Ed. Sune Auken and Christel Sunesen Genre in the Climate Debate
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Ed. Sune Auken and Christel Sunesen Genre in the Climate Debate Ed. Sune Auken and Christel Sunesen Genre in the Climate Debate Managing Editor: Katarzyna Grzegorek Language Editor: Adam Leverton Published by De Gruyter Poland Ltd, Warsaw/Berlin Part of Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston The book is published with open access at www.degruyter.com. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. © 2020 Sune Auken, Christel Sunesen ISBN: 978-83-957204-8-2 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-83-957204-9-9 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-83-957713-0-9 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. The Deutsche National- bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. Managing Editor: Katarzyna Grzegorek Language Editor: Adam Leverton www.degruyter.com Cover illustration: pixabay.com Contents Acknowledgements IX Sune Auken 1 Introduction: Genre in the Climate Debate 1 1.1 The Protest Sign and the Research Article 2 1.2 Genre Research 4 1.3 Scientific Evidence and Public Opinion 7 1.4 Humanistic Climate Studies 8 1.5 The Structure of the Volume 9 References 12 Amy J. Devitt 2 Genre for Social Action: Transforming Worlds Through Genre Awareness and Action 17 2.1 Introduction 17 2.2 Genres as Social Actions 18 2.3 Genres for Social Action 22 2.4 Genre Mindfulness 22 2.5 Genre Resistance 24 2.6 Genre Revision 26 2.7 Genre Creation 29 2.8 From Critical Awareness to Positive Action 30 References 31 Charles Bazerman 3 Scientific Knowledge, Public Knowledge, and Public Policy: How Genres Form and Disrupt Knowledge for Acting about Anthropogenic Climate Change 34 3.1 Introduction 34 3.2 Knowledge Resides within Genres 36 3.3 Knowing the Environment 37 3.4 Knowing about Global Warming 39 3.5 Knowledge for Policy Action 41 3.6 Interfering with what Publics and Governments Know 42 3.7 Final Comments 46 3.8 Postscript 47 References 47 Charles Bazerman and Josh Kuntzman 4 How The US Congress Knows and Evades Knowing About Anthropogenic Climate Change: The Record Created in Committee Hearings, 2004–2016 51 4.1 The Complexity of Congressional Deliberation 51 4.2 Knowledge in Hearings: Theories of Genre, Stasis, and Relevance 54 4.3 The Committee System, Hearings, and Records of Hearing 56 4.4 Historical Analyses 58 4.5 109th Congress (2005-2006) 59 4.6 110th Congress (2007-2008) 63 4.7 The 111th Congress (2009-2010) 67 4.8 112th Congress (2011-2012) 70 4.9 113th Congress (2013-2014) 72 4.10 The 114th Congress (2015-2016) 74 4.11 The 115th Congress (2017-Partial) 78 4.12 Discussion 80 References 83 Graham Smart and Matthew Falconer 5 Genre, Uptake, and the Recontextualization of Climate Change Science by ‘Denialist’ Cultural Communities 85 5.1 Introduction 85 5.2 Background: Climate Change Science and its Deniers 86 5.3 Related Research and Theory 88 5.3.1 Digital Genres and Genre Sets 88 5.3.2 Rhetorical Representations of Science 89 5.3.3 Genre Uptake and Recontextualization 90 5.3.4 Culture-related Concepts from Social-science Disciplines 91 5.4 The Cultural Turn in Climate Change Studies 92 5.4.1 The Social Organization of Denial 93 5.4.2 Cultural Cognition 94 5.4.3 Vernaculars of Meaning 95 5.5 The Case Study 95 5.5.1 Method 95 5.6 Findings 97 5.6.1 Recontextualizing the Official Science of Climate Change 98 5.6.2 Rhetorical Strategy 1: Refuting a Specific Scientific Claim Directly, While Often Voicing a Counter-Claim 100 5.6.2.1 Cornwall Alliance 100 5.6.2.2 Heartland Institute 100 5.6.2.3 Tea Party 100 5.6.3 Rhetorical Strategy 2: Attacking the Primary Research Tools of Climate Science – Global Climate Models 101 5.6.3.1 Cornwall Alliance 101 5.6.3.2 Heartland Institute 101 5.6.3.3 Tea Party 101 5.6.4 Rhetorical Strategy 3: Characterizing a Claim Advanced by the Official Science as Only a Theory, not Proven Knowledge 102 5.6.4.1 Cornwall Alliance 102 5.6.4.2 Heartland Institute 102 5.6.4.3 Tea Party 102 5.7 Conclusion 103 References 104 Sune Auken and Mette Møller 6 “THINK BIG and then do absolutely NÜSCHTE”. News Satire and the Climate Debate 108 6.1 Introduction 108 6.2 Convictions Blowing in the Wind 109 6.3 News Satire 110 6.4 News Satire as Parody and Satire 111 6.5 News Satire as News 114 6.6 News Satire on ACC 115 6.7 The Material 116 6.8 Ridiculing Denialism 117 6.9 The Passive Politicians 119 6.10 A Grim Outlook and a Laugh 120 6.11 News Satire for Political Action 122 6.12 News Satire Sites 125 6.13 TV-shows 126 