme and fall outside a balanced ("prudent") approach and the "responsible path forward" on climate change.

Balance, prudence, and responsibility, however, are normative terms, which find meaning in these advertorials (and most other corporate texts) within corporate neo-liberal economic discourse and the framework of market relations on which it relies. From this perspective, "the market" is constituted as a reality rather than as the product of social construction (see, e.g., Gibson-Graham, 2000). "Knowledge" of the market includes understanding and conforming to its natural "laws;" e.g., the need for profit, the need for unlimited growth, norms, of efficiency and effectiveness, and freedom from government regulation such as contemplated by the Kyoto Protocol (see Livesey, forthcoming). In the market, political values and debate are replaced by rational choice. Thus, the market functions as an ostensibly neutral and apolitical arbiter of competing social interests. To use the corporate language of the ExxonMobil advertorials, "rational scientific, economic, and technical analysis" becomes the instrument of norma tive control (see Patterson & Lee, 2000; Peterson, 1997). From the critic's perspective, the political nature of choice is thus made invisible (Fairclough, 1992).

In neo-liberal economic discourse, government is constructed as inefficient and incompetent (Boyer & Drache, 1996) and domains of public interest (e.g., protection of the environment, education, welfare) are increasingly privatized. Hence, competing social interests of the citizenry, traditionally represented through government, are forced to find a place within the private space of the market itself. In this case, for instance, ExxonMobil claims that market-driven technology improvements and costsaving measures of energy efficiency, rather than mandatory emission caps, as proposed in the Kyoto Protocol, are the "responsible" path forward. Corporate volunteerism and market-driven environmentalism, rather than government-dictated mandates, are the preferred means for protecting the public interest. From the critical perspective, however, when the "the market" becomes the locus of power, the massive influence of corporations in constructing marketplace "realities" is obscured. Through their control over what g ets produced and how it is advertised, corporations produce the choice that they claim resides in the market itself (Heath, 1994). Thus, while incorporating some aspects of the public interest in a healthy environment into the private space of the market though the mechanisms of market environmentalism, neo-liberal economics nevertheless denies the ultimately political nature of the market itself and the tensions between economic and environmental health and harm.

In addition to the health/harm metaphor, the patterns of argument employed in the ExxonMobil texts demonstrate these central tensions in the business-environmentalist discursive struggle. I reveal these tensions by contrasting ExxonMobil's public discourse (Table 1, left hand column) to the counter-discourses of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and climate scientists (Table 1, right hand column). For reasons of space, I draw my examples in the left-hand column from ExxonMobil's March 16 advertorial. The patterns of argument in this text are representative, reflecting the premises of the entire set of corporate advertorials on climate change, as well as the U.S. oil industry and government positions in contemporaneous IPCC negotiations (see Leggett, 2001). In the right-hand column, where there are direct quotations, I draw the texts from Leggett (2001), who provides details of the climate negotiations from his perspective as scientist and Greenpeace observer of the IPCC process. Otherwise, I reproduce en vironmental argument in summary form, relying upon my reading of Leggett and other environmentalist literatures (e.g., Gelbspan, 1998). The narrative of global warming as "crisis," as expressed in the right column here, affords a common storyline that has promoted particular kinds of discursive alliances (e.g., between environmentalists and Island Nations, who perceive that global warming and rising ocean levels would end their existence). Groups with other political interests (e.g., corporations and the governments of certain developing countries), however, have allied around a narrative of economic development, as represented in the left column.

From Foucault's perspective, the inherent rhetoricism of all bodies of knowledge produces their fundamentally political nature and explains the necessary link between knowledge and power. As these corporate excerpts demonstrate, ExxonMobil invokes in its arguments the legitimating power of particular knowledges, but differentiates among them in terms of their practical effects in this context. In respect to the natural phenomenon of climate change, the corporation follows conventions of empiricist research, assuming an attitude of skepticism, caution, and reserve. Its approach is based on the modernist assumptions, which ground most empirical sciences, that observation of natural phenomena, if sufficiently careful, comprehensive, and free from bias, leads eventually to "true" representations of reality. Such truths, in turn, become the basis for rational decision-making and action in the world outside the scientists' laboratory (cf. Kuhn, 1970; McCloskey, 1998).

