Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, Vol. 32, No. 3, May 2003 (䉷 2003)
Inconsistency as an Interactional Problem: A Lesson From Political Rhetoric Yair Neuman1,2 and Iris Tabak1 The classical theory of cognitive dissonance suggests that when two related cognitions are mutually inconsistent, one of them will change to restore consistency. However, Billig suggests that inconsistency is primarily an interactional problem between subjects and not a cognitive problem within a subject. In the current paper, we adopt Billig’s rhetorical approach to inconsistency and study inconsistency as an interactional problem in the context of political rhetoric. More specifically, we use Action-Implicative Discourse Analysis to identify the discursive strategies the former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, used to cope with the inconsistency between his national ideology and his contradictory behavior during his short term in office. KEY WORDS: Inconsistency; cognitive dissonance; discourse analysis; verbal interaction; interactional problem; Action Implicative DA; political rhetoric.
INTRODUCTION The notion that language is a medium for social action has been powerfully introduced to the modern mind by scholars such as Vygotsky (1986), Wittgenstein (1968), Austin (1962), and Harre and Gillett (1995). The “discovery” of language as a tool for social action is embedded in a long rhetorical tradition. This rhetorical tradition has become a major source of interest in the social sciences (e.g., Billig, 1987). Several researchers (Billig, 1987; Harre & Gillet, 1995) have even suggested that social psychology should study human activity through the rhetorical perspective rather than consider the human being as a computational machine. In the current paper, we adopt
The authors would like to thank Karen Tracy for her helpful comments and Abigal Ben Shitrit for her assistance in the data analysis. 1 Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel. 2 To whom all correspondence should be addressed: Department of Education, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel 84105. email:
[email protected] 251 0090-6905/03/0500-0251/0 © 2003 Plenum Publishing Corporation
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the framework of rhetorical psychology (Billig, 1987) and the novel discursive analysis methodology of Action Implicative Discourse Analysis (AID) (Tracy, 1995; Tracy & Anderson, 1999) to discuss the phenomenon of inconsistency from a rhetorical discursive perspective. That is, we discuss inconsistency not as a cognitive but as an interactional problem. More specifically, we study the discursive strategies that a gifted orator (the former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu) used to cope with the inconsistency between the national right wing ideology that he presented in his writings (Netanyahu, 1986; Netanyahu, 1993; Netanyahu, 1994) and his election campaign and his contradictory behavior during his short government.
INCONSISTENCY: NONRHETORICAL AND RHETORICAL APPROACHES The classical theory of cognitive dissonance suggests that when two related cognitions are mutually inconsistent, one of them will change to restore consistency. For example, in the classical study of Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) subjects performed boring experimental tasks and were asked to tell another subject, who was waiting for his turn, that the tasks were enjoyable. Some of the subjects received a large reward for their inconsistent behavior and the others received a small reward. It was found that low reward subjects reported more positive attitudes toward the boring experimental task than did participants who received a larger reward. This finding was explained as the attempt of subjects from the low reward group to solve the unpleasant inconsistency between the boring task they experienced and the contradictory behavior they manifested in front of another subject. The original theory of cognitive dissonance has been qualified by researchers who specified the conditions under which cognitive dissonance is supposed to occur. For example, the self-consistency approach to cognitive dissonance (Aronson & Carlsmith, 1963; Thibodeau & Aronson, 1992) suggests that dissonance is created when there is an inconsistency between one’s positive self-concept and a behavior that contradicts this positive selfconcept. That is, inconsistency per se is not a sufficient condition for dissonance but only as it is manifested in a context that threatens the positive self-concept of the subject. Another approach that questions inconsistency as a sufficient condition for dissonance (Cooper & Fazio, 1984) is sometimes referred to as the new look version of cognitive dissonance. This approach suggests that dissonance is created to the degree to which inconsistency produces aversive consequences for which the individual feels responsible (Scher & Cooper, 1989). This approach predicts that the subject would experience cognitive disso-
