Carnegie Mellon University
February 17, 2016

Rhetoric Ph.D. Student Authors Article in “Environmental Communication” Journal

Justin MandoJustin Mando

Ph.D. in rhetoric student Justin Mando’s first single-authored article is featured in a special edition of “Environmental Communication,” the official peer-reviewed journal of the International Environmental Communication Association.

The journal “provides a major international forum for the examination and evaluation of the role of communication in representing the environment,” according to the association’s website.

Mando’s article titled, “Constructing the vicarious experience of proximity in a Marcellus Shale public hearing” examines citizen testimony in a public hearing and explains how the description of places functions as an argumentative resource.

“It feels great to make a contribution on this issue,” he said. “I’ve been working on this for quite a while.”

Mando said he has been working on the analysis and writing for a year and a half, and the paper is derived from a chapter in his dissertation titled, “Fracking and the Construction of Proximity: The Public Rhetoric of Place in an Environmental Controversy.”

He faced a few challenges when meeting the expectations of the interdisciplinary team of reviewers at the journal, which helped him improve his writing.

“Being able to cross back and forth between my dissertation and the article was helpful to see the topic a little differently,” said Mando. “I read more deeply into environmental communication and discourse analysis to help make my analysis replicable. And, I hope now that people can use the framework I provide in their own work.”

Mando also hopes the article shows that discourse analysis and rhetorical analysis can be used together for analysis in environmental communication research and beyond. He credits Carnegie Mellon’s rhetoric program’s approach to making discourse analysis and rhetorical analysis complementary for helping him.

“It’s something I’m proud to be a part of and have made a contribution to,” he said.

Read Mando’s article.
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By Amanda King

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