Politics and Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of speech and persuasion, the study of argument and, in Classical
times, an essential component in the education of the citizen. For rhetoricians,
politics is a skill to be performed and not merely observed. Yet in modern democ-
racies we often suspect political speech of malign intent and remain uncertain
how properly to interpret and evaluate it. Public arguments are easily dismissed
as ‘mere rhetoric’ rather than engaged critically, with citizens encouraged to be
passive consumers of a media spectacle rather than active participants in a politi-
cal dialogue.
This volume provides a clear and instructive introduction to the skills of the
rhetorical arts. It surveys critically the place of rhetoric in contemporary public
life and assesses its virtues as a tool of political theory. Questions about power
and identity in the practices of speech and communication remain central to the
rhetorical tradition: how are we persuaded and can we trust that we are not being
manipulated? Only a grasp of the techniques of rhetoric and an understanding of
how they orient us towards common situations, argues the author, can guide us in
answering these perennial questions.
Politics and Rhetoric draws together in a comprehensive and highly accessible
way relevant ideas from discourse analysis, classical rhetoric updated to a modern
setting, relevant issues in contemporary political theory, and numerous carefully
chosen examples from current politics. It will be essential reading for all students
of Politics and Political Communications.

James Martin is Professor of Politics and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study
of Global Media and Democracy at Goldsmiths, University of London.
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Politics and Rhetoric
A critical introduction

James Martin
First published 2014
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Contents

List of tables ix
Acknowledgements x

1 The power of persuasion 1

What is rhetoric? 2
Politics, power and the political 3
Situating rhetoric in time and space 7
Chapter outline 12
Summary 14

2 The truth of rhetoric 15

The sophists and the origins of rhetoric 16
Plato’s critique of rhetoric 18
Aristotle and the republican tradition 21
Hobbes, Rousseau and modern sovereignty 26
Summary 31

3 The rhetorical citizen 33

Citizenship, ancient and modern 34
The politics of representation 38
Contemporary political philosophy and rhetoric 43
Summary 50

4 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement 51

The occasions of speech 52
The issue 55
The discovery of the argument 57
Arrangement 65
Summary 70
viii Contents
5 Techniques II: style and delivery 71
Style 72
Figures of speech 75
Delivery 83
Summary 87

6 Rhetorical political analysis 88

Political science, ideas and interpretation 89
Rhetorical situations and political strategies 94
Structure, agency and rhetorical intervention 97
Analysing rhetoric: a method and an example 99
Summary 106

7 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions 107

Deliberative democracy 108
The affective unconscious: neuroscience and psychoanalysis 113
Affective strategies and emotional orientation 120
A rhetorical democracy? 124
Summary 125

8 Media rhetoric: speaking for the public 127

Mediating the public domain 128
Public sphere, marketing or showbusiness? 131
Media rhetoric: the example of TV news 137
Counterpublic rhetoric 143
Summary 146

9 Embodied speech: rhetoric and the politics of gender 148

Situating gender 149
Feminism and rhetoric 154
Gender and the nation 160
Summary 166

Afterword 167

Bibliography 170
Index 184
Tables

4.1 The five canons of rhetoric 52

4.2 The genres of speech 53
4.3 Status theory 57
4.4 The three types of appeal 58
4.5 The parts of speech 66
Acknowledgements

This book took a little longer to complete than I had originally expected. I am
very grateful to my editors at Routledge – Craig Fowlie and Nicola Parkin – for
their generous patience. I am thankful also to those who have made me think
about the various dimensions of speech and persuasion: my mother, Helen, for
introducing me to a life of political argument, and my sister, Kate, for demon-
strating the importance of style; Susan, Esmé, Luis and Jacob, for supplying
dialogue, debate and disagreement; and the following, for reading or hearing
parts of the text and passing on much needed wisdom: Judi Atkins (who read
the whole thing and kindly provided copious, helpful notes), Soraia Almeida,
Giuseppe Ballacci, Alan Finlayson, Terrell Carver, Derek Hampson, Dai Moon,
Saul Newman, Nick Turnbull and Graeme Wise. I owe much to all the stu-
dents on my rhetoric courses at Goldsmiths, where most of the ideas were first
tried out, and to participants of various conferences and seminars, including
the UK Political Studies Association and its Rhetoric and Politics Specialist
Group, the ECPR, the Manchester Workshops in Political Theory, seminars at
Goldsmiths (with the Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy)
and the Universities of Leicester, Nottingham, Swansea and Westminster. Of
course, in spite of all the intelligent advice offered by many, responsibility for
what follows remains my own. An earlier version of Chapter 6 has appeared in
Political Studies and I would like to express my thanks to the journal’s editors
for permission to republish it here.
1 The power of persuasion

It is difficult to imagine politics without persuasion. By its very nature politics

requires choices to be formulated, options to be weighed and decisions to be
made. Often the uncertainty or ambiguity of the world forces us to confront a
plurality of contrasting perceptions of our situation and opposed views of how to
act. At such moments – moments of dramatic crisis, perhaps, but also in the more
routine, day-to-day choices – people need to be persuaded in order to proceed
with any degree of confidence. If everything was certain and clear, if nothing were
open to chance, it would be a world without choices, a strangely unhuman world
devoid of the anxieties such choices generate. However attractive that sounds to
you, it would be, nonetheless, a world without politics.
Persuasion is integral to politics because politics involves making judgements
in contexts of uncertainty about what to do. To persuade in such contexts involves
transforming, primarily by means of argument, a variety of possible options into
a unified judgement, perhaps even a decision. There are many ways to persuade,
no doubt, and threatening violence is one of the most common. But human com-
munities are perhaps unique in their use of speech in making persuasion a matter
not always or exclusively of brute force, but also of mutual understanding, shared
perceptions and interpretations, however temporary or tenuous. The power of per-
suasion, then, can be just as effective as – if not more so than – the force of arms.
Indeed, organized violence is usually accompanied by some effort at justification
to make it appear the right thing to do. It would be fair to say, then, that speech –
the ability to address others and to define problems and their solutions – is the
dominant medium of persuasion in human societies. Knowing how to speak –
whether in voiced words, written text or a combination of both – in order to suc-
cessfully persuade may be the fundamental political knowledge or skill, arguably
the original ‘political science’. The ancient name given to the body of knowledge
whose object is the practice of speech and persuasion is rhetoric.
The purpose of this book is to introduce readers to the study of rhetoric in
politics. That means grasping common ways in which techniques of persuasion
operate in political life; how argumentative strategies are employed to shape
judgements. But it also means understanding how the parameters of political
debate are themselves conditioned, delimiting who can argue, about what and
how. In this latter sense, rhetoric is more than just a collection of nifty techniques;
2 The power of persuasion
it is bound up with wider issues in political theory concerning the nature of power,
authority and citizenship.
Rhetoric, I am suggesting, reveals to us the character of the political; that is,
how, in speech encounters of various kinds, the limits of human association are
acknowledged, fabricated and contested. Speech aimed at persuasion – whether
in private or in public – is a powerful channel of energies, one directed as much
at fashioning human subjects and the conditions under which they make choices
as it is at moulding their judgements. To harness these energies is to lay claim to a
power to generate a force of some kind – perhaps a force of agency, public opinion
or community – to confront the uncertainties of the world.
In politics, then, speech mobilizes the power of persuasion. In the chapters that
follow I offer a rhetorical approach to politics aimed at illuminating how persua-
sive speech garners this power and how rhetorical tools can help us understand it.
But rhetoric – like politics itself – is riven with controversy and sometimes confu-
sion. In the remainder of this chapter, I argue that its controversial nature alerts
us to the intrinsically political dimension of persuasive speech and communica-
tion, the way in which these simultaneously disclose and mask relations of power.
I then set out the approach to rhetoric adopted in this book and sketch the content
of its chapters.

What is rhetoric?
The word ‘rhetoric’ derives from the ancient Greek rhetorike, meaning the ‘art’
(tekhne, or skill) of persuasive discourse undertaken by a rhetor (an orator or
speaker) (see Burke, 1969: 49–55). It refers simultaneously to instruction in
this practice and to the persuasive qualities of a discourse itself. That makes it –
perhaps rather oddly – both a mode of enquiry and the object of that enquiry.
Studying rhetoric can mean either learning about the skills of persuasion (that is,
taking instruction in communicative techniques in order to achieve persuasion)
or finding the persuasive element in a discourse (that is, examining ‘its’ rheto-
ric). Consequently, it is difficult wholly to separate subject and object, the human
skill of persuasion from the intrinsic persuasiveness of a discourse. This raises a
number of questions. When we are persuaded, is it because an idea or an argument
just is persuasive? Or is persuasion a consequence of purposeful manipulation on
the part of the speaker? Does the force of persuasion derive from a technique (that
can be mastered by anyone) or from an independent quality (that only the gifted
can know)? These questions, arising from the definition of rhetoric, underpin a
deeper, fundamental uncertainty that haunts politics more generally. What is hap-
pening when people form their judgements? Why do they believe what they do?
How can we know they are the right judgements? Can people be persuaded of
anything?
These questions about the sources and validity of persuasion have come to warp
our perception of the practice itself. Today the study of rhetoric remains present
largely on the margins of democratic life, the preoccupation of classics scholars
and, sometimes, nostalgic journalists. The word has an unfortunate, musty aura
 The power of persuasion 3
reminiscent of the book titles in the darker quarters of a university library. Indeed,
more often than not these days the term is associated with speech oriented pri-
marily towards deception, superficiality or manipulation. ‘Rhetoric’ is routinely
contrasted with speech that adheres to ‘reality’ or with the ‘truth’ that can be
found ‘behind’ words, the truth of real ‘interests’ or intentions that are deliberately
obscured by language.
That rather negative use of the term is not how rhetoric is understood in this
book. But let us not dismiss it without a thought. For it gives a clue to the ambiva-
lent feelings we frequently have for persuasion in democracies, where speech is
simultaneously an essential ingredient of politics but, quite often, the perceived
source of its decline. Clearly, democracy means little without the opportunity to
speak freely in public, to air our views, to persuade others of their value, to hold
to account our politicians and governments and demand answers from them, per-
haps even to become leaders ourselves and speak to, and on behalf of, our fellow
citizens. Free speech, from this point of view, is not just a luxury in a democracy:
it is its sine qua non, that without which popular judgements would be unable
to influence public authority. But, at the same time, we are forever wary that
free speech can result in the dissemination of the most ill-informed, repulsive
and sometimes injurious views as contenders for public judgement. Democracy
permits the spiteful, the prejudiced and the plain small-minded to have their say
as much as it does the noble, the wise and the eloquent. It allows politicians to
talk in simplistic ‘soundbites’ or grey, technocratic jargon so as to evade serious
scrutiny. When they aren’t pandering to public opinion, don’t politicians regularly
get accused of offering only ‘hot air’ precisely because we know it doesn’t usually
translate into practical change?
In modern democracies we despise and fear speech just as much as (if not more
than) we honour it. We curse the ‘liars’ and the deceivers just as we desire inspira-
tion and eloquence from our leaders. For every Rev. Martin Luther King Jr or Sir
Winston Churchill there are many more, sadly less inspiring politicians to hand.
Worse still, there are demagogues and firebrands only too willing to seduce us
into endorsing the most despicable choices. Each uses the medium of speech, but
how do we tell them apart? Persuasive speech, we might say, functions as both
poison and cure to democracy. By consequence, the skill of rhetoric, where speech
is deliberately manipulated to render it persuasive, is quietly cherished but – more
often than not – dismissed and derided.

Politics, power and the political

The suspicion displayed by many towards rhetoric is a reminder that persuasion
involves the exercise of power. But what kind of power is it? Not one whose
effects and limits are always easy to define objectively. At one level, persuasion
is a process whereby we are invited freely to give our assent, or not, to a point of
view or claim. As the rhetoric scholar Kenneth Burke wrote: ‘Persuasion involves
choice, will; it is directed to a man only in so far as he is free’ (Burke, 1969: 50;
italics in original). Unlike propaganda or physical force, persuasion requires some
4 The power of persuasion
independence of judgement, an ability to weigh up or assess an argument and
choose or refuse to endorse it. In short, persuasion involves letting oneself be
persuaded.
Yet, at another level, to be persuaded is a way of submitting to another. While
we usually don’t mind being persuaded by people we trust, or when little is at
stake, in politics it is often relative strangers who seek our support, sometimes
on matters of great significance. As Burke also points out, persuasion invites us
not only to agree abstractly but, often, to identify with the point of view of some-
one separate from us: ‘If men were not apart from one another, there would be
no need for the rhetorician to proclaim their unity’ (ibid.: 22). Yet because of
this urge to identify or create a sense of unity between speaker and audience, we
may also be conscious that to affirm another’s arguments is also to approve of
their authority over us – perhaps their superior intelligence or their right to make
decisions in our name – or to link us to further judgements of which we may dis-
approve. Persuasion in politics is often a way of achieving or keeping office, of
using resources in specific ways, of weakening opponents or sustaining alliances.
To seek or to be the subject of persuasion is therefore to engage in subtle relations
of power and to be complicit in some way with them. This complicity is all the
more binding because we freely choose to accept it.
Uncertainty over the power of persuasion directs us towards a fundamental
theoretical distinction that is of increasing significance to contemporary social
and political theory and that will guide the discussion in this book: the distinc-
tion between ‘politics’ and the dimension of ‘the political’. Hostility to rhetoric,
I want to suggest, often represents an urge to minimize or remove altogether the
political dimension from politics, to empty speech of the sense of power, contin-
gency and controversy that the political arouses and to isolate judgement from
the risks of possible manipulation. But first, what is the difference between these
two terms? The distinction could be said to be between established social institu-
tions and practices and the wider principles that ‘ground’ the polity and define
its parameters and purposes (see Mouffe, 2005: 8–9). Politics refers, broadly, to
the activities of administering and bargaining between organized interests, form-
ing coalitions, developing policy and taking decisions on the basis of instituted
relations and procedures (or the ‘rules of the game’). The political, on the other
hand, denotes the abstract frames or principles that define, for example, who gets
represented, what kind of issues are legitimate topics of dispute and which social
groups are recognized as ‘acceptable’ participants in politics, or not. The political
names a dimension of controversy and, potentially, violence where some options
are ruled in and others ruled out. It is sometimes argued to be ‘ontological’ in
that it concerns the being – or basic identity – of social and political existence
(Marchart, 2007). Thus we might say that the routine work of assemblies and
parliaments, politicians and activists, government officials and civil servants
largely comprises politics, while ideas about sovereignty, freedom or justice
invoke the political.
Politics is always premised on the partial settling of political questions. Without
some idea of what politics is for (to serve the common good, protect liberties
 The power of persuasion 5
or increase national glory, for example) or how different agents relate (as equal
parts in an organic whole, a rigid hierarchy or a diverse plurality), politics would
collapse into random exchanges lacking any coherence or durability. Politics
therefore depends upon the political dimension to define limits to what can legiti-
mately be said and done, not just in terms of law but also in terms of the ideals
that inform the law. The political is not therefore a separate domain but a horizon
inside which the myriad activities of politics are given coherence. Beyond the
horizon, however, lies uncertainty and the threatening (or liberating) realization
that politics might be done quite differently.
One reason why rhetoric is viewed with such suspicion, I want to suggest, is that
it is frequently a marker of the contingency of our political horizon, its essentially
groundless nature. That is to say, the basic structure of all political relations – the
constitutive principles defining the space and time given over to the exchanges of
politics – is founded not on eternal truths set in stone but on historical, fundamen-
tally arbitrary and hence contentious decisions about who citizens are and how
they relate to each other and the world. Judgements on these decisions are always,
in principle, open to contest and reformulation, reflecting power relations that
can be challenged and changed. But their contingency is something that is often
resisted for fear that social order will be undermined.
The dismissal of rhetoric is one symptom of that concern. Sometimes it reflects
an anxiety about what are regarded as ‘basic truths’ collapsing into ‘mere poli-
tics’ – that is, sacred principles being exposed to the amoral cut-and-thrust of
party advantage and strategy. Thus the desire to eliminate rhetoric often comes
in the form of a longing for certainty and security about these truths or via the
image of a purified language that can eradicate scurrilous manipulation from
judgement-making (see Garsten, 2006; Fish, 1989: 471–78). Or it might even
take the form of a politics reduced to technocratic problem solving, removed from
public life altogether and untroubled by controversial questions. At an extreme,
such anti-political longing emerges as a violent refusal to accept that the organ-
izing principles by which any group or society creates its shared world could or
should ever be put into question. As we shall see later, eliminating rhetoric has
been a feature of anti-political thinking for centuries.
Indeed, it is when the dimension of the political is brought into view – that is,
when politics is understood as premised upon contingent decisions over basic
principles – that the potential violence underlying human association is dramati-
cally revealed. Such was the case, for example, during the so-called ‘Arab Spring’
of 2011, when a politics instituted around dictators was challenged by publics who
no longer acquiesced to their rule. The political dimension that infuses all insti-
tutionalized politics is an uncomfortable, sometimes inconvenient reminder that
such arrangements are premised not on nature, identity or universal agreement but,
rather, on past decisions to coerce, exclude, suppress or ignore alternative arrange-
ments. Often, public discourse can itself help repress such decisions, especially
when such discourse is restricted to empty rituals, narrow routinized exchanges or
formal procedures. But, as the rebels and protestors of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya
(among others) demonstrated, new discourses can also reactivate the political
6 The power of persuasion
dimension, exposing the habits and customs of institutionalized politics to the
threat of their own dissolution.
Rhetoric is often dismissed because implicit to it is the nagging realization that
there is always another argument to be made, an alternative point of view, that
threatens consensus and order. It reveals public judgements to consist of certain-
ties that have to be actively made, not assumed, and hence politics is ultimately
a risky, uncertain and rather inconclusive business. But instead of eliminating
the political from speech and persuasion, we could instead try to restore it and
face up to its challenge. Rhetorical persuasion might properly be understood as
a form of mediation between politics and the political. That is to say, argumenta-
tive practices link routine politics to essentially contentious judgements about the
basic dimensions and limits of human association, reinforcing, contesting or even
repressing them in varying degrees. In that respect, there is always a trace of vio-
lence (whether real or implied) that surrounds political rhetoric because ‘matters
of principle’ invoke the limits of what is thinkable and do-able. As Slavoj Žižek
has remarked, although language is often perceived as the medium for mutual
recognition and peaceful exchange, ‘there is something violent in the very sym-
bolisation of a thing’ (Žižek, 2008a: 52). Language, he argues, carves up the world
into meaningful ‘things’, inserting them within one symbolic frame rather than
another. In politics, the fundamentally arbitrary character of that frame is, to some
extent, always partially exposed. We are never very far away, therefore, from the
‘unconditional violence’ – as Žižek puts it – which underscores all language and
threatens to manifest itself materially in state repression, ‘terrorism’ or resistance,
rebellion or dissent.
We can detect this underlying political dimension at work in rhetoric when
the basic limits of association are perceived to be at stake, giving rise to contro-
versy and a sense of unease or danger (see Marchart, 2007: 38–44). International
politics is replete with such situations in which a precarious order is brought into
question. Think, for instance, of Winston Churchill’s wartime speeches as British
Prime Minister in the 1940s. His powerful, sombre orations before parliament
and on public radio are now widely admired for their steadfast determination
to defeat the Nazi enemy ‘at all costs’ and to protect the independence of the
United Kingdom. At stake here were the very foundations of civility, sovereignty
and freedom. Churchill’s rhetoric is routinely invoked as an exemplary patriotic
and inspirational voice, rising above the fray of normal politics to express deeply
felt common values and unifying its audience around the defence of fundamental
principles – what Burke called identification. A profoundly political sensibility
permeates these speeches, charging them with a sense of the underlying violence
of the situation.
Yet it would be mistaken to think that Churchill’s speeches expressed an
entirely uncontentious set of values. In fact, his rapid rise to national leadership in
1940 came as a consequence of serious disagreement over the policy of appease-
ment followed by Prime Minister Chamberlain before him. A substantial part of the
political class had been convinced that war could be avoided by negotiating with
Hitler. The purported failure of that policy became a matter of public controversy
 The power of persuasion 7
in popular books such as Guilty Men (written by the anonymous ‘Cato’; see Cato,
2010), which denounced erstwhile leaders and ridiculed their strategy. Churchill
came to power on the heels of controversy and, certainly in the early period of his
premiership, remained a figure of suspicion even in his own party (thus, in order
to prevent instability in his government, he retained many of the pre-war leaders,
including Chamberlain). Only after the experience of war, once Churchill’s quali-
ties as a statesman were confirmed, was ‘appeasement’ universally regarded as
a derogatory term for poor international policy. We easily forget the controversy
that prepares the way for the ascendancy of principle.
It is wrong, then, to think that the political dimension exists entirely in iso-
lation from the strategic aspect of politics. In the daily flurries of institutional
politics, the grand ideals and universal principles that are claimed to ‘found’ the
community are always subject, to some extent, to the play of minor interests and
struggles for advantage among competing parties. But it is also wrong to view
the political dimension as simply reducible to a plaything of politics. Rather, the
two are constantly interweaving and in rhetoric we find, simultaneously, efforts
to foreground certain principles and close off others (the political) – and to do so
without also undermining the ‘relations of force’, as the Marxist thinker Antonio
Gramsci (1971) called them, upon which such choices are built (politics). In this
meeting point between the political and politics we find the power of persuasion.
In this book I conceive of rhetoric through the mediated distinction between
politics and the political. Persuasion is both a mundane business and a channel
of wider power relations; a process of coalition building and an effort to define
higher principles. Too often these aspects are separated off from each other, with
‘empirical’ politics and day-to-day debate divided from the considerations of
political philosophy and theory. But to understand how persuasion functions we
need to see the two at work together. When it is considered at all, rhetoric is
sometimes associated simply with one or the other: for example, with a scurrying
for advantage (‘just rhetoric’) or with the great statements of famous orators (the
‘great speeches that changed the world’). The first invokes an image of politics
without the political, while the second imagines the political without politics. If
we are to have a better understanding of rhetorical persuasion, we need to see how
each works with and affects the other.

Situating rhetoric in time and space

What exactly does the study of rhetoric comprise? Rhetoric is now an inclusive
term for a wide range of themes related to communicating, arguing and per-
suading through symbols. A tremendous variety of scholarly books and journals
are currently devoted to aspects of this expansive discipline. Its scope is sim-
ply too great for any one text to cover in sufficient depth. Rhetoric is studied
in fields such as classics and history (see Habinek, 2005; Conley, 1990), litera-
ture (see Richards, 2008; Cockcroft and Cockcroft, 2005), law (see Brooks and
Gewirtz, 1996; Goodrich, 1987), philosophy (Meyer, 1994; Grassi, 1980; 1983),
cultural studies (see Brummett, 2011; Sellnow, 2010), organizational studies
8 The power of persuasion
(Hoffman and Ford, 2010), psychology (Billig, 1991, 1996) and even economics
(see McCloskey, 1998). Traditionally concerned with written and spoken com-
munication, the study of rhetoric now comprises visual forms, too (see Hill and
Helmers, 2004; Kostelnick and Hassett, 2003). The approach adopted in this book
is to introduce elements of rhetoric as they concern the study of politics and political
theory. The main focus of the volume will therefore be on political discourses –
that is, speech oriented towards relations of power and practices of citizenship.
In focusing on power and citizenship I do not mean to deny the political per-
tinence of the other areas of rhetorical investigation noted above. Rather, I seek
to address a specific gap in political studies. Although rhetoric was originally an
integral part of civic life in ancient Greece and Rome, the contemporary academic
study of politics to a great extent neglects the role of speech and oratory (but see
Skinner, 2002a: especially ch. 10; Garsten, 2006; Charteris-Black, 2005). There
are many reasons for this, including the professionalization of politics, the prolif-
eration of technologies such as television and the dominance in political studies
of ‘scientific’ methods directed at measuring ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’ rather than
interpreting meanings (see Nelson, 1998). Despite these developments, politics
continues predominantly to be an activity of communicating and arguing in order
to persuade audiences. Certainly we live in a highly mediated age where texts and
images are consumed in far greater quantities than ever before, but that does not
diminish the relevance of speech and persuasion so much as it qualifies and trans-
forms it (see Jamieson, 1988). Of course, we cannot simply transplant ancient
ideas and apply them to the present, but we can let these provoke us into thinking
more about what distinguishes the present. At the core of this volume, then, is a
view that politics remains a stubbornly practical business of communicating and
persuading.
It may, of course, be objected that to give attention to rhetoric is to take seri-
ously politicians and the things they say and do. That is true, but it need not be
an objection. A common prejudice is that politicians are utterly self-interested,
amoral actors who neither merit close scrutiny nor require theoretical analysis.
While that may be so in many instances, nonetheless it is a prejudice in need
of correction. Not all political actors are professional politicians involved in the
institutionalized processes of government and party politics. The term ‘politician’
can refer to any individual or group that seeks to promote a political position,
whether inside or outside formal institutions. Moreover, politicians (in the broad
sense) are usually self-appointed agents of social change and innovation. Their
words are often themselves deeds, or ways of acting. As Kari Palonen argues, to
understand what they do, we need to ‘read politicians as theorists’ in their own
right (see Palonen, 2005: 359). Politicians use ideas, theories and arguments in
a ‘situated’ way to define the present circumstances, to forge coalitions, judge
policies, contest government actions or advocate alternative ways of thinking and
doing politics. Unlike most professional theorists, politicians inventively navigate
the constraints and opportunities of politics to re-fashion ideas as legitimation for
action. A rhetorical perspective on politics invites us to discard our prejudices
 The power of persuasion 9
about politicians and to explore how political actors put theories and ideas to work
(see also Wodak, 2011).
But why use rhetoric to examine what politicians do, rather than, for exam-
ple, language, ideology or discourse? What is it that rhetoric offers that these
more familiar categories do not? A preliminary answer is that rhetoric permits
an understanding of persuasive speech as a situated practice of argumentation.
To explore rhetoric is to consider how, at specific moments and locations, ideas
are fashioned into arguments with a certain force and direction in order to win
the assent of an audience. This definition underscores the dimensions of time and
space as defining features of rhetorical persuasion, a point related to the idea of
‘the political’ as a horizon discussed earlier. Time refers to processes of simul-
taneity, change, speed and duration; space implies the co-presence of ideas and
objects, relationships and distances between things. Speech aimed at persuasion
is often a creative articulation of various times and spaces: the time and place of
the speech occasion (the moment that gives rise to it and the event of its delivery),
the time and space of the message (its sense of urgency, its ordering of priorities
and so on) and the time and space of wider events into which it intervenes (the
enduring effects it may have on politics in the future).
These temporal and spatial aspects interweave in rhetorical persuasion, helping
to generate a sense of agency and purpose by mapping, via speech, a landscape of
connections and hierarchies, certainties and risks, to shape judgements about how
to proceed and to endow those judgements with affective force. In that respect,
rhetorical persuasion is akin more to early cartography than to philosophy: it plots
the terrain upon which we make our choices and alerts us to safety and danger
(‘Here be dragons!’), offering its audiences degrees of orientation in an other-
wise unsteady world. Thus persuasion entails imaginatively recreating the context
inside which a judgement is to be made about what to think or how to act.
A proper understanding of this jointly situated and resituating process undoubt-
edly overlaps with the study of language, ideology or discourse but, at the same
time, it is not reducible to any one of these specialised discipline areas. Let me
explain in more detail. In the past century, a broadly ‘constructivist’ idea of lan-
guage came to inform a variety of philosophical and social scientific enterprises
(see Taylor, 1985a: especially ch. 2; Rorty, 1989). Accordingly, language is the
medium through which humans construct their cultural and material world and
their sense of self. The grammars and vocabularies, concepts and categories of
language shape what can be thought, perceived and said. To understand human
beings, then, we must not only observe their behaviour but also interpret the
meanings they employ to construct a world. Although it has ancient origins that
long pre-date the so-called ‘linguistic turn’ in philosophy and the human sciences,
continued interest in rhetoric today owes much to this conception of human action
as linguistically mediated (Bernard-Donals and Glejzer, 1998).
But we should not equate rhetoric exclusively with language. Not all language
is rhetorical – that is, used for persuasive ends – nor is rhetoric strictly linguistic
(it involves gestures and sounds as well as words). Moreover, there is a danger
of missing the way it is related to politics if we hold too strongly to the notion of
10 The power of persuasion
language as fully constitutive of self and world. Rhetoric is important precisely
because language regularly fails to constitute its object. It is because crises and
dilemmas, conflicts and accidents occur that rhetoric is necessary. When established
vocabularies cannot fully make sense of what has happened or how to proceed,
then rhetoric helps to reassemble words and meanings in order for the world to
make sense again. Of course, this work will of necessity involve language. But, as
Sam Chambers argues, language is ‘not merely a problem for politics but a prob-
lem of politics’ (2003: 17): politics itself is the ongoing practice of reassembling
self and world, given their repeated resistances to stable symbolization. Rhetoric
weaves language and world together again and again because meaning is only
partially stable, at best. Hence rhetoric is not identical to language but works
through and around the gaps that prevent language from fully constituting a mean-
ingful world.
We might say, then, that the spatial ordering of the world given in language is
interrupted by time (or change). Some truths no longer hold; others don’t hold for
everybody or in all instances. That is why rhetoric is preoccupied with arguments.
Arguments activate a preferred view of the relationship between symbols and the
world, perhaps a hierarchy of values or an order of thinking, strengthening some
connections and weakening others in order to reinforce or change a judgement
where the durability of truth is in doubt. In rhetoric, ideas are given force and
direction – that is, a sense of weight and purpose – within the work of an argu-
ment. It is, to follow J.L. Austin’s famous title, a way of doing things with words
(see Austin, 1962). But it is always a tentative and temporary kind of doing, with
no guarantee that words can permanently hold down the meanings they are given
(see Derrida, 1988).
If arguments are central to rhetoric, then why not look at political ideology?
Ideology is a term used to describe an enduring constellation of associated
concepts, values and arguments that orient political actors towards distinct pro-
grammes of government and social interests (see Freeden, 1996). This spatial
arrangement of connecting concepts and making associations between them
is typically recognized as partial in as much as it privileges some ideas at the
expense of others, treating particular values as incontestable and universal while
diminishing or contesting others. Ideologies such as socialism or ecologism are
organized belief systems that may overlap in various aspects, but remain distinct
in so far as they embody a selective preference for some principles or values, such
as social and economic equality or environmental protection. Ideology therefore
shares the argumentative orientation of rhetoric.
If there is undoubtedly a parallel between rhetoric and ideology, in its common
usage the latter terms tend to direct us to established systems of ideas and argu-
ments (liberalism, fascism and so on) and not to the practice of assembling them
through forms of address to specific audiences. Rhetoric certainly is ideological
in so far as it draws upon and adds to ideological systems but, again, it is not
reducible to these (see Weiler, 1993). Sometimes speech and argument re-fashion
ideologies in new ways, selecting elements that are thought to ‘belong’ to opposed
systems and combining them in novel forms. On occasion there is no obvious
 The power of persuasion 11
ideological home at all for an argument; it may place itself simultaneously in a
variety of ideological categories, or none at all (see Bastow and Martin, 2003).
Nevertheless, ideology remains an important resource for the study of rhetoric in
as much as arguments draw upon and rework enduring ideological configurations,
which comprise already established scripts (see Finlayson, 2012).
What, then, of discourse? This term has become ubiquitous in recent social
and political investigation, particularly in the fields of linguistics (especially
critical discourse analysis; see Fairclough, 1993; Wodak, 2011) and social the-
ory (see Howarth, 2000). Instead of referring us to stable systems of language
or arguments, discourse usually places our focus on dynamic, often temporally
changeable meanings that shape social practices and that are actively transformed
across time and space. The emphasis on making meaning lends discourse a more
fluid, inventive character than ideology. Like ideologies, discourses certainly
have structure. But the term gives primacy to the malleability of that structure as
it is reproduced in different contexts.
In that respect, discourse invokes the situated and ‘at-work’ character of
rhetorical speech as a process of assembling ideas at specific moments. Discourse
exceeds the closed system of ideas often associated with political ideology. In
the work of thinkers such as Foucault, the term also has an ontological inflec-
tion. That is, it refers to ways in which social identity (the ‘being’ of human
subjects, or subjectivity, rather than just their political values or interests) is
itself determined through a combination of ideas and practices embedded in
claims to knowledge and authority (see Foucault, 1980: ch. 6; 1972). As Foucault
understood them, discourses are infused with power, conceived as a productive
capacity, in that they create positions from which to speak. This is not power
conceived as a force imposed on individuals from outside. Rather, it is a ‘fluid’
power by which selfhood is cultivated, perhaps even in resistance to dominant
norms (see Phillips, 2006). Discourses ‘recruit’ (rather than trap) subjects,
allocating them roles and shaping them in unconscious ways that often evade
scrutiny. For example, discourses of race and gender shape the self-perception
of subjects: the ways they are viewed by others, how they use their bodies and
what they can properly say and feel about them. If ideology gives us scripts to
argue from, then discourses position us on the stage, making us visible (or not)
and authorizing us to speak (or not).
Yet the breadth of discourse (for instance of race, gender or nationhood) gives it a
scope that extends beyond the situated encounters usually analysed by rhetoricians.
Rhetoric is, undoubtedly, a form of discourse in that it disseminates meanings that
shape experience and recruit subjects. But one key virtue of rhetorical study is its
concentration on speech and argument in specific, situated encounters. Much dis-
course theory makes use of the terminology of rhetoric to talk about social groups
and identities, but often at high levels of abstraction that refer back to complex
systems of thought (see Howarth, Norval and Stavrakakis, 2000; Howarth and
Torfing, 2004). It might be helpful, then, to regard rhetoric as a means to focus on
discourses in their operation at the level of particular events, texts and encounters.
If discourses organize social practices (that is, inscribe meanings on the activities
12 The power of persuasion
that subjects undertake), rhetorical analysis explores the moments at which
discursive ‘regimes’ are introduced and reproduced through argument. In that way,
rhetorical study permits analysis of concrete interventions that aspire to become
effective, perhaps dominant discourses. Like ideology, then, we can say that dis-
course is refracted through rhetoric, but it is not its primary concern. Rhetorical
practices may introduce and, eventually, help to establish, extend or transform a
discourse. But as rhetoric, its eventual outcome is still to be determined.
So if rhetorical study overlaps with the related concerns of language, ideol-
ogy and discourse, it is nonetheless distinctive because it mobilizes aspects of all
three in the generation of persuasive speech. Rhetoric describes the construction
of meanings through language, often by drawing upon ideological associations
to define that meaning in selective ways and discursively constructing the sub-
jects who are to act through it. But these are achieved through concrete modes of
address and argumentation, which are typically the concern of rhetorical enquiry.
There is not a hard-and-fast distinction to be made between rhetoric and these
other areas of analysis, so we should not see them as mutually exclusive. But, as
we shall see later in the book, rhetorical study invites us to dwell on language,
ideology or discourse as they are situated at intersections of time and space.

