Designating Opponents in Empirical Research Reports: The Rhetoric of ‘Interestingness’ in Consumer Research

Numerous studies have called attention to the importance of rhetoric inscientific writing by focusing on arguments presented in scientific debate articles. In contrast, citation analysis studies indicate that empirical research articles are generally nonconfrontational in criticizing the work of other researchers. How do empirical research reports establish opposing perspectives to argue against? One rhetoricalstrategy is to be ‘interesting’, which, according to Davis (1971), is the author’s attempt to contradict a taken-for-granted assumption of the reader. Scholars in management, marketing, and consumer research have also cited Davis’ conception of ‘interestingness’ as a characteristic of research that is more influential and intellectually creative. This article presents textual evidence from a volume of the Journal of Consumer Research demonstrating that a majority of researcher-authors of these articles use ‘interestingness’ as a rhetorical framing device in the abstracts, introductions, and concluding sections of empirical articles. However, an analysis of article citations and references suggests that these ‘interesting’ articles are neither more influential nor more innovative than other articles in the same volume.