Oral Rhetoric and Rhetorical Invention in Investor Relations: The Anatomy of a Quarterly Conference Call

Abstract

The study examines the influence of oral rhetoric on rhetorical invention in a quarterly conference call videocast, a rhetorical artifact from the field of investor relations. The material comes from a Finnish engineering company. A literature review outlines the theoretical background and draws attention to literature which points to a connection between orality and invention. Two critical questions guide the study. They focus on understanding the contextual features of the conference call and on analyzing how orality and invention interact in a given case. The study treats transcription as an integral part of the analysis, with remarks on transcribing non-native speech, selecting a unit of analysis, and deciding on a system of notational conventions. To respond to the first critical question, the rhetorical situation and its constituents are examined. The inventional analysis, which responds to the second critical question, reveals the following features in which orality and invention intersect: decisions to include and exclude themes, the treatment of substantive content categories, and the use of relational content as an inventional resource. The analysis is further extended with three inventional concepts that are applicable to all rhetorical messages: calls for judgments, arguments, and topoi. The analysis concludes that orality exerts a powerful influence on invention in the conference call and that oral rhetoric serves the rhetors’ goals in important ways. A discussion at the end summarizes the findings and considers their implications. The findings suggest that rhetorical criticism can offer its own contribution to the research on conference calls.

Key words: investor relations, conference call, rhetorical invention, oral rhetoric, rhetorical criticism, C-unit