We demonstrate how persuasive strategies activate the middle ground’s discourses of responsible and sustainable business constructed in three social/environmental reports. Drawing on insights from impression management and communication studies, and Kenneth Burke’s understanding that rhetoric is all pervasive, we focus on Aristotle’s rhetorical proofs’s: ethos (credibility), logos (reason), and pathos (emotion). We study the social/environmental reports produced by three New Zealand companies during a wider discursive struggle over the proper’s role of business in society. We argue that persuasive strategies facilitate the social effects of middle ground’s discourse by making business-centred understandings of social responsibility and sustainability appear reasonable and business organisations appear trustworthy in their pursuit of sustainable development. This study complements discourse analyses of social/environmental reporting by providing a finer-grained picture of how language use influences how social actors think, feel and act.
