Organizational rhetoric in the prospectuses of elite private schools: unpacking strategies of persuasion
The way in which private schools use rhetoric in their communications offers important insights into how these organizational sites persuade audiences and leverage marketplace advantage in the context of contemporary educational platforms. Through systemic analysis of rhetorical strategies employed...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Published: |
Routledge
2012
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/14061 |
| _version_ | 1848748519622443008 |
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| author | McDonald, P. Pini, Barbara Mayes, Robyn |
| author_facet | McDonald, P. Pini, Barbara Mayes, Robyn |
| author_sort | McDonald, P. |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | The way in which private schools use rhetoric in their communications offers important insights into how these organizational sites persuade audiences and leverage marketplace advantage in the context of contemporary educational platforms. Through systemic analysis of rhetorical strategies employed in 65 ‘elite’ school prospectuses in Australia, this paper contributes to understandings of the ways schools’ communications draw on broader cultural politics in order to shape meanings and interactions among organizational actors. We identify six strategies consistently used by schools to this end: identification, juxtapositioning, bolstering or self-promotion, partial reporting, self-expansion, and reframing or reversal. We argue that, in the context of marketization and privatization discourses in twenty-first-century western education, these strategies attempt to subvert potentially threatening discourses, in the process actively reproducing broader economic and social privilege and inequalities. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T07:06:20Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-14061 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T07:06:20Z |
| publishDate | 2012 |
| publisher | Routledge |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-140612017-09-13T15:59:55Z Organizational rhetoric in the prospectuses of elite private schools: unpacking strategies of persuasion McDonald, P. Pini, Barbara Mayes, Robyn schools prospectus persuasion rhetoric education corporate branding The way in which private schools use rhetoric in their communications offers important insights into how these organizational sites persuade audiences and leverage marketplace advantage in the context of contemporary educational platforms. Through systemic analysis of rhetorical strategies employed in 65 ‘elite’ school prospectuses in Australia, this paper contributes to understandings of the ways schools’ communications draw on broader cultural politics in order to shape meanings and interactions among organizational actors. We identify six strategies consistently used by schools to this end: identification, juxtapositioning, bolstering or self-promotion, partial reporting, self-expansion, and reframing or reversal. We argue that, in the context of marketization and privatization discourses in twenty-first-century western education, these strategies attempt to subvert potentially threatening discourses, in the process actively reproducing broader economic and social privilege and inequalities. 2012 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/14061 10.1080/01425692.2012.632864 Routledge restricted |
| spellingShingle | schools prospectus persuasion rhetoric education corporate branding McDonald, P. Pini, Barbara Mayes, Robyn Organizational rhetoric in the prospectuses of elite private schools: unpacking strategies of persuasion |
| title | Organizational rhetoric in the prospectuses of elite private schools: unpacking strategies of persuasion |
| title_full | Organizational rhetoric in the prospectuses of elite private schools: unpacking strategies of persuasion |
| title_fullStr | Organizational rhetoric in the prospectuses of elite private schools: unpacking strategies of persuasion |
| title_full_unstemmed | Organizational rhetoric in the prospectuses of elite private schools: unpacking strategies of persuasion |
| title_short | Organizational rhetoric in the prospectuses of elite private schools: unpacking strategies of persuasion |
| title_sort | organizational rhetoric in the prospectuses of elite private schools: unpacking strategies of persuasion |
| topic | schools prospectus persuasion rhetoric education corporate branding |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/14061 |