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 Ken
neth 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-opera
tive action. The Foucauldian approach, by contrast, focuses on the interplay of
texts (intertextuality) and discourses (interdiscursivity) 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.
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