Us vs Them

I wanted to hold off on commenting on the Tannen book until I had gotten all the way through it to make sure I understood her text as a whole. However, I'm seeing a lot of what she's talking about in my daily life, and I think that's worth noting.

First of all, there is a section in chapter 2 about sports announcers. The argument Tannen was making here is not only that sports are inherently (excessively so) violent, but that the way the announcers interpret the events helps create the argument culture by emphasizing violence and creating metaphors and images for the viewers that create undue tension. The idea of sport being mediated by one or more particular media is something that's made me stop and ponder (think about the people you see at the ballpark with radios; think about watching/listening to the radio broadcast of the game over the internet; think about how much more there is to baseball than can be shown in a tiny, electrical box), but the fact that announcers could make hockey more violent (50-51) was too much. With baseball season just around the corner, let me know if you ever want to listen to some mediated sports fun this Spring.

Another way Tannen's argument became crystal clear to me, was after watching the State of the Union Address on Tuesday (early apologies to those of you who have already heard all this, or maybe it will help you digest your ideas). In my Presidential Rhetoric seminar, we closely examined Obama's speech: how it conformed to the generic expectations, the tone of his policy recommendations, etc. We also examined the context surrounding the speech: the media spectacle, how the first lady's choice to wear or not wear sleeves factored into the whole show, and most germane to Arguing Differently, was the Republican Response to the President's speech. The minority party has only been responding for a few decades now (never mind the Bachmann response now), but the fact that this response sets up a dichotomous, Us vs. Them, two sides and only two sides, shows us Tannen's analysis embodied in a real-life rhetorical moment.

I like the way this book takes television to task. The last good bashing of TV I read was Niel Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, and that was a year ago. Tannen is subtle though. She doesn't come right out and deplore TV, but I have a feeling that one of her major claims will ultimately revolve around media, the mediation of public discourse, and instead of thinking outside the box, exploding the box.