Poles apart: Scott, Amundsen and science

One hundred years ago, teams led by Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott may have been heading in the same direction but they were poles apart in the way they sought their goals. Amundsen led a five-person team of expert Nordic skiers and dog-sledders with a single goal: getting to the South Pole first. He planned and executed the effort brilliantly. Scott, in contrast, led a complex and multi-faceted Antarctic expedition with 33 explorers and scientists, many of whom were focused on ambitious and often taxing scientific research projects that had nothing whatsoever to do with reaching the Pole. Although Scott failed to reach the South Pole first and died with four men on the return trip, his expedition made significant contributions to Antarctic science. Indeed, at least some of Scott's failure to reach the Pole first and the subsequent death of his polar party on the return trip can be attributed to burden of trying to do too much and not focusing on reaching the pole.     

Cultural Identity Tensions in a Post-Acquisition Organization A previous version of this paper was presented as a “Top Paper” at the annual convention of the International Communication Association,New Orleans,May 2004.

This study examines the problems associated with cultural integration in the aftermath of a corporate acquisition. Based on focus groups and one-on-one interviews with members of a post-acquisition organization (PAO), the results reveal three identity tensions used by organization members to reconcile conflicting pulls toward identification and disidentification: collaboration/competition, assimilation/autonomy, and consensus/command. Findings indicate that members across the four sites of the PAO reconcile these identity tensions differently, resulting in more evidence of disidentification at the two sites that had been acquired by the larger organization, than at the other two sites which had been long-standing locations of the acquiring organization. Implications are discussed relative to cultural and identity issues during periods of organization mergers and acquisitions.     

“Tonight Another Man Will Die”: Crime,Violence, and the Master Tropes of Contemporary Arguments about the Death Penalty

Merging our work as grassroots activists and scholars, we map the master tropes of contemporary arguments both for and against the death penalty. This rhetorical work is preceded by analyses of who uses the death penalty and why, noting especially the overlap between lynching and capital punishment; the status of exonerations, moratoriums, and contested scientific evidence; and recent court cases affecting executions. In addition to providing this informational overview of, and rhetorical road map to, debates about executions, we argue that each master trope suggests useful political strategies for advocating against the death penalty.     

Media metaphors: Two models for rhetorically criticizing the political television spot advertisement

In every election year, concern is raised about the spot commercial for and against various candidates. To date, little rhetorical‐critical research has been done concerning the political television commercial, though more has been done from a quantitative perspective. Two models of perspectives on the way the television spot message works are presented here—the transportation model and the evoked‐recall model. They imply the use of one of two message types: those using methods which focus on the logic or reasoning in the ad and those which focus on the ad from a metaphorical or dramatic methodology.