Rhetoric
Persuasion in Public Messages
Rhetoric. What a word. For many it’s spat out nearly as a curse word, or at least holds a negative connotation; for others, it serves as the ancient organizing principles concerning creation of persuasive public messages. Should you feel positively or negatively about messages that use rhetoric? Let’s find out.
Republican strategist Steve Schmidt interviewed by Rachel Maddow (28 May 2013):
“The country is changing demographically, and the Republican Party cannot represent a time in the eyes of the American people that is long gone and never coming back. We have to have solutions to today`s problems. We have to have reality-based-solutions, not just a bunch of rhetoric and not just the angry musings of talk radio hosts all for the American people.”
Commentator Michelle Fields on Fox News (25 Jan. 2014):
“That's why if you look at the polls since November he [President Obama] has dropped eight points with the American people when it comes to trustworthiness and honesty, because they know he's just filled with broken promises. It's just a bunch of rhetoric.”
So two professionals criticize an entire political party, and a sitting president, by utilizing the put-down: “a bunch of rhetoric.” Not promising for the concept of rhetoric.
Can anyone provide a defense? While Brian Vickers has written an entire 528-page book (published by Oxford Press) with the title In Defense of Rhetoric, perhaps Meg Greenfield can provide a quicker route toward appreciation of rhetoric:
“All critical public expression—true or untrue, extravagant or relatively restrained—is packed into the same crate and labeled ‘Dangerous: Rhetoric. Do Not Open.’”
“. . . rhetoric, with its proud ancestry, really means the most accomplished kind of oratory and argument.”
Plato, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Lucretia Mott, Gloria Steinem, Bruce Gronbeck, Richard Cherwitz, Celeste Condit, and Barack Obama all agree:
Rhetoric expressed via strong public messages can create persuasion;
hence, rhetoric is worth knowing about.
Rhetoric is both the process and substance of using language and symbol systems to create persuasion, and rhetoric is also the academic study of the process and substance of using language and symbol systems to create persuasion. So, rhetoric in the first case frequently goes with a modifier: conservative rhetoric, or LGBTQ+ rhetoric, or AAPI rhetoric, or gray panther rhetoric, etc., or in the second case, rhetoric is a systematic, academic study wherein persuasive public messages and practices are investigated. Original academic investigation of rhetoric within the American college and university system focused primarily on political speeches, but by the final decades of the 20th Century that focus widened to include verbal language-based public messages, visual messages, ads, social media, protest movements, metaphors, movies, television, and many other forms of public persuasive messages.
Since human communication frequently focuses on public persuasion, systematic investigation of such messages and cultural tools provides rich rewards to people willing to pursue rhetoric.
Explore Sources
Foss, Sonja K. Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice, 5th ed. Waveland Press, 2017.
Pierce, Dann L. Rhetorical Criticism and Theory in Practice, 4th ed. River Kishon, 2019.
Knowing how public persuasive messages are designed, constructed, built, and arranged can add much to your understanding of cultural persuasion. Learn more by clicking here: