Encouraging Mass Action: A Rhetorical Analysis of Team Authored Email Messages to Union Members

Catherine WynSculley

Abstract

In February 2007 the Professional, Administrative and Support Staff (PASS) of the University of Cape Town (UCT) went on strike for the first time. Up until that point the salary negotiations had been severely strained as a dismissive management tried to force the hand of a seemingly lacklustre Employees Union (UCTEU). A new team of union executives came together over the previous 6 months. Dedicated to the plight of workers, they put in enormous effort to control the sequence of events leading up to and in the resolution of the strike. At UCT, using electronic mail is a main channel for communication and is a deeply embedded cultural norm. The selected emails are public texts – even though they are specifically crafted to inform and educate UCTEU members, these messages are important enough to be posted to mailing lists and circulated to non-unionised individuals in the UCT community, including UCT management, and printed for departmental notice boards. In this paper rhetorical analysis shows how the five email communications sent by the union executive to members during the strike events encouraged workers to stand up for their rights and be more visible in their protest against the implementation of what they saw as an unfair wage distribution. The emails are evidence of the ways in which the UCTEU executive successfully created and edited persuasive texts (as a team) using consistent messages, couched in minimalist language, sent through a modest email system. Timing and responsiveness of the UCTEU executive to members’ needs are important factors in the development of the union’s rhetorical style. The Art of Rhetoric is 2500 years old, systematised by Aristotle in his book On Rhetoric. While adapted in Ancient Rome by Cicero and Quintilian, and used throughout the medieval period (especially in the political, educational and religious spheres), the last century has seen a revival of rhetorical analysis, notably in the realms of advertising and multimedia. The basics of rhetoric theory relies on understanding the logical and emotional appeals in a text, taking into account the impact of the personal attributes of those who generated the message, as well as the broader context.

Keywords: strike, rhetoric, rhetorical analysis, email communication, union members, UCTEU, University of Cape Town

About the Author

Catherine WynSculley obtained her MPhil in Rhetoric Studies from the University of Cape Town in 2004. Her research interests include the rhetorical strategies of the South African Ministers of Finance from the mid-1980s to the present, analysis of political sermons, rhetoric of emerging Communities of Practice and the rhetorical dimension of Passive Institutional Controls at long term nuclear waste repositories. She works as a publications co-ordinator in the Career Development Programme (a department within the Centre for Higher Education Development) at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is also an executive member of the UCT Employees Union.