Social and political dynamics depend in part on the emotional reactions of individuals. As a result, these reactions are targeted by players in the game of public discourse, such as journalists and politicians. The tactics available to these players are shaped by the intra-individual structure of emotion. In this chapter, I propose a framework for charting public discourse tactics using appraisal dimensions—the abstract features that individuals assess when appraising the meaning of a situation in light of important motives. I sketch hypotheses about common tactics used by journalists and politicians to shape the relevance, congruence, accountability, controllability, and certainty appraisals of objects of public discourse.