Of Visual Enthymemes and Rhetorical Intentions
The White House employs experts to get the administration’s message to the people–directly and through the news media. How good a job they do is partly a matter of politics and ideology. But I think it’s clear that presidents are able to employ among the best propagandists available in America.
It seems, however, that the propaganda experts screwed up with the Mission Accomplished banner. From the Associated Press:
“President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said `mission accomplished’ for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday. “And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year.”
This is a reasonable interpretation. I think it’s also utter bullshit. But it is reasonable. Here’s why: The banner was a visual enthymeme, aka a rhetorical syllogism. An enthymeme is always missing one or more parts, i.e. major and/or minor premises. What makes the enthymeme such a persuasive rheme (a unit of rhetoric) is that the audience supplies the missing part(s). Each individual member of an audience makes the syllogistic connection by supplying whatever missing parts make sense to that person.
So you throw up a banner behind the president. You know the audience will interpret it; you want them to interpret it or you wouldn’t have put it in that particular spot in the first place.
The administration has the right to interpret its own messages, to make claims for its own communicative intentions. What did the administration intend to indicate with that banner? We need to re-visit that moment to see what claims were made at the time. But I’ll make this prediction (knowing that I could be wrong): No one is going to find any public statement by any administration official made at the time to the effect that the banner refers to the mission of a specific boat and crew.
Tags: journalism, politics, rhetoric
One wonders: over the decades, how many naval vessels have, approaching home port after a successful sortie, displayed a banner reading, “Mission Accomplished” without having the crew’s achievement derogated to make political points?
Ray… Do you think I’m denigrating the crew? Did I mention the crew? I think any returning ship, having successfully completed its mission, should display whatever messages appropriate to the situation. The situation in this case, however, includes a president speaking about the war with a banner in the background. Make no mistake about it– that banner was there because the White House communications people wanted it there no matter who put it up. It was, therefore, a part of the president’s message.
My point precisely. I find it eminently believable that the banner was already there for quite proper crew morale reasons. The President, and/or his advisors, piggy-backed on the pre-existing banner for political purposes. As a consequence, the original meaning and significance of the banner was transmuted into a subject for comment by political opponents to the degradation of recognition of the crew’s achievement. I saw no political comments about any other homeward-bound ship’s banners, which I have every confidence were also displayed.
Ray… No one is denigrating the crew of the ship. I have yet to see any commentary that could come close to making such a claim. If you have a link to anyone denigrating the crew for celebrating a successful mission, please post it here. I would be frankly stunned by and vehemently opposed to any such nonsense.
Makes the head spin:
I also don’t remember very many people, and certainly nobody from the administration, trying to play down the importance of his appearance on the Lincoln five years ago. They were happy to make it as broad as possible when that worked in their favor, and the raving of television pundits was met with approval by the administration and its spokesmen.
Now that the bill comes due, it wasn’t them, they were somewhere else, it didn’t mean what everybody publicly talked about it meaning at the time, the media plays these things up, and besides, the wench is dead.
Yes, they have paid a price, but they bought themselves some very good media coverage for that price, and now the mortgage payments have tripled, and they are claiming that nobody told them it would be so expensive. Wah, wah, wah.
Thanks,
-V.
From the CS Monitor the day after the “major combat has ended” (a necessary legal announcement) address on the USS Abraham Lincoln: Bush’s verbal tightrope: success, not ‘victory’
Of course, the idiots call it the “Mission Accomplished” speech. It’s the idiotic CW of the day.
Sigh.
Of course, the idiots call it the “Mission Accomplished” speech.
It’s a damn shame. If only the White House communications gurus understood how television warps the message and had chosen a radio address instead…
I think I see our Linguistic/Semantic/Semiotic problem here. We’re talking past each other (as we used to say).
You said, “…No one is denigrating the crew of the ship…”
I said, “…the original meaning and significance of the banner was transmuted into a subject for comment by political opponents to the degradation of recognition of the crew’s achievement…”
No, I don’t think anyone is denigrating the crew. I’m saying that the symbology of the “Mission Accomplished” banner is being degraded (is that the wrong word?) to a political interpretation instead of the (higher?) meaning of ship and crew accomplishment.
The other ships returning home flying a “Mission Accomplished” banner were interpreted as having successfully completed their assignment. The “Abe”, because of Bush’s visit and the attendant political commentary, were seen as being political tools and were never granted the beneficial interpretation of having accomplished their assigned task.
Maybe I’m reading too much into the semiotics of the banner with the politician standing in front of it as opposed to the banner if the politician weren’t in front of it?
Sven,
It wasn’t television that “warped” the banner. The banner was poorly placed for television. In fact, one idiot has already been caught lying about the placement of the banner based on that false idea.
No, it’s an AP photo you usually see with Bush under the banner. Of all the PR visuals from that day that deserve criticism, only idiocy explains the banner’s prominent rhetorical syllogism years after the fact.
I didn’t say television warped the banner, or even the words on the banner. I said it warped the critical message the administration was trying to convey – that major combat operations in Iraq have ended
One would think that would be clear to the country’s premiere communication professionals. What on Earth were they thinking?
Sven,
A good question for Scott Sforza.
Interesting discussion. I’ll try to consider all of this some more over the weekend. Tim and Sven… thanks for the links.
While you’re at it, Andy, could you get that HaloScan plugin that allows comments to drip with sarcasm?
Is there a sarcasm smiley?
I like the wink smiley
I don’t know if that’s sarcasm, but I do like the wink smiley
:+:
Came across this passage while re-reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being over the weekend:
Hmmm. No wonder the other purveyors of totalitarian kitsch got so excited.