From the corporate perspective, then, climate science, as a young and contentious field (with "a range of views" and given to "debate"), does not present an adequate basis for decision and action. In the ExxonMobil texts, the statements of climate scientists are thus expressed as hypothetical and provisional (e.g., "possible future impacts"). The actions demanded by climate scientists, however, are represented as inappropriately extreme ("dramatically reducing the use of energy now") and "unwarranted" according to positivist norms. Curiously, and contradictorily, the "knowledge" of the economists represented in these texts is not treated with the same scrupulous reserve or skepticism. Predictions respecting the economic impacts of the Protocol are presented as confident, undisputed estimates ("a dramatic [30 percent] reduction ... of energy use") and represent a consensus of views ("most economists tells us"). In this instance, the company privileges economic "knowledge" as the regulator of social behavior a nd relies on the "truth" produced by a small number of scientists who refuse to accept the imminence of the global warming threat.

By contrast to corporate actors, scientists involved in the environmental movement, such as those represented in the texts I have excerpted here, explicitly recognize the political aspects of scientific and economic knowledge. For example, they note that the "uncertainties" relating to climate change offer room for "obfuscation" and accuse the oil companies of distorting and misrepresenting the "science" of global warming (Leggett, 2001, p. 16). Environmentalists step outside the normative role of "neutral" scientist to advocate for particular courses of action. Here, the precautionary principle leads to a policy recommendation for action (emissions reductions) "in the absence of complete scientific certainty about an environmental threat" and "ahead of absolute proof." Moreover, enviro-economists criticize neo-classical economic models, especially as applied in accounting and "traditional cost-benefit analyses," for failing to take into account the environmental and social costs of production and consumptio n of corporate goods. Thus, by showing the interested and biased nature of knowledges supporting economic development, environmentalists problematize the notion of "progress" that economic development promises to deliver.

At another level, the environmental scientists engage the political game on its own modernist terms by arguing the "evidence" of their experts on climate change. Yet, the foundation of their argument is still political in that they claim a consensus of views as the basis of legitimacy for their position. At the same time, however, the managers of the negotiation process appear to promote the possibility of an apolitical outcome. This is evidenced in the following statement by a chair of the working committee of IPCC scientists: "The integrity of the science is absolutely vital to the success of the IPCC. We must not allow ourselves to be influenced by politics" (Houghton, quoted in Leggett, 2001, p. 76). That is, the negotiation process itself has been wrapped in certain discourses of modernism, which are seen to lend legitimacy to the process itself. Here environmental scientists appear less willing to accept the rhetoricity of their own discourses (see Roe, 1994).

The power aspect of the conflict over sustainable development is also manifested at the level of corporate discursive practice. Advertorials, the genre employed here by ExxonMobil (see Cheney & Vibbert, 1987), constitute a particular mode of producing and circulating texts. To begin with, the ExxonMobil advertorials re-present the arguments that were swirling around the climate negotiations at the time. That is, they re-perform the stories of the US government, American oil companies, some developing countries, certain scientists and economists, and others. Thus, they demonstrate the concept of intertextuality, which shows how texts continually reactualize one another through a process of repetition and reference.

Moreover, advertorials constitute a discursive form and social practice that illustrates Foucault's understanding of the circular link between power and knowledge. Advertorials are published on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times as paid-for opinion pieces. Thus, they appear together wit opinion pieces selected by the editor to represent a range of voices according to the rules and regulatory practices of the media, which include norms of "balance" and "fair access." Leaving aside here the question c whether balance and fair access are in fact achieved in mainstream medic editorial selections are supposed to embody representative views on a sides and range of voices across society. In paid-for advertorials, however the company's economic power and institutional position, rather than the representativeness of its views, guarantee the regular appearance of it opinions on Thursdays in this journal of record and organ of the establishment. The placement of these ads implicitly legitimates the position c the cor poration as opinion-shaper without a corresponding recognition of its unequal power to take up public discursive space. Insofar as these view and opinions appear unopposed (crucially important here, given the isolationist position of the US oil industry and government), they violate the principles of balance and fair access. Symbolically, the advertorial as genre mirrors the superior power of private corporations in other forms of advocacy (e.g. in lobbying governmental agencies.). Moreover, ExxonMobil's advertorials reveal the power effects of the institutional affiliation between business and the press.

In summary, this analysis shows that the ExxonMobil texts reactualize other texts, specifically; discourses of environment and economic development articulated in Brundtland and entailed in contemporaneous climate negotiations under the umbrella of the UN. The dynamics of socio-political struggle reflected in these texts reveal discursive struggle and clash, but also discursive mingling. Thus, the dominant form of market economics both accommodates and fails to accommodate issues of environment and social equity within the space of the market. Accordingly, ii produces new hybrid forms (e.g., eco-efficiency), and new subject identities and ideologies (e.g., responsible capitalism). Yet, it also continues to insist that commercial and economic interests (unlimited growth, consumerism, and economically "rational" decision making) be privileged over environmental and social concerns by downplaying the latter and characterizing them as not knowledge-based, but emotional (irrational), political, and radical. Moreo ver, it eschews government regulation--in this case, the mandatory emissions caps of the Kyoto Protocol--as a primary means of protecting the public interest. Instead, "the market" and the private sector through which it operates are given expanded roles. Specifically, the company rejects emissions caps and other forms of regulatory control. It justifies its position through utilitarian discourses of economic rationalism that fail to recognize the socially constructed nature of "the market" and insist that "the market" produces rational choice and the greatest social good.

Discussion and Conclusion

Within the practice of rhetorical analysis, the influence of European social philosophy on communication research has turned some forms of "rhetorical criticism" to "critical rhetoric" (McGee, 1990; McKerrow, 1989) by focusing researchers on the political functions of texts as well as their formal qualities. For these researchers, therefore, the lines between rhetorical analysis influenced by Burke and Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis have started to blur. Nevertheless, there remains a distinct difference in emphasis in these two methods of textual analysis, as my examples above have illustrated. Language-based, new criticism influenced by Burke is centrally concerned with rhetorical selectivity as exhibited in specific texts (written and spoken). That is, it considers the purposive use of language by agents to facilitate action or shape attitudes that predispose audiences toward action of particular types. In the Foucauldian perspective, as I have interpreted it (cf. Alvesson & Karreman, 2000), the c ritic's more panoramic interest is to map the contours of ongoing socio-political conflict as evidenced in specific texts, showing how such texts are both constitutive of and constrained by the macro-social order. Here, the focus is on the link between knowledge and power, as well as the relationship between discursive struggle and social and institutional practice and change (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999/2001; Fairdough, 1992).

From the Burkean perspective, then, ExxonMobil advertorials represent an example of corporate issues management. The texts themselves and the rhetorical situation that gave rise to their production were the primary focus of my analysis. Accordingly, I considered the agentic function of the language used by the corporate rhetor to control meanings related to the issue of climate change. I focused on ExxonMobil's oppositional stance to the Kyoto Protocol, whose regulatory aims the company rejected. My purpose was to show the consequences of the rhetor's word play. Thus, I demonstrated how the effects of government policy, as opposed to the effects of global warming, were made the cause of crisis and concern and how the terministic screen of the market was substituted for the terministic screen of environmentalism. My analysis emphasized strategies of identification exploited by ExxonMobil to construct the company as protector of "life," while scapegoating environmentalists and most climate scientists (see Chen ey, 1983, p. 148; Crable & Vibbert, 1983). Within this context, I demonstrated that the corporate rhetor established "the market" as the god-term in this text, while "prudence" was the identifying characteristic of a rationalist approach. In these ways, I revealed the rhetorical means by which the company pursued its objective of legitimating a U.S. position on climate change that was coming under increasing pressure on the world stage.