Chapter outline
The book is arranged in such a way as to introduce various aspects of rhetoric
across a broad spectrum of issues. It does so in a series of steps: in Chapters 2
and 3 I discuss the relationship of rhetoric to political theory; in Chapters 4 and 5
I survey the classifications and techniques of rhetorical instruction; in Chapter 6
I reflect on how these techniques can be mobilized to analyse political strate-
gies; and in Chapters 7, 8 and 9 I consider aspects of rhetoric in distinct domains
where persuasive discourse is politically salient: namely democracy, the media
and gender. Overall, I argue a number of things: rhetoric is central to a theoretical
understanding of politics; the categories of rhetoric inherited from ancient writers
remain illuminating and useful; and these categories can be supplemented with
the help of contemporary theory to understand how judgements in politics are
produced politically.
Let me now sketch the content of each chapter in turn. In Chapter 2 I explore
the troubled relationship of rhetoric and political theory. Many classical thinkers
believed rhetorical speech and its instruction to be central to the life of politi-
cal association. This was the view promoted by Aristotle and later advocates of
the republican form of government. Nonetheless, since then, political theory has
tended to disparage rhetoric as a menace and even a threat to the maintenance of
social order and authority. Thinkers such as Plato initiated this view by counter-
posing rhetoric to philosophical ‘truth’. Modern political thinkers, such as Hobbes
and Rousseau – although they reject Plato’s notion of rational truth – retain the
idea that rhetoric threatens political order and needs to be restrained.
Chapter 3 continues the examination of the status of rhetoric by focusing
on its role as a tool of the citizen. I begin by noting the substantial difference
 The power of persuasion 13
between citizenship in the ancient and modern worlds. The classical advocates
of republican politics regarded speaking and participating in public life as cen-
tral elements of citizenship. But modern citizens are encouraged to look to
private not public life as the source of fulfilment and rhetoric is no longer an
explicit component of citizenship. Nonetheless, further reflection on the nature
of modern societies – particularly the separation of a political authority from
the rest of society – suggests how rhetorical persuasion remains important as a
means of democratic representation.
Chapters 2 and 3 have set up a framework for thinking about rhetoric politi-
cally, underscoring the way in which persuasive speech is regarded as a threat to
social order but also a means to contest and debate its parameters. The tension
between these positions is evident in the way rhetorical strategies work today.
Before we consider that further, however, we need to explore the content of rhe-
torical instruction itself. In Chapter 4 I explore the first two of the five classical
‘canons’ of rhetoric: the discovery of argument and the arrangement of the parts
of speech. In Chapter 5 I discuss aspects of style and delivery (missing out the
fifth canon, memory). These chapters provide a descriptive overview of the basic
content of rhetorical advice inherited from classical times.
In Chapter 6 I consider how we can employ the techniques and classifications
of the rhetorical tradition to analyse political action. Against the once dominant
tradition of positivism in political science, I align rhetoric with ‘interpretive’
approaches that seek to understand behaviour by reference to the ideas and lan-
guage of actors themselves. More than that, however, I follow others who claim
rhetoric has a distinctive approach to ideas: namely, in the form of arguments.
Political arguments never simply reflect stable cognitive frames by which actors
see the world but, rather, are dynamic interventions that give force and direction
to ideas. Rhetorical political analysis, then, is a way of examining how actors
‘appropriate’ situations by defining the issues at stake and orienting others in a
given context.
In Chapter 7 I discuss the value of rhetoric for democratic theory today. Recent
efforts to revive participation in democracy underscore active deliberation by
citizens. But this has come with a strong critique of what are regarded as the
disruptive effects of rhetoric, particularly the use of emotional appeals. Instead,
so-called ‘deliberative democrats’ foreground the rational – and purportedly
impartial – dimensions of communication. I discuss the difficulties and dangers
of eliminating passions from persuasion and, with regard to developments in the
disciplines of neuroscience and psychoanalysis, set out an alternative perspective
that gives greater room to ‘affective rhetorical strategies’ to negotiate politics and
the political.
The theme of Chapter 8 is the influence of mass media on political rhetoric.
In many ways, media inherit the controversial status that rhetoric once held –
simultaneously hailed as the channel of free speech yet frequently loathed as
the obstacle to informed communication. To explore this ambivalence, the
chapter identifies the contest over the meaning and limits of the ‘public’ as
integral to communicative strategies undertaken in a mediated public domain.
14 The power of persuasion
Media platforms are never simply a neutral resource to communicate political
messages; they themselves shape messages by appropriating situations according
to selective values and nurturing their audiences’ ongoing expectations. In this
sense, media themselves undertake a rhetorical function. As we shall see, that
enables certain rhetorical strategies over others and shapes public discourse in
distinctive, often rather narrow, ways.
Finally, in Chapter 9 I discuss the gendered character of rhetoric. Classical
ideas about speech and persuasion sometimes compared it to a form of struggle
in which a heroic figure wrestled with an audience in order to win the ‘war of
words’. Such an outlook continues in modern politics where, as feminists have
struggled tirelessly to lay bare, men and their speaking conventions dominate
debating chambers. Political rhetoric, as we shall see, is gendered through and
through, both in the way in which it is embodied in the person of a speaker and
in how the wider ‘body politic’ is figuratively imagined. Yet a gender perspective
also highlights the instability of the categories defining sexual identity, and thus
also the ambivalent gendering of speech for the purposes of persuasion. Here I use
the example of rhetoric about the nation to explore the peculiar ways that gender
enters into political speech.

Summary
Persuasion, I have argued, is central to politics. But understanding persuasion lifts
the veil on a practice that is more than just a set of techniques for communication.
Rhetoric draws us towards the power relations, the contests over the parameters
of space and time and the controversies that underlie and occasionally disrupt
routine politics. Far from being concerned exclusively with a superficial level of
speech, analysing rhetoric invites us to grasp the deeper political dimension that
shapes how individuals relate to each other, what they can say, and how.
2 The truth of rhetoric

The controversial status of rhetoric is deeply rooted in the tradition of western

political thought. Originally, rhetoric involved instruction in effective speaking for
citizens of ancient Greece who participated actively in political affairs. Whether it
was a genuine branch of knowledge, essential to the collective life of the Athenian
polis or state, or merely a technique that could be employed by anyone, for good
or ill, was a matter of heated debate. Rhetoricians classified different parts of
speech, the forms of argument and the strategies that might help win over differ-
ent kinds of audience. Rhetorical ‘knowledge’, therefore, was about controlling
spoken communication, rendering it effective, memorable and even repeatable
for other occasions. Speech was necessary to make the polity work, yet it often
smacked of artifice and the absence of a genuine concern for the good of the
community. Most famously, in the view of the philosopher Plato, rhetoric was
an immoral practice that permitted unqualified people to rule by means of cheap
argumentative tricks and the mimicry of genuine knowledge.
To this day, political theorists and philosophers have continued to feel uneasy
about the value of rhetoric. At the heart of that unease, I propose, is a concern about
the dimension of the political and its relation to politics. For many thinkers, poli-
tics must be founded on something firmer than the contingent, partial and unstable
to-ing and fro-ing of speech and argument: preferably a universal order of values
beyond the one-sidedness of speech. For others, speech itself – if properly aligned
to the needs of the community – can channel the sentiments and values necessary
to sustain political order. Either way, persuasion has long been suspected as a
practice that has the potential to disrupt, even to destroy politics. In the modern
age, we are heirs to this suspicion and its underlying ‘retreat’ from the political
(Mouffe, 1993).
In this chapter I survey the troubled place of rhetoric in political thinking. This
is not the place for a comprehensive history of rhetoric (but see Herrick, 2005;
Kennedy, 1994; Vickers, 1988). Instead, I introduce some of the key arguments in
western thought concerning its relation to politics. I start with a discussion of the
classical origins of the controversy in ancient Greek democracy and Plato’s criti-
cism of the ‘sophists’, the ancient teachers of rhetoric. Next, I look at Aristotle’s
more generous view of rhetoric as an integral part of political life, a view that
was central to the classical republican idea of politics handed down through
16 The truth of rhetoric
Roman writers and revived during the Renaissance in Europe. However, modern
political thinkers – most notably Hobbes – announced the end of that idea of
politics in favour of notions of ‘sovereignty’ and scientific truth. Even apparent
republicans such as Rousseau conceived persuasion as a threat to the sovereignty
of the General Will and sought to reduce the impact that unrestrained speech
might have on politics. Thus we can see that the discomfort with rhetorical speech
noted in Chapter 1 has a long history and isn’t just a recent phenomenon.

The sophists and the origins of rhetoric

Like rhetoric, ‘sophistry’ has long been used as a term of abuse, and for similar
reasons. To employ sophistry is to manipulate ideas deliberately in order to con-
vince someone of something that is either not true or, at least, is only partially so.
We inherit this use of the word from Plato, who dismissed the rhetorical skills
taught by the sophists. We shall see shortly how Plato’s opinion of the sophists
informs much of our current suspicion that rhetoric is intrinsically deceptive.
Plato’s criticism had a manifestly political implication: human association, he
believed, should be founded on knowledge of what is true, a knowledge accessi-
ble only by a certain number of gifted philosophers properly nurtured to discern it.
Sophists, the argument went, merely taught people to feign knowledge and hence
were not genuine philosophers.
But who were the sophists? The term refers to a category of teachers who were
employed to educate citizens in ancient Greece from around 500 BCE. This was a
period in which the system of self-government called democracy came into being
(see Davies, 1993). Following the reforms of Kleisthenes, the demos – meaning
the ‘people’, but also the ‘rabble’; mostly tenant farmers, all of them male – were
permitted to sit in the ekklesia, or assembly, as full citizens. Traditionally, aristo-
cratic families had run Athens and, even after democracy was introduced, they
tended to dominate political life still. With the arrival of new citizens, effective
communication came to have a high premium. Many of these citizens – but, inter-
estingly, often aristocrats – employed the services of the itinerant teachers known
as the sophists.
The Greek word sophos means ‘wisdom’, and the sophists offered their wis-
dom about how to speak and argue in the public realm. That kind of knowledge
was called rhetoric – from rhetorike, the art of speaking that they studied as a
special ‘science’. The sophists are thought to have originated with the arrival of
Gorgias of Leontini, who came to Athens from Sicily in the fifth century BCE.
Other important figures include Tisias, Corax, Demosthenes and Isocrates. The
emergence of democratic politics in Athens presented an opportunity for teachers
of this kind to offer their services. But they were not simply anonymous, travel-
ling salesmen. Many were learned and original scholars in their own right, known
for the important contributions they made both to rhetoric and to other areas of
enquiry. Figures such as Protagoras, Gorgias and Isocrates developed important
intellectual insights and contributed significantly to Athenian culture (see Dillon
and Gergel, 2003). While little now remains of their teachings, they were famous
 The truth of rhetoric 17
for formulating notions such as Protagoras’s claim that ‘man is the measure of
all things’, implying that conventions rather than fixed, objective principles are
the standards proper to human affairs. A claim such as this was relevant to a
society in which public speaking had become a regular and widespread event.
Individual sophists studied different aspects of argumentation and grammar, style
and arrangement, compiled examples of speeches and passed on their knowledge
in the form of what Vickers (1988: 14) calls ‘“how-to-do-it” manuals’ to assist in
the cultivation of effective public speakers.
Rhetorical instruction was not only a technical skill; it flowed from the
Athenians’ idea of moral and civil life. Let us note some key features of the demo-
cratic system in ancient Athens. The Greek polis is widely known for its highly
participatory system of politics. To be a citizen in this system was regarded as an
honour that bestowed important duties upon the individual. The freedoms of the
citizen were understood to be closely associated with a commitment to a sense of
the common good. The historian Thucydides reports the popular leader Pericles
saying of Athens, in his famous ‘funeral oration’:

Here each individual is interested not only in his own affairs but in the affairs
of the state as well: even those who are mostly occupied with their own busi-
ness are extremely well-informed on general politics – this is a peculiarity of
ours: we do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who
minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.
(Thucydides, 1954: 118–19)

To be a citizen of Athens was to be part of a very special kind of association, one

for which you would be expected to be highly active, often to fight and even to
die. Membership was greatly prized and, despite our contemporary understand-
ing of democracy as inclusion of all people, it was available only to males over
the age of eighteen whose families originated from Attica (the region of which
Athens was the capital city). Notoriously, women and slaves were not permitted
citizenship status. Even citizens who broke the law or failed in some major public
undertaking, such as winning a battle, were vulnerable to being stripped of their
citizenship and exiled. So being a member of the Athenian polis was a significant
marker of status, one defined by a powerful sense of obligation to the community
and by an expectation to demonstrate one’s worthiness. This was a competitive
world dominated by the words and deeds of leaders who, crucially, were depend-
ent upon winning the support of the demos.
Speaking in public was vital to Athenian life. It was a society where, tradition-
ally, information had been carried by word of mouth via face-to-face encounters
between individuals. Stories and histories had long been transmitted that way, as
was news of battles and their outcomes. What people said mattered and Athenians
had a high regard for the powers of oral persuasion, viewing the gifted orator as
akin to a poet or magician. With the arrival of democracy, the teaching of rhetoric
entailed a shift to a self-conscious use of speech in a culture already accustomed
18 The truth of rhetoric
to valuing ‘winged-words’ – speech that was pleasing to hear and memorable (see
Thomas and Webb, 1994: 7–9, 19).
Democracy did not just involve going along to the assembly to hear others
speak. It was incumbent upon all citizens to engage in public debate both in and
outside the assembly. The need for public speaking skills extended to commit-
tees to which citizens would be elected and, perhaps most importantly, to the
law courts. All citizens would be expected to serve on juries and hear other citi-
zens defend or accuse others. There were no lawyers available for hire: anyone
accused of breaking the law had to defend himself in person, often from mali-
cious accusations. It was vital, in this instance, that they had some experience
of public speaking in order to protect their livelihoods. To be able to refute the
charges effectively, to identify inaccuracies in the evidence of witnesses and to
win the trust of the jury required some understanding of oratory and the best way
to present a winning argument.
In his ‘Hymn to Logos’, the former sophist, Isocrates, expresses the peculiar
veneration held by many in Athens for the activity of speech in civil life: ‘the
power to speak well is taken as the surest index of a sound understanding, and
discourse which is true and lawful and just is the outward image of a good and
faithful soul’ (Isocrates, in Poulakos, 1997: 11). For Isocrates, speech was what
distinguished the Athenian community from other societies and other animals. It
was the distinctively civic orientation of speech and persuasion that gave Athens its
moral superiority as a self-governing community (see Poulakos, 1997). Through
speech, the community reflected upon, debated and judged its own activities. In
so doing, it secured Athens its wealth and longevity.

Plato’s critique of rhetoric

In light of the description above, we might think that the sophists were highly
regarded as exponents of civic pride and public responsibility. But that was not so:
the teaching of the arts of persuasion – and, indeed, democracy itself – was a mat-
ter of sharp controversy. The greatest critique of rhetoric came in the philosophy
of Plato, an aristocrat deeply dismayed by the teachings of the sophists. As well
as an opponent of democracy, Plato is also credited as a major source of western
political philosophy: that is, the project of grounding politics on rational ‘founda-
tions’ by means of which it is possible to separate out truth from mere opinion (or
doxa). For Plato, a just state should be founded on knowledge of incontestable
principles, not persuasion. That is, politics should have a metaphysical basis pro-
vided by the firm wisdom of philosophy, not by the arbitrary capacity of a speaker
simply to woo his listeners.
It was precisely that ability to sway an audience – taught by the sophists – that
Plato found objectionable, and to which he returned repeatedly in his dialogues.
It had been their vulnerability to such manipulation, he believed, that resulted
in the citizens of Athens unjustly condemning to death his mentor, Socrates (for
supposedly corrupting the young). If public speech can persuade an audience of
almost anything, then surely the greatest injustices can be served up in the name
 The truth of rhetoric 19
of justice? In all his work, Plato made clear his contempt for rhetoric as a form
of knowledge. An ‘expert in rhetoric’, he warns in Phaedrus, is someone who
can persuade ‘the city to do something bad instead of good’ (Plato, 2005: 43).
Concerned only with technique and surface, rhetoric, he claims in Gorgias, is a
form of ‘sycophancy’ or pandering to an audience, affirming opinion rather than
delivering genuine knowledge (see Plato, 2010).
In the latter dialogue, Plato presents the rhetorician Gorgias boasting of his
ability to persuade an audience on any matter, regardless of expertise: ‘there is
no subject on which the rhetorician would not speak more persuasively, before a
large crowd, than any skilled practitioner you care to name. Such is the extent and
nature of the science’s power’ (2010: 19–20). In response, Socrates disputes that
Gorgias has a ‘science’ at all. Indeed, Plato has him compare rhetoric to cooking:
a practice designed to bring pleasure to its recipients, but without any rational
understanding of its own procedures and purposes! A genuine art or skill, he
points out, is founded upon knowledge of its object. Rhetoric, as a mere practice
of persuasion, has no object of its own – bar the substanceless goal of persuasion –
and, by consequence, it is merely crowd-pleasing (2010: 27–28). Anyone with
genuine moral intentions, argues Plato, would not use rhetoric: ‘for the person
who is not planning to act unjustly I don’t think its use is very great – if indeed it
is any use at all’ (ibid.: 55).
For Plato – dismayed, as many traditional ruling families were, by imperial-
ist Athens’s low morals and belligerent lust for gain – rhetoric was a practice
that exemplified relativism in public affairs and moral life generally. Without the
guide of truth, persuasion was a rudderless boat leading people wherever seemed
agreeable at the time. It lacked the firm compass of philosophy, which was always
oriented towards the use of reason rather than pandering to prevailing opinions
or appetites. In his many dialogues, philosophical leadership was provided in the
figure of Socrates, whose critical interrogation of other people’s views regularly
exposed their limitations and drove their proponents through a rigorous, logically
supported argument to a conclusion they had not expected. Socrates achieves
persuasion by coming to clear definitions of concepts and then using these to
infer conclusions that challenge the unexamined opinions of his interlocutors (see
Plato, 2010: 43–44).
Socrates’ type of speech was evidently Plato’s model for a philosophical form of
reasoning that connected everyday judgements about how to live with the higher
realm of abstract reasoning. For him, that kind of reasoning was not a trick, but
mirrored a stable order of essential ideas which he believed governed the cosmos
and were embedded in the souls of all men. Rhetoric, however, ‘relates to the soul
as cookery does to the body’ (ibid.: 31). The ‘Forms’, as he called them, were the
unchanging and harmonious constellation of principles to which our finite ideas
can only approximate. For our thoughts to reflect this higher order, he implied,
took a talented and critical cast of mind.
Plato’s preference, of course, was for a society in which rational thought, not
persuasive speech, was at the helm. That wasn’t a democracy but rather a com-
munity built upon the strict allocation of functional roles which he believed to
20 The truth of rhetoric
be already distributed within the souls of men. In Plato’s ideal republic – as set
out in his dialogue, The Republic (see Plato, 1987) – citizens were allocated to
their class in society and would dedicate themselves to their own natural gifts.
Those with strong intellectual abilities would be given executive authority – the
‘philosopher-kings’; those with ‘spirit’ would undertake a military role as guard-
ians to protect the polis; and the rest would pursue their appetites by means of
trade. A society premised on the veneration of truth could therefore dispense with
public deliberation of the kind instructed by the sophists. Instead of the cacophony
of voices mingling in the Agora and straining to be heard, there would be the
quiet, orderly contemplation of reason among those with the expertise to do so,
unswayed by opinion and mere appearances. For reason, or logos, was to Plato
more like inward sight – a thoughtful reflection on images – than outward sounds.
Truth was essentially indifferent to vocal communication. As Adriana Cavarero
suggests, Plato’s image of rule by reason is ultimately a silent order, for rational
thought alone needs no outward expression through voice (Cavarero, 2005: 46).
Indeed, in The Republic Plato made clear his contempt for those noise makers –
the artists and poets – whose task it was to entertain and delight by ‘mimicking’
the truth. Such things, he argued, had no place in a rationally organized society
and ought to be banished (see Plato, 1987: 335–53).
What are we to make of Plato’s criticism of the sophists and rhetoric? What is
its enduring message? Critics have long highlighted the illiberal, anti-democratic
nature of his utopia. Plato wanted to replace politics altogether with a kind of
priesthood of philosophers. For liberals such as Karl Popper (1966), this marks
the early origins of ‘totalitarian’ thought, the urge to control society and limit
the freedom of individuals on the justification that a special elite has access to a
higher order of truth that ordinary people cannot attain. Writing in the twentieth
century during the rise of Stalinist communism, Popper saw figures such as Plato
as the philosophical precursors to a modern tendency to eradicate freedom in the
name of a utopian vision of perfect order.
But if Plato was clearly no liberal, his writings represent a current of thinking
that continues to inform political theory and philosophy today. As Jacques Rancière
argues, Plato established an underlying tension between philosophy and politics
whereby philosophy ‘expels disagreement from itself’ (Rancière, 1999: xii).
That is, in its very purpose, philosophy eradicates the contingency of politics. Plato
offered a theory of what Rancière calls ‘archipolitics’ – as the living embodiment
of reason, all activities of the community manifest an ideal essence (ibid.: 65–70).
The just state is one in which there is a proportionate distribution of functions
among the citizenry, where everyone is allocated a role and accounted for accord-
ing to a higher principle of order. Plato’s rejection of democracy was not simply
based on an illiberal tendency towards authoritarianism but, moreover, a refusal
of the excess and disorder that democratic politics brings to the community. In a
democracy, as he saw it, people exceeded their natural abilities and seek to under-
take any function whatsoever (ibid.: 19). This is precisely the problem identified
with rhetoric: the illusion of knowledge that upsets the ‘proper’ arrangement of
roles, allowing anyone to claim anything. While we may dispute Plato’s preferred
 The truth of rhetoric 21
vision of the just state, nonetheless his presentation of philosophy as a way of
confronting and expelling the disruptive effects of the political remained exem-
plary for later forms of political thinking.
Of course, a more sympathetic reading of Plato might look beyond the urge
to directly align politics with metaphysics. We might read Plato as offering us
an alternative kind of rhetoric: one focused on rigorously examining our points
of view and the conceptual definitions we use to reason, subjecting them to cri-
tique and exposing them to rigorous examination. It has certainly not failed to be
noticed that for all his criticism of rhetoric, Plato was himself a master rhetorician.
His dialogues demonstrated through elaborate, staged conversations and distinc-
tive imagery the kind of argumentation he preferred over democratic rhetoric.
This was a ‘Socratic’ form of reasoning that sought not to so much to eliminate
speech as to guide it towards philosophically defensible claims. Today, we might
not want to hand politics over to an intellectual priesthood, but we might find
appealing an environment of rational, self-critical rigour, where public servants
who have demonstrated expertise in their fields weigh up the consequences of
certain choices. Indeed, that is very much the way in which modern democracies
claim to work: that is, by separating complex public choices from the public (who
participate primarily by voting) and handing them over to an elite of representa-
tives and experts charged with the task of critically evaluating policy.
Plato’s overt hostility to rhetoric, then, might be seen as an effort to persuade
his audience to acknowledge, at a minimum, a certain kind of ‘serious’ argumen-
tation as the basis to political order (see Lanham, 1976: 6–7). That view remains
opposed to democratic politics, but it allows for some degree of speech and
persuasion, albeit regulated by a sense of working towards ‘higher principles’
of knowledge. However we interpret his work, Plato established an opposition
between philosophy and politics that contrasts the search for objective principles
of truth with the dangerous rhetorical excess of democratic speech.

Aristotle and the republican tradition

Of the ancient Greek philosophers it is Aristotle, Plato’s former pupil and founder
of his own school – the Lyceum – who has had the most positive impact on the
development of rhetoric. Unlike his teacher, Aristotle found a clear place for rhet-
oric in the business of the polis. He, too, was a firm supporter of the scientific
quest for truth, and his many and varied writings are a testament to that objective.
But in Aristotle’s analysis, speech and persuasion had an undoubted, practical role
in sustaining the political community and rhetoric could therefore be regarded as
an acceptable ally of philosophy. Man, he famously claimed in his Politics (1988),
was by nature a ‘political animal’. It was speech that distinguished humans from
the other animals and that enabled him to communicate moral ideas. It was proper,
then, that speech and persuasion should be integral to the life of the political
community.
For Aristotle, political association was founded not on fixed and eternal prin-
ciples reflected in the soul, but on the natural orientation of humans to live
22 The truth of rhetoric
together and share a common life. That foundation was conceived in a distinctive,
‘teleological’ way: all things develop in order to fulfil their essential purpose.
Just as the purpose of the seed is to grow into a tree, so the purpose of the polis
is to attend to the ‘good life’ of the families and communities that constitute it.
Of course, in any specific instance political life could develop in pathological
ways but, in essence, it was properly bound towards ends that could be rationally
explored. In Aristotle’s reasoning, the good life could mean a number of things to
different communities, rather than any single thing universally. But it underscored
his sense that debating the character of the common good was not an accidental
or detrimental aspect of politics but an activity that belonged to the very essence
of political association. To be citizens of such a community was, likewise, proper
to mankind and in tune with its own distinctive abilities to speak and argue about
issues of right and wrong, the expedient or inexpedient. Although Aristotle rec-
ognized various forms of political arrangement, such as monarchy, oligarchy and
democracy (which he rejected as rule by the mob), he nevertheless endorsed a
limited form of citizen participation in the ideal polity.
Starting from these premises, Aristotle made the case for rhetoric as a valuable
skill for citizens and therefore a true ‘art’ and object of knowledge (see Olmsted,
2006: 12–14). In so doing, he aimed to systematize much of the previous knowl-
edge of rhetoric developed by the sophists and to integrate it into a rational
appreciation of political life. Rejecting the sophists’ conception of politics as mere
conventions open to manipulation, he presented rhetoric as a practical form of
reasoning that complemented other, theoretical branches of knowledge. His work
The Art of Rhetoric (1991) was assembled over several years and contains a rather
uneven reflection upon various dimensions of speech. But it provides one of the
most widely accepted sources for the later classification of the different aspects
of rhetorical study that we will make use of in later chapters (see Black, 1978;
Lawson-Tancred, 1991).
What does Aristotle say in The Art of Rhetoric? He opens with the assertion
that rhetoric ‘is the counterpart to dialectic’. ‘Dialectic’ is philosophical reasoning
proper, whose purpose is to demonstrate the truth of things. The focus of rhetoric,
he argues, is not persuasion per se but ‘the detection of the persuasive aspects of
each matter’ (1991: 70; italics in original). What does that mean? Aristotle rejects
the sophistic view of rhetoric as simply about achieving persuasion, regardless of
any other consideration. Instead, he limits persuasion to the worth of the resources
at hand. Rhetoric entails an enquiry into how the best case can be put given the
argument, the evidence, the audience and so on. This limitation was intended to
prevent anyone overstating the possibilities of rhetoric and, in making it, Aristotle
emphasized his intention to explore the ways in which rhetorical techniques could
help in the pursuit of truth.
What then follows, however, is more an instructive exposition of rhetoric’s
fundamental elements than a purely philosophical account of the rationality
of rhetoric. Aristotle takes issue with the sophists’ attention to legal rhetoric.
Instead, he insists on the primacy of political rhetoric, where what is at issue
is the best course of action for the polis to pursue. Despite his insistence on
 The truth of rhetoric 23
rhetoric’s alignment with dialectic, Aristotle insists on the significance of facing
uncertainty – for deliberating in politics was usually a matter of hearing opposed
arguments on an issue for which there was not a logical answer. Oratory there-
fore involved a demonstration of a reasoned course of action that would most
likely be advantageous, and a rejection of the least advantageous. In that respect,
his account of rhetoric complements his views of politics and of ethics: it con-
cerns which policies serve the common good and the pursuit of happiness for the
citizens as a whole. Those goals were the highest concern of the community, and
therefore the supreme principle underlying a genuine ‘science’ of rhetoric.
The Art of Rhetoric provides an early but more or less systematic classification
of the elements of rhetorical instruction that would influence later rhetoricians.
That included the differentiation of the three ‘genres’ of rhetoric and the differ-
ent types of argumentative appeal. The three genres referred to distinct kinds of
persuasion for different occasions and comprised deliberative or political rhetoric,
forensic or legal rhetoric and display or ceremonial (sometimes called ‘epideic-
tic’) rhetoric. Deliberative rhetoric was the form of persuasion suited to arguments
concerning the right course of action in the future, often argued in the Athenian
ekklesia. Forensic rhetoric involved persuasion about the past, employed most
often in the law courts. Display rhetoric, finally, involved persuasion in relation
to the present, typically forms of praise or blame at moments of ceremony such as
funerals or festivals. For Aristotle, deliberative rhetoric was the most significant
of the three.
The different types of appeal distinguish between alternative sources of an
argument. For Aristotle, those comprise the ‘demonstrative’ form, which appealed
to an audience’s use of reason, the appeal to the character or personal authority of
the speaker and the appeal to emotion. Following their later Roman appropriation,
these are now often referred to as the appeal to logos (reason), ethos (character)
and pathos (emotion). Aristotle was mostly interested in reason and character, but
he made an interesting case for appeal to the emotions in order to sway a crowd.
We will consider these distinctions in more detail in Chapters 4 and 5.
Despite its pretentions to recruit rhetoric into the philosophical fold, Aristotle’s
Rhetoric has served primarily as a manual or guide to the practice of rhetorical
instruction. Unlike Plato, he accepted the value for the community of persua-
sion through oratory. The real test was not the accordance of claims with some
ideal principle accessible only by experts; rather, it was the ability of the orator
to make a case in matters that did not admit of such ideal foundation. In situa-
tions such as these it was necessary for an audience to hear different sides of the
argument and to make a judgement based not immediately on higher principles
of truth, but on the weight of evidence. Aristotle drew attention to the importance
of the ‘enthymeme’ in this process – that is, reasoning not from logical premises
but from commonplace understandings that can usually be taken for granted. In
politics, it was not necessary to defend every claim with rigorous philosophical
logic. The good orator, instead, could assume certain ideas and values as already
accepted.
24 The truth of rhetoric
But if in his account of the enthymeme Aristotle appeared to be a friend of
rhetoric, there is an important lesson to be learned here. In order for commonplaces
to work as hidden premises, the audience must be a community of likeminded
people with whom such an understanding could be reliably utilized. In Athens,
that meant exclusively male citizens who had wives and slaves attending to their
private affairs. While there was no guaranteeing that this community would agree
on every issue, it was reasonable nonetheless to assume that some matters (such
as the need to sustain an order based on slavery) would not be criticized and
hence did not need to be defended. This points to a common and serious problem
for those who promote the idea of deliberation and the rhetorical arts today: the
assumed existence of a community of likeminded people for whom argument and
debate can be contained within a broad consensus on common principles (what I
called a ‘horizon’ of political values in Chapter 1). For all Plato’s railing against
its dangers, political oratory has often been a rather elite practice built on a narrow
community of speakers and listeners who can assume various ideas to be already
agreed. Like Plato, Aristotle was suspicious of the mob entering politics and pre-
ferred that deliberation would be undertaken by a limited number of independent
and wealthy men able to participate effectively in an informed discussion. Such a
skill was hardly that of all people; a political community built on the teaching of
rhetoric was never intended to introduce dangerous instability into politics.
Whereas Plato’s approach to rhetoric was part of a deeply anti-political senti-
ment, Aristotle endorsed a limited form of politics that itself presupposed a limited
community of citizens. This is what Rancière calls ‘parapolitics’, by contrast with
Plato’s archipolitics. Parapolitics also works from the idea of a stable, orderly
community, but permits some degree of disagreement by partially incorporating
the demos into the political order and making the management of their discord
the task of government (Rancière, 1999: 70–77). A democratic contest of sorts is
staged in Aristotle’s vision, but it is also stripped of any destabilizing elements
because, it is thought, a natural equality among citizens has already been estab-
lished. This view remained very much the classical idea of politics transmitted
from ancient Greece to the Roman republic and beyond; it was a ‘republican ideol-
ogy’ of the state as a form of autonomous self-government. For later rhetoricians,
Aristotle’s Rhetoric was certainly not the last word, but it was a vital reference
point for a view of rhetoric as a practice for deliberating matters of state.
In the work of Marcus Tullius Cicero – often hailed as the greatest orator and
rhetorician of the Roman world – the skills of speech were central to the life of
the polis. Cicero produced a number of treatises on rhetoric in his lifetime (as well
as practising oratory as a lawyer and politician), where he extolled, in particular,
the virtuous role of speech in sustaining the republican way of life (see Cicero
2001, 1949a and 1949b). The Roman republic was no democracy in the common
sense of the word – it combined elements of representation with an aristocrat-
dominated Senate – but it contained various opportunities for speakers to win over
their audiences, and speech was a central part of its self-image as a self-governing
community (see Connolly, 2007). As one commentator argues, the figure of the
orator was a powerful motif in the republic and embodied the idea of a heroic
 The truth of rhetoric 25
protector from tyranny (Dugan, 2009). Yet Rome was a highly competitive and
often rather dangerous and unstable order where success or failure in public
speech, such as in the courts of law or the Senate, could have enormous implica-
tions. Riven with factions among the aristocratic elite and the plebeian classes,
only a small number of individuals had the recognized right – that is, the personal
prestige – to speak with authority. As a legal advocate and later a Senator and
Consul, Cicero made his name with a famed ability for public speaking.
Cicero’s contributions to rhetoric were less philosophical and more practically
instructive, although he clearly endorsed a view of informed oratory as part of
virtuous citizenship, where speech and the republican order were conceived as
mutually supportive. Cicero also refused the sophistic idea that rhetoric could
be used for any purpose. Rather, the ‘ideal orator’ was a virtuous man with a
strong understanding of his topic, who could persuade his audience with reason,
authority and emotion all combined: ‘Surely it is one particular quality that marks
good speakers: speech that is well ordered, distinguished, and characterized by a
particular kind of artistry and polish. And unless the orator has fully grasped the
underlying subject matter, such speech is utterly impossible’ (Cicero, 2001: 70;
see also 1949b: 357). For Cicero, it was the skill of the orator himself, rather than
any techniques or ordering of the parts of speech, that mattered most. A good
orator would judge the appropriate style of persuasion by the character of his
audience and moderate his style accordingly. In that way, he believed, through
oratory, reason and the higher needs of the community would prevail (see Kapust,
2011; Garsten, 2006: ch. 5).
Despite such noble intentions, in practice Cicero was a pragmatic orator, pre-
pared to adapt his arguments to whatever seemed likely to protect the republic
(Dugan, 2009: 187). His most famous speeches were delivered at moments of
great crisis, such as during his campaign against Catiline and his co-conspirators.
At such moments he was able to manipulate, in various ways, the idea of the
republic and its needs in order to suit his vision of its best interests. Nonetheless,
despite his inconsistencies, Cicero’s figure of the ideal orator as a moderate and
cultivated citizen who identifies with the good of the wider community persisted
long after the decline of the Roman republic. For example, in the writings of
Quintilian, himself a great admirer of Cicero, rhetoric was presented as part of the
general moral and civic education of the citizen.
After the fall of Athenian democracy and, later, the collapse of the Roman repub-
lic, rhetoric largely disappeared from its prominent place in political life. But it
reappeared again as part of the revival of classical scholarship during the period of
the Renaissance, particularly in its most productive centres in Italy. There, as part
of a reaction to external rule by autocratic princes and empires, Aristotelian and
Ciceronian ideas were rediscovered and called upon in defence of the republican
notion of politics. That included a re-elaboration of the idea of politics compris-
ing self-governing cities where a limited number of citizens participated actively
in the affairs of the community. Once more, rhetoric was regarded as an essential
element for the purpose of debating the common good. The development of a
‘humanist’ form of enquiry into all sorts of areas of man’s abilities shifted the
26 The truth of rhetoric
focus from purely religious, ‘revealed’ teachings about the cosmos and man’s
predesigned role in it towards the knowledge and skills that mankind generated
itself through its own endeavours (see Lanham, 1976). The works of Aristotle and
Cicero were thus conceived as part of the heritage of human wisdom about human
affairs that contributed to the establishment of political associations. Once more,
then, rhetoric was considered integral to the self-founding and self-governing of
political communities by citizens themselves, in opposition to the authority of
theological dogma or rule primarily by force (see Grassi, 1980, 1983; Skinner,
1978: 28–48). Yet, again, the revival of the classical notion of politics – or parap-
olitics – and the place of rhetoric in it was not a defence of democracy, but rather
a ‘defence of liberty’ by a limited number of citizens who alone deliberated public
affairs (Skinner, 1978: 41–48). The contingency of politics – its potential to pro-
duce political disagreement, deception and instability – was therefore balanced by
the narrowness of the body of citizens and the ‘virtuous’ qualities thought to be
shared among them.

Hobbes, Rousseau and modern sovereignty

The change that brought the greatest threat to the survival of rhetoric in political
life was the emergence of the modern, sovereign state. The arrival of centralized,
immensely powerful authorities with distinct territorial boundaries and the capac-
ity to enforce a uniform set of laws by the monopoly of the means of violence
ran directly counter to the idea of politics promoted in the classical and human-
ist treatises on rhetoric – for sovereignty implies that public power is exercised
through an autonomous and authoritative set of commands to be obeyed without
discussion. Of course, public speaking and the rhetorical arts continued to have
a part to play, but they became circumscribed by an idea of politics that severely
limited their exercise in the public realm.
The principle of state sovereignty, which emerged across Europe from the
sixteenth century onwards, involved subordinating existing assemblies and other
opportunities for deliberation and persuasion to a final power whose will was
indivisible. The outcome of that process was the nation-state model that now
dominates the world, even if the principle of absolute sovereignty is no longer
fully operative. What is important, from our point of view, is how the emergence
of the idea of sovereignty was responsible for the eradication, or at the very least
diminution, of rhetoric in politics. The two most significant political philosophers
of modern sovereignty, Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, offer con-
trasting interpretations of the nature of sovereignty as the basis of political order.
Yet both firmly insist on the danger of rhetorical speech and the need to limit its
effects. Let us look at the two thinkers in turn.
Hobbes’s political theory, set out in his Leviathan of 1651 (see Hobbes, 1991),
involved sustained criticism of the civic republican approach to politics that
he himself had inherited as a youth. Famously, for Hobbes, political power was to
be conceived as the formation of an independent authority fundamentally separate
from the people who authorized it. Yet Hobbes’s defence of absolute sovereign
 The truth of rhetoric 27
power was also theorized as a kind of ‘social contract’ – that is, as an agreement
among those subject to power themselves. Once agreed as a legitimate power,
however, the sovereign was free to decide the laws and determine the liberties – or
not – of its citizens. A moment of deliberation, then, was brief but final. Thereafter,
citizens were not to speak on public matters. Indeed, even the imagined moment
of contracting was less a debate than a collective calculation of the optimal means
of survival. At the heart of Hobbes’s theory, then, we find once more a radical
critique of rhetoric and the dangers it brings to civil peace.
Leviathan involved a sustained effort to reason from fundamental truths about
the nature of human beings towards an idea of how they might live together.
Hobbes’s method was taken from geometry – the procedure of reasoning in logical
steps from basic axioms – and his text sought to ground political theory in what he
called a ‘civil science’. That enabled him to develop a thoroughgoing scepticism
about human ideas and values. For all the capacity to reason and imagine, humans
could not be trusted to find peaceful ways of reconciling their common needs and
desires. Driven by their passions and appetites, and by the basic need for survival,
the ‘natural condition’ of mankind (that is, without an intervening authority) was
one not of harmony but competition and uncertainty.
In Hobbes’s sceptical view, although technically capable of rigorous thinking,
people were as likely to take on trust the word of others as they were to reason
from clear definitions or their own experience. Even if they reasoned independ-
ently, however, it was not possible to eradicate different interpretations of the
world: ‘For though the nature of that we conceive be the same; yet the diversity
of our reception of it, in respect of different constitutions of body, and prejudices
of opinion, gives everything a tincture of our different passions’ (1991: 31). Such
differences of interpretation were not minor. They extended along some of the
basic dimensions of moral vocabulary:

For one man calleth Wisdome, what another calleth feare; and one cruelty,
what another justice; one prodigality, what another magnanimity; and one
gravity, what another stupidity, &c. And therefore such names can never be
the true grounds of any ratiocination.
(Ibid.)

In the context of England’s traumatic civil war, with its toxic combination of
religious and political dispute, such differences could have dramatic, violent con-
sequences. It was precisely the inability of men to agree naturally upon common
definitions of the key moral concepts that determined the condition of uncertainty
and competition that Hobbes described as the ‘state of nature’. Indeed, Hobbes
devoted considerable space to attacking precisely the ‘absurdities’ and miscon-
ceptions of religious advocates, the fallacious reasonings of ancient philosophers
and, of course, ‘the use of Metaphors, Tropes, and other Rhetoricall figures, in
stead of words proper’ (1991: 35). Such misunderstandings, misconceptions and
misuse of words were the precursor to social and political strife. For Hobbes, the
Enlightenment thinker, ‘The Light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words’ enabled
28 The truth of rhetoric
by ‘exact definitions [...] purged from ambiguity’. By contrast, ‘Metaphors, and
senseless and ambiguous words, are like ignes fatui [foolish fire or Will-o’-the-
Wisp]; and reasoning upon them, is wandering amongst innumerable absurdities;
and their end, contention, and sedition, or contempt’ (1991: 36).
Hobbes is often thought a crudely materialist philosopher who reduces man to
a self-interested automaton, unable to constrain his natural selfishness in the com-
petition for survival. But as Terence Ball (1995: ch. 4) has argued, he was, on the
contrary, profoundly aware of the linguistic dimension of human nature, the social
character of language and its function as the basis of community. The uncertainty
of the state of nature, as he depicted it, was a consequence not of humans with
the speechless instincts of wild animals but, rather, of the surfeit of interpreta-
tions, ambiguities and misunderstandings among people who use language only
too freely. The problem was that an ability to use language only extended passions
into a confusion of concepts and values upon whose basic definitions they could
not agree. Unable, unlike Hobbes himself, to use Perspicuous Words to agree
a common way of living, it was subsequently necessary for them to generate a
power who could intervene and make the final judgement of what was ‘good’,
‘bad’, ‘just’ and ‘unjust’ on their behalf.
Hobbes’s account of the state of nature is, in part, a criticism of the Renaissance
revival of classic notions of politics. The palpable evidence of religious and civil
conflict demonstrated that there was no self-evident common good or all-embrac-
ing sense of community to which citizens would pledge their allegiance. Humans
were capable of morality but they were not ‘naturally’ political, as Aristotle had
claimed. They were naturally antagonistic, competitive and able, above all, to
disagree over the kind of vocabulary that a stable community requires to exist at
all. For that reason, Hobbes argued, it was rational to assume they would agree
to authorize some person, or persons, to protect them from each other. The sov-
ereign was therefore an ‘artificial person’ given the responsibility to decide and
enforce the key definitions of civil vocabulary. The sovereign was the outcome
of a contract between individuals to put survival above their preferred interpreta-
tions, abandoning their natural rights to decide such meanings for themselves.
Of course, the contract was not a historical fact but, rather, a thought experiment
designed to show how rational people would consent to such a power. Agreement
was not a matter of deliberation and argument so much as a post-hoc calcula-
tion. Once it was recognized that a supreme power of some sort was rationally
defensible, people would (at least, eventually) understand the legitimacy of such
an authority.
Hobbes’s political theory was a curious blend of absolutist goals (total power
and authority in a centralized authority) with the language of civic republican-
ism (he made the case for a ‘civil power’, not some ancient or divine right) and
the principles of liberal contractarianism (authority based on the acknowledged
consent of rational individuals). Despite that peculiar combination, his defence of
sovereignty has been extremely influential. Most states today are indeed regarded
as independent powers irreducible either to the body of a king or the bodies
of citizens, even if they are hardly absolute. We should not lose sight, however,
 The truth of rhetoric 29
of the fact that this conception of power is itself highly rhetorical. Not only was
Hobbes a hugely gifted rhetorician – quite able to develop a rigorous argument
and muster his own powerful metaphors, such as the ‘state of war of all against
all’ or the sovereign as a ‘mortall God’, while simultaneously denying the value
of rhetoric – but also, the sovereign power he defended was a way of organizing
the space of speech and argument, granting primacy to one voice over all others.
Unlike Plato, for whom political order should mirror the eternal – but speechless –
ideal Forms, Hobbes conceived the state as the dominant voice in an otherwise
crowded environment of interpretations. Likewise, today, we are accustomed to
conceiving the state as the dominant voice, the source of authoritative commands
and ‘official’ information that we are expected to acknowledge and obey, even if
we disagree.
Writing around one hundred years later, Rousseau provides an alternative
account of sovereignty to Hobbes’s severe and distant figure of the Leviathan.
For Rousseau, sovereignty entailed an agreement among individuals, but it could
never be alienated from the collective citizen body. Returning to a classical repub-
lican theme (he was an admirer of the ancient Roman Republic and of Sparta), he
recommended that the political order be founded on a community of citizens, each
of whom participated in determining the General Will. But if Rousseau adopted a
republican image of the political community, he nonetheless maintained a notion
of sovereignty that had no truck with the rhetorical arts.
Rousseau’s political theory and dislike of rhetoric were rooted in his view of
the evolution of mankind. For him, the development of society had corrupted the
settled and harmonious natural order of primitive man. Society had turned the
‘noble savage’ into a selfish and competitive individual. The only way to escape
this decline and return humanity to any kind of harmony with its nature (a return
to the primitive life of the past being impossible) was to reorder society in such a
way that reduced the dissonance between the public and private worlds, between
our consciences and our obligations to society. In his Social Contract of 1762,
Rousseau set out a vision of a political community where citizens themselves col-
lectively constituted the body of the sovereign (see Rousseau, 1968). Unlike in
Hobbes’s work, the principle of authority could never be externalized in a separate
institution. Instead, for Rousseau, citizens of his ideal state would feel internally
their common bonds and obligations to obey.
Rousseau pictured his state as a small republic or city-state, not unlike his native
Geneva. As in Hobbes, the state would be constituted through a contract or pact
between individuals to create an ‘artificial person and collective body’ (ibid.: 61)
but, this time, made up of the citizens themselves. In that way, Rousseau believed,
the state ‘has not, nor could it have, any interest contrary to theirs’ (ibid.: 63).
As the source of law, the sovereign would determine what was just and unjust, and
circumscribe individuals’ duties but also enable their civil liberties in return for the
individual giving up the right to determine such things privately (ibid.: 65). When
submitting to the sovereign, however, citizens would obey not something wholly
separate from themselves but, rather, what he famously called the ‘General
Will’. The General Will was the collective interest as determined by the citizens
30 The truth of rhetoric
themselves, whom he envisaged meeting regularly in open assemblies to pass
judgement on public matters. Submission to the General Will, then, did not mean
handing power over to someone else to dictate all one’s life choices (although it
was reasonable, he thought, to delegate a government) but, rather, to align one’s
private interests with those of the community as a whole. That meant not being
governed by one’s own appetites alone (which was a form of slavery, he argued),
but limiting them in order to fit with a wider sense of ‘moral freedom’ located in
the self-governing community (ibid.; see also 76–77). The individual was enti-
tled to private freedoms but it was the General Will that predominated, since only
through that will are citizens free and equal: ‘The citizen consents to all the laws,
even to those that are passed against his will […]’ (ibid.: 153).
So far this might seem like a fairly democratic arrangement in tune with ancient
ideas about democracy. But in the Social Contract and elsewhere, Rousseau quali-
fied his account of what a virtuous modern community might involve. Among the
preconditions he specified, Rousseau suggested it might help if the people were
already in some kind of association (if yet without law); one where they all knew
each other, where there was a moderate equality of wealth (he suggested Corsica
as an example; ibid.: 95). Moreover, he made quite clear that this state should not
be a democracy where all citizens could govern, since that was likely to lead to
the importation of private interests and civil strife. Only a nation of gods, not men,
could govern themselves democratically, he claimed (ibid.: 114).
Indeed, Rousseau indicated that it was better for the survival of the state if
there was a high degree of unanimity to sustain the General Will: ‘whereas long
debates, dissensions and disturbances bespeak the ascendance of particular inter-
ests and the decline of the state’ (ibid.: 151). He warned of the prospect of a ‘sly
orator’ who could persuade the people against their better judgement (ibid.: 150).
Under the rule of the General Will, ‘there is no question either of intrigues or of
eloquence’ to manipulate others (ibid.: 149). Rousseau also suggests at one point
that it would be better if, in their deliberations, citizens did not communicate at
all (ibid.: 73)! Deliberation in his view was less a process of argumentative
speech and more the outcome of internal reasoning from the standpoint of the
General Will.
As Bryan Garsten argues, Rousseau preferred a language of persuasion that
was essentially non-argumentative and appealed instead to the individual’s con-
science (see Garsten, 2006: 71–72). Particularistic interests could be avoided and
a sense of ‘generality of concern’ unearthed only by bypassing reason. By con-
sulting the ‘secret voice of conscience’ individuals would come, he believed, to
make moderate and inclusive judgements that evaded the self-interest that modern
reason had taught them. Thus Rousseau’s figure of the ‘lawgiver’, whose task it
was to guide the people towards their contract, was to ‘employ neither force nor
argument’ but ‘have recourse to an authority of another order, one which can
compel without violence and persuade without convincing’ (Rousseau, 1968: 87).
To ‘persuade without convincing’ meant to appeal to common sentiments and not
to bargain with individual interests. As Garsten points out, Rousseau believed
community emerged from the underlying sentiments of pity and ‘self-love’
 The truth of rhetoric 31
which brought a recognition of similarity with others and identification with them
(Garsten, 2006: 74–75). To access these sentiments was to release a sense of vir-
tue and fellow feeling independent of any argument, and it enabled Rousseau to
regard sovereignty as the expression of a shared sentiment from within, not as an
external order imposed from without. Yet, despite the disavowal of rhetoric, we
might properly regard such arousal as an appeal to pathos, or commonly shared
emotions. As such, Rousseau follows other republicans in assuming the presence
of a pre-existing common bond as the basis to community. Garsten further sug-
gests that Rousseau’s anti-rhetorical image of political order invokes a ‘prophetic
nationalism’ whose rhetoric is still heard today in the ‘dogmatic’ forms of speech
that appeal to a natural community of sentiments. In forms of ethnic nationalism
and religious speech, for example, judgements on issues are deemed to emanate
not from the contingent play of arguments but from an incontestable harmony of
values and feelings essential to citizens, whose desire for collective freedom may
be expressed through a prophetic leader or guide (ibid.: 80–83).
In their different ways, Hobbes and Rousseau formulated ideas of sovereignty
that sought to found political order on the presence of an incontestable will. For
Hobbes that will was imposed from without, while for Rousseau it was cultivated
from within. In both cases, however, the opportunity for argument and persuasion
was halted so that political order could be firmly anchored in an incontestable
principle. In these modern political theories, the moment of founding the order –
when some degree of deliberation might be imagined – is limited to a rational
calculation on the part of self-interested individuals or to the invocation of com-
munal sentiment. As some have noted, modern western politics has oscillated
between these two sources of sovereignty: the authority of the state being located
either in an independent entity governing a society of atomistic individuals or in
an underlying sense of community expressed through the state (see Taylor, 1985b:
ch. 10). In each case, persuasion finds its absolute limit in an impermeable will
that transcends politics.

Summary
Since its inception in ancient Greece, western political thought has largely con-
stituted itself in opposition to the perceived dangers of rhetoric. This has been
achieved either by treating rhetorical speech as wholly disruptive of political
order or, more favourably, in need of alignment with intrinsic principles of social
organization, such as the ‘good’ of the community (see Fish, 1989: ch. 20). In
each instance, political thinkers have sought a point of reference, outside politi-
cal dispute, that draws limits around what can be said, who can say it and how.
Rhetoric is therefore contrasted with, or subsumed into, some eternal or basic
‘truth’ about humans and how they might live together. Persuasive practices must
either vacate the space of the political community where that truth resides, or they
must be so closely aligned with it as to not exceed its boundaries.
Rhetoric is controversial not because it is explicitly subversive but because it
exposes the political order to a contingency that philosophers and theorists have
32 The truth of rhetoric
tried to suppress. Philosophy’s systematic organization of knowledge is supposed
to reason from clear, rigorous principles and definitions that aim to have a uni-
versal scope. By contrast, rhetoric is thought to be concerned with partial points
of view lacking in rigour. Left unchecked, many political philosophers and theo-
rists predict that rhetoric will lead communities either to tyranny or chaos. But if
some thinkers have tried to reason from fundamental truths, the underside of this
claim is that the truth has been transmitted in ways that are themselves evidently
rhetorical. From Plato’s dialogues through to Hobbes’s image of the Leviathan
and beyond, political thinkers have, as Garsten notes, often used rhetoric to argue
against rhetoric! That is, to get readers to understand the worrying truth about
rhetoric and to submit to some higher order, it has been necessary nonetheless
to utilize its techniques and devices. Philosophical and political reasoning there-
fore cannot be said entirely to lie outside the realm of rhetoric, as is claimed, but
employs it at the very same time as it is disavowed.
3 The rhetorical citizen

Rhetoric is inextricably linked to a politics of the citizen. Citizens can be both

speakers and audience in a community that governs itself. In the classical world,
individuals granted membership of the polis had the freedom to attend assemblies,
hear debates and speak as equals among their fellows. To be a citizen was – at
least in principle – to be included within the speech community and to contribute
to its sustenance. By contrast, modern political systems have done away with
that dimension of citizenship. They have extended formal membership to a much
wider range of persons, most notably women and people from all social classes
and ethnic groups, but they have drastically reduced the degree of participation
in politics demanded of citizens. In modern democracies, citizens are simply not
expected to speak or to listen in public to the same degree as their classical coun-
terparts. Not surprisingly, perhaps, rhetoric has diminished as a focal point of
public life, substituted by a ‘thinner’ conception of citizenship and community
based on codified legal rights and social entitlements. Paradoxically, opportu-
nities for people to speak and persuade have multiplied vastly, but largely at a
distance from the formal political arena, as private individuals and not as publicly
engaged citizens.
We might see the contrast between ancient and modern citizenship as evidence
of the ultimate triumph of efforts, noted in the previous chapter, to depoliticize
public life and separate it from squabbling or easily flattered citizens. To an extent
that is true. But we should not ignore the distinctive way that the political dimen-
sion presents itself in modern society. No longer are citizens perceived as the
bearers of a common group identity for which they are regularly expected to dem-
onstrate their support. Instead, in modern states commonality is achieved at a
remove, through representation rather than physical presence: that is, common
values are conjured and refashioned by actors (professional politicians and other
political agents) who – formally or informally – represent citizens’ needs and
interests on their behalf and who make use of symbols, ideas and arguments to do
the representing.
Rhetoric, consequently, is no longer framed primarily by a demand for an
elevated or ‘special’ form of speech delivered by a virtuous citizen speaking to or
for the polis (see Habinek, 2005). Instead, persuasion is sought through multiple
strategies to shape the idea of the community itself and the place of the citizen
34 The rhetorical citizen
within it. Rather than simply a means to the self-management of the community,
rhetoric is now part of a politics of representation in societies that are much larger
and more diverse and internally differentiated than in classical times. The separa-
tion of public authority (or the state) from society and the independent expansion
of a bureaucratic apparatus mean that the formal public realm no longer coincides
with the body of all citizens (conceived as a natural unity) but is, instead, per-
manently at a distance from that body and bridged by acts of representation that
reduce but never eliminate the distance. That gives formal politics a relative inde-
pendence and stability often lacking in pre-modern orders. But it also means that
rhetoric relates to the political dimension in new ways: particularly in contests
over the nature and limits of citizens’ obligations to each other.
In this chapter I explore the above argument to think about how to conceive of
the ‘situated’ nature of speech and rhetoric today. Even if it is no longer perceived
as the primary skill of the modern citizen, rhetoric nonetheless remains impor-
tant in mediating politics and the political – that is, in connecting the day-to-day
choices and judgements in administering to society with the broader, ‘universal’
principles that shape its parameters and mark out its limits. But the separation of
authority from society has opened up new opportunities to test, contest and remake
such principles in ways unknown in classical times. As we shall see, different
approaches in contemporary political theory offer alternative, often contrasting
images of how citizens might participate in that process, with various degrees of
attention to speech and persuasion.

Citizenship, ancient and modern

In its classical formulation, as we saw in the previous chapter, rhetoric denoted
the civic skill of oratory or public speaking. The institutions of democratic Athens
and republican Rome provided contexts for such skills to be at the centre of public
life: political assemblies, public committees, open-air law courts, a large number
of citizens freed from domestic concerns and hence able to attend meetings and
a strong ethic of responsibility to sustain the community. Around such practices
there developed a combative sense of citizenship as the prized membership of a
community for which it was necessary on occasion to prove one’s worth with a
strong performance. In societies where the lives and deaths of individuals and
communities were often closely related to a performance before an audience,
being able to engage the crowd gave speakers a winning advantage.
Despite its vocal and articulate critics, rhetoric came to be regarded as a central
part of the education of young citizens in the classical world. The ideal citizen was
someone trained both in the skills of combat and those of grammar and rhetoric
(see Habinek, 2005: chs 1 and 4). Such a view was expounded by figures such
as Isocrates in Greece and, later in Rome, Quintilian, whose mammoth Institutio
Oratoria (or the ‘Orator’s Education’) set out a curriculum to nurture citizens on
the basis of views derived from Cicero (see Quintilian, 2002; Connolly, 2009).
Supporting that notion of rhetorical education was a view of public life as the
object of a common obligation that bore down upon all citizens. To be a member
 The rhetorical citizen 35
of the polis in Greece or a citizen of Rome meant to take responsibility for public
life over and above one’s own person. Private life – which was more clearly set
out in Roman law than it was in Greece – was not insignificant by any means but,
by definition, it was not anyone else’s concern. As Hannah Arendt once pointed
out, the term ‘private’ stems from the notion of a ‘privation’. To be in private, she
argued, is ‘to be deprived of the reality that comes from being seen and heard by
others’ (Arendt, 1959: 53). In the classical world, the purpose of living in large
communities was to achieve a good higher than one’s own personal success or,
better, to make one’s personal success translate into that of the wider community.
The assumption here was that the capacity of the community to govern itself
freely meant overcoming external obstacles such as the power of other communi-
ties or tyrants. Thus Athens was perpetually at war with other communities, such
as Sparta, and Rome was transformed over the centuries from a city republic
into an enormous empire comprising half the world. The most cherished freedom,
then, was that of the community as a whole, rather than of individuals alone.
A citizen of communities such as these therefore took on duties to sustain and
expand a collective identity that was the precondition of any liberties he and his
family enjoyed.
In the classical conception of citizenship, then, to speak was to participate
actively in an environment focused greatly on collectivity. Learning how to
communicate by means of rhetorical instruction was an integral part of belong-
ing to it. Performing well doubtless enhanced an individual’s status in the eyes
of others but, in the final instance, it was the wider group that was thought to
benefit. Citizenship – although limited to a select number, all of them men – was
functional to the community’s survival. That is why, in the work of Aristotle
(1988), the highest good of the polis was understood as the ultimate guiding
thread for citizens. In his view, only a limited number of participating citizens
were likely to defend the common good; a democracy in the fullest sense would
end up as mob rule. Likewise, in republican Rome, full citizenship was not
granted to everyone, nor were all citizens strictly equal in the powers they could
wield; the political order was entrusted largely to a number of aristocrats who
dominated the Senate from where ruling Consuls were drawn (see Connolly,
2007; see also Ober, 1991).
That sense of a powerful communal obligation had an impact on the teach-
ing of rhetoric. Speech, too, was expected to conform to the higher need of the
community for stability and survival in time and space. That expectation was
expressed in concepts such as the Greek term kairos and the Roman idea of status.
Kairos concerned the sense of ‘appropriateness’ of rhetoric to ‘time, place and
circumstance’, that is, the accordance of an argument to what is given as true to
the community at a given moment (see Lanham, 1991: 94). Contra Plato, rhetori-
cians taught speakers to address audiences in terms of what was reasonable for
the community at the time, not what was rational outside of all time and place.
Likewise, the later Roman concept of status (or stasis in Greek) denoted a deliber-
ate effort to determine the space of conflict around an agreed issue (for example,
whether a legal dispute hinged on a matter of fact, interpretation or motivation;
36 The rhetorical citizen
see Lanham, 1991: 93–94). By these concepts, speaking citizens in ancient times
were encouraged to adopt strategies that worked within collectively recognized
parameters (see Carter, 1988). Although there remained considerable room for
disagreement about those parameters and how they were met, it was the responsi-
bility of public speakers to demonstrate that they could align the content of their
arguments to a common sense of time and space so that communal needs would
remain paramount.
However, it is the close connection between citizenship and deference to the
time and space of the community that contrasts with modern ideas of political
membership. Although the classical idea of politics was still influential up to the
early modern period in Europe, the notion of active, participatory citizenship
was eventually supplanted by a more limited idea that only faintly echoes the
earlier version. The rights-bearing citizen that emerged from religious wars and,
importantly, the French revolution, although drawing upon the Roman idea of
equality before the law, involved a wholly new conception of freedom, equality
and responsibility (see Bellamy, 2008; Heater, 1990).
Let me sketch some of the important differences here. Fundamentally, the mod-
ern, broadly ‘liberal’ notion of citizenship dispenses with the embracing sense
of community of the classical version. In the modern notion, membership of the
political community entails a minimal obligation to observe the state’s laws, not a
responsibility to participate in the sustenance of a specific way of life or to pursue
the common good. Here the state is not so much a higher moral community of
which individuals are an integral part but, rather, an instrument for the preserva-
tion of order. Moreover, this independent public authority has the primary role of
protecting the private freedoms and formal rights granted to citizens. As the insti-
tutional arm of public order, the state is typically constrained by constitutional
law to prevent it from overly interfering with individual freedoms and encroach-
ing upon rights. As we saw in the previous chapter, institutionally speaking, the
sovereign is formally independent of the body of citizens over whom it governs.
It remains the guarantor of individual rights and freedoms, but those are often
regarded as embodying sovereignty too – that is, they are absolute and indivisible.
So the politics of modern liberal orders usually entails a policing of the bounda-
ries between citizen and state, with a strong emphasis on preserving the sphere of
private right from illegitimate interference. That stands in direct contrast with the
classical notion of politics, in which there was no fundamental boundary between
public and private.
The modern state is therefore a political association promoting a distinct under-
standing of freedom: namely, individual freedom exercised outside the formal
public domain. Individuals are thought to fulfil their personal sense of the good
without regard to the concerns of public life. As many commentators and critics
have pointed out – Karl Marx being the most famous (see, in particular, Marx,
1994) – this is a notion of private life congruent with market societies in which
the pursuit of private gain is paramount. It is a notion that does not rule out all
sense of collective belonging, but the demands of collectivity do not bear upon
the individual citizen in anything like the same way as they did in the classical
 The rhetorical citizen 37
world. Above all, there is an assumption that society will endure more effectively
if citizens attend to their own affairs, leaving the public sphere to a select group
of experts. As the Swiss political writer Benjamin Constant put it in a speech of
1820: ‘we can no longer enjoy the liberty of the ancients, which consisted in an
active and constant participation in collective power. Our freedom must consist of
peaceful enjoyment and private independence’ (Constant, 1988: 316).
Formal citizenship in modern society therefore demands little of citizens as
political participants. As a consequence, oratory and public speaking remain
limited to the few who undertake a public function. The sense of a tight-knit com-
munity gives way to the more complex times and spaces of capitalism and the
nation-state, with experts in particular fields working with degrees of independ-
ence from direct public scrutiny. In democratic parliaments, especially, debate
and argument over political affairs is entrusted to representatives rather than
the full citizen body. Of course, if the responsibility for political judgement is
handed to an elite, nevertheless debate continues, which interested citizens share
via public media such as newspapers and pamphlets and other public fora. While
formal speaking is regulated and limited, mass literacy and the expansion of rights
to assembly and free speech nonetheless grant modern citizens a considerable
amount of informal opportunities to engage in debate.
In the modern notion of citizenship sketched above, speaking is not a central
requirement. Indeed, direct participation in public life generally is not expected, at
least not from everyone. The great merit of the idea is that it permits the individual
to cultivate a private life and personal associations in myriad ways, much of which
need not be justified in the name of a ‘higher order’ of values or made accountable to
a prior conception of the good life. As citizens, individuals are free to determine
their own interests without the burden of communal expectations, yet still under
the protection of the law. Instead of emphasizing participation, modern (and usu-
ally western) societies have extended citizenship in other ways, by, for example,
expanding the number of individuals with political rights and granting civil rights
to protect them as they pursue their private freedoms. In addition, social rights
have been added to enable more people to share in the benefits of private liberty
by removing many of them from conditions of poverty and illness. Although sup-
plemented by a growing variety of social, civil and increasingly ‘human’ rights,
modern citizenship has remained relatively thin in relation to its political dimen-
sion (see Marshall and Bottomore, 1987).
The lack of depth to modern citizenship has led some to lament the loss of the
virtues of the ancient idea. Indeed, a sense of solidarity with the community and a
desire to speak to and for ‘shared traditions’ is common in the recurrent nostalgia
for ancient virtues. The philosopher David Hume, for instance, remarked in an
essay, ‘Of Eloquence’, that despite the great advantages of modern society and
its application of reason, ‘our progress in eloquence is very inconsiderable, in
comparison of the advances, which we have made in all other parts of learning’
(Hume, 1987: I.XIII.8). The ‘sublime and passionate’ oratory of the ancients, he
argued, shines in comparison to the rational but dull public speakers and politicians
of the eighteenth century. A similar but more substantial sensitivity to the loss of
38 The rhetorical citizen
ancient virtues is found in the work of Arendt (1959). For her, the ancient idea of
political association, where citizens meet to determine their common fate through
speech, contrasts radically with modern political orders. The idea of sovereignty,
she argued, makes politics a matter of the assertion of will – the indisputable and
final judgement of a subject expressed through the state (see Arendt, 2000: 454) –
whereas the ancients saw political judgement as an open-ended and creative
process of collective deliberation among a plurality of citizens. Where today the
freedom of the private individual is prized above community, in ancient times
the freedom of the community had primacy. For Arendt, that was a genuinely
political freedom, where speech and argument were central components of human
action. Although neither Hume nor Arendt recommends a direct return to ancient
citizenship (and, interestingly, Arendt says next to nothing about rhetoric), both
regard the higher value of speech that characterized it as instructive of what is
lacking in modern societies. Yet without a sense of communal time and space
by which to regulate speech and maintain it within natural parameters, how can
rhetoric continue to have a political role for modern citizens?