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nance in situations in which inconsistency exists, the inconsistency may lead to aversive consequences, and the subject will feel responsible for those consequences. The classical theory of cognitive dissonance received empirical support in a variety of research paradigms (for a comprehensive and up-to-date summary of research results see Harmon-Jones & Mills, 1999), although several researchers questioned those findings, their meaning, and the context that constitutes the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance (e.g., Billig, 1987; McGuire, 1969). A radical challenge to the classical theory of cognitive dissonance comes from Billig’s rhetorical approach to social psychology (Billig, 1987). This approach emphasizes the discursive, argumentative, and social aspects of psychological phenomena. Billig’s point of departure is the argument that studies of cognitive dissonance failed to show a change in attitudes as a result of inconsistency between two related cognitions. He locates inconsistency in a context of dialogue and argumentation and suggests that it is not inconsistency per se, that is disruptive but the possible criticism of inconsistency that raises the need for a defensive justification (Billig, 1987, p. 192). That is, inconsistency is described by Billig as an interactional problem rather than a cognitive problem. Billig proposes that we should look for the way inconsistency is settled without a change of attitudes. He points to the idea that inconsistency may rest peacefully unnoticed unless an audience recognizes it in the subject’s behavior and criticizes the subject for this inconsistency. This interpretation of inconsistency is very similar to the impression management theory (Tedeschi, Schlenker & Bonoma, 1971), which has been presented as an alternative theoretical account for the effect obtained in dissonance studies. The impression management theory suggests that people do not really change their attitudes because of inconsistency but try to create a favorable impression or avoid an unfavorable impression by appearing to have attitudes that are consistent with their behavior. Billig accepts this approach. However, he also emphasizes the major difference between the two approaches; although the impression management theory considers the positive impression as the ultimate aim of the subject, Billig considers it as only one component of the rhetorical situation that involves the justification of a certain standpoint while trying to avoid a critique launched against it. Therefore, when studying inconsistency through the rhetorical perspective we should not look for a simple change of belief but “look at the ways people resolve or dismiss inconsistency without any fundamental changes of belief” (Billig, 1987, p. 194). Beyond technicalities and minor methodological disagreements, the most significant difference between the rhetorical approach and the nonrhetorical
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approaches to inconsistency is located in the different paradigms in which the rhetorical and the nonrhetorical approaches are embedded. The rhetorical approach leans on a discursive paradigm (Harre & Gillett, 1995) that emphasizes the discursive nature of human beings, the active construction of meaning as a joint activity, and the contextual nature of human activity. In contrast, the nonrhetorical approaches to cognitive dissonance lean on a positivist research paradigm that ignores the way human activity is verbally mediated and emphasizes through experimental methodology the search for universal rules that govern the psychology of the individual. Our aim is not to judge between the two approaches but to suggest that there are many situations in which inconsistency could be better described as an ‘interactional problem’ rather than as a cognitive problem. That is, situations in which inconsistency does not exist a priori in the individual’s mind but is constituted as related and inconsistent when a certain subject interacts with certain others in a given argumentative context. Another derivative of the rhetorical approach to cognitive dissonance is that speech is the major medium in which the dissonance is constructed and settled. In this context, we should not expect inconsistency to result in a simple change of attitudes but in an attempt to settle the inconsistency that rises in certain social interactions between a speaker and the relevant reference group, through discursive moves. First and foremost this occurs by questioning the existence of the inconsistency (Billig, 1987), but it is also aided by using rhetoric that leans on other tactics for dissonance reduction that have been identified by classical theorists of cognitive dissonance (Harmon-Jones & Mills, 1999). Such tactics may include removing the dissonant cognition, adding new consonant cognitions, reducing the importance of dissonant cognitions, or increasing the importance of consonant cognitions. Reframing those tactics in a discursive context and replacing the term “cognition” with the term “argument” may support us with a fresh and different way for examining inconsistency.
