Aristotle

Bakhtin MM

Baldry AP

Butler R

Campbell KK

Cap P

Edelman M

Fairclough N

Gross AG

Hall S

Halliday MAK

Herman ES

Kumar MJ

Lemke J

Lewis RL

Perelman C

Thibault PJ

Toulmin SE

Van Dijk TA

 This article examines precontextualization: the rhetorical act of previewing and contextualizing a future discursive event. I examine how an NBC News broadcast selected verbal–visual representations of the past in order to enact a context for an upcoming discourse moment: Colin Powell’s 2003 United Nations (UN) address. The article draws on appraisal analysis (Martin and White, 2005), multimodal video analysis (Baldry and Thibault, 2005) and scholarship on the rhetoric of futurity (e.g. Dunmire, 2011). I show that the NBC journalists who precontextualized Powell’s address on the night before its delivery presented viewers with a supportive context for understanding Powell’s argument. By representing Saddam Hussein as deceptive and even deserving of future violence, the journalists essentially pre-confirmed arguments that Powell employed the next day. More importantly, because the news representations were presented as factual, they allowed viewers little space to consider alternative viewpoints – and little reason to question or resist the seemingly inexorable push for war. </jats:p

John Oddo

Crossref

Discourse & Communication

Precontextualization and the rhetoric of futurity: Foretelling Colin Powell’s UN address on NBC News

Precontextualization and the rhetoric of futurity: Foretelling Colin Powell’s UN address on NBC News

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