The politics of representation

The nostalgia that often accompanies reflections on rhetoric responds to an impor-
tant, intellectual transformation in modern societies that distinguishes them from
those of the past and profoundly alters the way in which the political dimension is
now experienced. It is therefore worth thinking again about the difference between
ancient and modern citizenship in light of this transformation. The difference
derives from what is variably described as the loss of transcendent foundations,
‘disenchantment’ or the ‘decentring of society’. It means that society is no longer
conceived as an essentially harmonious unity centred on a fixed, transhistorical
essence, such as God, and mediated by some privileged individual or collective
body. Rather, it is exposed to the fluctuation of contingent forces without any
secure anchor. Society – the social roles we are given, the nature of authority,
justice and power – is no longer widely thought to mirror a higher or deeper order
of values grounded in a shared sense of community. With no guarantee of the
ultimate harmony of its different elements, society comes to be seen as fractured
and unmotivated by any overarching purpose. Rather, as Niccolò Machiavelli was
one of the first to point out, in The Prince, political action involves bringing order
to a world that does not exhibit any intrinsic moral or objective cohesion (see
Machiavelli, 1988). In those circumstances, political power comes to be under-
stood as an intrinsically amoral and impersonal force, indeterminate in its specific
content. Quentin Skinner argues that the idea of the modern state, conceived as
a separate entity over and above its citizens, is informed by the perception that
authority is no longer naturally embodied in the physical assembly of its citizens
(as in classical republican thought) or in the body of the prince (as in monar-
chist absolutism; see Skinner, 1989). The state is an abstract agency – an artificial
person, as Hobbes put it – whose authority rests on not being equated with any
specific individual or group.
 The rhetorical citizen 39
For Claude Lefort (1988: 17–19), that indeterminacy of authority – which
found expression in the American and French democratic revolutions of the late
eighteenth century – involves political power becoming what he calls an ‘empty
place’ – that is, a location with no fixed content; rather, the place of power can
be ‘occupied’ by numerous actors, but never fully and finally expressed by any
one of them or in any agreed idea of the Good. With the advent of democracy,
especially, no one can claim to mediate between society and the higher order, so
guaranteeing divine or rational status to its pronouncements. Instead, authority is
only partially and temporarily occupied by limited agents, who struggle to rep-
resent (rather than embody) the interests of all. As political philosopher Ernesto
Laclau puts it: ‘Incompletion and provisionality belong to the essence of democ-
racy’ (Laclau, 1996: 16).
The loss of a transcendent principle of society and justification for authority is
at the heart of the modern idea of citizenship. It fundamentally alters the way citi-
zens relate to the political realm and, consequently, alters the function of rhetorical
speech. No longer are citizens members of a self-contained or ‘organic’ commu-
nity; rather, they are part of an incomplete society whose unity is permanently in
question and constantly needs to be represented anew. Rhetoric now functions
not as the elevated speech of the community but, rather, as a means to repre-
sent society in its quest for an elusive social unity. There are two aspects to this
representative politics that bear on citizenship and rhetoric, and which I would
like to underline: first, the dynamic relation between the ‘universal’ and ‘particu-
lar’ aspects of community; second, the ‘aesthetic’ character of representation.

The universal and the particular

The distinction between universal and particular refers to the unifying and differ-
entiating dimensions of a community. Modern societies are widely understood to
have expanded the possibilities for legitimate differences in society (the element
of particularity) while simultaneously loosening the hold of values and principles
that, purportedly, transcend those differences and join them as equivalent parts
of a whole (the element of universality). The weakening of religious claims on
social and political life has steadily enabled a greater plurality of differences to
emerge. That greater diversity, expressed in demands for liberty both in politics
and in society more widely, does not eliminate the need for universal values. But
the proliferation of particular liberties (economic, intellectual, sexual and so on)
is increasingly in tension with what it is that makes them equal. The universal
dimension of society comes to be a topic of dispute, its boundaries and shape con-
stantly in question as new demands emerge (see Laclau, 1996: ch. 2).
How does this affect the idea of citizenship and rhetoric? Citizenship has
always implied a confluence of particular differences (discrete individuals and
their different needs and demands) and a universal identity, necessary to all, that
makes people equal. As we have noted, in ancient Athens, priority was given to a
universal dimension of existence, conceived as the substantive ‘way of life’ of the
Athenian community. The particularities of citizens were certainly not erased, but
40 The rhetorical citizen
they were subordinated to their shared identity as members of the polis. Citizens’
private affairs, for example, were kept out of the purview of public debate to
preserve the latter from corruption. Equally, the exclusion of women, slaves and
foreigners from citizenship minimized the extent of potential differences. The
democratic regime in ancient Greece therefore distributed speaking roles widely
across its citizen body, but with clear restrictions that sustained a strong sense of
the universal dimension.
The ancient primacy of the universal is clearly mirrored in explicit attitudes
towards rhetoric. As we saw in the previous chapter, rhetorical practices were
conceived by many as integral to the life of the community – that is, as necessary
to its identity. On the other hand, critics such as Plato saw universality as eternal
Forms accessible only to the most gifted intellectuals. For him, ancient democ-
racy undermined the universal by allowing particularity to corrupt it. There could,
in his view, only be one kind of society that adhered to universal principles – a
hierarchical one where philosopher-kings ruled and everyone else fulfilled their
allotted roles. Yet, for all their stark differences, both perspectives saw the stabil-
ity and purity of the universal dimension as having priority over the particular.
In modern societies, by contrast, universality remains but has softened its con-
nection to one, exclusive way of life, so transforming citizenship and, as I shall
argue, the standing and function of rhetoric. Without a fixed order of social ranks
and hierarchies premised on a societal essence, modern democracy postpones the
idea of a complete or self-contained society and that, in turn, allows a variety of
particular groups to demand inclusion. The indeterminacy of power permits a
greater variety of images of the common good and hence invites a diversity of
agents to enter the fray. The result has been an increased plurality of citizens and
their voices, but also a constant struggle of competing conceptions of social order
and the universal principles that purportedly give it coherence. It is no surprise
that the democratic age is also an ‘age of ideologies’, since democracy not only
offers the possibility of membership to different groups but also provides space
for competing representations of the society citizens are members of. Contrasting
ideological programmes present alternative conceptions of the proper boundaries
of societal relations: the ‘balance’ of state and society, the public and the private,
liberty and discipline, and so forth. In each, we find variations in the ways in
which universal values – which promise the achievement of social harmony – are
combined with particular differences.
In the history of modern democratic states, then, we find a variety of differ-
ent groups struggling for citizenship – workers, women, ethnic and religious
groups – mobilizing or redefining universal ideals that promote varying degrees
and terms of inclusion and exclusion. As Marx and other critics of liberal-
ism remind us, these universals are often particular elements of society writ
large: the self-interested bourgeois, the white male European, the ‘ethnic’
national, the working man and so on. What is universal is never without some
grounding in the particular. Universal principles are often presented as being
founded upon the underlying ‘truth’ of society, whose full realization guaran-
tees the future reconciliation of all (legitimate) differences between citizens.
 The rhetorical citizen 41
As Michael Freeden (1996) argues, ideologies both contest and ‘decontest’
universal values. That is, they promote certain universal ideals (individual
liberty, social equality, national identity and so on) as intrinsically superior to
others that they diminish or oppose and, in so doing, treat those ideals as incon-
testable principles whose validity is self-evident. Thus ideological rhetoric is
heavily principled – mobilizing values supported by vast constituencies – but
also deeply antagonistic. The political is experienced less and less as a privi-
leged time and space of deliberation based on common premises and fellow
feeling, and more as a sharp contest of competing arguments representing ideas
of how a good society can properly be accomplished (see Balibar, 2002: ch. 8).

Aesthetic representation
Aesthetic representation refers to the way in which the political dimension in
modern conditions relates to society, now conceived as an inherently incomplete
order in search of unification. As Frank Ankersmit (1996) has argued, moder-
nity entails the steady loss of the view that political authority directly ‘reflects’ a
transcendent order of truth, and its replacement by the notion of re-presentation
of society by contingent actors (that is, elected or appointed political representa-
tives in parliament or elsewhere, such as the media or culture). In his view, such
representation must be distinguished from ‘mimesis’: even in liberal democracies
where ‘the people’ are supposedly sovereign, politics does not directly reflect
society; it is not a mirror or measure of it. Rather, like a painting and its object,
politics is an ‘aesthetic’ representation of society, a partial and fabricated version
of the people and its demands, one that never fully corresponds to it in its totality:
‘representation is essentially a process of depiction’ (Ankersmit, 1996: 45; see
also Laclau, 1996: ch. 6).
Ankersmit underscores the point that the distance between society and its rep-
resentation can never be overcome. Rather, representation relies on that distance
and the opportunities it creates to vary, perhaps reimagine altogether, what society
is. Like the visual arts, politics substitutes for society rather than mirrors it. For
that reason, Ankersmit criticizes schools of thought that seek to install an identity
between politics and social interests, whether through rigorous electoral systems
or ethical rules that try to make politics transparently reflective of something ‘more
real’. The ‘aesthetic gap’, as he calls it, creates a space between represented and
representatives, people and the state, that cannot be judged according to objec-
tive criteria (just as paintings should not be judged as to whether they accurately
mirror their object): ‘That is why the elimination of the aesthetic gap between the
voter and the representative is not the realization of democracy, but an invitation
to tyranny’ (Ankersmit, 1996: 104). The drive to create an identity between state
and society – to fill the gap or substantially embody the place of power – is the
source, he claims, of totalitarian thought.
Politics, continues Ankersmit, is a creative activity – an ‘art’ – in so far as
seeking to represent others (through elections or communication) is a matter
not of following preconceived rules but, rather, of style and taste (ibid.: 54).
42 The rhetorical citizen
Representatives are not ‘delegates’ of their constituents but substitutes for them.
Their success relies on their ability to creatively style themselves according to
the tastes and feelings of their voters, shaping themselves in ways that invoke a
seemingly ‘authentic’ relationship between them (see Saward, 2010). Of course,
representatives often claim to be accurately reflecting the interests or needs of
their constituents, as though representation was indeed mimesis, a simple identity
shared between the one and the other. But that claim is illusory, not least because
representatives do not regularly consult with their constituents to make decisions
or secure seamless continuity with their views.
Ankersmit’s idea of aesthetic representation helps to clarify the relationship
between modern citizenship and rhetoric. Citizens who are represented, rather
than themselves embodiments of the public good, are able to view themselves
from the point of view of others, to locate themselves in a wider set of relations
outside of themselves. To Ankersmit, that condition is potentially a ‘civilizing’
one in so far as it decentres the citizen from public life and therefore permits
a greater tolerance for others whose demands must also form part of the act of
representation (1996: 56). But, we might add, the aesthetic gap can also result in
conflict and efforts to narrow the distance between public and private realms by
prioritizing a narrow set of values, feelings and styles over others.
As regards rhetoric, or the character of public debate, we can understand the
antagonism of modern ideologies as part of the ‘friction’ between state and soci-
ety that the aesthetic gap entails. The state becomes a permanent terrain of contest
over different ideals, the repository of numerous political strategies and the argu-
ments that inform them. Far from reflecting the outcome of rational syntheses of
opinion or the formation of shared premises, public policy is a selective process
which, as Ankersmit points out, as much involves ignoring or dismissing an oppo-
nent’s views as it does confronting and answering them (ibid.: 106–11).
Rhetorical speech (and, indeed, other forms of representation) can be under-
stood as part of the aesthetic bridging of the gap between state and society. In
principle, democratic rhetoric enables alternative styles of representing (and
hence shaping) opinion and contrasting conceptions of the shared parameters of
time and space. Undoubtedly, some styles predominate over others – white, male,
middle-class representatives have been the norm in most western democracies
and consequently give parliamentary rhetoric a certain hue. Nonetheless, as the
enormous attention paid to the public image of politicians and parties testifies,
style and the shaping of public taste for partisan political purposes have both
become fundamental elements of communication in modern democracies. This
is especially so following the expansion of communicative technologies in the
twentieth century (which we consider in Chapter 8).
In summary, then, we can say that modernity involves a transformation of the
experience of political life that wholly recasts the ancient idea of citizenship and
the practices of rhetoric. What appears as a depoliticization of the citizen and
a diminution of rhetoric is better conceived as a reconfiguration of the dimen-
sions of political encounter. In this new environment – built around the essential
incompleteness of society – membership does indeed become more formal than
 The rhetorical citizen 43
solidaristic and participatory. But citizenship is also removed from attachment to
any one specific community or way of life and becomes an open-ended project
where different types of solidarity may be imagined, though often in a fraught
relation to established parameters of the state. Likewise, rhetoric loses its sta-
tus as the elevated speech of a civic community of citizens. It, too, is pluralized
and becomes more open to the vernacular and popular traditions, again always
in potential conflict with the social order and established values and customs.
Oratory and rhetorical persuasion are diminished as the primary medium of public
power, replaced by bureaucracy, written text and force (see Ong, 1982). But social
relations in general (that is, traditions, customs, social roles and conceptions of the
world associated with them) are increasingly revealed as conventional and open
to rhetorical contest, or what Richard Rorty calls ‘redescription’ (Rorty, 1989; see
also Vattimo, 2004).
In the modern environment, oratory has lost its centrality to political life and
yet, because of this, rhetoric permeates society in more diverse ways than ever
before, as part of multiple efforts to represent citizens and their common demands.
Rhetoric is no longer key to the self-government of a polity by its citizens but is
part of a wider politics of representation in which citizenship and the limits of the
modern community become open to redefinition.

Contemporary political philosophy and rhetoric

In this final section I want to survey ways in which citizenship and rhetoric are
figured in key contemporary approaches in political theory. At the risk of simpli-
fication, these can be categorized as approaches from liberalism, critical theory
and postmodernism. Although they occasionally overlap, unlike other theoreti-
cal positions such as communitarianism or Marxism, each takes up the challenge
of modernity to find a way of conceptualizing citizenship without invoking a
substantial concept of community or common good (see Kymlicka, 2002 for a
general discussion).

Liberalism
Modern political orders have been substantially influenced by liberal political
thought, especially the work of thinkers such as John Locke and John Stuart Mill.
Liberals such as these embraced the separation of state and society as the essen-
tial condition for individual freedom. Without a single conception of the good
life, a plurality of projects can freely co-exist. Liberated from the bonds of public
duty but protected by their rights, individuals thrive in the private sphere and
choose to participate in public life at their own will. For liberals, the absence of
a transcendent authority requires us purposefully to draw a balance between the
particularity of individuals and the universal preconditions of their association.
The co-existence of separate public and private domains is achieved by constitu-
tional controls on government and mediation between government and society by
an informed elite. In that way, government is prevented from overreaching itself
44 The rhetorical citizen
by imposing unwarranted universal values and principles on society. However,
undergirding much, though not all, of liberal political philosophy has been a
rationalism that understands universal values – primarily the value of individual
liberty – as founded upon the implicit direction and development of society itself,
which is understood to entail the progressive expansion of freedom and the ulti-
mately harmonious reconciliation of differences (see Bellamy, 1992; Gray, 2000).
For much of the first half of the twentieth century, however, liberalism seemed
at odds with the prevailing direction of society. War, economic crisis and class
conflict all indicated that liberal principles were not written into history but
were the outcome of contingent circumstances not universally shared. Liberal
philosophers later sought to overcome this deficiency by making explicit the
reasoning behind liberal ideals and by demonstrating their capacity to mediate dif-
ferent demands on government. Perhaps the most significant liberal thinker in the
second half of the twentieth century, in this regard, was John Rawls, whose Theory
of Justice aimed to reconcile the liberal defence of individual liberty with social
democratic ideas of wealth redistribution (see Rawls, 1999).
Famously, Rawls claimed that redistributive measures were philosophically
defensible for liberals only in so far as they improved the circumstances of the
worst off. That is, it was just to treat people differently (that is, tax some more
than others), rather than as strict, formal equals, if doing so permitted those with
less wealth to improve their lot and so exercise their rights and opportunities
with greater success. That conclusion was rationally demonstrable by means of a
purportedly ‘impartial’ form of reasoning: Rawls invited his readers to imagine
themselves being behind a ‘veil of ignorance’, unaware of the circumstances into
which they might be born and the opportunities that would be available to them.
From the perspective of that imaginary ‘original position’, claimed Rawls, it was
reasonable to argue that wealth should be redistributed to allow those who are
born into poverty or inherit other circumstances that limit their ability to live free
and autonomous lives.
How did Rawls view the relationship between rhetoric and citizenship? At its
heart, his argument defends the idea that particular private needs can be recon-
ciled because a universal rationality demonstrates the justness of redistributive
measures. In that argument, rational judgement is a subjective exercise and not a
practice of actual individuals communicating and persuading each other to shape
their judgements. The ‘impartial’ reasoning that Rawls expounds is deemed to
be transparently available to all rational individuals and does not require active
debating among citizens (see May, 2008: 11–13). Rawls’s philosophy therefore
leaves little room for the aesthetic gap in which style may intervene in form-
ing judgements: in the original position we are bereft of any such distinguishing
features, and thus reason alike on the basis of logic alone. Like other liberals of
the late twentieth century, Rawls’s approach is that of a legal philosopher, con-
cerned with abstract principles and their application. In Ankersmit’s terms, Rawls
presents a view of public life in terms of mimesis – that is, the mirroring by politi-
cal orders of rational principles deemed universally valid.
 The rhetorical citizen 45
In Rawls’s liberalism, there is little room for a dynamic rhetorical interaction
of universal and particular – where different, perhaps opposed versions of public
reason are contested and one view comes to achieve dominance. In his later work,
however, Rawls agreed that his account of justice could not be claimed, in strictly
Kantian terms, as universally valid for all. His was a ‘political liberalism’ – that is,
contingent upon particular societies and not necessarily shared by all (see Rawls,
2005). Yet, despite this, Rawls saw no real problem with the idea that rational
citizens might come to what he called an ‘overlapping consensus’ about the rules
by which they agreed to live. Again, that consensus was presented as the product
of a purely subjective reflection in which people set aside knowledge of who they
actually are, not an actual process of discussion by citizens, with all their distin-
guishing features and abilities (see Mouffe, 1993: 41–59).
Of course, not all liberals adopt Rawls’s philosophy to justify their outlook.
Many are happy to accept that politics is a rhetorical activity where representatives
vigorously compete to persuade citizens to endorse the principles they promote
and so vote for them accordingly. The virtue of a liberal order is not that it is philo-
sophically grounded but that it sustains a common allegiance to individual liberty
(however defined) and refuses the alternatives of moral coercion (as in Plato) or
endless, disruptive conflict and insecurity (as in Hobbes). Such is the view, for
example, of Richard J. Burke, who confidently claimed that ‘modern American
politics is best understood […] as a sort of ongoing debating society in which eve-
ryone is trying to score points according to the agreed-upon rules’ (1982: 54). Yet
that perspective requires there to be a settled consensus over the value of individ-
ual liberty and what it practically means. The political dimension – the aspect of
controversy over principles – is here radically diminished so that rhetoric appears
as a kind of harmless exchange of opinion. In light of the historical struggles to
bring civil and political equality to all US citizens, more recent conflicts (physical
as well as verbal) over race and gender and the authoritarian response to the ‘war
on terror’, such a consensus seems not to be settled at all.

Critical theory
Against the apparently complacent view that citizens would be happy to put aside
their differences and agree common principles without actually communicating or
conflicting, the tradition of thought known as critical theory has sought to inject
greater practical involvement of citizens in the formulation of shared principles.
In this, its proponents have been open to the interaction of universality and par-
ticularity and to the place of aesthetics in shaping public life (see Bronner, 2011).
The dominant figure in this enterprise has been the philosopher Jürgen Habermas,
although that is not to say that all who work under the label of critical theory agree
wholeheartedly with him. Nonetheless, Habermas provides the primary points of
reference for a critical theoretical approach to citizenship and the positive value of
public argument, and it is therefore worth dwelling on his ideas.
Habermas, like his earlier critical theorist predecessors, emerged from a
Marxian theoretical framework that aspired to the liberation of individuals from
46 The rhetorical citizen
structures and systems of oppression (particularly economic oppression under
capitalism). In that vein, Habermas developed a theory of ‘communicative action’
that would advance on Marxism’s traditional focus on labour by setting out a
conception of intersubjective dialogue as a precondition for human emancipation.
In communicative action, argued Habermas, citizens debated and held to account
the authorities and powers that shaped their lives. His model for that conception
came originally from his studies on the ‘bourgeois public sphere’ that emerged in
the late eighteenth century in the form of cafes and salons where merchants and
businessmen freely discussed and criticized public policy (see Habermas, 1989).
In this they formed a mass of self-generated critical opinion that could bear on
government and influence its direction. While that opinion slanted in favour of
particular interests, nonetheless, argued Habermas, the key to legitimizing public
power is to rebuild the public sphere, where free ‘opinion formation’ might occur,
and keep a check on the otherwise autonomous and potentially pernicious systems
of the state and capitalism.
We can see, then, that Habermas’s response to the separation of state from soci-
ety, unlike that of liberals such as Rawls, is to advocate an intermediary space of
dialogue where public life is exposed to the critical interrogation and opinion of
its citizens. Habermas’s project has been to define the preconditions that permit
critical dialogue among citizens and between them and the formal public sphere
or state. He, too, accepts that there is no preconceived common good. Like many
contemporary liberals, he proposes a ‘deontological’ ethics – a conception of
morality divorced from an explicit account of the good life. Citizens themselves
ought to formulate moral principles via democratic procedures that structure their
communication and enable them to test the ‘validity’ of the normative claims
they make (see Habermas, 1996a). Collective moral discourse, then, rather than
Rawls’s ‘monological’ justification, is the basis for forming binding judgements
of a universal nature:

If moral argumentation is to produce this kind of agreement, however, it is

not enough for the individual to reflect on whether he can assent to a norm. It
is not even enough for each individual to reflect in this way and then to regis-
ter his vote. What is needed is a “real” process of argumentation in which the
individuals concerned cooperate. Only an intersubjective process of reaching
understanding can produce an agreement that is reflexive in nature; only it
can give the participants the knowledge that they have collectively become
convinced of something.
(Habermas, 1996b: 186)

Habermas calls the procedures for testing validity ‘discourse ethics’ – impartial
rules designed to be inclusive but also to constrain dialogue in such a way as to
eliminate ‘distortions’ that impede reaching a ‘rational consensus’. For him, valid-
ity claims are intrinsic to any ‘speech act’ in so far as they are always presupposed
but can be actually tested by participants raising objections and demanding further
justification (see Habermas, 1996b: 147). The content of any dialogue will vary,
 The rhetorical citizen 47
but implicit validity norms are deemed universal to communicative acts aimed
at reaching mutual understanding. By instituting forms of deliberation based on
discourse ethics, he argues, citizens can – together – reach common judgements
about their shared arrangements, eliminating claims that are untrue, inappropriate
or insincere. The achievement of a rational consensus is, of course, only an ideal;
any actual dialogue may fall short of fulfilling all the criteria to everyone’s satis-
faction, but that does not, in his view, undermine its value as a democratic answer
to the conditions of modern societies.
Habermas’s ideas have been extraordinarily influential in the development of
the theory of ‘deliberative democracy’ (to which we shall return in Chapter 7).
In that view, citizens are active participants in debating, contesting and ulti-
mately agreeing the principles that govern them collectively. Discourse ethics are
designed to uphold the separation of state and society, yet also to mediate between
the two in such a way that particular differences can be reconciled by means of
(discursively revealed) universal principles. But, as many critics have pointed
out, the claim to have grounded discourse ethics in reason radically narrows the
possible kinds of communicative encounters and, at worst, threatens to exclude
ways of arguing and persuading that do not fit with it – that is, claims that can-
not be ‘rationally’ justified. Such claims might be dismissed as distortions of the
truth, inappropriate or insincere because they do not fit with preconceptions of
what is rational. In short, far from being impartial rules, discourse ethics may
well pass off forms of power and control under the guise of universal reason (see
Calhoun, 1992). Moreover, the demand for rational justification does not admit
much in the way of aesthetic play or stylistic variation which, though not entirely
ruled out, are deemed irrelevant to the fundamental goals of agreement. Indeed,
Ankersmit himself sees Habermas’s ethics as a way of overcoming the aesthetic
gap by securing a mimetic relation between state and society.

Postmodernism
Although, again, a very broad term, so-called ‘postmodern’ philosophies have
involved a quite distinctive approach both to citizenship and to the place of speech
and rhetoric. Central to postmodern thought is what Jean-Francois Lyotard called
‘an incredulity toward metanarratives’ (Lyotard, 1984: xxiv); that is, a scepticism
concerning totalizing conceptions of society and history that imply a coherent
structure that unifies their parts and which a properly elaborated rational out-
look alone can grasp. For postmodernists, broadly speaking, neither society nor
history can be anchored around a stable principle independent of language and
symbolic representation. The historical separation of state from society, then,
was the precursor not to a more rational correspondence between the two,
but to a destabilization of all authority. Postmodern thinkers therefore tend to
enhance the significance of ‘rhetoricality’ in general and often emphasize the
ultimately linguistic and arbitrary character of universal principles (see Richards,
2008: ch. 3; Bernard-Donals and Glejzer, 1998; Rorty, 1989; Fish, 1989). For
many, that is an opportunity for a citizenship of much greater particularity,
48 The rhetorical citizen
but also controversy and conflict. While there is no single dominant thinker in
a postmodern approach, ‘poststructuralist’ figures such as Michel Foucault and
Jacques Derrida stand as influential representatives. Central to their work is a
rejection of the idea of the human subject, or self, conceived as a naturally auton-
omous, self-sufficient agent directed by its own conscious purposes and free will.
This so-called ‘anti-humanism’ undermines the view that universal principles
can ever be finally found by gaining access to an uncontested truth free from
contamination with particularity.
Foucault, for instance, argued that the subject was itself an effect of various
forms of knowledge and institutions that shape human desire and selfhood in
particular ways. The individual, in his view, is not born self-sufficient and only
later confronts pressures to conform in one way or another with society; rather,
the individual is the product of various ‘disciplinary’ practices and discourses
that shape it from birth and impress upon it certain truths and abilities (Foucault,
1980: 117). Famously, Foucault saw these pressures as forms of power – not a
repressive type of power that blocked a pre-existing freedom, but a productive
or ‘positive’ form of power that enabled the subject to accomplish certain things.
In that respect, power is different from ‘domination’ (see Foucault, 1997: 283).
Institutional discourses around sexuality, education, crime and punishment,
and health and illness, for example, nurture subjects amenable to techniques of
self-control and allow individuals to operate ‘freely’ in society. Power, in this con-
ception, is not opposed to individual freedom but is, rather, a condition of it. Indeed,
for Foucault, we need to dispense with the idea of power as a repressive instru-
ment concentrated in the state – for him, power (in the form of discourses about
knowledge) circulates throughout society and is never located exclusively in the
hands of political authorities or the wealthy (see Foucault, 1980: 115–22; 1977).
In his view, society is not a total structure operating around a power centre that
amasses control, but a diverse and uneven assemblage riven with forms of resist-
ance and subversion (Phillips, 2006).
Similarly, Derrida rejected the view of an implicit structure to society or history
(see Derrida, 1978: 278–93). In his philosophy of ‘deconstruction’, he refused the
view of language as a transparent medium of communication by means of which
an autonomous actor could represent an independent reality to another without
in some way interfering in it. That is not to say that we cannot communicate but,
rather, that all meaning is bound up with – and therefore inflected by – its mode
of representation (see Derrida, 1976; 1988). Thus Derrida disputed the view that
human speech was somehow superior to writing because it emanates in an unme-
diated way from the consciousness of the speaker (whereas writing makes use of
graphic signs that, by definition, function at a distance from the original inten-
tions). Indeed, speech is itself a form of writing because it also tries to represent
by means of signs, such as sounds, pauses, emphases and so on. Thus there is no
communication that is not open to the inflections and figurations of language, but
also to their possible misunderstanding or reinterpretation in different contexts. It
is therefore wrong to think in terms of a pure and transparent language that does
not delay or interrupt meaning in some way.
 The rhetorical citizen 49
With their criticism of humanist accounts of subjectivity and the idea of
representation-free and power-free communication, poststructuralist philosophers
appear to undermine the classical rhetorical focus on the persuasive speaker.
Moreover, they imply that modern politics can never fully resolve clashes between
citizens, since no universal reason or stable moral principle can genuinely be estab-
lished. How, then, might a democratic political theory build upon these ideas?
Postmodern political theorists tend to see the impossibility of universal reason
as an opportunity not for chaos but for a radical democratic politics that legitimizes
a plurality of social differences (see Laclau and Mouffe, 2001; Little and Lloyd,
2009). In that conception, the presumed stability and coherence of universal val-
ues are brought into question, as is the coherence and stability of the very groups
whose identities are marginalized or oppressed by those values. The decline of
philosophical and cultural supports to dominant principles, however, does not
mean they disappear overnight; rather, their grip on society is increasingly open to
contest (see Vattimo, 2004; Martin, 2010). Thus, for example, feminist criticisms
of patriarchy do not do away with patriarchy, but render it ever less tenable as a
naturalized belief and source of commonplace judgements.
So a postmodern politics does not dispute the effect of all rhetoric and rhetorical
strategies. Rather, it disputes the claim that there is a single language of commu-
nication that can stand outside of power relations and arbitrate between all voices
without remainder. There is no one style of speaking, no one set of universal prin-
ciples, no one actor that represents all. Postmodern theorists therefore emphasize
the dynamic interaction of universal and particular, exposing universal principles
to greater variation and transformation rather than renouncing them entirely (see
Rorty, 1989, 1999; Corbin, 1998; Fish, 1994). That is not to say that all interpreta-
tions are equal (the common charge of ‘relativism’). Rather, it suggests that all
universal claims are – at least in principle – open to dispute and controversy. The
emphasis in postmodern political theories is often therefore on legitimizing differ-
ence and conflict in rhetorical encounters among citizens rather than harmonizing
them (see Mouffe, 2005, 1992; Isin, 2009, 2008, 2002; Balibar, 2004; Phillips,
1996). Like critical theorists, postmodern thinkers see contemporary society as
open to greater democratic involvement in the formation of common ways of
being. But unlike critical theory, postmodernism refuses the idea that democracy
can be anything more than a temporary and contingent stabilization of conflict.
The three general approaches sketched above do not exhaust all forms of con-
temporary political theory, but they provide a clue as to its broad orientations.
Each approach accepts the institutional and symbolic separation of state and soci-
ety as the starting point for reflecting on the character of contemporary citizenship,
but each adopts a different perspective on the place of rhetoric and its part in the
life of citizens. Contemporary liberalism endorses a plurality of citizens and con-
ceptions of the good life, but more than the other approaches it minimizes the
place of public speech in formulating judgements on universal principles. In its
typically analytical and legalistic language, universal principles are often defended
as a matter of reason. Critical theorists, by contrast, emphasize the importance
of citizens’ collective deliberation in formulating universal principles. Yet, as
50 The rhetorical citizen
Habermas’s work indicates, such deliberation remains guided by the idea of rules
of communication thought to be universally grounded. As with liberalism, then,
there remains a suspicion of rhetoric entering the fray and distorting communica-
tion. Postmodern thinkers, on the other hand, reject the idea of universal reason
and point to the multiplicity of representations such that no final foundation is
achievable. All human relations are imbued with a potentially political character
in so far as they can be disputed and recast according to new principles. Of course,
for some that invites a relativism that undercuts any genuine solidarity based on
shared truths and makes postmodernism a deceptively conservative outlook (see
Habermas, 1987). Postmodernists, however, retort that refusing speech, argument
or representation any automatic or intrinsic priority actually permits a radically
pluralistic democracy to thrive.