In my second example, which uses a Foucauldian analysis, the ExxonMobil texts embody and illustrate discourse, broadly conceived. Through this lens, the debate over climate change played out in these texts reflects evolving storylines (Hajer, 1997) that remember and reactualize elements of the old story and political and institutional conflicts embedded in the notion of sustainable development My analytic focus here is not simply on oppositional rhetorics, but on the dynamic interplay of discourses. Within this context, the ExxonMobil discourse demonstrates a corporate urge to preserve fundamental aspects of the discourse and practices of economic development, even while it accommodates ecological issues that have been made visible through environmentalism's challenges to narrow economic views. In these respects, my Foucauldian analysis demonstrates the dynamic and political effects of language in wider processes of social change.

My discourse analysis also emphasized the circular link between knowledge and power recognized explicitly by Foucault (1984), but only implicitly in much Burkean scholarship (see Cheney, Garvin-Doxas, & Torrens, 1999). Specifically, the "knowledge" produced by actors such as ExxonMobil and its institutional allies (e.g., economists; anti-Kyoto scientists), as well as by pro-Kyoto environmental scientists and economists, helped to constitute each as powerful in particular ways, while their very power helped to legitimate the knowledge they produced. In this context, ExxonMobil's economic discourse can be seen as stabilizing and legitimating "the market" and its rules, while de-legitimizing radical environmentalism, governmental action, and climate science. On the other hand, the knowledge and power systems entailed by economic discourse have not been able to establish hegemonic control. Industry's technological innovations to reduce emissions and other forms of market environmentalism, which are mentioned in the ExxonMobil texts, as well as the company's more general effort to construct itself as "responsible," represent concessions to environmental interests--to the knowledge produced by environmentalists. Knowledges are thus shown to be rhetorical, contingent, drawn on for political purposes, yet also subject to change.

Broadly then, a rhetorical approach offers techniques by which to analyze features of language in detail and consider its immediate, often polarizing, effects in specific controversies. The Foucauldian perspective, on the other hand, helps the researcher to understand the implications of local struggles and conflicts in terms of change at the social and institutional level. Foucault (1977) calls genealogy "gray, meticulous, and patiently documentary" (p. 139), but offers little in the way of insight into how textual analysis should be accomplished (see Fairclough, 1992). Rhetorical techniques and treatments of the intricate details and functions of language therefore offer useful exemplars for a critic doing the work of Foucauldian analysis. Because of their distinctive emphases on micro and macro levels of analysis, the two methods of inquiry that I have illustrated in this paper offer the communication researcher complementary tools for engaging the contexts and meanings of corporate texts.

Finally, for both Burkean and Foucauldian analysts, criticism performs an ethical role. Nevertheless, criticism pursued from these two perspectives is informed by different visions of the human condition and the possible ameliorative effects on human agency. Burke (1984a) calls for a healthy skepticism that is neither "naive" nor "over scrupulous" (p. 246), what he calls the "comic corrective." The thrust of the critic's work within this tradition is to "expose mystifications" (i.e., uses of language that deceive self and others) (Burke, 1950/1962, p. 702) and to help people get along better by making them more conscious of the social and ethical effects of their language use. Burke discourages Nietzschean suspicion and distrust (Crusius, 1995). His vision is one of people who are mistaken, not vicious and assumes that human attitudes and actions can be revised over time. Foucault (1980), on the other hand, asks the critic to acknowledge explicitly the role of discourse in producing political and coercive ef fects and to assist in the "insurrection of subjugated knowledges" (p. 81). In contrast to Burkean approaches that assume a comedic corrective (e.g., Killingsworth & Palmer, 1992), criticism from this perspective sometimes seems susceptible to the pessimism of Nietzschean distrust. For this researcher, however, Foucauldian methods have provided a means for examining the contradictory nature of discursive struggle, which evidences moments of positive movement and change as well as instances of power's coercive and corrupting hold.