References 126 Esben Bjerggaard Nielsen and Felix Kühn Ravn 7 “This will all be yours – and under water”: Climate Change Depictions in Editorial Cartoons 129 7.1 Introduction 129 7.2 Satirical Cartoons – a Potent Genre 130 7.3 Categories of Climate Change Arguments in Editorial Cartoons 134 7.4 Consequences 136 7.5 Capitalism 139 7.6 Ridiculing the Deniers 140 7.6.1 Against Climate Activism 142 7.7 Satirical Functions and Climate Change 144 References 147 Cartoons 149 Mary Jo Reiff and Anis Bawarshi 8 “How to Turn Accumulated Knowledge into Action”: Uptake, Public Petitions, and the Climate Change Debate 150 8.1 Introduction 150 8.2 Genre and Uptake 152 8.3 Dimensions of Uptake in the Mobilization of Knowledge and Action 156 8.4 Taking up a Public Genre: Petitioning for Climate Change 158 8.5 Petitions, Uptake Affordances, and Uptake Captures 159 8.6 The Uptake Affordances and Constraints of Online Petitions 166 8.7 Uptake Residues and Online Petition Hoaxes 167 8.8 Petitions and Uptake Enactments 170 8.9 Uptake Enactments: Mobilizing Uptakes, Localizing Uptakes 172 8.10 Conclusion 174 References 175 Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher and Brad Mehlenbacher 9 Rogue Rhetorical Actors: Scientists and the Social Action of Tweeting 179 9.1 Introduction 179 9.2 Genre, New Media, and Muddled Arguments 182 9.3 AltGov Twitter and Resistance Genre Work 185 9.4 Final Remarks 189 References 190 Sune Auken 10 Genre, Anthropogenic Climate Change, and the Need to Smell your Body Odor. A Personal Postscript 194 References 197 About the Contributors 198 Acknowledgements The editors owe a special debt of gratitude to Dr. Helle Bildsøe who participated in the planning of the present volume and the early stages of the editorial work. Dr. Bildsøe had to concentrate on other tasks, but her input to the volume has been of immense value. Thanks are also due to Dr. Jack Andersen from the Department of Communica- tion, University of Copenhagen, and Dr. Kristian Pagh Nielsen from the Danish Meteo- rological Institute for their valuable scholarly input. The editors also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers who commented on the project at various stages of the process; their inputs have greatly strengthened the volume. Also, we wish to express our admiration of our editor at De Gruyter, Dr. Katar- zyna Grzegorek, who from our very first contact has been a lucid and good humored anchor for the book. Finally, a heartfelt appreciation is due Lademanns Fond and the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, at the University of Copenhagen, for their generous support for the publication of the volume. Sune Auken & Christel Sunesen Sune Auken 1 Introduction: Genre in the Climate Debate The fundamental idea of the present volume is that an engagement with the genres involved in the climate debate can be a key to understanding, developing, and perhaps even changing the debate. The book’s starting point is twofold. On the one hand, a well-known problem, the gap between the near-unanimous agreement in science about the basics of human made, or anthropogenic, climate change (ACC), and the widespread lack of accep- tance of this agreement in the public sphere. On the other, a field of study, genre research, which has been through an explosive development during the last three decades, but is still a long way from having made its full impact on research and is largely unknown beyond the academy. Briefly stated, the connection between the two is that genres play vital roles in human interaction. We express ourselves in genres, learn in genres, and act in genres. Therefore, the question about how knowledge of ACC spreads – or, as the case may be, does not spread – from the scientific sphere to a broader public will to a very large extent be influenced by the genres in play, and by the use of those genres by individual actors. More than this, however, is the role played by genres – and by genre users – in the climate debate. Genres are strong carriers of tacit cultural knowledge (Devitt, 2004; Auken, 2015a), and their role in social interchanges and institutional communication have been analyzed many times over (for instance, Andersen, 2015; Artemeva, 2008; Bazerman, 1994; Berkenkotter, 2011; Bhatia, 1993; Devitt, 1991). However, there is also a more problematic side to genres, since genres are habitual and may acquire what Paré has called an “illusion of normalcy” (2002). Genres may even, in Judy Segal’s apt phrase, become carriers of a “cultural reproduction of ignorance” (2007, 4; see also Segal, 2012).