Summary
Rhetoric started out as an integral part of the repertoire of skills for citizens
actively participating in the public life of ancient communities, whose unity and
survival was felt to be paramount. While today something remains of the idea
of elevated speech in the formal political arenas and especially in law courts, I
have argued that the state’s separation from society has fundamentally altered the
relationship between citizens and the dimension of the political. No longer are we
so automatically deferent to a singular, hierarchical sense of community whose
boundaries must be respected. Public authority is now open to contest over the
source and character of its representation. In the gap opened up between public
power and citizens, different voices contend to define the unifying principles of
the community and offer up competing styles to represent them.
In the modern era, then, the political dimension is no longer concentrated
exclusively in the polis but, rather, concerns the wider articulations of state with
society, public power and popular opinion, universal and particular. If citizenship
no longer demands direct participation and rhetorical engagement as a condition
of membership, citizens are nonetheless exposed to the rhetoricality of society
more generally – that is, to the contestability and variation of identities, principles
and values. Paradoxically, then, the decline of rhetoric as the privileged realm of
political discourse coincides with the dispersal of its effects across society more
generally. Many people now live in societies that, curiously, permit citizens to
talk about almost anything in private; yet those societies remain suspicious of
the public value of speech and unwilling to instruct people in it as a condition
of citizenship. Contemporary political theories have responded to this situation
in different ways: most welcome the division of state and society because of
the opportunity it affords for a plurality of ways of life. But there are important
distinctions among those theories concerning the role citizens might play in for-
mulating common judgements and how they communicate with each other in so
doing. In the next two chapters, we shall turn our attention to the advice on this
matter offered by ancient rhetoricians.
4 Techniques I
Discovery and arrangement

What does the ancient study of rhetoric teach us and how might it be relevant
today? Classical rhetoric offered its students a series of practical observations
and classifications to help the would-be speaker navigate the successive steps and
dimensions of public speech. Rhetorical advice was designed to enable a speaker
to master a situation by anticipating the occasion and preparing in advance a
strategy to achieve successful persuasion. That advice consisted of technical
instruction rather than philosophical investigation, typically delivered by word of
mouth or via a handbook (sometimes referred to as ‘a rhetoric’). Designed to be
applicable on numerous different occasions, rhetorical instruction was a mobile
body of knowledge – a kind of communications toolbox of many instruments –
and varied from teacher to teacher. Today it comprises a vast collection of practi-
cal techniques and terms gathered under a range of headings and applied, beyond
oratory, to all forms of communication in fields such as politics, law, poetry and
literature (see Lanham, 1991; Olmsted, 2006).
In the next two chapters I survey key rhetorical classifications and techniques
handed down from antiquity in order to underscore their continued relevance to
politics. Unlike the previous chapters, then, the two that follow will serve as a
direct resource for undertaking rhetorical analysis and criticism. But we should
also bear in mind the earlier discussion concerning rhetoric’s mediation of politics
and the political. Contemporary handbooks for public speaking and speech writ-
ing tend to limit themselves to the immediate concerns of the moment – effective
techniques of communication within familiar contexts (see, for example, Atkinson,
2004; Lancaster, 2010). But we need to remember that rhetoric also contributes to
shaping such contexts – that is, it helps to set the parameters of debate by repre-
senting the community and orienting the audience towards it. Later, in Chapter 6,
I combine the elements discussed in these two chapters to discuss the analysis of
rhetorical political strategies. In Chapters 4 and 5, however, I consider separately
the techniques that make up such strategies, taking as my point of reference four
of the five ‘canons’ of rhetoric (see Table 4.1): discovery, arrangement, style and
delivery (the fifth, memory, concerns how to memorize a speech. It is not signifi-
cant for us and will not form part of the discussion).
52 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement
Table 4.1 The five canons of rhetoric

Latin name English name Concerns

1. Inventio Discovery The argumentative claim and how it is defended

2. Dispositio Arrangement The structure of the parts of speech
3. Elocutio Style Techniques of language and linguistic expression
4. Pronuntiato Delivery Techniques of performance
5. Memoria Memory Techniques to memorize speech

Source: Corbett and Connors (1999: 17–23).

In this chapter I look at the ‘discovery’ and arrangement of persuasive

arguments. Any speech or contribution to a dialogue is likely to have an argument –
that is, a distinct conclusion or point of view of which the audience is to be per-
suaded. It might advocate a universal claim (‘all poverty is wrong’), or define
that claim in a distinctive way (by expanding or contracting it: ‘poverty leads
to crime’), or argue the case for how some particular example fits with it (‘high
crime rates are a symptom of poverty’). The ‘invention’ or discovery of argu-
ments, as it was called (in Latin, inventio), refers to the choices a speaker makes
about the issue at hand in order to convey effectively the desired point of view.
Arrangement (or dispositio), on the other hand, refers to the procedure of the
speech, the combination of various structural elements in a certain order. Like all
the canons of rhetoric, however, the two are closely related to the context and to
what precisely is at issue. I mentioned in Chapter 1 and in the previous chapter
that this sensitivity to time and space – expressed in concepts such as kairos and
stasis – was central to the ‘situated’ character of rhetoric. So, before we look at
these dimensions of persuasive speech, let us first consider the question of occa-
sion and issue.

The occasions of speech

Rhetoric is concerned with persuasive speech as it relates to specific contexts.
Aristotle famously distinguished three ‘genres’ or occasions, according to which
different types of persuasion will apply (see Aristotle, 1991: 80–82). These are the
ceremonial (‘display’ or epideictic), the judicial (or forensic) and, finally, the politi-
cal (or deliberative; see Table 4.2). All forms of persuasion, he assumed, fall into
at least one of these categories. What distinguishes them is their audience, their
general orientation towards action, and hence the kind of argument (or message)
that suits them.
Ceremonial discourse concerns action oriented towards events in the present.
The kind of arguments appropriate to such circumstances typically concern
praise or blame; or, as Aristotle put it, ‘to laud and censure’ (Aristotle, 1991:
104). Funeral orations or rousing speeches prior to military battles are ceremonial
moments, when the orator is given the task of taking stock of the prevailing situa-
tion and of persuading the audience to acknowledge a certain sentiment.
 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement 53
Table 4.2 The genres of speech

Type of Occasion Orientation Type of Example

persuasion discourse

Epideictic Ceremonial The present Praise or Wedding, funeral,

blame presidential inaugural,
opening of parliament,
national celebration
Forensic Judicial The past What happened? Who Court proceedings,
did what and what committee hearings
was the motivation?
Deliberative Political The future How to act? Election campaign,
Advantageous or public debate,
disadvantageous? legislative discussion,
media debate

Source: Aristotle (1991: 80–82).

Judicial discourse is concerned with action in the past and is recognizable in the
arguments for prosecution and defence given in courts of law (see Aristotle, 1991:
80–111). Here the audience is often a jury who must be persuaded to form a judge-
ment about what is deemed to have happened in a specific circumstance now past.
This will involve re-description of the event and a discussion as to whether the
conduct that took place coincides with the law or not. The ‘forensic’ examination
of evidence is a very common feature of this style of argument. It involves picking
over the details of an event reconstructed before the audience.
Deliberative discourse, finally, is concerned with action in the future and, for
Aristotle, involved the properly political style of argument over issues such as leg-
islation, revenues or war (see Aristotle, 1991: 84). Debate over policy or its goals
concerns matters that have yet to happen, and hence cannot be treated with the
same degree of objectivity as judicial speech. Here persuasion is typically about
probabilities (the possible outcomes of a policy or judgement and its potential
benefits) and argument is usually directed towards affirming one possible choice
of action over alternatives.
Aristotle distinguished these three speech genres but, of course, any single
effort at persuasion may utilize elements from all three. A political argument may
contain not only advocacy of a specific policy (future) but also a critical dissec-
tion of a government’s record (past) and, very often, an affirmative celebration of
the group gathered to hear the speaker (present). So we ought not to regard the
classifications as mutually exclusive. Clearly, the three reflect the type of events
that people living in ancient Greece would have regarded as familiar. We may no
longer understand these as exemplary forms of public gathering (we might add
the realm of public debates occasioned by the media, for example) but, given that
much of modern politics was built on images of public life inherited from the
ancients, they still provide a useful point of reference.
In contemporary societies we still find events that match or combine Aristotle’s
threefold distinction. Political debate is obviously driven by the desire to promote
54 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement
preferred policies and visions of collective action. This is what we find in debating
chambers in most democracies, but also in the wider media and in the less formal
spaces of dialogue and deliberation, especially when the debating chambers either
don’t exist or are not receptive to an issue. But we also find forensic analysis of
the past mixed with political debate – for instance when political leaders and
office holders are held to account for decisions they have made – as well as in
the law courts. Indeed, debating the past is a constant activity in democratic life,
especially now that we can retain so much information in text and digital records.
As a consequence, interpreting the past can become an issue with direct influence
on the present and the future – as evidenced by the International Court of Justice,
which deals with ‘crimes against humanity’, or the heated debates about the deci-
sion to go to war in Iraq in 2003.
Finally, in politics we also find regular forms of ceremonial discourse where a
collective sentiment is endorsed. In many democracies today, the head of state or
the prime minister will undertake a role as the focus of national attention follow-
ing a disaster or tragedy, at a moment of national celebration or commemoration.
Here the function of speech is not to argue about the future or past so much as to
praise or blame certain agents, affirm feelings and rally people behind an ongo-
ing cause. Similarly, political leaders will engage with their own supporters at
conventions and public rallies designed primarily to fulfil a ceremonial function.
Party conferences and conventions are precisely the place for leaders to show
their sympathy with the grassroots organizations that support them. Such cer-
emonies may look like harmless, non-political celebrations, but they are vital in
generating an attentive audience for the future-oriented discourses that follow.
Without a sense of common feeling it is difficult to encourage the audience to
accept controversial political positions.
If the occasions of speech are never made quite as simple as to fall exclusively
into one or another of the three of Aristotle’s genres, it is nevertheless worth retain-
ing the analytical separation. For the distinction between ceremonial, forensic and
deliberative pinpoints distinctive modes of representing certain principles: cer-
emonies tend to assume certain shared values; forensic examination may assume
certain (legal or factual) principles but question how particular details fit with
them; and political debate holds open the possibility that shared principles can be
contested or redefined. Even if all three are present on any one occasion, one will
often dominate over others. A ritual occasion such as the US President’s State of
the Union Address, held every year of the term of office at the start of the calendar
year, will be partly ceremonial and assume certain values as universal (such as
the need to hear the President, the authority of the legislature and so on). That is
because it is a ritual with a distinct and widely understood purpose from which the
speaker rarely diverges. But it also serves as an occasion to set out the President’s
own political arguments, if only in general terms, about how government will
proceed in the future. Common feelings, particularly with Congressional repre-
sentatives, will be strongly affirmed, but often as part of the process of elaborating
a distinct policy agenda or defining the kind of attitude or style that will orient
 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement 55
the presidency. Here the usually uncontroversial affirmation of sentiments in the
present will function as a platform to set out preferences for the future.
As we shall see in Chapter 6, if we are to understand any particular use of rheto-
ric it is important to grasp the kind of occasion that predefines the speech event
and the mode of persuasion taken up by the speaker. Speeches and other prepared
forms of discourse are usually formulated with a distinct occasion in mind. This
is largely so that they conform, at least to some extent, to the expectations of
the audience who, it is assumed, will be prepared for a certain kind of event and
will respond warmly when its expectations are met. Of course, it may be that the
speech is deliberately written against the grain of expectations in order to surprise
the audience. But that is a risky decision to make and demands not only audacity
but also skill. For example, we rarely find wedding speeches dwelling in intimate
detail, and at great length, on the past conduct of the bride and groom, because the
occasion largely demands the affirmation of goodwill and a deliberate forgetful-
ness about the past. To diverge radically from the expectations of the audience and
the assumed goal of the occasion (what is called decorum) is to risk being thought
inappropriate and to show poor judgement (being ‘indecorous’). On some occa-
sions, such as the proceedings of law courts, close adhesion to expected standards
is strictly policed and any serious divergence may be punished. A more effective
way of subverting the occasion might be, instead, to insert into a public address
comments that diverge only mildly or suggestively from the expected form. In
that way, a veneer of formality is maintained but another kind of persuasion can
be alluded to. As we shall see later, this ‘layered’ use of speech occasions is very
much the norm in modern democracies.
What this insistence on the speech occasion tells us is that arguments are social
and not strictly logical activities. Any utterance may be incontrovertibly true – as
a statement of fact or logic – but if it is delivered at an occasion that does not suit
it, its truth may be lost on the audience. Formulating an argument means acknowl-
edging the constraints of the occasion, the way in which convention makes some
things socially acceptable and others not. For example, many people are disap-
pointed if they attend a law court as a witness or even as a defendant only to
discover that it is not arranged simply so that they can ‘have their say in court’. To
think about the formal expectations of an occasion is to begin to shape an argu-
ment according to power relations that pre-date the event – sometimes to affirm
those relations, sometimes to exploit them, perhaps even to subvert them. Either
way, the occasion will give us some clue as to what kind of audience will be faced
and to what type(s) of message it will in all likelihood be receptive.

The issue
The ‘issue’ refers to what is at stake on any speech occasion. Of course, the type
of occasion will give us some idea about the roles taken up by participants (for
example, in a judicial setting: audience as jury, the presence of a judge, lawyers as
the main speakers, plaintiff and defendant) but it will not tell us exactly what it is
that needs to be argued or how speakers approach their designated roles. This all
56 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement
concerns ‘the matter at hand’ – that is, what is in question or doubt – and that is
particular to the specific event. Nevertheless, understanding the issue is vital for
working out what kind of ‘stance’, or attitude, to take as a speaker. If I am sup-
porting an argument against critics, rather than proposing one, my stance may be
defensive, cautious even, and responsive to certain claims made against me. If I am
recounting the factual details of a past event, I will need to be precise and able to dis-
criminate what might seem to be the case from what is so. If I am celebrating some
common sentiment I will be positive, assured, maybe expressing a degree of joy.
All these are examples of a stance taken in relation to what is deemed to be at
issue. They imply that speakers need to judge the appropriate tone and their com-
portment towards the task of persuasion by adopting an attitude that fits with the
problem in hand (on ‘stance’ see Cockcroft and Cockcroft, 2005: ch. 1). To fail to
do so, again, runs the risk of accusations of improper conduct. To appear uncertain
or defensive when calm reassurance was required can be unsettling to an audi-
ence. Aggressive, forceful argumentation will be out of place in circumstances
where people are not yet convinced of the premises of an argument. All speakers
at some time run the risk of accusations of smugness, over-confidence, excessive
flattery, patronising attitudes or lack of sincerity, to name only a few failures of
stance associated with politicians. Getting the tone right is a matter of judging, on
the specific occasion, how to approach the issue, given what is at stake.
But what can be ‘at stake’? Our division of occasions gives us a clue here. In
ceremonies it is usually praise or blame. In judicial settings it is usually a question
of ascertaining facts and evidencing transgressions of the law, either in prosecu-
tion or defence. In politics it is most commonly a question of how, or how not,
to proceed in policy. But even within this classification there are many variations
and shades. As we noted in the previous chapter, the theory of status (or stasis) is
a commonly utilized framework for thinking about what is at issue in legal con-
texts (see Table 4.3). Cicero distinguished between the statuses of ‘conjecture’,
‘definition’ and ‘quality’. A conjectural issue concerns matters of fact – whether
something did or did not occur. A definitional issue concerns the interpretation
of the fact. An issue of quality concerns the nature itself of the fact. In a court
of law, a defence counsel needs to determine precisely what will be defended:
whether something happened (a murder, for example), whether what happened
has an interpretation that mitigates the defendant’s behaviour (not ‘murder’ but
manslaughter), or an account of the crime in relation to its particular quality
(murder in order to prevent greater loss of life). A final option is the status of ‘cir-
cumstance’, where the issue is regarded as inappropriate for the type of trial (for
example, a civil rather than criminal case) and hence not to be defended in that
court at all. In each instance, the stance adopted will vary with the issue.
Status theory can be extended to other kinds of occasion, not only those of
legal defence. In political affairs, speakers need to adopt a stance in relation to
commonly accepted principles and values. That is, they need to work out whether
such a principle is at stake (from which certain deeds may depart: conjecture),
whether a nuance of interpretation needs to be taken into account (definition), or
whether there are good grounds for overlooking the transgression of the principle
 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement 57
Table 4.3 Status theory

Status Question Example

Conjecture What is the truth? I did not do it (e.g. take the money)
Definition What does it mean? I did it, but it’s not what you think
(I borrowed the money)
Quality What is the nature of the act? I did it, but for a good reason
(I used it to help the poor)
Circumstance Is it relevant? You can’t ask me that here
(you have no authority)

Source: Cicero (1949a: 21–25).

(quality). For example, Tony Blair’s defence of his conduct to an enquiry in

relation to the 2003 Iraq invasion could be said to have shifted the issue from
one of conjecture (over whether he propagated ‘lies’ about the threat from Iraq’s
weapons of mass destruction) to one of definition (how we interpret his role as
a leader uniquely burdened with the task of making judgements with imperfect
evidence), but also of quality (it was useful to invade Iraq despite its alleged threat
or otherwise because it got rid of a dangerous tyrant).
Establishing the issue, then, permits the speaker to adopt the stance that appears
most conducive to persuasion. This is not a failsafe approach in politics (Tony
Blair’s critics still maintain he ‘lied’), but it accounts for much of the manoeu-
vring of speakers prior to an event when they seek to determine what questions
might be asked in an interview, or who in a debate can ask questions and how (in
advance rather than spontaneously, for example). In political arguments speakers
often talk past each other precisely because each defines what is at issue in a dif-
ferent way, usually the one most conducive to the stance they wish to adopt. Being
able to ‘frame’ the argument by determining what principle is at issue can allow
one speaker to dictate the way in which others will respond and close off awkward
questions that are difficult to explain away.

The discovery of the argument

Having understood the type of occasion and the issue upon which a speaker might
take a stance, it is possible to select a fitting argument(s) to achieve persuasion.
The discovery of argument involves selecting, from a range of options, a form
of reasoning that addresses the audience in such a way as to encourage them to
reach (or, as Kenneth Burke argued in 1969, identify with) the conclusion offered
by the speaker. Aristotle claimed that this range consisted of three types of appeal
or ‘proof’: the appeal to logos, ethos and pathos; that is, to reason, authority and
emotion (see Table 4.4).
The appeal to reason involves an argument based on a logical procedure through
which the speaker leads the audience, often by employing evidence of some kind
to demonstrate the veracity of the conclusion. This, of course, is the process with
which many trained philosophers are familiar. The appeal to authority involves
58 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement
Table 4.4 The three types of appeal

Type of Meaning Methods

appeal

Logos Appeal to reason Demonstrating logic (inductive or deductive)

of an assertion, using empirical evidence,
statistics or examples
Ethos Appeal to the authority Explicit or implicit reference to qualities of
or character of the speaker speaker
Pathos Appeal to emotions Expressing feeling, identifying shared
of the audience emotions

Source: Aristotle (1991: 74–75).

pointing to the appropriateness of the speaker to speak at all. That is signalled in

various ways: perhaps by announcing one’s distinctive experience, qualifications
or job title. Finally, the appeal to emotion involves invoking the sentiments of the
audience: a sense of moral outrage, of hope or of humour, for example.
Each appeal constitutes a way of arguing that is recognized as legitimate in certain
contexts. We often associate argument with a logical procedure that demonstrates,
or at least indicates, rational truth. While this is certainly a dominant, perhaps even
preferred, form of appeal, we should not dismiss arguments based on authority and
emotion. A sense of authority, perhaps in the form of expertise or experience, is
effective – perhaps even necessary – at times of crisis. Likewise, emotion is a pow-
erful, if frequently underestimated, dimension of persuasion, as we shall see later.
The capacity to ‘lighten the mood’ or, by contrast, to invoke seriousness or even
danger is an impressive tool when used effectively. While the latter two may not
always appear strictly like arguments (with a specific thesis that is promoted with
explicit reasoning), they have what Ruth Amossy (2005) calls an ‘argumentative
dimension’ in that they help orient their audiences towards an issue.
The three different types of appeal might be more or less appropriate to certain
contexts, but they rarely function entirely independently of each other. In any
oration or process of argumentation, each appeal will be used to a degree, if only
subtly. It is difficult to imagine any political communication where reason is not
used in so far as valid conclusions are shown to follow logically from certain
premises. Likewise, the authority of the speaker needs to be maintained, at the
very least by speaking well. And all forms of persuasive argument will seek to
satisfy the feelings of the audience, perhaps only by avoiding provoking discom-
fort. What is important to note, however, is that any speech moment will involve
at least one kind of appeal. Let us look more closely at each.

Logos
The appeal to reason entails leading the audience through certain logical steps
so as to reach a specified conclusion. In politics, this is a key dimension when
policy options have to be deliberated, when principles and ideologies are asserted,
 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement 59
defended or attacked, when past or potential consequences are examined and,
finally, when explicit decisions have to be made. For Aristotle (1991: 75), the
appeal to logos was a vital form of argumentative strategy in politics, since it
involves reasoning about the future (whether in the long or short term) and thus
requires the use of particular intellectual processes such as abstraction and cal-
culation. To encourage an audience to reason their way to a conclusion therefore
requires an understanding of what reasoning involves.
In very general terms, a rational argument can be said to involve a procedure by
which we defend a specific thesis, or conclusion, by making logical connections
between the conclusion and certain premises or supporting grounds (see Weston,
2000: 1–9). The claim that ‘hand weapons sales should be banned’, for example,
might be defended on the premise that ‘hand weapon usage accounts for an enor-
mous number of deaths every year’. Or the same claim might be defended on the
grounds that ‘weapons designed to kill are morally repugnant’. The first is a form
of ‘inductive’ reasoning whereby the conclusion is based on a particular case (the
number of deaths in this country in the past ten years, perhaps). The second is a
form of ‘deductive’ reasoning whereby a specific conclusion is reached by way of
a general principle (all weapons designed to kill are morally wrong, wherever we
are). In the first, reasoning comes from an external form of evidence – that is, a
claim about the empirical world. If the empirical evidence changed (that is, if the
number of deaths radically reduced), the conclusion would not reasonably follow.
In the second, the conclusion is deduced from a general principle that is assumed
to hold at all times in all places. In that instance, the premises are abstract – that
is, they are assumed to be acceptable by any reasoning person.
In both examples, the argument is drawn from premises that we are required
to accept if we are to reach the same conclusion. The speaker’s task is often to
demonstrate the connection between the premises and the conclusion such that
the reasoning is shown to be one that an auditor can legitimately follow and, as a
consequence, agree to be fair. The effectiveness of rational argumentation lies in
the speaker’s ability to make this connection appear as smooth and unforced as
possible. In that way, even if the listeners do not like the conclusion, they are com-
pelled by their own reasoning to accept it as valid. The assumption, then, is that
having been taken through certain logical steps, listeners are unlikely to disagree
with themselves. That is, if they are rational they will seek logical coherence in
their views and feel compelled to accept coherence as a sign of validity even when
it contrasts with their own preferences or preconceptions.
This is what Richard Dawkins implies in The God Delusion (2006) when, in his
argument against religious explanations of life on earth, he contrasts a Darwinian
form of reasoning based on the principle of evolution with arguments drawn from
religious texts. If we are reasonable, he claims, we will see that religion offers only
dogmatic (that is, unsupported) assertions about the design of all life by means
of a divine source. Meanwhile, Darwin’s theories demonstrate, through the use of
empirical evidence and theoretical hypotheses, that life evolved over the course
of millions of years through a process of trial and error through which only those
organisms that could adapt to their external conditions could survive, so passing
60 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement
on their genetic code. For Dawkins, Darwin’s theory is a superior contender for
universal agreement because it draws its conclusions from empirically verifiable
premises. However much we might recoil emotionally at the conclusion, we are
compelled by reason to accept it as true.
Dawkins’ polemical encounter with religion exemplifies a (frequently rather
shrill) form of scientific argumentation that seeks persuasion through reason. Yet,
like all forms of reasoned argument, it demands we accept the logical connection
between premises and conclusions. However, this is where logos reveals its vul-
nerability as a strategy of persuasion. Few premises are self-evidently true and,
if examined or brought into question, they can show themselves to be open to
criticism. Much of scientific enquiry demands we isolate empirical evidence and
reduce it to a series of ‘objective’ features that can be enumerated, quantified and
labelled. That is what Darwin spent much of his life doing before he came up with
his theory of evolution, and it is common practice for members of scientific com-
munities. Most other people, however, do not engage in this exercise and simply
have to accept such claims to scientific objectivity and evidence. We are not usu-
ally in a position to contest the accumulated findings of scientists and therefore
we accept the premises because they appear valid and in tune with prior ways of
thinking that we endorse. Having done so, however, our ability to contest their
conclusions is also limited. Once we accept Darwin’s premises, it is difficult not
to accept as valid his conclusions about the development of life on earth.
In politics, however, argumentative premises are much more likely to be
disputed, not least because they rarely have the same weight of evidence as do
scientific theories. That demands that we think about reasoned argument in politi-
cal life being characterized by less rigour than is the case for scientific theory.
To make this point, Aristotle distinguished between the ‘syllogism’ and the
‘enthymeme’ as two forms of logical reasoning (Aristotle, 1991: 75–77). The syl-
logism is an abstract form of deductive reasoning that makes a logical connection
between conclusions and premises. As the famous example goes:

Major premise: All men are mortal

Minor premise: Socrates is a man
Conclusion: Socrates is mortal

Here the conclusion, ‘Socrates is mortal’, follows inexorably from the major and
minor premises. Of course, it may not actually be true that Socrates is mortal.
The conclusion here is ‘logically valid’, that is, it is the product of a correct form
of reasoning. We might dispute the truth of either of the premises, in which case
the reasoning would be wrong, or ‘fallacious’ (see Pirie, 2006). But if we accept
them, then the conclusion must follow. In philosophical logic, this is thought to
be a rigorous demonstration of abstract deduction. Thus we might replace the
contents of the premises and conclusions with other claims such as, for example,
‘Murder is wrong. Killing animals to eat them is murder. So killing animals is
wrong’. As long as we accept the premises here, the conclusion is valid. But if we
dispute either of the premises, then the conclusion will seem fallacious. We might
 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement 61
disagree that murder is always wrong or we might dispute that killing animals for
food necessarily amounts to murder. In such cases, the conclusion cannot claim to
be based on a logically rigorous form of reasoning.
Few political or moral disputes are conducted in this way. It is rarely possible
in the heat of an argument to set out premises in neat, orderly steps. Indeed, it is
not always desirable to do so. Hence Aristotle (1991: 77) named a lesser form of
argument: the enthymeme. In the enthymeme, the premises might be missing,
merely implied or hidden so that only part of the argumentative structure is visible.
Sometimes premises are just assumed, taken as accepted fact, and the conclu-
sions are reached without having to demonstrate every logical step. For example,
the saying that ‘money follows power’ is a conclusion that involves premises
which are suppressed. These premises could be ‘those with wealth always seek
the conditions to make more wealth’ or ‘those in political office always provide the
conditions to make wealth’. Yet, as an enthymeme, the saying takes the premises
as assumed, implicitly understood and accepted such that it is not necessary to
state them explicitly. This is the power of an enthymeme: it is a form of reasoning
that invites listeners silently to acknowledge the truth of a claim, to make the logi-
cal connections themselves, and so become subtly complicit with the speaker’s
reasoning.
It is the informal logic of the enthymeme, rather than the strict logic of the
syllogism, that characterizes moral and political debate, as contemporary rhet-
oricians usually accept (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969; Burke, 1984).
Sometimes that is because certain premises or conclusions are so widely held
as to not need recounting in detail. We find this in the aphorisms and popular
idioms that stand as collective wisdom in certain communities: ‘in this country
we all believe in free speech’, ‘all men are born equal’, ‘there’s no smoke without
fire’ and so on (see Morrell, 2006). Classical rhetoricians often provided lists
of formal argumentative structures called ‘topics’ (topoi) that enumerate recog-
nized rational formulae for speakers to fill out with their own content (such as
topics of cause and effect, association, contraries or similarities; see Aristotle,
1991: 183–214; Corbett and Connors, 1999: 87–130). Topics provide ready-made
structures that, like aphorisms and idioms, give rational plausibility, rather than
strict logical validity, to rhetorical reasoning (see Burke, 1984). At other times, it
is useful simply to assume agreement on issues, or an association between ideas,
that might actually be contentious but which the speaker wants to pass over with-
out controversy. Sometimes that might be achieved by suppressing the conclusion
rather than the premises: ‘we all know where high interest rates lead …’. Either
way, enthymemes remind us that political and moral debate often involves appeal-
ing not to explicitly demonstrated logical truths but, rather, to implicitly assumed
matters of fact or agreed principle that, if tested, might prove contentious and may
even need to be further defended.
A similar approach to argumentation is set out by the philosopher Stephen
Toulmin (2003). Most arguments, he claims, refer us not to absolute, final
truths so much as to ‘local’ truths: accepted reasonings about how things are to
be conceived. It would be wrong, he claims, to test most forms of reasoning by
62 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement
the highest standard of logical validity. Instead, he argues, we must see truth
claims as being restricted to certain ‘fields’ or collections of understandings
that rarely need to be set out. Of course, taking certain matters to be true –
by using off-the-cuff remarks and figures of speech, for example – often
reflects power relations in society, where commonplace understandings, or
what Gramsci referred to as ‘common-sense’ thinking (see Gramsci, 1971:
432), have come to crystallize around certain practices and domains. ‘Common
sense’ is a type of shorthand for an accepted way of reasoning that does not lay
itself open to question but relies on our implicit acceptance or deference – and
hence our complicity.
In order to evade such complicity, it is necessary for an opponent to make
explicit the hidden premises of an argument and so dispute them, thereby bringing
into question the conclusions that ‘naturally’ follow. Much of politics in debat-
ing chambers, as well as in society at large, involves precisely this identification
and disputation of hidden and/or faulty premises and the offering of alternative
premises or new conclusions in their place. The dialogical nature of many public
arguments also permits speakers to anticipate potential counter-arguments when
making their own case so as to deflect them in advance (hence humanist rhetori-
cians taught their students to argue in utramque partem – on both sides of the
case – to strengthen their ability to defend themselves). This image of argument
as a rather clever academic seminar may reflect the character of some political
debate today. But we should note that it is a lot easier to contest conclusions
or their premises when aspects of the central issue are already agreed. Such a
debate might occur if we are arguing about the correct approach to welfare policy,
which may involve evaluating the foreseeable costs of withdrawing benefits or
programmes and directing funds elsewhere. Heated disputes might well arise here
about potential effects on certain sectors of society, the use of statistical evidence
to justify the policy or the moral reasoning informing it.
But if the issue is shifted from the question of how to undertake a specific
policy to the issue of whether such a choice should be taken at all, or whether
the problem to be resolved is not one of how to reduce costs but instead how to
raise revenues, then the framing of the argument may substantially transform. In
such circumstances, debaters may fail even to find common ground upon which
to contest premises and conclusions. Such is often the case when entirely opposed
ideological viewpoints come into conflict: neither party comes ‘close enough’ to
the other to test their reasoning. That may sometimes be an opportunity: allowing
one to advocate anew the terms within which premises and conclusions are posed.
But it can also be severely disabling of any kind of reasoned deliberation and, if
it persists, can create the conditions for hostility and violence. Alternatively, rival
parties can find some common ground – in the form of constitutions or agreed
principles (peace, equality or national self-determination for example) – by
which to institutionalize and regulate their disagreement within relatively settled
parameters.
 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement 63
Ethos
The appeal to ethos is, as with pathos, not an alternative to the appeal to reason
but something that typically accompanies it. Nevertheless, it is worth dwelling
upon since all argument demands a sense of confidence in the speaker by the
audience. Ethos refers to the speaker’s character or authority, which gives his or
her words some degree of persuasive force. We typically understand this when
we hear ‘experts’ speak (see Aristotle, 1991: 172–79; Cockcroft and Cockcroft,
2005: ch. 1). Sometimes, ethos works on the basis of the recognition of prior
authority (for instance, being someone who already holds public office and hence
having the right to speak), but often it is because an authoritative character is
demonstrated in speech itself (see Amossy, 2001).
Demonstrating or even seeking to enhance one’s ethos need not mean explicitly
claiming to be an expert on the topic on which one is speaking. But it does involve
giving the listener a sense of the speaker’s entitlement to speak. Witnesses at a
traffic accident are not experts in accidents, but their views have force because
they saw what happened. Alternatively, people who can demonstrate an unblem-
ished record of efficiency and hard work will be more appealing to employers
than those who cannot. Ethos is a reminder that a sense of entitlement to speak
is a vital addition to a reasoned argument, for the perception of the speaker as a
worthy and truthful character, at least in regard to the topic in question, is a way of
making an argument seem plausible. In short, as listeners (or readers), we need to
trust our speakers as genuine and reliable sources of the judgements they defend.
To experience this trust means not to have to examine the validity of every sen-
tence but, instead, to feel confidence that whatever is said is worth hearing. Thus
ethos contributes to making arguments seem plausible.
In politics we see the appeal to ethos regularly, though sometimes it can be very
subtle. Politicians and political activists wish to enlist the support of members of
the public with whom they are usually not familiar. To do this, merely setting out
a reasoned argument is not always enough. It is necessary to ingratiate oneself
with an audience, to supply them with reasons for thinking this person or group is
worth hearing or that it is worth hanging around long enough to hear their argu-
ment. For many professions this is not a problem: people go to medical doctors,
surveyors, police and lawyers precisely because they accept such people are enti-
tled to speak on certain matters. But in politics, things often work the other way
around. Politicians, at least in electoral campaigns, come to us (either in person or
via the media) for our votes and our continued support (financial or moral). For
this they need to win our trust, not just by telling us what they think but also by
demonstrating in some way that they have the right to be heard.
Appeals to ethos can be either explicit or implicit. An explicit appeal will
involve saying why the speaker should be trusted, perhaps by listing existing
accomplishments or by recounting his or her past experiences, family upbringing
and moral values. The point here is to bridge the gap between listener and speaker,
to generate a sense of identity with the audience that assures it of that entitlement.
Sometimes politicians do this by claiming to have much in common with the
audience, maybe that they belong to the same community. At other times ethos
64 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement
might be achieved by differentiating themselves from the community, perhaps by
indicating a distinctive experience or ability that grants them knowledge or exper-
tise in judgement. Such explicit claims include the recounting of war experience,
being a parent in ‘difficult times’ or a past history of holding public office.
Implicit appeals to ethos, on the other hand, involve employing subtle indi-
cators of character that an audience will understand without them having to be
explained. These might include a general eloquence and control over one’s words,
indicating a capacity for moderation and thoughtfulness. Or, by contrast, it may
involve using one’s local accent or a vernacular vocabulary to imply a connec-
tion with ‘ordinary people’. Notable politicians are often those who communicate
with distinctive traits that make them seem less ‘polished’ than typical politicians,
but perhaps also more ‘authentic’. Likewise, a capacity to quote sources suggests
erudition and intelligence, while plain speaking may suggest honesty.
It is also true that ethos extends far beyond the words used. Throughout much
of the past century the use of the media, and particularly visual imagery, has
grown in significance and is regularly exploited to enhance the ethos of speakers.
Backdrop and context, the style of dress and the mannerisms of a speaker are all
assumed to be important in defining character and many professional politicians
hire image consultants at some point in their careers to assist them in this depart-
ment. Failure to consider such things, particularly in an age when embarrassing
photos can be distributed across the media within minutes of being taken, can
puncture the public image of a speaker, undermine their credibility and dent the
degree of seriousness with which he or she might be received by the public.