Sharon M. Livesey is an Associate Professor in the Communication and Media Management Department at Fordham University Graduate School of Business Administration.

The author thanks Kathryn Rentz, Neil Talbot, and Julie Graham for their always unstinting and generous support. She also appreciates the helpful suggestions of the anonymous reviewer and the creative insights offered by her research assistant, Molly Shearer. Funding for research on this paper was provided by the Fordham University GBA Research Committee. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Business Communication, San Diego, October 2001.

NOTES

(1.) In this scheme, rhetoricians such as Stephen Toulmin and Chaim Perelman fall within the functionalist perspective, usefully expanding functionalist conceptions of human rationality to include new forms and values and contributing, in Toulmin's case, complex ideas of fields of argument. See Klumpp, 1993 for a discussion of important distinctions between dramatism and argumentation within the field of rhetoric.

(2.) Foucault himself refused labels and provided no methods. Accordingly, there has been much scholarly debate over the appropriate interpretation and labeling of his work and methods of textual analysis (see Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2000; Rosenau, 1992; van Djik, 1997/1998a & 1997/1998b). These arguments reveal the tensions between structuralist (see Fairclough, 1992) and post-structuralist (e.g., Cameron, 2000; Gibson-Graham, 1994; Livesey, 2001; see also Wetherell & Potter, 1992) interpretations of Foucault and forms of postmodernism.

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Table 1.

A: Discourse of                 B: Discourse of
Development (*)                 Environment (**)

"[V]iews on the climate change  "In June [1988], a group of
debate range from seeing the    climate-change and ozone-
issue as serious or trivial,    depletion experts ...
and from seeing possible        concluded that global warming
future impacts as harmful or    ...could combine with acid
beneficial."                    rain and loss of ozone to
                                unleash consequences ...
                                second only to those of
                                nuclear war." (pp. viii-ix)

"[T]here is not enough          The precautionary principle
information to justify harming  holds that "in the absence of
economies and forcing the       complete scientific certainty
world's population to endure    about an environmental threat,
unwarranted lifestyle changes   policy would be predicated on
by dramatically reducing the    the need to act ahead of
use of energy now....           absolute proof." (p. 23)
"[M]ore needs to be
learned..."

"Many scientists and            Failure to act now may lead
economists believe that it is   to irreversible damage to our
inappropriate to impose costly  natural system.
policies such as the Kyoto
Protocol..."

"Most economists tell us that   Business overestimates
[the Kyoto Protocol] would      [Kyoto's] negative economic
damage our economy and almost   impacts. Taxes on gas and oil
certainly require large         will curb wasteful use of
increases in taxes on gas and   energy and other natural
oil."                           resources.

"[Developing countries]         Industrialized nations should
desperately need energy to      help developing economies cut
improve the welfare of their    emissions by providing
people. They have not agreed    advanced technologies.
to limit their energy use...
and could not do so without
undermining growth."

"We support[eco-efficiency]     Corporate volunteerism is
and are undertaking feasible    inadequate to address the
and affordable ways to          scope of the problem and will
voluntarily use less energy     not produce rapid enough
today."                         change. Emissions caps will
                                force energy companies to
                                invest in alternative
                                sources of energy.

"[W]e propose an approach that  Traditional cost-benefit
continues a strong focus on     analyses underestimate or
scientific understanding,       fail to consider environmental
carefully evalutes the costs    costs.
and benefits of policies, and   Technical improvements alone
promotes research and           will not be adequate to
development of technical        address the enormity of the
options that have the           problem; lifestyle changes
potential to make significant   must also occur.
longer-term reductions, if
they are needed."

