Examines the Reagan administration's crisis rhetoric after the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in September 1983. Asserts that errors in argumentation strategy undermined the American position, raising doubts about U.S. complicity in the incident, and enabling the Soviet Union to present a plausible explanation for its action.…

Examines the way competing interpretations of evidence form the basis for arguments over appropriate defense postures. Indicates that it is only as participants in a policy dispute move to develop validity standards appropriate to the particular dispute that resolution becomes possible. (MS)

Argues that the use of historical events as rhetorical artifacts has sustained cold war assumptions and attitudes; that rhetorical events provide composites for rhetorical histories which become the basis for argumentative appeals; and that these rhetorical histories continue to permeate American diplomacy in general and arms negotiations in…

It is widely believed that poetry in the Soviet Union has lost its place to newspapers and periodicals that have robbed literature of its readers. Prior to glasnost, non-official literature in the Soviet Union was more than a literary event; it was often the only mode of political discourse available to the literate public. This paper suggests…

The shooting down of KAL Flight 007, a South Korean airliner, by a Soviet jet fighter, and the resulting deaths of the 269 people on board, has brought into focus the Reagan's administration's equivocal relationship with the Soviet Union, provided insights into the channels of power in the Soviet military hierarchy, and led other nations to…

Examines samples from public discourse during the period 1961-1989, which reveal several different symbolic uses of the Berlin Wall. Suggests these differences reflect the never-completed struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. (KEH)

American foreign policy must operate within the parameters of public opinion, and governmental and non-governmental actors must educate the characteristically alienated citizenry concerning policy issues. Since rational discourse is of limited benefit in the process, advocates instead use verbal representations or metaphor to instill within the…

The symbolic presence of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) has been and continues to be the pivot point in all summitry rhetoric between the American President and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. To examine some of the rhetorical choices made by Gorbachev to dramatize his vision of why Ronald Reagan refuses to…