Pathos
The appeal to sentiment is a pervasive element of rhetorical communication, though
often those who prioritize logos diminish its significance. Pathos involves seeking
to shape the feelings rather than merely the thoughts of the audience (see Aristotle,
1991: 139–71). That may involve seeking to generate laughter, concern, fear or
even anger. Doing so helps to create a context for arguments to have greater per-
suasive effect. Encouraging a public sense of anger or hurt might make a forceful or
extreme policy option seem reasonable. Using humour can lighten an atmosphere
and dispel discomfort or nervousness. These effects are often regarded as cyni-
cally manipulative by critics – especially in relation to efforts to express passionate
feeling – and more in keeping with theatrics than serious argument, perhaps even
distracting an audience from the intended misdeeds of the speaker. It is certainly
the case that tyrannical dictators have employed strong appeals to the emotions as
way of generating popular support for terrible crimes. But it is also true that many
do not. Passion can sometimes be distracting but so, too, can dull, bureaucratic
reason. Pathos need not always be thought an effort purely to manipulate the audi-
ence; it is also a way of demonstrating a connection with shared sentiments and an
ability to channel them towards a constructive judgement.
Cicero claimed that good speakers need to argue not only rationally but also
eloquently in order to delight the audience: ‘all who desire to win approval have
regard to the good will of their auditors, and shape and adapt themselves completely
 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement 65
according to this’ (Cicero, 1962: 323). Increasingly, today, neuroscientists and
others are coming around to the view that emotion is not a brake on reason so
much as a necessary and ever-present stimulant (see Damasio, 1994). To reason
effectively, it is argued, we need to be in the right emotional disposition rather than
not being emotional at all. Certain emotions may place the audience in dispositions
that enable receptivity to particular arguments. Thus well-deployed humour can
allow an audience to deal with serious issues that might otherwise be experienced
negatively. A certain register of anxiety in a speaker alerts us to danger, while anger
or rage encourages us to be decisive or resolutely principled (see Marcus, 2002).
A speaker’s use of the appeal to pathos is revealed in a number of ways: in the
vocabulary, or lexicon, and in what we might call ‘tone’. The vocabulary of emo-
tive speech is largely self-evident. Specific words invite certain responses: some
words have violent connotations and invite intense reactions (for example, ‘rape’,
‘fight’, ‘slaughter’), others invite concern (‘crisis’, ‘corruption’, ‘disaster’), and
still others imply routine business (‘discussion’, ‘agreement’, ‘procedure’). This
aspect of pathos is closely related to rhetorical style (the use of words), which will
be examined in the next chapter. Tone, on the other hand, refers to the general
resonance of communication rather than to specific words and relates to other
qualities related to delivery (which we shall also examine in the next chapter).
Hurried speech, for example, may imply anxiety and invite listeners to feel con-
cern, while gently paced speech indicates control and invites feelings of assurance.
Other differences can be found when arguments are shouted or gently spoken,
delivered at a distance from the audience or close up, savagely critical or accom-
modating and friendly and so on. There is no guarantee, of course, that changes
to words or tone will induce the expected response from the listener. Sometimes
things can go badly wrong with the feelings of the audience: being booed off
stage, being politely ignored, or just not ‘hitting the right note’ with an audience is
always possible. In such circumstances, a negative, or at least neutral, emotional
reaction can make it difficult to get across an argument.
Appeals to reason, authority and emotion are essential to the craft of rhetori-
cal persuasion and, it might be said, form the substantial matter of any political
intervention. To mobilize an argument by means of these appeals is not only to
make and defend a reasoned case; it is also to shape the way in which that case is
received and digested by the audience (see Tindale, 2004). In short, it is to create
a relationship and, in so doing, recruit others into the process of acknowledging
certain qualities in the community. The discovery of arguments involves judging
the best means by which to connect – or, indeed, disconnect – particular issues,
ideas and claims with a wider horizon of principles.

Arrangement
Discovering the right argument or combination of argumentative appeals may
be the essence of a speaker’s task. But the argument still needs to be assembled
into an order of presentation that delivers its full force. This aspect of rhetoric
was known as the task of ‘arrangement’ or, in Latin, dispositio, which deals with
the positioning of the various parts of speech and the way speech flows from
66 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement
start to finish. There is much advice in the classical canon on the proper forms
of arrangement for different types of oration, so let us stick with a fairly typical
schema. The varied parts of the speech can be broken down as in Table 4.5.
What are these parts expected to do? The exordium opens the speech with
some preparatory comments designed to achieve two things: first, to prepare
the audience generally, perhaps by greeting them, thanking them or announc-
ing the significance of the event; second, to inform them of what is about to be
said. The latter might involve any number of things, such as directly stating the
conclusion of the argument and setting out how it will be reached. Less directly,
the speaker might quote a famous saying, pose a question or state a paradox or
some observation that will capture the audience’s attention and prepare it for
the argument. Look at the introduction to any speech, pamphlet or book and you
will usually find some effort to hook the audience’s attention by inviting them
to consider a problem or a question.
But the task here is not simply one of capturing attention. The introduction also
offers an opportunity to present the speaker’s view of the issue at stake and the
stance to be taken on it. Sometimes this will be very simple and uncontroversial –
at a wedding, the presiding official will welcome and announce the purpose of
the event – but on other occasions it might involve broaching a controversial
or difficult subject, such as giving bad news, resigning or announcing a failure of
some kind. At these moments, introductory remarks function to allow a topic to
be approached by adopting a tone that signifies what will come without saying it
directly. Of course, getting straight to the point is frequently desirable, especially
when the speaker or the general purpose of the speech is widely understood. In
such instances, preparatory remarks might be unnecessary. Often, however, the
speaker will need to establish an initial relationship with the audience, if only by
greeting them. Such is regularly the case at political campaign rallies, where dif-
ferent constituencies can be addressed individually and thanked directly, allowing
everyone else to recognize their own presence as a distinct part of the whole. On
other occasions, such as governmental committee hearings or in legal contexts,
the speakers may not dwell for long on their introductory remarks, given that the
purpose and function of the event is already clear.

Table 4.5 The parts of speech

Latin name English name Function

Exordium Introduction Prepare the audience and inform them of what

follows
Narratio Narration Set out the ‘facts’, interpret facts selectively
Confirmatio Proof Present the argument(s)
Refutio Refutation Reject alternative argument(s)
Peroratio Conclusion Close the discourse by summarizing argument(s)
and/or gesturing a sentiment

Source: Cicero (1949a: 40–161).

 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement 67
The narratio involves the setting out – or narration – of the facts. In law courts
this occurs in order to let the jury know what the known facts of the case are
so that lawyers can then proceed to develop their interpretation. But the narra-
tion of facts takes place in all sorts of other speech contexts, too. News reports
are dominated by this part of speech, and broadcast interviews with politicians
will also involve reference to events that involve recounting factual information
upon which they might then be asked to comment. In so far as politics involves
responses to events in the world such as wars, military conflicts, natural disasters,
financial crises and the success or failure of policies, there will be, by necessity,
a place for narration.
But narration is never simply a matter of neutrally setting out agreed facts. In
political life (and doubtless elsewhere), facts are always bound up with interpreta-
tions. To set aside a part of speech devoted to what is officially known is also to
take the opportunity to decide what ought to be known. That is, facts can be selec-
tively narrated. If facts supply a good part of the empirical premises of inductive
forms of reasoning (for instance, facts about what other politicians said or did,
about the economy, or facts in the form of statistics), being able to define them is
a vital part of securing persuasion. This is what Quentin Skinner (2002b: 270–74)
refers to as ‘rhetorical redescription’: redescribing reality according to one’s own
preferred view. Others may just call it ‘spin’.
Narration may involve attributing certain causes to events, identifying blame,
emphasizing some aspects of an event over others, appealing to statistical data
or just restating known but controversial facts that place an event in a wider
picture. Whichever choice is made, narration provides an opportunity to define
the situation and, hence, details that are purportedly beyond dispute. Perhaps the
important point here is that one’s own preferred interpretation should not seem
to be uppermost in the speech. To describe the world simply as one prefers it will
appear absurdly prejudiced and crudely manipulative. The narratio works as an
account of the facts if it is represented as an objective description that others can
agree is true.
Confirmatio is the part of a speech devoted to setting out the ‘proof’ or argu-
ment of which the speaker is seeking to persuade the audience. In different types
of speech event, this will have a greater or lesser role to play. In politics and
political debate, the proof is usually the centrepiece of the event, but in ceremo-
nial speeches, it need not be at all elaborate, and sometimes not even explicit. In
celebrating births, deaths or marriages, the essential argument (often of praise or
blame) will likely be already understood and so simply needs saying only once, if
at all, and then succinctly. In matters of greater controversy, however, the moment
of proof will require more effort and maybe demand attention to the aspect of
discovery. In these instances there will often be several proofs, and so it is neces-
sary to decide which is the most important and in which order to present them.
In classical rhetoric it is often claimed that, in order to stay in the memory of the
audience, the most important, or ‘clinching’, arguments will come last, while the
lesser proofs will be presented first.
68 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement
But here much depends on the context and the nature of the speech event.
A debate with another speaker (or more than one) will likely often require respond-
ing to their arguments, too, contesting their premises or conclusions. Inevitably
that will detract from a speaker presenting his/her own arguments, or it may
require repeating the preferred argument after aspects of it have been disputed.
In contexts where a speaker is given free rein to present his/her own proof, it will
be necessary to calculate how rapidly the central argument needs to be set out. If
there is time, a number of minor proofs might be made, premises developed and
conclusions elaborately defended. But if there are tight time constraints, minor
proofs may be set aside in order to deliver the clinching argument. Furthermore,
not all proofs will appeal to logos, or not exclusively so. If ethos and pathos are
also part of the proof, then the moment to employ these, too, needs to be calcu-
lated in order to have the optimum effect.
Closely related to the presentation of proofs is the refutio or refutation of oppos-
ing arguments. It is not always possible to separate the refutation of alternative
arguments from the confirmation of one’s own, and it may even precede the proof.
Nevertheless, we can treat this as a separate part in so far as it is a distinct element
of many speeches and arguments. Sometimes the refutation will be of distinct
claims by specified individuals, but it can also involve the rejection of anonymous
claims (such as ‘it is said that …’). Either way, refutation is an important way
to enhance the persuasiveness of one’s own argument by permitting it to be set
alongside the limitations of another. Thus a speaker’s proof can be made to sub-
stitute for another, less effective argument by exposing its fallacies or answering
its deficiencies.
There are many ways to develop a refutation of another’s argument. These are
clearly related to the aspect of discovery and the kind of proof upon which the
(real or anonymous) other relies. A speaker might criticize the other’s premises
and conclusions by highlighting the faulty reasoning of the argument. Or the
speaker may attack his or her ethos, demolishing the opponent’s character and
thereby his or her right to speak with authority. Finally, the speaker may dispute
the sentiments aroused by the opponent, perhaps dismissing their seriousness by
ridiculing them or, in a reverse movement, by suggesting they do not take seri-
ously enough the issue at hand. Either way, the audience will be presented with a
stark contrast between one supposedly proper emotion and another that is deemed
inappropriate.
The peroratio concludes the speech by signing off in a way that closes the argu-
ment effectively. Closing abruptly may leave the audience in expectation of more
and unaware of why things have stopped. So a deliberate conclusion provides an
ending that releases the listener’s attention by bringing the speech to a final point.
That point may involve a neat summation of the argument, a return to some issue
(or quotation) raised at the start or a gesture of some kind that embodies a senti-
ment for the audience to take away with it. The conclusion is the ‘last word’ of an
oration and, depending on the context, speakers can find it difficult to let go. We
often notice this in broadcast interviews or public debates where speakers want
 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement 69
their own views to be the last words heard by the audience. There is nothing more
frustrating than to find oneself cut off in mid-flow and hence unable to give some
final, emphatic flourish to one’s argument. The peroratio is the moment at which
a ‘final frame’ is placed on the speech and the place where its essential qualities
may be invested. Once finished, the audience will start to reflect on what has hap-
pened, so this final frame is important if the speaker wishes to ensure the audience
remains in tune with the spirit of the argument.
Not every persuasive speech follows the pattern of exposition above. Depending
on the occasion, various parts may be missed out altogether, while at other times
some parts will be elaborated at great length and in a different order. We can see
that ceremonial speeches will involve little or no confirmatio or refutio, while
judicial speeches (concerned with elaborating facts) will devote much attention
to narratio and political speeches may dwell on refutio and confirmatio. Among
these occasions there may be a wide variety of differences, too. It is possible to
identify certain ‘genres’ of arrangement in politics in the same way that we can
define genres of literature (see Cockcroft and Cockcroft, 2005: 139–60). Thus we
can point to party conference speeches, resignation speeches, campaign speeches
or presidential inaugural speeches as examples of distinctive genres that arrange
their parts in similar ways (see Freedman and Medway, 1994).
The arrangement of a speech is significant not because there are fixed models to
follow in each and every circumstance, but because there are choices to be made
in any occasion, and often examples that can be followed. Rhetorical reflection
upon arrangement is a way of mapping out the structure of possibilities for mak-
ing this judgement. When we listen to, or read, a speech we tend not to see this
aspect and it passes by without our noticing, partly because we are caught up in the
flow of the argument, registering its effects moment by moment and responding
to specific phrases, concepts and sentiments as they arise. Yet it is precisely this
‘flow’ that helps shape our reception of speech – that is, our reaction to the speed
and fluency with which it covers its various parts and the sense of tension and
release, movement and intensity it conjures by the arrangement of the parts in a
distinctive way. Although we might not reflect much upon it, all speech moments
involve an economy of feeling and desire: the management of our expectations
as an audience; of our desire, perhaps, to hear the facts or get a sense of the over-
all point, or maybe just to hear acknowledged certain sentiments and values. An
effective speech is one that selects an arrangement to both stimulate and meet
those expectations. Sometimes that involves holding off the clinching argument,
but at other times perhaps it means saying it straight away. In delivering bad news,
for example, one is rarely thanked for saving the crucial information right until the
very end! In the defence of a policy, dwelling on the deficiencies of other policies
might appear a rather negative way to promote one’s preferred approach. Getting
these details right is a matter of judgement and doing it effectively – that is, in
a way that does not jar with the audience or encounter disabling criticism – will
reflect well on the speaker (and the speech writer).
70 Techniques I: discovery and arrangement
Summary
The importance of discovering the argument and arranging the parts of speech can
be understood by returning to the toolbox metaphor I used at the beginning of the
chapter. Discovery and arrangement provide tools to craft the substantial dimen-
sions of speech. Defining the argument gives us the precise focus to the stance we
wish to take on an issue in any particular occasion, supplying a coherent purpose
to our discourse. Arranging the parts of the speech permits us to structure our
words so as to effectively deliver their focus.
This toolbox metaphor should not be taken too far, but it does convey an idea
of what the first two rhetorical canons are about. Without a clear view of the argu-
ment or a structure, persuasive discourse is likely to fail. Of course, political life
is full of occasions when people argue unclearly or without a strongly defended
argument and when they talk without brevity, concision or proportion. Classical
rhetorical advice, however, provides a means to think and prepare one’s strategy
in advance. This is not simply a matter of producing an eloquent and pleasing
discourse. Nor, indeed, is it just a technically effective way of transmitting infor-
mation. Discovery and arrangement are instrumental in shaping the basic terms of
the relationship between audience and speaker; they disclose the message that the
speaker wishes to convey but also help position the audience to receive that mes-
sage. As we shall see next, the effort to shape the relationship between audience
and speaker is further enhanced in the canons of style and delivery.
5 Techniques II
Style and delivery

This chapter explores the technical elements of rhetoric related to style and
delivery. Whereas discovery and arrangement concern the substantial content
and shape of rhetorical speech, the next two explore what often makes it distinc-
tive and memorable. Style (in Latin, elocutio) concerns the use of language and
delivery (in Latin, pronuntiato or actio) deals with the techniques and qualities of
performance. In some respects these are the most outward, perhaps even ‘theatri-
cal’ aspects of persuasion. They are dimensions that give it distinctive qualities as
an event. By consequence, they might seem rather superficial aspects, especially
if the central part of speech is thought to be its argument. But given that speech
is typically a public performance of some kind and not just a thought experi-
ment, outward qualities take on a greater significance than might otherwise be
expected.
Style and delivery could therefore be said to concern primarily ‘aesthetic’
qualities of speech – that is, the evocation of sensation – whereas discovery and
arrangement concern the rationality of argument (that is, its logic and order). This
holds to some extent, but we should not think that style and delivery do not impact
at all upon the qualities of the argument (or its ‘argumentative dimension’, as
Amossy put it; see Amossy, 2005). On the contrary, they are particularly impor-
tant in influencing ethos and pathos, each common forms of argumentative proof.
In domestic and international politics, the dimension of theatre – or the aesthetic
dimension – is widely recognized, if not always positively endorsed (see Bleiker,
2009). Speeches are not infrequently delivered as exhortations from balconies
to admiring crowds or in apparently impromptu public settings to provide the
speaker an immediate and uncritical reception. Of course, it is always possible
to be understood if we simply communicate in plain prose delivered in a formal,
undemonstrative manner, but what is said might not be experienced as an argument
with sufficient intensity or appeal to be fully grasped. Persuasion – as opposed to
mere understanding – often involves making emphases, expressing urgency or
conveying degrees of moral significance to help make auditors identify, if only
momentarily, with the speaker and the claims being made (see Burke, 1969).
These are possible only if speech takes an outward form that presses its argument
in such a way as to make it moving (see Spence, 2007). That need not always
demand excessive exuberance or heightened theatricality, which may diminish
72 Techniques II: style and delivery
the reception of the argument, but a flourish here and there can sometimes help
the argument find its target. As is commonly said about effective rhetoric: it not
only makes you agree with what is said, it makes you want to agree. That task is
the responsibility of style and delivery.

Style
Style is the most overtly ‘literary’ part of rhetoric. It is the part that concerns
language: the choice of words (diction), the figures and forms of speech and
the overall tone of a discourse. It is through the choices made about style that
speech not only delivers its argument but also, indirectly, conveys the ethos of the
speaker. Clarity and precision without extensive ornamentation or wild flourishes
can convey a simplicity of purpose that suggests resolve, while the use of dense
language with technical jargon may isolate the hearer behind a veil of apparent
expertise that implies distance. When we hear political actors communicate, the
style of language makes an immediate difference to the way we hear and appreci-
ate what is said. It will shape our trust in the speaker and our sense of attachment
to the argument(s) being put. As well as contributing (or not) to the ethos of the
speaker, therefore, language may also have an effect on pathos: the emotional
disposition of the audience.
That link between language, ethos and pathos is of particular importance in
political life, especially in democracies where the connection between citizens
and their representatives is desired but never assured. When a leader speaks
with little attention to style – when, for instance, unprepared verbal responses
are given to questions – the audience can easily generate negative feelings and
the speaker can lose authority. If a consistently poor performance is put in,
then the speaker may even become the object of ridicule. Former US President
Ronald Reagan’s occasional failure to respond coherently to direct questions
from journalists (sometimes without the prompting of his wife, Nancy) for which
he was not prepared was often regarded as a sign of weakness. President George
W. Bush’s occasionally mangled phrases and lack of grammar regularly brought
him much criticism. Interestingly, however, it could also be argued that this lack
of perfect diction and eloquent style endeared him to some of the public, making
him appear unpolished but genuine, a ‘regular guy’. President Obama’s control
of language and his thoughtful, well-prepared orations reflect a more ‘intellec-
tual’ style that has mostly met with public approval. In each of these instances it
is never wholly certain in advance how language will play with the audience on
any given day. But once politicians have found a style that works for them, they
are likely to continue with it as much as possible.
But what is it about language that makes it so important to find the right kind
of style? This is a difficult and complex question to answer, and it has been an
issue for philosophers, linguists and literary scholars (among others) for a very
long time. One way to start to think about answering it is to recognize that lan-
guage is never simply about words or signs designed to ‘pass on’ information. The
instrumental view of language treats words as though they were vehicles carrying
 Techniques II: style and delivery 73
discrete meanings from one person to another (see Chambers, 2003: ch. 1).
While that is true of words to some extent, language is so much more than simply
intended meanings travelling from A to B. Like colours, words have different
effects depending on how they sit alongside each other in combination, in what
order they come, how different words might substitute for each other and what
happens when some are missed out. Language involves complex and varying sys-
tems of combination and substitution that can alter meanings in diverse ways just
as a painter’s palette can select and blend different colours and tones. Just as blues
look subtly different when tinged with green or with purple, so concepts and ideas
come across differently when combined in different ways.
Rather than thinking of language exclusively in terms of vehicles containing
information, then, we might conceive it also as a way of blending meanings in dif-
ferent ways to produce different types of sensation. That effect can be discussed
in terms of the distinction between ‘denotation’ and ‘connotation’. Words are
denotative when they seek to represent directly the objects they name. Thus the
word ‘oil’ is used to represent the dark material extracted from under the ground.
However, words are connotative when they make associations between objects
and ideas. For example, to call someone ‘oily’ is to imply moral untrustworthiness
by connoting the way in which oil is slippery and prevents a firm grip, or to say
that someone is ‘fishing around’ for new ideas is to convey a sense of speculative
searching rather than actually employing a hook and rod.
In speech we regularly employ denotative and connotative aspects of language
at the same time, indicating actual things but also conveying a more abstract
representation through indirect associations. For instance, to say ‘he signed the
contract’ is a denotative statement about someone actually signing a piece of
paper setting out the legal terms of a partnership. But to say ‘we want a new
contract with the people’ is to signify the spirit of a legal arrangement, an agreed
relationship to which each party willingly submits and takes on a duty to fulfil,
rather than an actual document. If lawyers deal with the first kind of contract,
politicians often deal with the second by using the connotation to make abstract
associations that invite confidence and trust. The connotative dimension of lan-
guage associates indirectly rather than indicates directly. That can make it easy to
miss, especially if we are not familiar with the kinds of association being made.
But it reminds us that language is a rich fabric of meanings that never merely
sends us information; it also ‘dresses’ its content or colours it in ways that provide
layer upon layer of sense that we cannot always penetrate in the moment that we
hear it. Like the informal reasoning associated with the discovery of arguments, it
requires the audience to infer what is being suggested by drawing upon its stock
of common sense or cultural knowledge. It is no surprise to find that elocutio is an
aspect of rhetoric that has been influential in the study of poetry. Speechwriters, it
has been said, are the poets of public discourse (see Clark, 2011; 2009).
Of course, politicians are not always known for their precise arguments but,
rather, for the simpler ways in which they put things in speech. The ‘soundbite’ –
the formulaic phrase or saying that concisely sums up an outlook or idea – has been
a trusty component of politics in the age of the mass media, where it is possible
74 Techniques II: style and delivery
to distribute widely a neat, condensed package of meaning in a short collection
of words. But even before soundbites came to prominence, the stylistic flourish
that connotes a complex blend of meanings was a common feature of public ora-
tions. Clichés and platitudes, for example, are, like aphorisms, part of that stock
of pre-digested common sense that needs only be repeated to elicit widespread
recognition. Speeches are themselves often the originating source for such well-
known phrases. For example, students of politics have long repeated Abraham
Lincoln’s celebrated definition of democracy in his Gettysburg Address of 1863,
as ‘government of the people, by the people and for the people’. Aside from the
likelihood that many who repeat the phrase do not recall its original location in
a specific speech (perhaps they do not even recall the author), it is often missed
that the repetition of ‘the people’, divided only by prepositions and conjunctions,
gives the phrase an uncomplicated but insistent affirmation of the principle of
popular sovereignty (despite the fact that it was uttered after a devastating and
violent civil war, when the people were hardly united). The appeal here lies less
in Lincoln’s formal definition of democracy (which is fairly vague) and more in
the rhythmic alliteration, which exquisitely performs in words democracy’s claim
about the primacy of the people (try replacing the three prepositions with any oth-
ers to see that the effect is largely the same: ‘at’, ‘in’, ‘on’, for example).
However critical we might be of the simplicity of soundbites today, they are a
reminder that much of what we know of speeches in the past is often reliant upon
a single, repeatable phrase that can be extracted and used as a motif for the whole
message (Clark, 2009: 115). This is what dictionaries of quotations typically
comprise: famous lines taken from bulkier orations or writings that articulate an out-
look in a concise but memorable way. Many of the speeches with which we are
familiar are referred to in terms of single lines that are used as titles: Sir Winston
Churchill’s many war speeches, for example, such as ‘We shall fight them on the
beaches’ (speech to the House of Commons on 4 June 1940) or ‘Blood, toil, tears and
sweat’ (speech to the House of Commons on 13 May 1940; the phrase was
originally used by Garibaldi). Or think of key policy approaches: for example,
Gordon Brown’s ‘No more boom and bust’. Such titles sum up certain emotional or
aesthetic qualities connoted by a speech or a proposal rather than offering a precise
argument. We find a similar thing in the use of the epithet in political discourse: the
short adjective that names something or someone and simultaneously attributes par-
ticular qualities to it. Trading insults, for example, is a regular feature of democratic
conflict: a good name can carry associations that are hard to shake off. Australian
Prime Minister, Paul Keating’s labelling of his opponent as a ‘feral abacus’ because
of the economic rationalism of his party’s policies helped him win the 1993 general
election (see Clark, 2011: 5). Alternatively, Margaret Thatcher’s appellation as the
‘Iron Lady’ probably enhanced rather than diminished her appeal.
So the peculiar effect of style can often be the way in which it makes speeches
and their ideas memorable and repeatable in other contexts. This might have the
consequence of obscuring the logical force of any argument, but it transmits a
sentiment or an idea that endures beyond the speech occasion. Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher’s claim that ‘there is no such thing as society’, for example, has
 Techniques II: style and delivery 75
come to sum up the type of neo-conservative liberalism she promoted. President
George H.W. Bush’s fateful campaign phrase of 1992, ‘Read my lips: no new
taxes’ (a claim he did not fulfil), reminds us that quotable phrases transmit unfor-
tunate as well as inspirational ideas.

Figures of speech
What makes for a memorable style of language? Here rhetoricians often point
to the use of ‘figures of speech’ – that is, distinct ways of shaping language to
enhance its connotative and denotative effects. This is accomplished by using
words and sentences that deviate from normal discourse in some way, making
them stand out and catch our interest, as well as blend together different kinds
of sense. Listing figures of speech has been central to the rhetorical tradition,
with new figures continuously being added (and, like other terms we have seen,
often labelled in Latin or Greek – a helpful list can be found in Lanham, 1991).
Nevertheless, figures are typically divided into two categories: ‘schemes’ and
‘tropes’ (see Corbett and Connors, 1999). Schemes are ways of arranging words
within the sentence; tropes are ways of using particular words. Let us look at each
category in turn, using examples to illustrate their effects.

Schemes
Rhetorical schemes arrange words in ways that heighten their effect – that is,
they draw our attention to the way we read or hear them. Nowadays these effects
are mostly associated with the study of literature but, because rhetoric is in
certain respects a literary approach to speech, they are important in public life
too. Although formal speech has become remarkably less ornate in the past few
hundred years, and hence less inclined to sound what we might call ‘poetic’,
rhetorical schemes are still regularly employed. In such schemes, the words them-
selves do the performing by virtue of their peculiar presence in a sentence.
There are very many named schemes and so I will list a few recognized
examples. Schemes concern the phrasing of sentences and produce their effects
primarily by way of techniques of repetition, word order and even the omission
of words. In this they attend to the flow of meaning that an audience hears, creat-
ing movement between ideas through word sequences that slide, stop, interrupt
and sometimes deliberately reverse the sense of what has already been said. Such
techniques permit the selection of emphasis in order to shape the auditor’s proc-
ess of reasoning, but they also offer a certain ornamentation that can make the
mundane seem otherworldly or more meaningful than we might otherwise think.
In repetition, the most common techniques include: anaphora – the repetition of
the first words in successive clauses of a sentence (for example, Churchill’s
‘Blood, Toil’ speech: ‘no survival for the British Empire; no survival for all that
the British Empire has stood for; no survival for the urge and impulse of the
ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal’; see Churchill, 1940:
188); epistrophe – repetition of the final words of a clause in successive clauses
76 Techniques II: style and delivery
(for example, ‘live young, die young’); and antimetabole – repetition of words
in reverse order in successive clauses (for example, JFK’s famous line from his
inaugural speech: ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do
for your country’). Other forms of repetition include epanalepsis – the repetition
at the end of a sentence of the words from the start, or anadiplosis – repeating the
last words of the previous clause to start the next.
Word order techniques can involve deliberate deviations from a familiar
arrangement. For example, Jesus’ reported line at his crucifixion ‘Father forgive
them, for they know not what they do’ (Luke 23:34) is an example of anastro-
phe, the inversion of normal word order. The sense here remains intelligible but
the poetic ‘know not’ (rather than the regular ‘do not know’) adds an alliterative
emphasis with a simple rhythm that helps make it memorable (similar to the ‘Ask
not’ in the JFK example). On the other hand, the use of antithesis places emphasis
on contrasting terms (for example, ‘we seek freedom, not tyranny’). The dra-
matic contrast between one thing (idea, principle or objective, for example) and
another is clearly central to political debate, where arguments typically aim to
differentiate themselves from and declare their superiority over each other. Such
antitheses can be found in unbridgeable dichotomies such as them/us, friends/
enemies, not(this)/but(that), either/or and so on. Alternatively, speakers who wish
to avoid a confrontation will try to eliminate the antagonism with terms that do
not directly contrast – for example, by using ‘and’ instead of either/or. This was
a notable aspect of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s style when trying to
evade the ideological antithesis of the state versus the market (see Bastow and
Martin, 2003).
The omission of words is effective in altering the sound but also the sense of
speech. Parallelism, for instance, involves creating a balance or sense of structural
equivalence between terms (words, phrases or clauses) by omitting intervening
words (for example, ‘our cause is just, our goal is clear’). Asyndeton is the omis-
sion of conjunctions between clauses to create a continuous flow (for example,
Julius Caesar’s reported ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’ instead of ‘I came, then I
saw, and then I conquered’. The absence of ‘and’ between the terms enables an
effortless movement through each action, rather than adding new, unrelated ele-
ments one by one).
Among the most well-known types of rhetorical scheme in political speech is
the tricolon, or three-part list. Three sometimes seems like a magic number in
rhetoric, since it involves orderly steps that become increasingly emphatic (two
is often an antithesis, which creates an immediate hierarchy). The tricolon can
involve three parallel words (‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen’) or phrases (‘I
came, I saw, I conquered’), which build to a powerful conclusion. Again, like
most schemes, the effect is partly in the ordering of words, which simultane-
ously colours their connotative meaning. The third step is usually triumphant in
relation to the others; it both adds to the order of their succession and completes
them. Thus the final ‘for the people’ in Lincoln’s famous phrase accomplishes
in the form of tricolon what it cannot as epistrophe (the mere repetition of the
 Techniques II: style and delivery 77
word ‘people’): namely, to emphasize the primacy of government serving the
people above all else.
Finally, schemes enable a degree of interaction with the audience that invites
them to anticipate the reasoning of the speaker. This is achieved in phrases that
either explicitly or implicitly elicit a response. The most well-known of these is
the ‘rhetorical question’, in which the speaker explicitly asks a question that she
then goes on to answer herself. Churchill’s famous ‘Blood, Toil’ speech, for exam-
ple, involves him twice asking and responding (with tricolon) for his audience:

You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and
air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage
war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable
catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can
answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all
terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory,
there is no survival.
(Churchill, 1940: 188)

Contemporary speechwriter Max Atkinson lists a variety of similar techniques

that he classifies as ‘puzzle–solution formats’, which pose problems rather than
ask direct questions, inviting the audience to anticipate a solution that the speaker
then gives (Atkinson, 2004: 190–92). The puzzle may consist in a curious anec-
dote or statement of paradox that implicitly poses a problem whose next step is a
resolution. For instance, then UK Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s Bridgend speech
of June 1983 set out a puzzle in the form of a warning: ‘If Margaret Thatcher is
re-elected as Prime Minister, I warn you’. He then solves the puzzle with a long
series of anaphoric repetitions that answer the implied question concerning the
nature of his warning: ‘I warn you that you will have pain […] I warn you that you
will have ignorance […] I warn you that you will have poverty’ (Kinnock, 1983:
439). In Atkinson’s analysis, to be effective, contemporary speeches often com-
bine various schematic techniques (such as lists, contrasts and puzzle solutions)
that work to constantly engage the audience and create regular bursts of applause
by prompting them to anticipate resolutions that, to their satisfaction, the speaker
then provides (see Atkinson, 2004: 198–210).

