ecology

Our analysis of EIS rhetoric is based on a 1985-86 study, in which (with the help of Dean Steffens) we subjected to rhetorical criticism a library of EISs developed for projects in central New Mexico and filed in the Socorro District Office of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). In addition, we analyzed the U.S. Department of the Interior Editorial Management Handbook for Environmental Impact Statement and Environmental Assessment, and we interviewed a number of writers and resource managers working in the Socorro office. While thesis writing is a problem for you, our the best Custom thesis writing writers are ready to assist you! In 1988, we followed up the initial study with telephone interviews. Our aim was to get at the particular traits of the government expert's rhetoric as a step toward evaluating the effectiveness of the EIS as a communicative document. The predominant tone in the BLM documents is one of disinterest. The perspective requires distance from subject matter and audience. Despite any personal feelings the various authors may have -- several we interviewed expressed a deep love of the region they studied and a commitment to the New Mexican people as well as to environmentalist values -- the language of the expert nullifies potential identifications with the ordinary reader and with the environment that is examined, both the "physical environment" (land, air, water, plants, animals) and the "social environment" (people). The objective tone does, however, preserve a social identification within the community of experts; the very identity of the expert depends on this language of disinterest and distance. As surely as it objectifies the land, water, air, plants, animals, and people that constitute the environment under study, this objectification extends even to the self -- the personality of the author is expunged by impersonal constructions and passive voice -- and to those of the author's immediate social group (other technical experts reduced to names attached to studies that compose the technical "literature"). This implicit denial of the self attempts to replace a subject-subject relation (between the authors and their readers) and a subject-object relation (between the authors and the environment in question) with an ideal object-object relation between the expert and the objects of study. The EIS author presents indirectly a self-portrait of a data-gathering machine, a computer with an optical scanner and word-processing capabilities.