Introduction: Rhetoric and Public Policy

In both conceptual and critical investigations, scholars in fields like political science have shown an appreciation for rhetoric as a political force, even as they sometimes struggle with explicating its intellectual history and contemporary theory.3 Judging from their reception of rhetoric, scholars in other fields struggle to make a rhetorical perspective cohere (rather than appear as a series of techniques) and to integrate a rhetorical perspective in their own work.4 Our reluctance to incorporate metaperspectives into our analyses likely arises from many sources, including personal predilections and disciplinary culture. [...] my contribution analyzes arguments over Social Security.