THE CASE Billig’s psychorhetorical approach to inconsistency is persuasive and rich in theory, but as Billig himself admits (personal communications) it has not been the focus of an empirical discursive study. One interesting case for examining inconsistency from Billig’s rhetorical perspective is the case of the former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is an interesting case because despite obvious and publicly visible inconsistencies, which could cost him future votes and support, Netanyahu did not alter his attitudes after these inconsistent actions. This phenomenon cannot be fully explained by a classical cognitive dissonance perspective. Specifically, Netanyahu was
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leading a national right-wing party whose ideology he presented to the public. However, after being elected he made political moves, such as signing the Wye memorandum, that his right-wing supporters saw as contradicting his attitudes. Netantahu was severely criticized by the Israeli extreme right wing for this inconsistency. However, he did not change his attitudes as the nonrhetorical approaches to inconsistency would have predicted, although the inconsistency: (1) was evident to him, (2) was a serious threat to his positive self-concept, and (3) could result in negative consequences, as he himself argued in writings, interviews, and his first election campaign (e.g., Netanyahu, 1995). This case, which is a typical case of political life, invites a discursive attempt to examine the discursive strategies that Netanyahu used to cope with the inconsistency as an interactional problem. The major aim of this study is to identify discursive strategies Netanyahu used to cope with the inconsistency. A secondary aim is to provide evidence for the highly contextual and discursive nature of inconsistency by showing that the discursive strategies occur more frequently in situations in which the potential for criticism was more intense. We broached this secondary goal through a quantitative study. Although the use of mixed methods is not common in DA studies, we believe that in this study it is justified. In general, quantitative studies might violate some of the central tenets of the theoretical approaches that call for qualitative methods, such as preserving situated and contextual information. However, in this case, the quantitative results that present the differential distribution of particular discourse strategies in the corpus of speeches emphasizes the contextual nature of the phenomenon we examine. Therefore the quantitative analysis is consistent with the theoretical stance that invites qualitative rather than quantitative analysis. THE ANALYSIS Texts Forty-six speeches of Benjamin Netanyahu were used for the study. Most of the speeches were taken from the official Internet site of the Israeli Prime Minister’s office. The other speeches were taken from an Internet site of Netanyahu’s supporters. The Internet site of the Prime Minister’s office included 40 speeches in English. Originally some of the speeches were given in Hebrew but were translated to English. The first speech was Netnayahu’s inaugural speech on June 1996. The last speech was an election campaign speech given during 1999. Therefore the speeches cover the full time length of Netanyahu’s term of office. In addition the speeches were delivered in various contexts and were addressed to a variety of audiences.
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The DA Methodology: Action Implicative Discourse Analysis (AID) AID is a novel methodology for discourse analysis developed by Tracy (1995). The major aim of AID is to identify the interactional problems interlocutors experience during a given form of discourse (e.g., emergency calls) and the discursive strategies the interlocutors apply to handle those interactional problems. For example, in a recent study, Tracy and Anderson (1999) examined citizens’ calls to the police. Those calls reported on a certain problem the caller had with someone s(he) knew. This situation involves an interactional difficulty because on the one hand the caller should convince the police officer of the seriousness of the complaint, and on the other hand avoid the impression that his complaint is not biased against someone with whom s(he) had a relationship. In other words, the citizens “need to not only characterize the problematic action/event, but they must position themselves in relation to the complained-about person.” (p. 202). After identifying this dilemma, Tracy and Anderson (1999) identify several discursive strategies citizens used to address the dilemma. For example, the first strategy that was identified involved the use of a generic term, such as “a man” “someone” or “a person,” to present the related other to the police officer. The use of generic terms “masks” the relational position of the caller with regard to the subject of the complaint and therefore supports the complaint with an appearance of “objectivity.” AID is well suited to our aims in this paper, because it seeks to identify problems of communicative practice (Tracy, 1995). The need to resolve the inconsistency between a public official’s stated promises and subsequent actions when giving a public address constitutes such a problem. AID further focuses on identifying the conversational techniques for managing these problems, which is precisely our goal in