Richard Nixon's “opening to China” is regarded as one of the most significant moments of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. Through his rhetoric before, during, and after his visit to the People's Republic of China, the president moved from established metaphors of communist nations and peoples as “savage enemies” and descriptions of “Red China” as a nation “lost” to communism to a narrative that suggested openness and friendship. In this essay, we argue that Nixon's use of spatial, territorial, and orientational metaphors such as “journey for peace,” “open the door,” “bridge,” “wall,” “common ground,” and “close the gulf,” compounded with his physical presence in China, are key for understanding the force of his rhetoric during this shift in U.S. Cold War foreign policy. In discursively and politically opening transnational U.S.–China relations, Nixon weakened the polarized East–West ideological and geographic divide and provided a new vision of Cold War geopolitics.
President Ronald Reagan’s June 6, 1984, “Address on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day” is one of his most celebrated speeches, and yet no critical assessment of the address exists in rhetorical scholarship. In this article, I examine this speech as a deictic epideictic address, or a speech in which the rhetor uses the physical place, the immediate scene/setting, and the assembled audience as evidence to commemorate the past and chart a clear course for the future. Through this analysis, I argue that Reagan’s speech at Pointe du Hoc is exemplary because it relies on rhetorical vision and deixis to connect a past moment to the present, and in so doing, invites the audience to participate in the discourse emotionally, mentally, and even physically. I conclude by suggesting that a deictic approach to rhetorical criticism offers scholars a vocabulary to describe how speakers can “point” or refer to the physical and material elements of a speech setting as evidence for their argument.
I introduce the concept of the global rhetorical presidency to account for a fundamental shift in U.S. presidential rhetoric and foreign policy, one that emerged at the dawn of the twentieth century. As the nation redirected impulses of westward expansion, manifest destiny, and settler colonialism to the rest of the world, U.S. presidents traveled beyond the nation's own borders to speak on the international stage. Through these acts of going global, chief executives sought to extend the United States' military, political, and psychological influence in various geopolitical regions and nation‐states, expand presidential power in foreign affairs, and elevate the United States’ image and position at home and abroad. The global rhetorical presidency also illuminates how U.S. presidents deploy the constellation and coalescence of five specific elements—body, place, image, audience, and circulation—to create and contribute to conditions of globalization, address audiences foreign and domestic, and rally international public opinion.
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