Reading Response Exercise

Chapter 5, “The Environmental Impact Statement and the Rhetoric of Democracy” raises important questions about how rhetoric is and should be used as a tool. “Instrumental rationality” was a term that I had not come across before but I was interested to learn how governments' use it to steer public opinion by presenting a façade of personal choice and leeway but, in actuality, offering the public with options so limited that their choice is reduced almost to the point of nonexistence.

The alternative of “communicative rationality” in which a self-regulating system creates “imperatives [that] override the consciousness of the members integrating into them” sounds like an ideal democratic process of decision making. However I do worry that there me be some element of truth in the claim made by the instrumentalists that there is a potential for confusion within this system.

I find it interesting also to consider the rhetorical role that Killingsworth takes in Ecospeak. It is obvious that his bias is towards communicative rationality and favours public discourse that can be understood by the masses in contrast to the impenetrable scientific data produced by the creators of “instrumental rationality”. I do however find myself asking does this essay really make itself accessible to the masses? It is certainly not impenetrable like the governmental data the Killingsworth describes, but I wouldn't regard it as a user-friendly read either. Ecospeak resides very much within the realm of academic texts, which is by no means a problem, but it raises questions for me about how somebody from an academic position may be able to create rhetoric that is accessible to the masses, and what form this might take.