(*)Excerpted from ExxonMobil Advertorial Do No Harm (March 16, 2000)

(**)Alternate discourses of environmentalists (page numbers refer to
Leggett, 2001)
Appendix

Timeline

Date                      Event

1970-US                   Clean Air Act [right arrow] Environmental
                          Protection Agency authorized to
                          establish air quality standards

1972-Stockholm            United Nations (UN) Conference on Human
                          Environment [right arrow] Stockholm
                          Declaration: common out-look needed

1973                      Arab Oil Embargo [right arrow] first
                          "oil shock"

1979-Geneva               World Climate Conference convened
                          by UN. Environment Programme (UNEP),
                          International Council of Scientific
                          Union, and World Meteorological
                          Organization [right arrow] World
                          Climate Program establised

1979-US                   Second "oil shock" [right arrow]
                          increased government support
                          of solar and renewable energy
                          sources; oil companies diversify

1987                      U.N. World Commission on
                          Enironment and Development
                          (Brundtland commission) Report,
                          Our Common Future [right arrow]
                          concept of "sustainable
                          development" enters into popular
                          use

                          Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
1988                      Change (IPCC) established by U.N.
                          General Assembly to advise
                          governments on issue of global
                          warming

1989-Alaska               Exxon Vaidez spill

1990-US                   Clean Air Act amended; EPA to set
                          limits on permissible level of
                          pollution; market-based mechansims
                          such as pollution allowance
                          trading introduced, as well as
                          increased penalties and
                          enforcement mechanisms

1990-US                   Oil Pollution Act [right arrow]
                          establishes new liability and
                          compensation scheme for oil spills
                          in navigable waters

1990-May-United Kingdom   1st IPCC Scientific Assessment
                          Report

1990-Summer               IPCC report on impact of global
                          warming & policy recommendations

1990-August-Sweden        IPCC First Assessment Report
                          accepted by over 100 countries

1990-November-Geneva      Second World Climate Conference
                          [right arrow] Scientists'
                          Declaration & Ministerial
                          Declaration on Climate Change
                          adopted

1992-June-Rio da Janeiro  Earth Summit [right arrow] UN
                          Framework Convention on Climate
                          Change (UNFCCC) ratified
                          Annex I (Industrialized Nations)
                          and Annex II (Developing Nations)
                          established

1995-Berlin               Conference of the Parties (COPs) 1
                          [right arrow] Berlin Mandate to se
                          CO2 target and implementation
                          strategies

1995                      2nd IPCC Scientifif Assessment
                          Report [right arrow] described
                          human influences on climate change
                          & developed 'no regrets"/
                          cost-effective options

1996-June-Genva           COP 2

1997-US                   Further amendments to Clean Air Act
                          related to smog and particulate
                          matter

1997-December-Kyoto       COP 3 [right arrow] Kyoto Protocol;
                          Industrialized countries to reduce
                          greenhouse gas emissions to 5%
                          below 1990 levels between
                          2008/2021;
                          * Kyoto Protocol requires
                            ratifiction by 55 nations
                            representing 55% of total 1990
                            greenhouse gas emissions

1998-November-            COP 4 [right arrow] Buenos Aires Plan of
Buenos Aires              Action: Schedule to work out agreement
                          of operational details and strengthen
                          implementation of UNFCCC with
                          monitoring, compliance, accounting
                          mechanicms

1999-October/November-    COP 5 [right arrow] Consensus reached
Bonn                      with Canada, Japan, Australia; US
                          position opposing Kyoto becomes
                          increasingly isolated

2000-March-Bonn           Workshops on compliance procedures;
                          focus on Kyoto "Articles"

2000-April & July         Parties submit voluntary reports on
                          greenhouse gas emissions; US report
                          submitted April 11

2000-June-Bonn            Meeting of subsidiary committees on
                          scientific and technical advice

2000-July-Poland          Subsidiary committee discussions on
                          land use, land use change, forestry

2000-November-The         COP 6, Part I [right arrow] Canada,
Hague                     Japan, Australia repudiate their support
                          of Kyoto

2001-July-Bonn            COP 6, Part II [right arrow] compromise
                          solution to Kyoto agreed by all but US;
                          compromise requires 30-plus most
                          developed nations to cut emissions