Making claims on value: The rhetoric construction of aesthetic innovation by ethnic minority creatives

Abstract

Conceptualizing aesthetic innovation as the social and cultural act of claiming value, we investigate how ethnic minority creatives rhetorically construct their work as innovative, while dealing with contradictory discourses of ethnicity. From our analysis of the rhetorical schemes they deploy to construct aesthetic innovation, three types of argumentations emerged: (1) argumentations relating one’s creative work to one’s unique self and biography through liaisons of coexistence; (2) argumentations establishing aesthetic innovation vis-a`-vis other products and traditions through comparisons and model schemes and (3) argumentations highlighting power struggles between the creative and some ‘significant others’ in the creative industries through personifications and hierarchies. This study contributes to a better understanding of rhetorical strategies to construct aesthetic innovation focusing on the role social identities play in this process. More generally, it shows the suitability of rhetoric theory and method to analyse claims on value.