Herndl and Brown

The authors of this piece are Carl G. Herndl and Stuart C. Brown, two Professors both from New Mexico State University. Herndl is an Associate Professor of English, and Brown is a Rhetorical History and Criticism Professor. The audience of this piece is scholars, other rhetoricians, other environmental rhetoricians to be more specific, and maybe even just environmentalists too. Herndl and Brown say that rhetoric can be extremely influential in how something is perceived, and how people may respond to it. For example, Herndl and Brown talk about a direct mailing that was intended to raise awareness and funds about cranes and their loss of habitat. However, the card talked about the cranes in ways such as “prime real estate” and a small donation could get it its “first motel stop”. Even though they are trying to help and support the cranes and their habitats, by talking about them in ways such as real estate, they are commercializing them, and reinforcing the ideology and values that have lead to their loss of habitat in the first place. The main argument of this text is that the environment is a concept and an associated set of cultural values. Additionally, they say that there is no environment separate from the words we use to represent it, and “how it is affected by our actions only through the language we have developed to talk about these issues.” For example, in the first page of the  text, it talks about environmental discourse, and how many people and organizations have debated over the environment, while not knowing or realizing that the environment is a result of discourse. The purpose of this article is to inform and raise awareness about how the way we talk about the environment can have very strong and very real effects on it, based on the way it makes people think, feel, and respond.