Abstract
“Corporate Ventriloquism” examines coal industry front groups and the “Faces of Coal” campaign. Using theories of voice and appropriation, this chapter argues that much of the coal industry’s advocacy operates through a rhetorical process of “corporate ventriloquism,” in which the coal industry appropriates elements of neoliberalism and neoconservatism, adapts them to the cultural circumstances specific to coal, and “throws” its voice through “front groups” to create the impression of broad support for coal. Corporate ventriloquism masks the industry’s influence over the spaces and conditions for “voice.” The coal industry constructs a corporate voice that is positioned as a voice of citizenship, blurring and flattening the distinction between corporation and citizen in ways that are advantageous to the industry.
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Notes
- 1.
MSNBC is a 24-hour cable news station produced in the US.
- 2.
The Faces of Coal website no longer exists as such; it now directs users to a new campaign, called “Count on Coal” (“Count on Coal,” 2014).
- 3.
This definition is an updated version of the definition we offered in 2014 (Bsumek et al., 2014).
- 4.
Cooren’s larger project, which explores the implications of viewing all acts of communication through the lens of the ventriloquism metaphor, while intriguing, is not the focus of our project. In our view, broad application of the metaphor has the potential to render it irrelevant, which would leave us without a means for distinguishing intentional acts of ventriloquism, like the one analyzed in this chapter, from other forms of communication. Nonetheless, we are in general agreement that all acts of communication are always and already, at least to some degree, “constituted by” and “constitutive of” communicators, their acts, and the material world (including identities, norms, ideologies, organizations, etc.).
- 5.
Here, we use the term persona because based on its Latin and Greek roots the term implies that situated rhetorical constructions of voice imply “masking.” Robert E. Brooks argues “the concept of persona encourages rhetoricians to think of the ‘I’ created in a speech or writing as something constructed by the speaker or writer” and that persona is associated with the rhetorical construction of character in terms of ethos, voice, and identity (Brooke, 2001, p. 569).
- 6.
David Harvey (2005) situates neoconservative discourse as an extension of neoliberalism. Nationalism, militarism, and conservative “family values” are mobilized to sustain neoliberalism. Mark Fisher and Jeremy Gilbert argue that “neoliberalism has always depended upon commitment to traditionalism” (Fisher & Gilbert, 2014, p. 99). They note that both Thatcher and Reagan relied on “faith, flag, and family” to put together coalitions to enact their neoliberal agendas.
- 7.
For example, the number of coal miners employed in West Virginia has decreased from over 125,000 in 1945 to less than 25,000 in 2005. See (Bell & York, 2010, pp. 114–115). Shirley Stewart Burns, (2007) book Bringing Down the Mountains details the social, economic, and environmental costs of such shifts to residents of Appalachia.
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Schneider, J., Schwarze, S., Bsumek, P.K., Peeples, J. (2016). Corporate Ventriloquism. In: Under Pressure. Palgrave Studies in Media and Environmental Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53315-9_3
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