<i>Kairos</i>: On the Limits to Our (Rhetorical) Situation

Trapani, William; Maldonado, Chandra A.

doi:10.1080/02773945.2018.1454211

Cited by 14 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Green (2004, p. 661) proposes an ideal sequence of appeals for managerial bodies (such as governments) seeking to introduce ideas: “a managerial practice for which the diffusion process follows a rhetorical sequence that starts with pathos , moves to logos and ends with ethos will have a rapid rate of initial adoption, a broad diffusion and a slow abandonment”. We agree with Green's theory and add kairos – creating a sense of urgency to act whilst implying the opportuneness and decisiveness of the action at the “right” time [3] (Trapani and Maldonado, 2018). Kairos are particularly pertinent given the sense of urgency inherent in developing the pandemic response.…”

Section: Theory Of Rhetorical Diffusionsupporting

confidence: 59%

“…The potential of severe loss implied in the case of late action highlights that this was the moment to act decisively ( kairos ) . Thus, the government relied heavily on kairos , by creating a sense of urgency and decisiveness required for the evolving situation (Trapani and Maldonado, 2018). When announcing the AL Framework on 21 March, the PM stressed the urgency and the decisive action:New Zealand is fighting an unprecedented global pandemic.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To justify this response to the public, we contend the government relied largely on the rhetorical appeals of pathos (appeal to emotions), ethos (appeal to a sense of social norms) and kairos (appeal to a sense of urgency). Using rhetoric to promote managerial practices is common in humanities (Green, 2004; Green et al , 2009; Trapani and Maldonado, 2018) yet emerging in accounting research (Higgins and Walker, 2012; Brennan and Merkl-Davies, 2014; Liguori and Steccolini, 2018; La Torre et al , 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The rhetoric of New Zealand's COVID-19 response

Bui

Moses

Dumay

2021

AAAJ

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PurposeThe authors unpack the critical role of rhetoric in developing and justifying the New Zealand (NZ) government's coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown strategy.Design/methodology/approachUsing Green's (2004) theory of rhetorical diffusion, the authors analysed government documents and media releases before, during and after the lockdown to reconstruct the government's rationale.FindingsThe blending of kairos (sense of urgency and “right” time to act), ethos (emphasis on “saving lives”), pathos (fear of disruption and death) and selective use of health-based logos (shrinking infection rates), prompted fast initial adoption of the lockdown. However, support for the rhetoric wavered post-lockdown as absence of robust logos became apparent to the public.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors implicate the role of rhetoric in decision-makers’ ability to successfully elicit support for a new practice under urgency and the right moment to act using emotionalisation and moralisation. The assessment of the NZ government's response strategy provides insights decision-makers could glean in developing policies to tame the virus.Practical implicationsThis study’s analysis demonstrates the unsustainability of rhetoric in the absence of reliable information.Originality/valueThe authors demonstrate the consequences of limited (intermittent) evidence and disregard for accounting/accountability data in public policy decisions under a rhetorical strategy.

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Section: Theory Of Rhetorical Diffusionsupporting

confidence: 59%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The rhetoric of New Zealand's COVID-19 response

Bui

Moses

Dumay

2021

AAAJ

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“…These two hallmarks of fitness trackers are captured by the term "social tracking" (Becker et al, 2017). The rhetorical concept of kairos explains the first part of this equation: the opportune time and network occasion to perform a rhetorical act (Trapani & Maldonado, 2018). Rather than focusing on chronological time or the static architecture of the network, kairos helps explain why people share their data.…”

Section: Kairos In Times Of Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

Rhetorical Implications of Contact Tracing Mobile Applications: An Examination of Big Data’s Work on the Body

Lanius

2021

Poroi

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For nearly a decade, big data has been hyped as an amazing new technology that will benefit corporations and consumers alike. By promising customized knowledge at an accelerated pace, big data technologies have slowly saturated the digital systems American consumers use to live, work, and play. Yet have the promised benefits materialized? An examination of the proposed contact tracing applications in response to the novel coronavirus alongside existing wearable technologies reveal that our trust and vulnerability, opening our bodies to be sensed by these networked systems, is a fraught rhetorical activity, but not because an omniscient system now sees us and cares for us in our time of grave need. Rather, the opaque system misunderstands our embodied rhetorical actions, is incapable of moving the American polis, and cannot generate the promised collective action.

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“…Like the Cynics who roamed the landscape and confronted problems as they arose, contemporary counterpublics must be trained to experience the world through alternative sensory capacities and then to turn that bodily potential into public action. Such metistic approaches infuse publics with an “enhanced sensitivity to rhetorical ecologies without losing sway of the spatio-temporal effect structures in which they operate” (Trapani & Maldonado, 2018, p. 282). The cultivation of differently charged energies attuned to bodily craftiness applies rational thinking to the cultivation of oneself and extends the notion of rhetorical invention from something practiced on discourse to something enacted on bodies.…”

Section: Implications For Rhetoric and Public Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Neoliberalism and the rhetorical invention of counterpublic attunement

Chaput

2018

Communication and the Public

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This article demonstrates the many seamless ways that multiple and diverse publics align their automatic, instinctual behaviors within the broad agenda of neoliberalism. Rather than surreptitiously crafting discourse to appeal to unconscious public dispositions, as neoliberalism does, it suggests that counterpublics consciously apply this technology to themselves. Specifically, it advocates that they forge a productive friction between rational critical thought and bodily habituation so as to reconstitute public orientations and open unexpected occasions for oppositional communication. This requires that scholars engage both traditional neoliberal critics and new materialist critics to tease out the embodied aspects of publics theory and infuse new materialism with an oppositional edge. Michel Foucault’s late lectures provide a theoretical and practical scaffolding for this practice of differently capacitating bodies. The article concludes by gesturing at how this public formation might further pull from underutilized rhetorical resources to expand the communicative possibilities of counterpublic production.

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Kairos: On the Limits to Our (Rhetorical) Situation

Cited by 14 publications

References 13 publications

The rhetoric of New Zealand's COVID-19 response

The rhetoric of New Zealand's COVID-19 response

Rhetorical Implications of Contact Tracing Mobile Applications: An Examination of Big Data’s Work on the Body

Neoliberalism and the rhetorical invention of counterpublic attunement

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