demonstrating how inconsistencies can be resolved through discursive strategies, rather than through attitude change. In the following sections we first present the communicative problem, which we identify and on which we focus our analysis, and then we present a set of strategies used by Netanyahu to navigate this problem. THE PROBLEM: APPEARING TO MAINTAIN INCONSISTENT POLICIES Elected public officials have an unwritten contract with their constituents, supporters, and fellow party members to advance party lines and fulfill promises proclaimed during the election campaign. However, living up to this contract in full is virtually impossible. The political arena is complex and dynamic, requiring a careful balance and orchestration between maintaining continuity with earlier policy, maintaining long-term political
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alliances, and responding to rapid changes in circumstance, any of which might result in a shift in policy or an implicit retraction of former decrees. In some cases, promises may even have been made simply to appease certain interest groups and win over groups of votes, with no real intention of fulfillment. Yet these shifts, while often carried out strategically, are not without cost. Votes can be lost, supporters turned around, and party stature undermined. Therefore there is an onus on the official—particularly one who wishes to be reelected—to appease, make amends, and whitewash any apparent inconsistencies in policy. Public appearances, speeches, and press conferences are some of the most prominent arenas in which the candidate can come under attack, having these inconsistencies raised and his civic integrity challenged. Yet these also present an opportunity for the candidate to preempt these strikes and ameliorate the situation. In this paper we describe how a specific official used a set of rhetorical strategies to overcome such inconsistencies and appease his potentially hostile audience. We present a set of rhetorical strategies used by Binyamin Netanyahu in the course of public speeches to reconcile inconsistencies between his party line and some of his actions during his term in office. Two political moves Netanyahu made were his major source of difficulty. The first was signing the Hebron agreement, and the second was signing the Wye memorandum. In both cases, he was obliged to withdraw from Israeli territories and to deliver them to the Palestinian authority. These moves were considered by his right wing supporters as inconsistent with the national ideology Netanyahu presented to them in his election campaign. In the next sections, we present some of the strategies that Netanyahu used in speeches that followed these problematic events. STRATEGIES FOR RECONCILING POLITICAL INCONSISTENCIES Shifting the Blame: If There Is an Inconsistency, I Am Not Responsible For It One strategy Netanyahu used was to implicitly recognize that some inconsistency existed between his stated platform and his official actions, but that this inconsistency was unavoidable, thus minimizing his personal responsibility for the act. He claims that the inconsistent decision was imposed by agreements passed by the previous government, and he has no choice but to respect them. Consider the following excerpt, which appears fairly early in an address to the Knesset (Israeli parliament). The address takes place shortly after the signing of the Hebron agreement, which states
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that Israel will withdraw from territories—a stance that is in conflict with Netanyahu’s right-wing party line. Several keywords in the speech are emphasized for the following discussion of the text. Excerpt 1 Knesset Address on Hebron Protocol, Jerusalem, January 16, 1997; Netanyahu addresses the members of the Israeli parliament 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.
Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Members of Knesset These are difficult days. Every step that we take in the city of the patriarchs and the matriarchs is difficult, even when we redeploy in Hebron. We are not leaving Hebron, we are not redeploying from Hebron. In Hebron, we touch on the very basis of our national consciousness, the bedrock of our existence. Everyone whose heart beats with national feeling, with Jewish feeling, cannot help but feel the weight of the responsibility placed on our shoulders, and supreme obligation to preserve our heritage. At the same time, we cannot ignore reality. I must say to the Members of the Knesset and the citizens of Israel that we inherited a difficult reality. The agreements signed by the previous governments are binding upon the Government of Israel. We said this in the election campaign, we said this after the election campaign, before the establishment of the government and afterwards. These agreements which we inherited were framework agreements, full of breaches, and we criticized them— and rightly so—because they did not take into proper account the problem of security; they did not take into account the full significance of the agreements for our national security; they did not demonstrate sufficient concern for the fate of the settlers in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, including the fate of the Jewish community in Hebron. We inherited difficult agreements. This is the reality. We could try to ignore it. We chose not to ignore this reality.
