Grim Fairy Tales: The Rhetorical Construction of American Welfare Policy

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Gring-Pemble asserts that the role of language in shaping policy options is rarely studied and poorly understood. She seeks to analyze congressional hearings and debates on welfare to understand the role of language in framing welfare policy and contemporary welfare discussions. She reviews welfare history in the United States and provides a rhetorical analysis of welfare deliberations. In the process she illustrates the significance of language and ideology in shaping American social policy outcomes.

Reviews

Very much as Christopher Martin does in Framed! Labor and the Corporate Media (CH, Jun'04), Gring-Pemble demonstrates that the way an issue is presented strongly influences the way it is handled. The present volume goes beyond Framed! in that the author applies sophisticated rhetorical theory to her subject. The "fairy tales" of the title are the anecdotal "evidence" used by politicians to justify welfare policy decisions....Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers.-Choice
"Very much as Christopher Martin does in Framed! Labor and the Corporate Media (CH, Jun'04), Gring-Pemble demonstrates that the way an issue is presented strongly influences the way it is handled. The present volume goes beyond Framed! in that the author applies sophisticated rhetorical theory to her subject. The "fairy tales" of the title are the anecdotal "evidence" used by politicians to justify welfare policy decisions....Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers."-Choice

Author Bio

LISA M. GRING-PEMBLE is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric at George Mason University.