Reification and Evidence in Rhetoric on Economic Recession: Some Methods Used in the UK Press,Final Quarter 1990

This paper examines reasoning and rhetoric about economic recession in selected newspapers. This is an interesting topic for discourse analysis because it is a site of argumentation. We begin by asking: (1) epistemological questions (e.g. What evidential basis is drawn on in rhetoric about recession?) and then (2) ontological questions (e.g. How is recession pictured? and How is recession coordinated with the social world?). We examine the management of evidence and definitions concerning whether or not there is a recession. We then examine the entities invoked, showing how (a) a range of metaphors depict the recession as either an uncontrollable agent or as a controllable thing; and (b) rhetorical strategies used by both critics and supporters of the government collude in picturing the economy as a realm abstracted from social life.