Abstract
The examination of the lengthy at the risk construct shows a substantial shift from the voluntary exposure to substantial harm to rhetorical use in recent decades. The at the risk construct already occurred in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when reporting heroic risk-taking. From the beginning there was also a rhetorical use of the construct which became more frequent in the twentieth century when heroic risk-taking almost disappeared. This construct varies only slightly in frequency over the centuries while the change in usage from substantial to rhetorical usage follows a general shift in news coverage in the second half of the twentieth century with a larger proportion of articles reporting opinion and lifestyle issues. While risk studies neglect the rhetorical dimension, they are not responsible for the pervasiveness of risk.
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Notes
- 1.
It contrasts with the involuntary exposure to risk increasingly reported on from the mid-twentieth century onwards (compare Zinn and McDonald 2018).
- 2.
The numbers refer to year_month_day of publication of the article the quote is taken from.
- 3.
The collocate pretentious (compare Appendix F) occurs together with sounding or is part of constructs with similar meaning such as “at the risk of coming over all pretentious” or “at the risk of being pretentious”.
- 4.
It should be noted that this requires relatively free and uncensored media which can resist becoming dominated by economic and political interest or moral panics and rumours.
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Zinn, J.O. (2020). From Substantial Risk to Social Relations and Rhetoric. In: The UK ‘at Risk’. Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20238-5_6
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