Theoretical Concepts and Tools: Rhetoric and Culture

Abstract

This chapter presents the conceptual framework used to analyse and compare official agency talk. It describes in detail concepts from both the New Rhetoric and Grid Group Cultural Theory (GGCT). Both of these perspectives offer different heuristic tools for comparing similarities and differences in agency talk across The Netherlands, Sweden and Australia. They are particularly appealing to this study because they are sensitive to how similar reform practices and even labels, such as agencies, can be situated in entirely different discursive structures. In answering the research question of how agency reform has been constructed across different political cultures they provide a way to distinguish both the rhetorical styles and cultural flavour of agency talk. They can also be used to examine how these aspects of national agency talk have changed or remained stable over the period studied.