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Full-Text Articles in Speech and Rhetorical Studies
Inside The Coal Industry’S Rhetorical Playbook, Steve Schwarze, Jennifer Peeples, Jen Schneider, Pete Bsumek
Inside The Coal Industry’S Rhetorical Playbook, Steve Schwarze, Jennifer Peeples, Jen Schneider, Pete Bsumek
Public Policy and Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations
If citizens have heard anything about the upheaval in the U.S. coal industry, it is probably the insistence that President Obama and the EPA have waged a “war on coal.” This phrase is written into President-elect Donald Trump’s energy platform, which promises to “end the war on coal.”
Industrial Apocalyptic: Neoliberalism, Coal, And The Burlesque Frame, Jennifer Peeples, Pete Bsumek, Steve Schwarze, Jen Schneider
Industrial Apocalyptic: Neoliberalism, Coal, And The Burlesque Frame, Jennifer Peeples, Pete Bsumek, Steve Schwarze, Jen Schneider
Jen Schneider
Rhetorical scholarship and cultural commentary have demonstrated that environmentalist voices are consistently associated with apocalyptic rhetoric. However, this association deflects attention from the apocalyptic rhetoric that comes from industry and countermovements to environmentalism. This essay seeks to remedy that oversight by proposing the concept of "industrial apocalyptic" as a significant rhetorical form in environmental controversy. Based on analysis of the rhetoric of the U.S. coal industry, we find that these industrial apocalyptic narratives rely on a burlesque frame to disrupt the categories of establishment and outsider and thus thwart environmental regulation. Ultimately, we argue that industrial apocalyptic co-opts environmentalist appeals …