Should Scholars Delineate a Data Set Apart from a Research Project? Considering Objects, Methods, and Purposes for Studying Presidential Rhetoric

At first glance, the phrase "presidential rhetoric" may appear as a readily understood and transparent phrase that identifies a clearly bounded and delineated body of discourse and an attendant area of scholarship. Presumably, "presidential rhetoric" refers to the rhetoric of presidents--their persuasive, public speeches and statements. While the terms "persuasive" and "public" may generate different interpretations among scholars, presidential rhetoric putatively avoids many of the difficulties involved in identifying, say, a rhetoric of science or a visual rhetoric, since both categories suggest more porous and less established boundaries. On this basis, the move to identify major presidential addresses, as Kevin Coe and Rico Neumann (2011) have done, ought to entail a comparatively straightforward process of articulating and justifying various criteria that scholars may evaluate in terms of their suitability. Initial appearances notwithstanding, presidential rhetoric references a fluid field of study, even if we set its boundaries as the rhetoric of presidents. Presidential speeches and statements invite scholarly questions about how they should be understood and studied. Any effort to identify a body of discourse implicates questions of use--whether or not we explicitly pursue these questions. Coe and Neumann (2011) hold that we should study major addresses by modern presidents to generalize about major addresses by modern presidents. Unanswered in this somewhat circular rationale is the question of just what we hope to generalize from these addresses. I do not raise this issue to discredit Coe and Neumann's project, since articulating a common scholarly endeavor and engendering more expansive and sustained scholarly conversations are potentially important contributions. However, I am wary of efforts to answer questions of use--and thus to identify suitable texts for study--in advance of articulating a clearer research program. The question of which presidential speeches and statements to study raises questions of how scholars of presidential rhetoric understand their objects of study, methods, and purposes. I do not hope to answer these questions conclusively, since I do not believe that a single scholar or study could offer a definitive statement. Rather, I shall suggest some of the ways that the texts we select for analysis may differ depending on how scholars answer these questions when studying presidential rhetoric. Objects Speeches have beginnings and endings, but the meaning and significance of what presidents say in their speeches may be understood as arising from speeches as discrete texts and/or as texts that make meaning in connection with other presidential and nonpresidential discourses. Moreover, particular presidential speeches may be understood as meaningful and significant in terms of their parts and wholes. These issues do not compel mutually exclusive choices, nor do they compel scholars to pledge allegiance to one or another theory of signification and textuality. Rather, we may glean alternative insights by focusing on single speeches or larger sets, and our selections may or may not include "major addresses." A focus on single speech texts as important sites of meaning has been advanced importantly by the project of close textual analysis. A leading proponent of this approach, Michael Left justifies a focus on singular texts in the "radically particular" quality of public speech, since "the action in an oration is bound to the moment of its utterance," even as specific speeches may establish more general rhetorical standards (1986, 382). Particularity reveals the ineluctably time-bound character of presidential rhetoric, as speeches and statements make meaning in moments. For Left, temporality signals the work of the rhetorical scholar, who should consider how a speech appears in time and shapes audience understandings of time: "The timing in the discourse mediates our perception of time in the public world" (1986, 385). …