Discourses at Play: A Rhetorical Exploration of Historical Crises Using the Language of Games

Todd Frobish explores a diverse set of historical crises through the lens of "rhetorical gameplay", an approach that serves as the intersection between rhetorical theory and game studies.

The field of rhetorical studies has yet to embrace the subject of gaming and play. While previous methods, such as dramatism, narrative analysis, fantasy theme, and more, are still powerful and useful as critical methods, Frobish argues that rhetorical events can be analyzed as games of persuasion, choice, and play. Testing this model through a textual examination of four large-scale rhetorical events (The Salem Witch Trials, the Covid Pandemic, Fall of the Berlin Wall, and the Bombing of Hiroshima), Discourses at Play argues that these major events constitute rhetorical games with Players, Rules, Match turns, and Outcomes, and focuses on the persuasive choices that guide these games toward eventual resolution. Through these events, readers will become familiarized with effective and ineffective communication strategies while employing the vocabulary of gaming to comprehend the persuasive mechanisms behind them.