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Netanyahu opens his speech with a positioning of Hebron as an emotionally, religiously, and historically significant landmark for the JewishIsraeli people that will never be forsaken (lines 8 and 9). This opening forms a prelude for his next remarks, which constitute the rhetorical strategy of shifting the blame, but more accurately of positioning the emotionally and historically loaded issue of Hebron as against the pragmatic commitment to an agreement his government inherited. In this sense, Netanyahu is not simply shifting the blame to the former government. Doing so might position him as a weak political leader who is not able to influence the political arena beyond the constriants imposed on him by the past. Netanyahu’s move is far more sophisticated, because he is positioning himself at the crossroad of national-religious-historical ethos and the pragmatic-rational demands. By portraying his moves as an attempt to settle the emotional-rational conflict, Netanyahu legitimitizes his policy as pragmatic and himself as a national and rational leader. To recall, Aristotle identified three main components of rhetoric: ethos, pathos, and logos. By portraying his political moves as both loyal to the Zionsit heritage and the religious city of Hebron, Netanyahu clearly manipulates pathos. By portraying the constraints he is facing, he is clearly a rational orator that supports arguments in favor of his stance (logos). By describing himself as loyal to the historical ethos but at the same time as struggling with the constraints in a pragmatic way, Netanyahu dismisses the possible criticism of inconsistency and establishes his leadership as a national and pragmatic leader (the ethos). Those strategic moves are evident in the speech. Netanyahu invokes two justifications for why he was bound to uphold earlier agreements. The first justification is from a pragmatic standpoint: “we cannot ignore reality” (line 14), “This is the reality” (line 33). The term “reality,” marked in the above speech, is one of Netanyahu’s keywords and it appears four times at the above excerpt. The second justification relates to the “honor code” and unwritten rules that exist in the workings of governments “The agreements signed by the previous governments are binding upon the Government of Israel” (lines 17 and 18). Note how in asserting the necessity to uphold earlier agreements Netanyahu states that this binding falls upon “the Government of Israel”— an institution larger than any one individual that transcends terms of office and party affiliations. By deferring to a higher authority, Netanyahu places stronger rhetorical power on the claim that he must adhere to the earlier agreements because of the unwritten rules of government. This choice of words helps shift the blame from Netanyahu as an individual who might be accused of inconsistency to Netanyahu as an actor in an ongoing network of activities.
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Positive Reformulation: I Had No Choice but To Be Inconsistent, but Look How I Turned a Bug into a Feature A second strategy that Netanyahu used was to criticize the original agreements made by his predecessors while emphasizing provisions he introduced into the agreement he signed—stipulations more palatable to his right-wing affiliates and supporters. In using this strategy of positive reformulation Netanyahu is again working toward substituting the notion of “agreement as offending inconsistency” with alternative and more positive connotations. In terms of classical cognitive dissonance theory he is emphasizing the importance of the “consosnant cognition” to reduce the inconsistency. In particular, and in discursive terms, he is trying to instantiate the agreement as reflecting the efforts his cabinet made toward “saving” the population from the ill-fated agreements signed by the previous government and toward initiating measures that conform to right-wing policy. In Excerpt 2 below, we see this strategy of positive reformulation unfold over a series of statements that start out emphasizing the differences in position between Netanyahu’s government and his predecessors’ government (lines 3–7), followed by the list of positive measures the Netanyahu leadership introduced (lines 8–12). Excerpt 2 Knesset Address on Hebron Protocol, Jerusalem, January 16, 1997; Netanyahu addresses the members of parliament 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.
Our viewpoint and our objectives are completely different. We do not want to remove the Jewish community from Hebron. We want to preserve and consolidate it. We do not want to remove ourselves from Hebron; we want to remain in Hebron. From this different objective are derived those items, those paragraphs, those components, which were inserted into the agreement as a result of the negotiations. The agreement today is of course much broader, much more detailed. But the major point that I wish to convey to the Members of Knesset with regard to our policy is that it is our different objective, in this case, to remain in Hebron, that dictates in the details in the agreement before you. From this different objective, we saw to it that there would be areas of separation, we removed the
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rifles, we saw to it that there would be an IDF presence in the territories overlooking the Jewish community and the major routes, through joint patrols. We saw to it that the Jewish community would be protected from high Palestinian buildings that could threaten or encroach on Jewish homes. We saw to improved and more numerous security mechanisms between us and the Palestinian security forces in order to make possible a reality of security, a reality of living, a reality of development and consolidation for the Jewish community. I can therefore say with confidence that this is an agreement that is better, more secure, more responsible than that which we inherited.