Tropes
Tropes involve the use of particular words to connote certain meanings. Here
effort is directly focused on creating or specifying meaning rather than arranging
words and phrases for effect. By consequence, tropes are often closely connected
to the premises and conclusions of an argument. Again, there are many possible
examples of these figures and I will draw upon only a few notable examples.
One of the most significant tropic figures in rhetorical analysis is metaphor.
Metaphors abound in political discourse, although they are not always recog-
nized as such (see Carver and Pikalo, 2008; Charteris-Black, 2005). They involve
78 Techniques II: style and delivery
the substitution of one or more terms for another in order to invoke a kind of
comparison. I say ‘kind of’ because metaphors are stronger than similes. In a simile
we explicitly claim something is ‘like’ something else (for example, ‘the defeated
candidate was cowering like a dying animal’). But the word ‘like’ indicates only a
partial similarity between things that are basically different. By contrast, a meta-
phor implies an identity between otherwise different things (see Black, 1962).
Thus to call a political experience a ‘journey’ or to talk of a ‘new dawn’ in inter-
national affairs involves comparison by asserting an identity between particular
events and certain, evocative ideas. This is a stronger claim than mere similarity
and permits a much more powerful use of imagery. It invites the audience to have
the same direct reaction and response to the metaphor as it would to the thing
described.
Metaphors have such a strong effect on communication generally that they are
rarely used just to embellish an already established argument (see Lakoff and
Johnson, 2003). The substantive content of a speech may well use a metaphor
either as a premise or even as a conclusion. For instance, after 11 September 2001
the claim to be undertaking a ‘war on terror’ was used as a premise to enable some
fairly extraordinary uses of military and legal powers by western states against
‘terrorism’ (see Redfield, 2009; Brecher et al., 2010). Here the strength of the
metaphor lay in its ability to make a series of discrete actions all relate to the
goal of ‘preserving security’ by treating them as elements of an ongoing war.
Of course, this was no war in the strictly literal sense of one state undertaking a
military assault to subdue another (although that formed part of it, in Afghanistan
and Iraq). Rather, it was an ongoing utilization of state power in various ways as
though there was actually a war with a defined enemy. That metaphorical defini-
tion became a premise for arguments to alter the established legal entitlements of
citizens and to undertake military action of various kinds (against purported ter-
rorists). The use of the words ‘war’ and ‘terror’ – dramatically charged terms, but
with no precise target – heightened the effect of the phrase in order, it might be
argued, to invoke a sense of principled purpose behind a collective mobilization
(as war implies, even when it is a ‘war on poverty’, for example) and to raise fears
of a generalized nature about an imminent attack on civilians. Interestingly, the
phrase was eventually withdrawn, as it came to be widely dismissed as excessive
and inaccurate.
The use of metaphor to sustain an argument can also be found in what is called
‘analogical reasoning’. This is an inductive style of argumentation that works by
presenting a particular case as ‘being like’, or sharing features, with another case
such that we should react in the same way: for example, referring to an interna-
tional negotiation as ‘appeasement’ (invoking comparison with the appeasement
of Hitler in the 1930s). Such arguments are common in the pragmatic world of
politics, where practical examples rather than universal principles are employed
to make sense of specific issues (see Musolff, 2004; Aronovitch, 1997). Analogy
functions metaphorically to connect a specific instance with others that it is
assumed to resemble, encouraging an audience to infer the resemblance and
respond to this instance in the same way they would to the other. Analogies of
 Techniques II: style and delivery 79
war, ‘rape’, ‘theft’ or being on a ‘battlefield’ are common in international poli-
tics and conflict, but so too are more cooperative analogies, such as appeals to
‘family’, ‘humanity’, ‘special relationships’ and so on. Analogies permit an argu-
ment about an issue to unfold as an enthymeme: by allowing the metaphor to
serve as an implied or unexplained premise or conclusion and relying on the audi-
ence to make the connection. In adopting the analogy, distinctive features of the
object are suppressed and a selective connection with other qualities is stressed.
In day-to-day politics, such analogies are often unquestioned and may form part
of an underlying consensus. But when the metaphor is exposed as partial or inad-
equate, the analogy might then be contested and its accuracy or hidden prejudices
laid bare.
We have already noted the journey metaphors, which can be seen to help define
change in terms of positive movement. But other analogies for change are used
in political contexts, such as the activity of ‘building’ (to achieve peace between
divided communities, for example), developing ‘road maps’ (in the Palestine–
Israel conflict, in order to have a journey at all) and so on. Metaphors such as
these are not necessarily controversial, but they assist the elaboration of arguments
by framing the context and, as a consequence, orienting the audience towards a
distinctive, associated quality of an issue. Thus it is easier to invite people to make
a decision when there is a sense of urgency, which might be assisted by talking
of the train being ready to ‘leave the station’, as happened in debates about the
European Union in the 1990s (see Musolff, 2004). To disagree, as Mrs Thatcher
found, meant tackling the metaphor that defined the situation, rather than just
the arguments built around it. Thatcher discovered to her cost, however, that if
everyone else sticks with the analogy of departing trains, there lies a risk of being
isolated in a discourse that no one else is hearing.
Metaphors are often connected to two other tropes that connote meanings:
‘metonymy’ and ‘synecdoche’. A metonym involves the substitution of a word
or concept with another that has particular connection with the object in ques-
tion. In that way, related aspects of the thing described come to stand for it as
such. Here there is room to generate connotative associations and to define the
thing(s) in question. Thus, for example, governments are often referred to in
the media by the location of their executive seats (for example, ‘Washington’
for the US, ‘Beijing’ for China). These substitute names give political authority
and its decisions a distinct sense of place. Where metaphor invokes an identity
between different things, metonymy uses close associations, and these are often a
matter of convention. For instance, the saying ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’
uses pen and sword metonymically to symbolize the things these objects actu-
ally do (writing and fighting, respectively). Aphorisms and other commonplace
sayings in political speech often rely on metonymic conventions such as these to
convey their meanings.
A synecdoche, on the other hand, is a type of metonym for which an actual
element of an object comes to stand in for the whole, or the whole for a part. A
typical example is the use of a sail to represent ships, or, keeping with the nauti-
cal theme, the command ‘all hands on deck’, where the hands of people stand in
80 Techniques II: style and delivery
for the people themselves. Synecdoches therefore keep a direct association with
the object represented either by taking one part as its defining feature or using
the whole class to reference one element of it. This can be a rather controversial
way of reducing things to one aspect of their many features, such as reference to
individuals by the colour of their skin (‘blacks’ or ‘whites’) or by their clothes
(for example, ‘suits’ to refer to businessmen). But it can also have a powerful
effect, because it defines the qualities of a thing by eliminating all complexity and
magnifying one trait over others. Referring to whole groups or communities by
distinguishing one feature, for example, is a common use of synecdoche: ‘gays
are demanding equal rights’, ‘Muslims are under threat’, ‘the French capitulated
to the Germans’ and so on. Here an element of group identity – be it sexual
orientation, religion or nationality – is taken as the unifying trait of the group.
Synecdoches therefore provide a recognizable shorthand that can be either nar-
rowly reductive or helpfully clear, depending on how they are employed.
Metaphors, analogies, metonyms and synecdoches are therefore powerful
devices for stylistically shaping not just the tone but also the content of an argu-
ment, because they permit speakers to redescribe situations, objects, agents or
experiences in selective ways that subtly shape how judgements about them are
to be made. One way for political actors to escape a downturn in their fortunes –
such as hostile public opinion or a series of events that go against stated aims or
principles – is to redescribe the situation by changing the dominant metaphors.
Thus the designation by President G.W. Bush of certain states as part of an ‘axis of
evil’ helped to turn a sense of potential weakness or isolation in the international
environment into a moral struggle against not just specific regimes or a military
alliance, but the embodiment of moral wrongdoing itself. ‘Evil’ is a common term
in political discourse in so far as it magnifies what otherwise might be regarded
as discrete difficulties into conflicts where what is at stake is the very principle
of moral order. Such rhetoric is often criticized for being overly simplistic and
certainly unhelpful if technical solutions to problems are thought to be available.
But its effect is to lever its audience into making a choice – possibly quite uncon-
sciously – or taking a principled stand on some issue, often to adopt the judgement
of the speaker by having little option but to take the side of the Good. Again,
to resist such arguments means taking issue with the metaphor and having the
resources to sustain an alternative description of the situation.
As we shall see further in the book, politics involves a constant negotiation
of competing metaphors to define contexts and actions. These metaphors often
function as premises to assist the deployment of certain arguments. Metaphors
prepare audiences for arguments to which they might not otherwise be receptive,
to acknowledge conclusions that, without the metaphors, may seem alien or inap-
propriate. Even the most anti-rhetorical speakers will use metaphors of some kind
to make their arguments – think of Hobbes’s definition of the state of nature as,
in essence, a ‘warre of all against all’ to be resolved by the ‘mortall God’ that is
Leviathan. Often, however, the use of metaphors fails. The appeal to the symbol
of the British pound, for example, by the Conservatives in the 2001 UK gen-
eral election failed to ignite sufficient interest among the public. That synecdoche
 Techniques II: style and delivery 81
was intended to mobilize support in defence of British economic sovereignty in
light of the purported threat that the Labour government would adopt the euro
as its currency. Doubtless there were many external reasons for this failure (the
Conservatives were still in general popular decline), but it is clear nevertheless
that the choice of metaphor takes place in a context of uncertainty where the readi-
ness of the public to invest their aspirations or fears can vary significantly. Not
all situations are characterized by such chronic anxiety or accumulated discontent
that new metaphors can capture the audience in sufficient numbers.
I have devoted considerable space to discussing metaphors because these
figure greatly in political life. But other tropic figures are worth mentioning, too.
For example, hyperbole involves the deliberate exaggeration of a point to mag-
nify its significance. For instance, to argue that ‘permitting greater immigration
will gradually murder our way of life’ adds a metaphor (murder) that overstates
but undoubtedly enhances its thesis. Hyperbole dramatically raises the stakes in
political debate, putting something fundamental at issue. The danger, of course, is
that such a technique will be regarded as an overstatement deployed to paper over
the weaknesses of an argument. Alternatively, the use of irony – stating something
that is not true in order to draw attention to its implied lack of truth – is a com-
mon device that relies on an audience’s understanding to work (for example, ‘We
all know how politicians abhor media attention …’). Irony is a regular technique
used in the mockery and ridicule of others.
Another trope that is important to political argument is paradiastole – the re-
evaluation of an action by ‘replacing a given evaluative description with a rival
term’ (Skinner, 2002a: 183; see also Lanham, 1991: 107). For example, a coward
might be called ‘cautious’, vacillation might be called being ‘fair-minded’ and
so on. The effect here is to reverse the moral significance of an act or object,
making negative what was once viewed positively, or vice versa. This is an argu-
mentative manoeuvre to which Skinner makes reference in his discussions of
post-Renaissance politics and Hobbes in particular (see Skinner, 2002a: 175–87;
2002b: 273–85; 2002c). Paradiastole was a common technique in ‘rhetorical
redescription’, whereby a creative redesignation of persons or actions altered
their public evaluation. But it was precisely the capacity to stretch or narrow a
moral vocabulary that, for Hobbes, allowed rhetoricians to manipulate their lis-
teners. Only the Leviathan state could ensure that words had fixed meanings, he
claimed (see the discussion in Chapter 2).
In politics, we regularly come across contests over the way a term is used eval-
uatively. Paradiastole is an inventive practice whereby a speaker may extend a
moral vocabulary to include something with which it usually isn’t associated,
thus making that something seem morally acceptable or, by contrast, repugnant.
Common examples of this device include designating violent suppression as ‘law
enforcement’, calling the state’s receipt of taxes ‘theft’ or defining terrorists as
‘freedom-fighters’ (or vice versa). In that way, the audience’s appraisal of cer-
tain ideas, activities or agents is encouraged to alter by applying terms whose
application elsewhere is already understood. What on the surface often looks like
an agreed vocabulary among opponents can turn out to involve quite opposed
82 Techniques II: style and delivery
understandings of the meaning and application of evaluative words. Thus during
the peace process in Northern Ireland in the 1990s, the very term ‘peace process’,
although widely shared among different parties as a positive goal, had a variety of
interpretations. For some it meant the total eradication of any organized violence
without exception (and hence the immediate and unequivocal relinquishing of
all weapons), while for others it meant a process of gradual movement towards
that situation (and hence permitted the retention of weapons by certain groups
until an appropriate time). Use of this imprecise but shared vocabulary eventually
succeeded in overriding differences of interpretation over what it actually meant
(see Shirlow and McGovern, 1998). In other contexts, however, such differences
can be exclusionary and generate serious disagreement. For example, should the
vocabulary of the ‘family’ and ‘marriage’ only apply to heterosexuals or can it
reasonably include homosexual couples, too? Debates in the US (and elsewhere)
about how to apply these terms involve rhetorical strategies over whether and how
certain actions are valued or which kinds of persons can legitimately be associated
with them (see Chambers, 2003: ch. 6).
Finally, a noted alternative to paradiastole, where moral approval and disap-
proval is contested around a common vocabulary, is catachresis – the introduction
of a new term altogether. This new term has the effect of providing an alternative
point of reference to an established vocabulary and is often associated with the
introduction of an inappropriate term whose novelty arises from the way it jars
with existing usage (see Lanham, 1991: 31). Examples include the term ‘democ-
racy’, which in ancient Greece was a term of abuse indicating, as Rancière (1999)
argues, a scandalous assertion of equality by subjects not thought fit to govern.
Similar catachrestical terms in social and political life include words that some-
times have a jarring effect but that also offer new, unifying categories – ‘justice’
or ‘freedom’ in authoritarian regimes or ‘the people’ or ‘proletariat’ elsewhere.
In post-revolutionary France, for example, the term ‘citizen’ became a new and
radically egalitarian term of address for new political subjects in a society hith-
erto accustomed to hierarchy and markers of distinction. To call others ‘citizen’
was to publicly remind them that they were now equals. These examples are all
what Ernesto Laclau calls ‘empty signifiers’ that function to unite various political
demands by not referring to any specific groups or set of arrangements as such
(see Laclau, 1996) – that is, they are presented as universal principles or qualities
that apply to everybody. Their very emptiness permits numerous demands and
aspirations to coalesce around a common name that then stands in opposition to
the existing order.
As I noted earlier, style is often associated with ornamentation. That makes sense
in so far as it is a dimension linked to poetry or the deployment of words (in any form)
so as to have some kind of aesthetic effect, shaping sensations and the meanings
built upon them. But in political rhetoric, we should not dismiss it for this reason.
As I have tried to argue, stylistic devices such as schemes and tropes shape the way
in which an argument is perceived and understood by its audience. This is not, then,
simply a harmless matter of surface appearance or agreeable-sounding words and
phrases. Style involves reflection on how to fine-tune speech for the purposes of
 Techniques II: style and delivery 83
persuasion, to get around the strict logic of an argument to access the softer range
of sensations that always accompany reason. Some devices are doubtless used as a
matter of personal preference or needless ornamentation and have little substantial
effect on how an argument is received. But others can have a vital part to play in
determining the issue and conveying the stance of the speaker. Stylistic devices are
therefore important ‘moves’ in strategies to achieve persuasion.

Delivery
The performance of speech might, at first glance, seem like a matter that pertains
only to the speaker on the day rather than to the speech itself. In a predominantly
oral culture we can understand that much of the reception of a spoken perform-
ance would have hung on the qualities of its ‘live’ delivery. In today’s rhetorical
performances, by contrast, where so much is written and communicated textually
and electronically, such things are now heavily managed (often with specialist
expertise). But the delivery of speech remains crucial to its reception and plays an
important part in shaping ethos and pathos – that is, the authority of the speaker
and the emotional reception of the audience. Indeed, if anything, delivery has
become equally as important as the content of speech, since recordings remain in
circulation long after the actual performance and can be distributed much further
than the immediate audience. As we shall discuss in a later chapter, the formation
of mass media may have fundamentally shifted the balance away from argument
in favour of image and performance.
On the question of delivery, we are likely to find the advice of the ancients rather
anachronistic. Cicero, for instance, had much to say on the topic. In De Oratore
he noted that ‘Delivery is, so to speak, the language of the body’ (Cicero, 2001:
294). ‘Every emotion’, he claimed, ‘has its own facial expression, tone of voice
and gesture’ (ibid.: 292). Physical presence was therefore crucially important and
speakers should adopt a ‘vigorous and manly attitude of the body derived not
from stage actors but from those who fight with weapons’ (ibid.: 294). Continuing
with the military analogy:

The hands should not be too expressive, accompanying rather than depicting
the words with the fingers. The arm should be extended forward a bit, as if
our speech were employing it as a weapon. And you should stamp your foot
at the beginning or at the end of energetic passages.
(Ibid.)

Techniques of delivery, then, are likely to vary from age to age and from culture
to culture. That makes it difficult to generate common expectations or advice.
Nevertheless, it was clear to rhetoricians such as Cicero that delivery was of great
significance, and it is still worth taking seriously: ‘Delivery [...] is the one domi-
nant factor in oratory. Without it, even the best orator cannot be of any account
at all, while an average speaker equipped with this skill can often outdo the best
orators’ (Cicero, 2001: 290).
84 Techniques II: style and delivery
Delivery involves the manipulation of the ‘paralinguistic’ (or non-spoken) tools
directly available to the speaker to help sustain the point being argued. These
tools are, in most cases, the body and the voice (conceived as a device for making
sounds). Orators can move their limbs to direct the audience’s attention through
gestures and can modulate their voices to convey various degrees of emotion
and force. The recordings we have of political orators such as Adolf Hitler or
Benito Mussolini underscore their distinctiveness in oratorical delivery. Hitler’s
lengthy speeches often built up into shrill demonstrations of intense anger, his
voice almost squealing with rage as he denounced his enemies. Mussolini, on the
other hand, chose to swagger, jutting out his chin and often crossing his arms and
staring at his audience with contempt. Of course, these were the performances of
megalomaniacal showmen and firebrands, deliberate crowd-pleasers looking to
stir up popular feelings with pronounced oratorical displays that now seem rather
overstated, comical even. Leaders in liberal democracies tend, by contrast, to
downplay their physical and vocal abilities in order to display calm and control.
Nevertheless, today’s politicians and leaders are often given quite sophisti-
cated advice about how to deliver their speeches in ways that enhance rather than
detract from their argument. Mrs Thatcher notoriously lowered the tone of her
voice in order to affect a more reassuring and less hectoring vocal tone than before.
Similarly, political leaders are taught what to do with their hands when speaking
(a problem for all public speakers at some point), perhaps relaxing and placing them
to the side or behind the body rather than, say, jabbing the air aggressively. The most
difficult techniques, however, are often to do with the voice. Scientists are increas-
ingly aware of the intense sensitivity of humans to the pitch, speed and volume of
the human voice and the differences in reaction that variations can stimulate (see
Karpf, 2006). Being able to modulate vocal tone (that is, to go up and down the high
and low notes at will) is desirable but not always easy. Nor is knowing when to do
it. A modulated voice enables emphases to be made at the right time, permits irony
and generally shapes the tone of the oration in harmony with the kinds of argu-
ments being made. Celebrated British orators such as Aneurin Bevin or his protégé,
Michael Foot, were impressive modulators of tone to create a probing, questioning
and sometimes mocking tone. Churchill, on the other hand, exuded statesman-like
authority via a deep, gruff voice. Similarly, speakers need to learn how to pace their
orations, avoiding excessive speed, undue length, unclear words or stumbling over
multiple syllables. These are all simple, basic issues but they can make a great dif-
ference to the tenor of an oration and how the audience receives the speech.
While advice and expectations may vary, it might be possible to distinguish
types of performance by the classification of the speech occasion. Different events,
we might say, demand certain modes of delivery. Ceremonies, for example, rely
on the affirmation of common feelings and therefore a certain degree of pathos
is to be encouraged. But the precise form of delivery will vary if the ceremony is
one of sympathy and goodwill (a marriage, for example) or one of loss (such as a
funeral). Likewise, a judicial speech demands clarity in the delivery of a narrative
about past actions and evidence to sway the jury, but the delivery may adopt more
or less aggressive styles depending on the lawyer’s perception as to what kinds
 Techniques II: style and delivery 85
of evidence the jury will be receptive to. Finally, political deliberations may often
involve aggressive, heated and emphatic argument. But, equally, ‘the voice of rea-
son’ can be found in the speaker who rises above the fray with gentle serenity and
only the most modest of vocal and gestural inflections. Selecting the right style of
delivery, then, is not exclusively associated with the type of event so much as the
kind of tone a speaker wishes to adopt. What is ‘right’ in any instance will vary in
light of all sorts of conditions – not least the natural abilities of the speaker.
There are also choices about delivery that might be made on the occasion itself
rather than prepared in advance. Bold gestures, the use of props, sudden halting
and silence, coping with hecklers or an angry crowd, perhaps even crying might
be deemed acceptable given the nature of the event. In the 2008 US presidential
election, for example, Hillary Clinton interrupted an interview to shed some tears.
Whether that was feigned or entirely genuine is not easy to tell. But it certainly
draws attention to a candidate if he or she is deemed to be burdened with emotions
that cannot be contained inside the oratory. On other occasions, delivery might be
unduly interrupted or rendered less convincing by bodily events that might not
have been expected. Richard Nixon’s notorious unshaven appearance is thought
to have made him look less presidential than his opponent (and eventual winner),
John F. Kennedy, in 1960. Tony Blair’s visible sweating during a party conference
in 2001 doubtless drew attention away from the content of his speech.
It is for these reasons that contemporary politicians often have image consult-
ants. When things are going well, we tend not to see the manufactured, carefully
coiffured aspects of a speaker’s appearance and delivery. The ‘image’ and the
‘substance’, as they are often distinguished, merge into each other effortlessly.
When they don’t, however, appearance and argument compete for attention and
the argument can so easily get lost. Achieving a sensation of ‘authenticity’ and
honesty so as to deliver the argument effectively is a constant struggle for politi-
cians who are permanently in danger of being regarded as insincere or superficial.
That struggle is visible in recent efforts by some professional politicians to speak
without the use of notes, to roll up their shirt-sleeves and appear informal or, by
contrast, to communicate with the faltering speech of ‘ordinary’ conversation.
Outside of the well-known techniques of routine politics, the issue of performance
has an increasingly significant place in contemporary political theory. In particular,
the work of Judith Butler has drawn attention to the importance of performance in
generating and sustaining social, particularly gender, identity. Butler has argued,
following Foucault and other poststructuralist and feminist thinkers, that human
sexual identity is not a fixed or universal set of qualities and orientations but, rather,
a contingent phenomenon dependent upon regular (or ‘reiterated’) bodily perform-
ances (see Butler, 1999). Butler develops J.L. Austin’s (1962) idea of ‘performative
utterances’: sayings that produce what they refer to, such as the words ‘I do’ at a
wedding. These are contrasted with ‘constative’ utterances that merely describe.
Performative utterances are types of speech act that practically bring about some
change in the world. Deepening this idea, Butler uses the term ‘performativity’ to
refer to the way in which sexual identity is both contingent upon actions that bring
it into being and, by consequence, also profoundly unstable and variable.
86 Techniques II: style and delivery
For Butler, individuals perform their gender identities in so far as they enact
through bodily actions and gestures (ways of dressing, comporting themselves
and talking) the style of gender that is then ascribed to them as ‘natural’. Thus
the everyday actions through which identity is outwardly expressed come to be
seen as a consequence, rather than the cause, of an ‘inner’ character. In that way,
universal norms of identity and behaviour are deemed natural and usually policed
through expectations about dress and comportment. But, if identity is taken as the
outcome of repeated performances and not as an essence, then gender and desire
(which are traditionally assumed to flow from predetermined sexual dispositions)
can be multiple and varied, with no fixed anchor in nature. Gender comes to be a
kind of rhetorical performance that may be infinitely inflected in varying contexts.
Butler’s work on parody and ‘drag’, where the artifice of identity is explicitly on
display, underscores the subversive politics she associates with performativity
(for a discussion see Lloyd, 1999).
While it starts out as a deconstruction of sexual identity, Butler’s analysis points
to the political dimension underlying rhetorical delivery. For political action can
also be understood as a kind of performance strategy by which outward gestures
indicate ‘essential’ and ‘authentic’ qualities that are in fact contingently produced
through performance. The voices and the bodies of political agents are not sim-
ply ‘tools’ for communicating preconceived ideas but also the medium through
which ideas, arguments, aspirations and desires are given material embodiment.
The agent of persuasion could be thought of as a subject that is created through
the gestures and sounds that invoke an authentic point of view and the supposedly
coherent identity that expresses it. Although many people can argue for the same
conclusions, some manage to embody their arguments in such distinctive ways
that it is difficult to separate the person and the ideas they transmit.
For example, Sir Winston Churchill was not always regarded as a great speaker
and noble leader, but achieved those qualities in part by his oratorical performances
as a wartime leader. His style of delivery succeeded in generating, in the circum-
stances of great national threat, a sense of ethos that particularly suited and helped
shape the mood of his audience in the 1940s. Churchill-the-great-leader was, in
a sense, a mythical fabrication, a character generated by means of oratorical per-
formances in the House of Commons and on the radio. Interestingly, immediately
after the war, Churchill’s performances no longer succeeded in swaying the public
and he was unceremoniously removed from office in the election of 1945.
Butler’s notion of performativity underscores and greatly enhances some of
the ideas already at work in the classical notion of delivery (and rhetoric more
generally): speaking is a form of action that shapes both the speaker and the audi-
ence in specific contexts. For our purposes it is important to see how delivery is
not simply about the routine politics of making an emphasis or appearing well.
It also concerns the political dimension of persuasion: that is, the dependence
of common principles and norms of behaviour upon contingent circumstances.
Through voice and gestures, speakers embody their arguments, the motivations
behind them and the qualities of the ideas they represent. Far from being pure
abstractions or universally agreed truths, then, shared principles depend for their
 Techniques II: style and delivery 87
force upon repeatable performances that are often inflected by their association
with, for example, sexual, racial or class-related qualities. These qualities invoke
desires or identifications on the part of the audience that attract attention, stimu-
late feelings and help sway them. Thus we regularly see delivery styles that affirm
ideas of sexual ‘normality’ (for example, politicians appearing on platforms with
partners and children) or moral probity (clean-shaven, smartly but conventionally
dressed). While we may like to think of arguments as essentially separate from
the persons enunciating them, rhetorical inquiry reminds us that such things can
be hard to distinguish.

Summary
Today, style and delivery are ubiquitous dimensions of political communications
such that it is difficult not to define politics entirely in their terms: that is, in rela-
tion to highly stylized methods of communication, the fashioning of personalities
and ‘celebrity’, image-friendly characters, soundbites and marketable phrases. As
we shall see, it is often felt that modern media techniques have transformed poli-
tics into something like a marketing campaign.
But to reduce politics in that way is to risk emptying enquiry into rhetorical style
and delivery of its political insights. If such things have become disproportionately
evident in recent decades, nevertheless, we should not dismiss the obvious fact
that humans can be deeply receptive to the sound and vision of public performance
such that the mere inversion of words, their repetition or a simple gesture can alter
the way in which we hear and understand speech. Of course, we are not all recep-
tive in the same way and the use (or overuse) of such techniques can have negative
as well as positive effects on the persuasive process. Indeed, to highlight style and
delivery is not to discount the possibility that, as with all aspects of rhetorical com-
munication, too much effort may be expended on such things. Florid, excessively
verbose and exuberant orations still appear absurd and overstated, except at certain
moments. This is what is often dismissively referred to as being ‘too rhetorical’.
When we notice such things it is because those aspects of speech immediately
stand out, and the persuasive encounter will have already failed.
Like discovery and arrangement, the canons of style and delivery are elements
of a whole process, rather than discrete parts. An effective oration needs a degree
of coherence between these elements, a sense of continuity that ties them together,
seamlessly linking arguments in a clear order with stylistic elements that affirm
the point, all held together in a delivery that distributes emphases with gestures
that match them. Undeniably, this is a tall order and rarely do most speech encoun-
ters reach such heights. But the classifications of ancient rhetoric do more than
simply advise us of handy techniques for eloquent oratory. They point us towards
the ways in which most speech and communication seeks to achieve control over
a situation and an audience. Such efforts are never without a wider context of
power relations. What remains for us to consider is how the ancient techniques
of rhetoric can illuminate the type of interventions we encounter in contemporary
political speech.
6 Rhetorical political analysis

How can rhetoric help us to understand modern politics? The categories and
devices examined in the previous two chapters were originally designed as practi-
cal techniques for generating persuasive arguments. Because of this practicality,
Plato dismissed rhetoric as having little significance for a genuinely theoretical
knowledge of politics. That is to say, he believed the skills of persuasion could not
account for the fundamental conditions that made political community possible.
Rhetoric, argued Plato, only dealt with short-term manoeuvres and strategies, not
the basic principles by which political order was structured. Since Plato, how-
ever, we have learned to appreciate that politics and basic principles are difficult
to separate from each other. That view, formulated by figures such as Aristotle
and Machiavelli, has only been reinforced by the emergence of the modern state
and the development of democracy. Despite efforts to eliminate contingency from
principles of political order, we are inclined now to regard the two as mutually
intertwined. Politics and the political, as I claimed in Chapter 1, are inextricably
linked. It is in practically mediating that link that rhetoric illuminates the character
of politics today.
In this chapter I set out a rationale and a method for applying rhetoric to the
study of politics. This is a form of what has been called ‘rhetorical political
analysis’ (see Finlayson, 2007; Nelson, 1998). It involves employing rhetorical
categories to explore how political actors make interventions to control or ‘appro-
priate’ particular situations. These interventions can be understood as strategic in
that they are a means to negotiate the opportunities and constraints of any circum-
stance so as to achieve certain ends. They do this by deploying ideas – or, better,
arguments – to reorient audiences in relation to the prevailing situation. Rhetoric
helps us understand how political actors try to create agency by resituating an
issue in time and space so as to realize their goals. Democratic politics, we could
say, is awash with rhetorical strategies – not all of which succeed – competing to
shape public perceptions of people, events and policies. In so doing, such strate-
gies blend politics and the political – the struggles for advantage and the higher
principles that govern spaces of conflict – through the medium of speech and
argument. A rhetorical approach to politics allows us to disassemble these strate-
gies and to identify how they work.
 Rhetorical political analysis 89
In what follows, I explore the character of rhetorical political analysis by
contrast with other approaches in political science. What is at stake here is the
question of political agency. Traditional approaches in political science have
largely diminished the role of subjective agency in political explanation by treat-
ing individuals as maximizers of utility or bearers of fixed values. More recently,
‘interpretive’ approaches have sought to correct this tendency by incorporating into
their explanations the values, perceptions and norms – or ‘ideational factors’ – that
actors themselves use to understand and alter their environment. A rhetorical politi-
cal analysis can be aligned with these interpretive incursions into political science.
However, it also differs from them in important ways. Against a tendency among
interpretivists to treat ideas and beliefs as stable ‘cognitive frames’ or normative
dispositions – rather like tinted spectacles colouring the way we receive infor-
mation – a rhetorical approach understands ideas as arguments, which are more
akin to projectiles moving outwards in varying degrees, purposefully displacing
the context around them. Rhetorical enquiry invites us to treat ideas as situated
in specific moments and, moreover, as efforts to refigure situations by actively
privileging particular interpretations and diminishing others. As we shall see, this
view is compatible with so-called ‘dialectical’ accounts of structure and agency
that emphasize the negotiation of constraints and opportunities. This discussion
leads directly on to the formulation of a methodological schema for conduct-
ing a rhetorical analysis by drawing upon the toolbox of rhetorical techniques.
I complete the latter discussion with a brief reflection on the example of President
John F. Kennedy’s famous inaugural address of 1961.