Recall the distinction that Netanyahu created between himself as the marginal, almost passive, agent in maintaining/inheriting the agreement versus the central and active agent in criticizing the ideology behind the “inherited agreement.” Similarly, in this excerpt, Netanyahu casts himself and fellow cabinet members as active agents in the construction of more favorable (more right-wing–oriented) provisions in the agreement (lines 17–22). By signing the Hebron agreement, Netanyahu has positioned himself in the eyes of his right-wing supporters and party members as aligning with left-wing ideology, and therefore as inconsistent. In this excerpt (excerpt 2 above), Netanyahu tries to set himself apart from the left-wing government and ideology by continually and explicitly noting that he and his cabinet maintain a different stance (lines 1–6). Moreover, he repeatedly and explicitly states that this difference is the source of the more favorable terms of the new agreement: “From this different objective are derived those items, those paragraphs, those components, which were inserted into the agreement” (lines 8–10). If the source of the new provisions is a “different from the left” ideology, then it is the product of a right-wing ideology. In framing the source of the new (more favorable to the right) stipulations as rightwing, Netanyahu eliminates any semblance of inconsistency, because signing this agreement does not represent the inconsistent acts of a rightwing leader executing left-wing policy, but rather, the consistent acts of a right-wing leader executing right-wing policy. In a wider rhetorical perspective this strategy seems to be close to the idea of rhetoric as manipulation of self and nonself as described by Neuman, Bekerman, and Kaplan (2002). Neuman et al. (in press) argue that a crucial process in rhetoric is the situational manipulation of the boundaries between the audience and the speaker collective self. Netanyahu’s political moves
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position him in a difficult rhetorical identity crisis because he may be considered by his supporters as moving from their collective group to the “others”/the nonself/the left wing. The above rhetorical strategy is heavily invested in the attempt to discursively reestablish Netanyahu’s identity as a member and a leader of a given collective in contrast with the “others” collective and differentiated identity. Whitewashing: What Inconsistency? There Is No Inconsistency! Unlike the almost apologetic posture that Netanyahu assumes at the beginning of the Kenesset Address on Hebron Protocol, stating that although withdrawing from Hebron is in conflict with his views, he has no choice but to uphold the commitments of the previous government, in the following speech his posture is definitive and unabashed. In this speech (see Excerpt 4 below), Netanyahu employs a whitewashing strategy by usurping the inconsistent act of signing the agreement into his presentation, or rerepresentation, of his stated campaign promises. Excerpt 4 Likud Members during Hanukkah Ceremony, Tel Aviv, December 17, 1998; Netanyahu addresses the members of his Likud Party: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.
We have a clear policy which I and my colleagues in the cabinet have been consistently steering since we were elected to lead the country, and this is exactly what we promised our voters. I will not tear the Oslo agreement or the Wye accord, of course, to pieces as some people in the right demand from me. Neither am I going to effect a withdrawal without getting something in return, as those in the left demand from me. We said that we were committed to the agreements and that we would implement them, while reducing the withdrawals, upholding security, and meticulously insisting on reciprocity. This is what I promised and this is what I did.
In the excerpt above Netanyahu does not attempt to reconcile or reframe the inconsistent act of signing the agreement; he simply skirts the issue of inconsistency by plainly stating that these actions represent the policy he and his cabinet presented since their election campaign (lines 1–4 and 14). In this excerpt he sets up both the typical right-wing and the typical left-wing views as straw men and as opposed to his stated platform
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(lines 5–7 and 8 and 9). In lines 10–13 he describes his (seemingly inconsistent) actions as a restatement of his campaign promises, that is, “We said that we were committed to the agreements and that we would implement them, while reducing the withdrawals. . . .” In line 14, Netanyahu repeats, and thus emphasizes, the idea that his actions represent a veridical enactment of his stated promises: “This is what I promised and this is what I did.” THE QUANTITATIVE PART OF THE STUDY The major aim of this study was to discuss inconsistency as an interactional dilemma and to identify discursive strategies that aim to solve this difficulty. However, one may argue that Netanyahu’s discursive moves characterize general rhetorical norms common in political rhetoric and that there is no convincing evidence that Netanyahu used those discursive moves as a response to a given context. That is, there is no convincing evidence that the generation of specific discursive moves is the result of the speaker’s sensitivity to a given threatening rhetorical context that may challenge his consistency. Is there a way to support the claim that Netanyahu’s discursive moves indicate his sensitivity to specific rhetorical contexts? We suggest that if Netanyahu was using the discursive moves strategically to solve a situational and rhetorical inconsistency, then we should expect to find a more intensive use of those strategies in rhetorical contexts in which he might be attacked for his inconsistency. The quantitative part of this study was aimed to investigate this suggestion. Identifying the Target Speeches The two problematic political moves were signing the Hebron agreement and signing the Wye memorandum. In both cases, he was obliged to withdraw from Israeli territories, which is in conflict with right-wing ideology. We identified four speeches (the target speeches) that were embedded in a threatening rhetorical context. We expected to find in those speeches an intensive use of the discursive strategies we identified previously. The first speech (speech number 10) was a “Knesset address on the Hebron Protocol.” This speech was given in front of the Israeli parliament after the Hebron agreement was signed. The specific audience of the speech included the national right-wing supporters of Netanyahu who protested against the agreement Netanyahu was trying to “sell” to the public and the members of the parliament. The Israeli left wing supported Netanyahu on both the Hebron agreement and Wye memorandum; thus it was the right wing that was Netanyhau’s main obstacle in “selling” the agreements to the parliament and the public. It was his right-wing supporters he was trying to persuade, and we hypothesized that inconsistency as an interactional problem would emerge in this context.
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The second speech was speech number 11. This speech also concerns the Hebron agreement. It was given in a press conference after the agreement was signed. In this case, it was not a specific audience Netanyahu faced as a possible source of criticism. The possible source of criticism was the larger audience of Netanyahuu’s supporters that were watching/listening to the press conference and to which Netanyahu addressed his speech in an effort to gain support. The third speech (speech number 41) was given at the Wye River memorandum signing ceremony in Washington. The characteristics of this situation were similar to the situation of speech number 10 in the sense that Netanyahu was trying to achieve the support of his right-wing supporters for the agreement he had signed and was exposed to a possible criticism for his inconsistency. The last target speech (speech number 45) also involves a period close to the Wye memorandum. This speech was given in front of the Likud (Netanyahu’s party) members during a Hanukkah ceremony in the party’s offices in Tel Aviv. This speech was one of the two listed speeches that Netanyahu gave directly in front of an audience that was composed mostly of his right-wing supporters. We assumed that this context too, specifically after signing the Wye memorandum, would trigger situational inconsistency and Netanyahu’s attempt to resolve it through discursive moves. The Content Analysis Unlike the qualitative analysis, in which discursive strategies cut across several utterances, the quantitative content analysis identified strategies at the utterance level. This was necessary to establish a reliable and valid unit of measurement. All the speeches were subjected to content analysis. All the speeches were analyzed in several phases by research assistants. To prevent possible bias they were not informed about the general aim of their analysis. All the speeches were segmented by the research assistants into sentences based on the sign of period at the end of the sentence. Second, each sentence was segmented according to semantic features into basic propositions. That is, each sentence was reduced to its most basic meaningful utterances. In the third phase of the analysis, the utterances were coded according to the discursive strategies we identified. The coding process was conducted by two graduate students who coded the speeches independently according to clear operational definitions of the content categories and were asked to judge whether a given utterance corresponds to one of the discursive strategies. Coding reliability was measured by calculating the two independent judges’ agreement on the categories. It was found that across 10 randomly chosen speeches (approximately 22% of
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the texts), the two independent judges agreed on 92% of the utterances coded. The sum of utterances corresponding to the discursive strategies was calculated for each speech. The data were than translated into z-scores to allow comparison of the speeches beyond the unique particularities of each speech (e.g., speech length). The Results of the Quantitative Analysis Figure 1 presents the frequency of the content categories in each speech. We can see that the use of the discursive strategies was far more intensive in the speeches we a priori defined as the “target-speeches,” speeches immediately following an inconsistent act. These results support evidence for our argument that the use of the discursive strategies was strategic and aimed to rhetorically solve a problem in situational inconsistency. It may be argued that the differential distribution of the strategies results from a short-term impact of Netanyahu’s political moves rather than from his sensitivity to the rhetorical context. If this was the case, we would expect the use of the strategies to diminish over time and for subsequent speeches to consistently display a low frequency of strategies. However, in the actual frequency count we see that after a period of diminished use (see speeches 42–44) there is a second “spike” of increased use in speech 45. This suggests that contextual factors play a role in triggering or not triggering the need to recognize and confront inconsistencies. This is in line with Billig’s rhetorical reinterpretation of the notion of inconsistency that we discussed in the introduction.
Fig. 1. Frequency of strategy use across speeches.
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CONCLUSIONS Proponents of cognitive dissonance theory have lately celebrated the publication of a new volume entitled: Cognitive dissonance: Progress on a pivotal theory in social psychology (Harmon-Jones & Mills, 1999). In their introduction to this volume, the editors argue that “Dissonance theorists currently agree that genuine cognitive changes occur in dissonance studies” and that those cognitive changes are motivated by “a form of psychological discomfort” (p. 15). The case we present in this study seems to contradict the most basic agreements between cognitive dissonance theorists. However, and as we previously noted, our aim is not to reconcile rhetorical and nonrhetorical approaches to inconsistency nor to pass judgement on either approach. Rather, we consciously chose a theoretical stance and followed it to illustrate inconsistency as an interactional problem in the specific context of political rhetoric. Our general conclusion is that while analyzing inconsistency, as manifested in the public sphere, we should carefully examine the unique context that may raise the inconsistency and the way inconsistency is realized and resolved through rhetorical tactics. A close attention should be made to the linkage between inconsistency and face-work. To recall, Goffman (1959) coined the term “face” to describe the public self-image that people, such as elected politicians, are so concerned about. Inconsistency, as used against a politician in a public-argumentative context, may be considered as a facethreatening act, that is, as an act of questioning the positive face of the politician. Consistency (or coherence) is highly appreciated in the Western culture; therefore such a face-threatening act cannot be left without a response by the threatened politician. The natural way of responding to this threat is by arguing with it as illustrated in this study. In this context, it is important to avoid the old mechanistic epistemology while analyzing inconsistency through the discursive perspective. Although it is tempting to consider Netanyahu as simply manipulating his audience through rhetorical tricks to mask his inconsistency, this mechanistic metaphor of objects and forces is not an adequate one. As Bakhtin (1986) has already commented, the speaker does not expect passive understanding that only duplicates his own idea in someone else’s mind but expects “response, agreement, sympathy, objection” (p. 69) and other active utterances of the other that constitute the process of speech communication. In Netanyahu’s speeches it seems that the objection Netanyahu expected to confront from his audience in certain contexts was the process that motivated his rhetorical moves. Following this line of reasoning, we should be aware of the enormous importance of the context in the analysis of discursive phenomena in general and inconsistency in particular. Indeed, context, rather than being a mere background for interactions between people, provides an interpretative frame
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through which participants construct and reconstruct the meaning of their psychosocial realm through discourse. The concept of context is crucial for the understanding of verbal interactions but theoretically obscure. This state of affairs calls for a deeper examination of context as a theoretical structure and its relevance for understanding verbal interactions.
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