Political science, ideas and interpretation

Ideas enter into contemporary politics in a myriad of different ways: as preferences
and attitudes shaping voters’ choices; as party ideologies and doctrinal statements;
as practical theories and paradigmatic policy frames; as ‘live’ public debate in
deliberative chambers; as official statements, public addresses or remarks on
contingent events; in political interviews, campaign advertisements and, more
recently, in ‘blogs’ and Tweets. Such variety precludes any simple explanation
of the role ideas play in politics. Variations in the form, intensity and breadth of
impact make a full appreciation of the role of ideas difficult to gauge.
Partly because of this complexity, ideas have often been ignored in politi-
cal science which, under the sway of positivism, has reduced human agency
to narrow psychological operations such as rationally calculating utility or
following routinized behavioural patterns (for a discussion, see Hay, 2002: 7–10).
Rational choice theory (or ‘public choice theory’), for example, ‘explains’ human
behaviour on the basis of an abstract model of human reasoning drawn from
economics. In short, human subjects are understood to be rational maximizers of
utility, calculating in advance what course of action would benefit them best. This
model of behaviour can be applied to politics, too, in so far as electoral democ-
racy involves a process of exchange on a par with economic transactions. The
most famous proponent of this approach to politics was Anthony Downs (1957)
90 Rhetorical political analysis
but it was prefigured by the work of the economist Joseph Schumpeter (1954).
Generally speaking, individuals – be they politicians or electors – will make
choices that enable transactions of mutual benefit to occur. Politicians, for
instance, seek the advantages of office, while electors seek policies that advan-
tage them (lower taxes, more welfare benefits and so on). For rational choice
theory, what brings individuals to have these desires is not of concern. What
matters is how to explain the choices they make in light of them. It is taken as
axiomatic that individuals will calculate which options will benefit them most:
electors vote for the candidates who offer policies of optimal advantage and poli-
ticians will offer the policies that will accrue the largest number of votes and so
get them into power. In different scenarios the situation becomes more compli-
cated but, in essence, rational choice theory works from this surprisingly simple
model of human behaviour.
What is notable in this approach is that speech is regarded, if at all, as little
more than an expression of a reasoning process that has already occurred. That
is to say, individuals come to politics already largely persuaded of how they will
judge the choices on offer. Uncertainty or doubt about how to reason is not a great
obstacle. Parties and individuals may have to bargain with each other to work
out the optimal choice in any given circumstance. That might involve ditching
an unpopular policy or encouraging people to rank their preferences in a differ-
ent order. If rhetorical speech is used at all, it is in order to manipulate rational
choices to achieve certain outcomes (see McLean, 2001; Riker, 1996). But, gen-
erally speaking, persuasion is primarily a matter of clarifying or distorting the
calculation, not of shaping judgements.
Rational choice theory works by applying axioms to certain scenarios, or dilem-
mas, where choices need to be made. Politics is conceived as a kind of game where
competing parties and individuals take up predefined roles to win rewards. Like
all games, however, it works best when everybody accepts the rules and calculates
in a way that is not fundamentally challenged. That may reflect some features of
democratic politics (its rules being like the predictable rules of a game, for exam-
ple). But the approach has been widely criticized for holding to an impoverished
view of human nature – deemed to be essentially self-interested – and distorts the
experience of politics, which entails more than just hard-headed calculation of
interests (see Hay, 2002: 37–40, 52–53). Above all, it is argued, people come to
politics with a range of values and emotions that are often irreducible to calcula-
tions of utility – shared desires and ambitions, attachments to certain symbols and
people – and with doubts and grievances that are yet to be clearly defined. The
rational choice approach reduces these to one type of rationality and, in so doing,
misses the depth and complexity of individuals’ social encounters, both in elec-
tions and in politics generally.
The other dominant approach in political science is behaviouralism. Rather than
approach politics from abstract premises, this model is based on the empirical
(and supposedly ‘neutral’) observation of behaviour and the various measurable
‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’ that contribute to decision-making (Hay, 2002: 10, 41–45).
The virtue of that approach, in contrast to rational choice theory, is it does not
 Rhetorical political analysis 91
assume a universal rationality. We need not agree that people are rational actors
at all. Their choices are made in accordance with a whole range of desires and
feelings, calculative reason being only one. Behaviouralists are less attached to
drawing conclusions from abstract premises than to observing what people do;
they use actual behaviour to predict their future choices. For instance, it was widely
noted in the post-war democracies that there was a strong correlation between vot-
ing intentions and social class (see Butler and Stokes, 1969). In the UK, for many
years, voters appeared to identify with political parties (notably the Conservative
and Labour parties) that represented stable clusters of values, experiences and
aspirations. Thus people would vote for those parties, often despite the policies
offered at any moment. Rather than adopting the outlook of a maximizer of util-
ity, voters’ judgements were governed, at least to some extent, by symbols shared
among members of their class that would shape their preferences and guide their
judgements. Voting was less like a marketplace and more like a demonstration of
identity and tradition.
The ‘party identification model’ of politics started to break down from the
1960s and it became clear, as voters became more volatile in their choices and as
traditionally dominant parties struggled to sustain their support, that it no longer
effectively explained people’s behaviour, if indeed it ever had (see Clarke et al.,
2004). Like rational choice theory, it suffered from an impoverished view of how
people formed judgements. Rather than seeking utility, individuals were under-
stood to be reasoning from collective identities and interests. But that was still
to diminish the place of speech in shaping judgements. People remained already
persuaded in advance, this time by their loyalty to a party associated with their
class traditions and interests. What they did at election time was merely re-enact
an established habit, rather than have it substantially challenged or changed.
Neither rational choice nor behaviouralism had much interest in practices of
persuasion in politics. Human judgements were deemed predefined by virtue
either of reason (conceived as self-interest) or habit. Inherent to both approaches
were largely static conceptions of the human mind, which was not expected to
change very much. It is no surprise that both approaches were eventually criti-
cized for taking for granted the stability and durability of post-war politics in the
West (Hay, 2002: 49–50). By the late 1960s and 70s it was clear that contrasting
ideals, symbols and values were having a greater effect on people’s behaviour,
and in ways that neither politicians nor political scientists were able to predict or
control (see Edelman, 1971; Bernstein, 1976: 55–114).
More recently, political scientists have incorporated insights from disciplines
sensitive to the varied perspectives which individuals themselves bring to the
world, such as cultural anthropology or cognitive psychology. These invite a
richer understanding of the way in which behaviour is mediated by subjective
outlooks, which the analyst must also interpret if behaviour is to be understood.
They provide a nuanced picture of the attitudes and values actors bring to political
problems and their judgements of how to act. Thus it is now increasingly common
to find political scientists employing terms such as the ‘ideational’ or the ‘dis-
cursive’ to denote a field of subjectivity where individuals and groups construct
92 Rhetorical political analysis
their own relationship to the world (see Gofas and Hay, 2010; Blyth, 1997).
For instance, Bevir and Rhodes favour what they call a ‘narrative’ form of
explanation that reconstructs the ‘stories’ which agents tell to account for how
they act (Bevir and Rhodes, 2003: 5, 20, 26). Here we are invited to understand
behaviour by reference to the complex ‘webs of belief’ and ideological ‘tradi-
tions’ upon which individuals draw to frame their encounters. In the face of what
are called ‘dilemmas’, the authors explain, narratives are transformed as actors
meet new circumstances and adjust their frames (see, for example, Atkins, 2013).
Alternatively, Vivien Schmidt champions an all-inclusive approach which she
calls ‘discursive institutionalism’ that, like the work of Bevir and Rhodes, identi-
fies the role of ideas and values in making institutions work (see Schmidt, 2008,
2010). She highlights a distinction between ‘background ideational abilities’, by
means of which institutional practices are reproduced, and ‘foreground discursive
abilities’ that permit actors to ‘communicate’ and ‘coordinate’ with other actors so
as to innovate and extend institutions through the deployment of ideas.
These approaches have begun to incorporate subjectivity into the assessment
of political and institutional change. They do so with considerable sophistica-
tion and with some appreciation of the dynamics of ideas as they shift from
routine habits to active exchanges where new beliefs are formulated, articulated
with other ideas and put into circulation. At the same time, however, the default
position of such approaches has been to treat ideas as relatively stable cognitive
frames by means of which actors follow rules (see Carstensen, 2011). Although
Bevir, Rhodes and Schmidt refer to moments when new frames are formulated,
the assumption is that, rather like the institutions they seek to interpret, ideas
function primarily as coherent and stable outlooks that determine a consistent
pattern of behaviour.
Another approach – one that captures more fully the dynamic aspect of ideas –
can be found in rhetorical approaches to discourse that build upon the insights of
interpretivism. The central premise of rhetoric, as social psychologist Michael
Billig claims, is that ‘our private thoughts have the structure of public arguments’
(Billig, 1991: 48; 1996). That is to say, human thinking is more like public delib-
eration than the ‘cognitive arranging and cataloguing of information according to
procedural rules’ underscored by cognitive psychology (ibid.: 41). Accordingly,
adopting attitudes, endorsing theories or expressing opinions and beliefs is less
like putting on mental spectacles and more like positioning ourselves within a
controversy: by taking sides, adopting reasons, repressing alternatives and iden-
tifying antagonists (ibid.: 43). To ‘believe something’, Alan Finlayson argues, ‘is
to accept the (many kinds of) reasons that can be presented for so believing it’
(2007: 551; see also Finlayson, 2004). That, I suggest, implies we also treat ideas
as projectiles with ‘expressive’ qualities of force and direction, as well as settled
narrative frames. To hold ideas, from that perspective, is not merely to perceive
the world in a particular way, but to participate in a more or less hidden dispute.
Viewed rhetorically, the world of subjectivity is less the smooth space of formu-
lated beliefs and narratives and more a world contoured by uneven and constantly
moving forces.
 Rhetorical political analysis 93
In assessing ideas and ideologies, Billig and Finlayson emphasize this outward
activity of argumentation, where reasons and the conclusions they support are
proffered and contested. They underscore the point that ideas are given force and
direction in processes of public argumentation. Private attitudes and beliefs repre-
sent secondary outcomes in a wider, ongoing process where ideas are recruited to
enhance some arguments and diminish others. To interpret that process involves
a change of emphasis, switching focus from more or less stable and structured
outlooks (coherent beliefs, attitudes and discourses and so on) – which appear
to give actors and their institutions an enduring solidity – to argumentative
practices that recharge, articulate and recirculate ideas (see Fairclough and
Fairclough, 2012). Although that process is acknowledged by existing interpretive
and discursive approaches, it is often set apart as one possibility in an otherwise
stable and consistent set of institutional conditions. Yet revising narratives in
the face of dilemmas (Bevir and Rhodes) or ‘coordinating’ with other discourses
(Schmidt) necessarily involves choices and exclusions that have to be argumenta-
tively expounded and defended.
By contrast, a rhetorical perspective interprets the way ideas are given charge
in argumentative processes that unsettle, transform or simply reaffirm established
narratives, often when their coherence might be in doubt. Rhetorical argument
therefore admits various degrees of intensity and can be said to mediate the extent
to which ideas remain in settled frames or approximate forceful projectiles that
shift the terms of debate. Thus we find many uncontroversial forms of rhetoric
that reinscribe new ideas or events in accepted frameworks – the ritual of the UK
Queen’s Speech in parliament or the rousing of the party faithful at Conference,
for example – as well as more combative, declamatory forms of speech aimed at
smashing accepted frames and projecting new ways of thinking and acting – the
Rev. Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, for example, or President
G.W. Bush’s invocation of an ‘axis of evil’. In most cases, however, rhetoric
combines continuity with provocation, endorsing established ideas while simulta-
neously advancing new ones. It falls to the analyst to interpret the degree to which
this is accomplished and with what consequences.
But how is that interpretive process undertaken? As we have seen, rhetoric
was originally conceived as the art of persuasive communication or, in Aristotle’s
more precise terms, as ‘the power to observe the persuasiveness of which any
particular matter admits’ (see Aristotle, 1991: 74). Here ‘persuasion’ entails
forging a relationship between speaker and audience so as to shape the latter’s
judgement around an issue, not only to convey information. In Chapters 4 and 5
we looked at some of the key classifications for the linguistic and performative
techniques involved in crafting that relationship, formulated often with a view
to their subtle psychological effects. These can help to disassemble the various
components, manoeuvres and layers of persuasive discourse designed to incite
certain responses. Rhetoricians traditionally seek out the ‘means of persuasion’
by locating the argumentative forms of appeal (to reason, character or emotion),
the ordering of the components of a discourse, the style of language and figures
and any peculiarities of delivery (Lanham, 1991; Leith, 2011). Unlike linguistics
94 Rhetorical political analysis
and other approaches to discourse, rhetoric is not strictly about language: it
describes a composite, multilayered performance embodied in communication.
A speaker usually mobilizes language and emotion, personal authority and, if
delivered ‘live’, bodily gestures and audible voice to make an argument work.
These elements combine to give ideas a force that is often both affective and
rational, and is impressed upon audiences to shape their judgements on any spe-
cific matter (see Clark, 2011; Cockcroft and Cockcroft, 2005).
Of course, as I noted in Chapter 1, the term ‘rhetoric’ has something of an
equivocal reputation that has limited its appeal for scholars of politics. On the one
hand, it is routinely disparaged as the distracting surface of political discourse, the
superficial immediacy of utterances in the day-to-day competition for advantage,
but not a useful guide to the deeper interests or intentions at work. This is what is
regularly dismissed as ‘mere rhetoric’. On the other hand, examples of political
speech come to acquire iconic status in a virtual pantheon of significant utterances:
what are often referred to as ‘great speeches of our time’ (see, for example, Safire,
2004). The latter category typically includes the oratory of Abraham Lincoln,
Winston Churchill and other such notable communicators. Thus rhetoric tends
either to be dismissed as having no genuine impact at all or lauded for having a
self-evident, transformative effect. A rhetorical political analysis, however, needs
to explain the impact, or not, of speech and argument, rather than presuppose it in
one way or another. To do so, I claim in the next section, requires a conceptuali-
zation of the ways in which arguments are deployed strategically in relation to a
prevailing situation.

Rhetorical situations and political strategies

‘Rhetorical strategy’ denotes the purposeful assemblage of arguments for a par-
ticular occasion and setting in light of its anticipated effects and by means of
available techniques (see Rowland, 2002). The classical legacy – and particularly
the work of Aristotle – has handed down the notion of rhetoric as speech fashioned
to be as persuasive as possible to specific audiences, particularly those of the court
(forensic rhetoric), the ceremony (epideictic rhetoric) or the citizen’s assembly
(political rhetoric). My claim in this section is that the concept of rhetorical strat-
egy can be adapted to understand political action in contemporary settings. Its
enduring virtue lies in registering how argument itself articulates time and space,
thereby charging ideas with force and direction in order to orient audiences in
their perception of a situation.
‘Strategy’ is an indispensable concept for political action and analysis. If poli-
tics names an endeavour that is neither randomly contingent nor totally static,
then strategy generally describes the mediation of these extremes. Agents partici-
pate in political activity in so far as circumstances permit them some opportunity
to intervene and control their environments. Yet such choices, opportunities
and interventions are rarely wholly open-ended but are rather circumscribed by
constraints in various degrees. To strategize, then, is to formulate a distinct set
of judgements to achieve certain ends given (more or less) known constraints.
 Rhetorical political analysis 95
What is important to note here is that, in politics, strategy is the stuff of public
engagement itself, and not simply a private, rational calculation made in advance
of action. Political actors invite audiences to form judgements by weighing up
alternatives, anticipating outcomes and selecting what seems the most appropriate
option in light of their goals. Strategizing is thus a distinctively rhetorical activity:
it entails formulating interpretations of a situation such that audiences are moved
to respond in certain ways rather than others. Sometimes this is done in relatively
closed, elite settings; very often it is much more public.
We saw in Chapter 3 how classical scholars and rhetoricians understood the
strategic aspect as an intrinsic dimension and responsibility of the rhetorical arts.
Rhetoric was designed not simply to achieve persuasion but to do so without radi-
cally disrupting the parameters of the community. Attention to the time and space
(or kairos and stasis) of persuasion was thus an implicit component of civically
responsible argument (see Carter, 1988). Today, however, it is less easy to identify
a stable or common sense of time and space against which strategic choices might
be made. Classical rhetoric can therefore seem anachronistic, because it assumes
conditions for speech and its reception that now no longer hold (see Black, 1978).
This issue – of how rhetoric relates to its social context – came to the fore in
debates among rhetorical scholars in the 1960s and 70s. In a famous article, Lloyd
F. Bitzer (1968) argued that rhetoric is called into being by a determinate situation
fuelled by a problem – or what he called an ‘exigence’, such as a crisis, a disaster,
or a policy failure – whose disruption to routine habits compels the speaker to
provide a ‘fitting’ response through argument. The exigence obliges a persuasive
intervention ‘in the same sense that an answer comes into existence in response
to a question, or a solution in response to a problem’ (ibid.: 5). Thus the objec-
tive situation itself is thought to determine the intervention by an agent in order
to resolve the dilemma. For example, we might say that the global financial crisis
since 2008 has forced politicians to find new ways of explaining and resolving a
situation whose destabilizing effects exceed any ‘normal’ narrative of events. In
response to Bitzer, however, Richard E. Vatz (1973) defended the reverse point of
view: situations don’t determine rhetoric; rhetors (or speakers) themselves create
situations with their rhetoric: ‘No situation can have a nature independent of the
perception of its interpreter or independent of the rhetoric with which he chooses
to characterize it’ (ibid.: 154). It is the creativity of rhetors that shapes reality by
defining the situation through arguments by means of which traits are ascribed to
certain events. Keeping with our example, we might say that the financial ‘crisis’
is largely the product of interpretations that emphasize uncertainty and risk for
continued investment, rather than simply an objective fact to which politicians
merely respond. On the one hand, then, the exigence circumscribes the parameters
of rhetorical strategy; on the other, strategy consists in the intentions and skills of
the rhetor.
The dispute was brought to an instructive resolution in a later article by
Scott Consigny (1974), who returned the emphasis to a classical concern with
argument as the medium of strategic action. For Consigny, rhetoric is indeed
often a response to an exigence, but not exclusively so. The skills and creativity
96 Rhetorical political analysis
of the rhetor are also important in shaping the situation. Neither, however, is
all-determining. If situations provide a stimulus for rhetorical intervention, the
situation is nevertheless often ‘an indeterminate context marked by a trouble-
some disorder which the rhetor must structure’ (ibid.: 178). Agents are thus
partially forced by situations to act, but how they do so depends upon their
ability to formulate what is at stake in the situation. For Consigny, the rhetor’s
creative engagement with the situation makes all the difference:

Through his actions the rhetor attains a ‘disposition’ of the situation, or a new
way of seeing and acting in the situation. He discloses a new ‘gestalt’ for
interpreting and acting in the situation, and thereby offers the audience a new
perspective to view the situation.
(Ibid.: 179)

The ‘art’ of rhetoric, according to Consigny, consists in identifying issues in inde-

terminate situations and finding a means of managing them. Doing that depends,
fundamentally, on the selection of argument. In classical rhetoric, as we have
already noted, the selection of argument is classified under the category of the
‘topics’: ‘commonplace’ or established argumentative structures, or formulae,
that rhetors select. The topic was a device to help the rhetor ascertain the type
of persuasion germane to the particularities of the situation (see Lanham, 1991:
152–53): for example, whether it concerned a problem of definition, of compari-
son or of relationship (for a full list, see Corbett and Connors, 1999: 87–130). For
Consigny, as well as being a technical device, the topic also has what might be
called an existential dimension as ‘a realm in which the rhetor thinks and acts’.
Deriving from topos, meaning place or site (hence ‘situation’), a topic is itself a
place from which to conceive the situation. Selecting the topic is thus about both
responding to objective conditions and creatively resituating them in the words
of the rhetor. This diminishes the distance between the speaker and situation and
provides the audience a place from which to grasp the moment anew.
Consigny helps us to think about rhetorical strategy as the creative combination
of established narrative frames with projectile-like ideas that shift perspectives
on a situation. Accordingly, the task of persuasion is to reorient the audience in
relation to an exigence by selectively re-appropriating the situation as an exempli-
fication of a distinct type of issue, therefore making it amenable to a certain kind
of management. In our example of the financial crisis, we could say that the situa-
tion has a variety of objective features, but some politicians have sought to define
its dimensions by interpreting it as a ‘crisis of debt’ (to be resolved through a
policy of ‘austerity’) rather than, say, a ‘crisis of growth’. Here ideas amplify some
aspects of the situation over others, generating associations that trigger particular
reactions or introducing new terms that heighten the appeal of certain responses.
As such, they construe the situation as a particular kind of event in, and of, time
and space with a distinctive significance for the audience – the argument serving
as a privileged location from which this new perspective is illuminated.
 Rhetorical political analysis 97
As another example, take Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s ‘Winds of Change’
speech to the South African parliament in 1960, in which he announced Britain’s
support for majority rule across Africa and an end to his government’s acceptance
of white domination. Macmillan responded to an objective situation of spread-
ing demands for national independence across the continent by presenting these,
metaphorically, as an inexorable, nature-like ‘fact’ to which whites urgently had to
adapt by abandoning their vain aspiration for continued supremacy (Macmillan,
1960). That charged reconception of the situation was blended with an insistence
that adaptation was the only way to ensure the continued influence of ‘western
civilization’ in the face of growing communist influence (see Myers, 2000). Thus
Macmillan boldly conveyed a controversial idea (radical policy change) by means
of topics of definition (what something is) and circumstance (what is possible
or impossible), supplemented with an established narrative of western cultural
supremacy.

Structure, agency and rhetorical intervention

How might an understanding of rhetorical strategy be incorporated into the analy-
sis of contemporary politics? Here, we should admit, arguments are developed and
applied in environments defined by complex institutional practices that are rarely
amenable to casual alteration. Moreover, institutions involve numerous formal and
informal layers of custom and practice (for example, law, professional discourses,
structures of authority and so on) that are never immediately visible in one glance.
Such layers are resistant to change and typically orient institutions towards some
modes of operation and outcomes rather than others. Rhetorical strategies are
therefore better conceived as interventions designed to shape arguments and forge
alliances in and through as well as against those constraining contexts.
The debates over rhetorical strategy noted earlier can be linked to the ‘dialecti-
cal’ approach to structure and agency developed by recent political sociologists
(see Jessop, 2001 and 1990; Hay, 2002 and 1996). In that approach, social change
is conceived as a process interweaving structure and agency. Accordingly, change
involves the interaction of enduring practices and discourses, reproduced over
time, and efforts by specific actors deliberately to alter those practices and dis-
courses. In a dialectical approach, structure and agency are mutually constitutive,
not ontologically distinct: structures offer resources by which actors function as
particular kinds of empowered subjects with degrees of agency (for instance,
political institutions supply legitimate leaders, with access to resources, who can
then speak with authority and support their words with practical action) and actors
are the medium through which structures are instituted as routinized practices.
Thus agency emerges out of structures and structures emerge out of the actions of
agents. It also follows that structures never totally structure and agents never fully
master their environment; neither commands the field entirely. Structures provide
opportunities for agents, which they may or may not take up, but also constrain
them to act in accordance with established scripts and routines; and agents inherit
98 Rhetorical political analysis
rules and customs but nonetheless seek opportunities to impose their will and alter
their constraints.
In this partially structured, partially agential environment, strategies are con-
stantly formulated with imperfect knowledge and in contexts that are always
already the outcome of earlier strategies. In the ‘strategic-relational’ approach to
the state developed by Bob Jessop, for example, the state is conceived as strategi-
cally selective; as the ‘condensation’ of earlier strategies, it is readily amenable
only to some types of action and agency over others (Jessop, 1990: 260–62). Only
certain strategies will be realizable in the short term. Long-term, transformative
strategies may be required in order to restructure state practices to make possible
other types of action. But such efforts will also be open to delay, revision and
failure, with certain opportunities being activated only at distinct temporal stages
and phases.
Political sociologists also underscore the dimensions of time and space at work in
strategic negotiation. For instance, Hay examines the diachronic pattern of ‘punc-
tuated evolution’ in which periods of stability are interrupted by moments of state
crisis and transformation (see Hay, 2002, 1996). Likewise, Jessop and others explore
the co-present spatial ‘scales’ of state activity in globalizing capitalism, from local
to national, international and global (see Brenner, 2004; Jessop, 2002). Strategic
action is thus understood as ‘adaptation to structural constraints and conjunctural
opportunities’ (Jessop, 1990: 266) in light of multiple and overlapping times and
spaces that do not spontaneously cohere but require deliberate (re)alignment – for
instance, the temporalities of government terms, economic cycles and the spaces of
governance and political conflicts at both national and international levels.
Yet because these political sociologists are focused on macro-structural phe-
nomena such as states and economic systems, strategic calculation is not usually
explored from the perspective of agency. Consequently ideas and discourses are
treated as relatively coherent rather than as tentative and provocative manoeu-
vres. But this is where a rhetorical approach can make an important contribution.
The reappropriation of the situation can be conceived as the agential moment of
strategic intervention where constraints and opportunities are given definition in
argumentative form (see Opt and Gring, 2009). Such interventions aspire to medi-
ate structure and agency by disclosing ‘the truth’ of the situation and determining
the issues at stake. Actors use the structural resources at their disposal to rhe-
torically ‘problematize’ (see Turnbull, 2007) and so (re)fashion the parameters of
choice and conflict so that a preferred kind of agency becomes both legitimate and
urgent, often in the face of competing arguments. Of course, strategically selective
contexts will make some arguments seem more plausible than others. Effective
rhetoric then builds upon its own success by generating ‘feedback loops’, such
that earlier interventions are the unquestioned premises of later ones (and are then
available for generating enthymemes). What was once rhetoric later comes to be
‘common-sense’ premises to routine decisions; what began as an audacious inter-
vention becomes a coherent discursive frame.
In modern political orders, rhetorical situations tend to emerge in the context
of the routinized processes and behaviours of social and political systems. The
 Rhetorical political analysis 99
scale of those situations will vary greatly: some will be small interruptions in
fairly regularized processes that will not alter much of their overall functioning,
while others will dart around and ricochet from one location to another, eventu-
ally bringing the survival of whole systems into doubt. If the model of the first is
scandal or policy failure, the model for the second is corruption, a key resigna-
tion, war or economic crisis. Politics in complex multilayered systems unfolds
simultaneously at various scales and temporalities, such that it is difficult to gauge
fully the objective dimensions of the situation. Indeed, it is the task of rhetorical
intervention itself to give definition to the exigence in order to control it, to pin-
point its limits and reinscribe it as much as possible within established terms or,
where a risk is viewed as an opportunity, to utilize its disruption to impose a new
grammar (see Hay, 1996: 86–7).
Furthermore, political regimes typically supply their own platforms for actors
to make such interventions in a regulated manner that reduces the potential for
uncontrolled disputation. Representative democratic systems, for example, dis-
tribute speaking functions in various ways that provide privileged times and places
for intervention: in parliamentary debates, for example, at party conferences or in
electoral campaigns, as well as via press conferences or political interviews (see
Palonen, 2008). The effectiveness of strategy will partly depend, then, on how a
speaker utilizes the prevailing conditions of any speech event (its conventions and
audiences, for example) to maintain the exigence within the times and spaces of
‘normal’ governance (for example, within a term of office, using normal channels
of political support and policy formation). Equally, it may be that a crisis prevents
regular forms of communication from being effective and exceptional forms may
be used (for example, De Gaulle’s radio broadcasts to the French resistance during
the Second World War).
The theoretical debates about structure and agency in political analysis can
deepen the concept of rhetorical strategy developed in the previous section by
alerting us to the wider, dynamic context to speech interventions. Contra classical
rhetoricians, they suggest that the situations in which political actors intervene are
often complex, layered intersections of space and time, substantially structured
and so constrained by previous strategies. But it should also be noted that the
dialectical perspective also benefits from a rhetorical approach to strategy, for two
reasons: first because, like other interpretive approaches, it fills out the ‘agency’
side of the structure/agency dynamic by attending to actors’ roles in producing
ideas, namely through argumentative strategies in specific situations; and sec-
ond because unlike other interpretive approaches, it uniquely identifies rhetorical
techniques as strategic manoeuvres in the recasting of structure.

Analysing rhetoric: a method and an example

What, then, might a rhetorical analysis (or interpretation) of political strategy look
like? I have argued above that strategies comprise arguments situated at specific
moments which they provocatively recast in order to orient audiences. The task of
the analyst, then, is to interpret not just the internal coherence of a discourse but
100 Rhetorical political analysis
the way that speech is assembled in response to specific situations. Certainly, that
may be achieved in any number of ways. A generic approach, however, will help
us to identify some core features. Here I want to set out three moments and use
these to explore, in brief, a well-known example of speech.

A method for rhetorical analysis

Rhetorical analysis should be concerned with three distinct moments of a speech
intervention, each of which combines structure and agency in a particular way and
hence serves as a separate area for interpretation: 1) the rhetorical context, 2) the
rhetorical argument and 3) the rhetorical effects.
In what do these moments consist? The rhetorical context refers to the
immediate conditions giving rise to a speech occasion. Interpreting a rhetorical
context involves identifying the historical time and place of the intervention, the
exigence(s) to which it is a response (a perceived problem) and any broader cir-
cumstances the intervention also seeks to shape (thus rhetoric is central to so-called
‘contextualist’ approaches to political ideas; see Skinner, 2002a). The local time
and place of speech often involves its own degree of constraint and opportunity
where a speaker is charged to deliver a particular type of discourse to a specific
audience. Where classical rhetoric divided these into three, today it is reasonable
to identify forms that combine generic elements of each, such as parliamentary
speeches, press conferences, party conference speeches, political interviews and
so on. Specifying the generic occasion helps to determine what is expected of the
speaker and what conventions are typically upheld. An effective intervention is
often elaborated according to recognized formulae that ensure its reception as a
proper speech for the occasion. That accordance with convention constrains what
can be said but also offers opportunities to speak legitimately. Party conference
speeches, for example, use ceremony (with associations of goodwill and com-
mon feeling) in a way that speeches in formal assemblies cannot. The shaping of
speech and argument to fit with the occasion, we have noted, is known as ‘deco-
rum’. Given the degree of disruption caused by an exigence, it is always possible
for the genre conventions to be altered or challenged (as, for example, Tony Blair
did in his ‘farewell’ speech in 2007; see Finlayson and Martin, 2008; Freedman
and Medway, 1994).
The rhetorical argument concerns the situation configured in the language and
performance of the speech itself, where constraint and opportunity are discursively
reimagined. Here the traditional classifications of rhetoric permit us to interpret
how discourse defines the situation and refigures perceived constraints to make
an opening for effective agency. This is the moment that ideas are shaped into an
argument for an audience (and often more than one audience). Rhetorical argument
typically comprises the four classical canons explored in Chapters 4 and 5 –
argumentative appeals, arrangement, style and delivery – shaped to maximize its
effect and hence its persuasive force. While usually following the conventions of
the occasion, the choice of topic, as discussed above, is the central, creative aspect
of this strategic moment.
 Rhetorical political analysis 101
Finally, gauging rhetorical effects involves interpreting the alteration to the
situation after the intervention – that is, noting whether any constraints have
been overcome and certain kinds of action made possible. Such effects may be
immediate (provoking a decision or a form of conduct) but also longer-term.
An intervention may aim to supply the language by which other actors are con-
strained to interpret similar or related situations. To do so requires repeated
efforts to build a vocabulary and arguments that may be redeployed later. In
Chapter 5 I noted the importance of the term ‘peace process’ in Northern Ireland
in the 1990s and 2000s, which exemplified the eventual success of a definition
of the situation as a developmental transition open to erstwhile antagonists (see
Shirlow and McGovern, 1998). Of course, the measurement of success is never
easy, since rhetoric develops and alters over time as it is deployed in different
circumstances. It is also true that some rhetoric becomes influential in ways that
are quite different and even at odds with the original circumstances of its deliv-
ery. Nonetheless, the effects of a speech intervention can often be gauged if they
appear to have enabled a speaker to enhance her capacity to act and speak in
certain ways and constrain others to follow likewise. In that respect, we may rea-
sonably infer that rhetorical strategy has contributed to defining the parameters
of choice and conflict, compelling others to accept its terms of reference to the
situation and positioning themselves accordingly.

Example
In the remainder of this section, I apply these three foci to a specific example of
rhetorical strategy. President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address of 20 January
1961 (Kennedy, 1961) is a familiar, iconic speech and a much-admired example of
liberal idealism at the height of the Cold War. It is not exemplary of every aspect
of rhetoric but serves as a useful example of the strategic appropriation of a situ-
ation, deliberately moving its audience by combining established narratives with
provocative rhetoric. What follows cannot be an exhaustive analysis (for which
see Tofel, 2005) but, rather, a loose discussion of the type of investigation that
could be undertaken. Let us proceed in the order of the three aspects of analysis.

Rhetorical context
Any analysis of the speech must begin from its status both as an inaugural address
and as an intervention at a particular moment in the Cold War. The strategy of
the speech is closely bound up with the constraints and opportunities supplied by
those – partially structured – contexts. As an inaugural address, the speech fits
a tradition in the life cycle of a presidential administration (every four years): it
follows the swearing of the Oath of Office and is delivered publicly at the White
House in Washington, DC in the January following the election of the previous
November. As a ceremonial speech, it embellishes a ritual function of confirming
the new president. This is signified in the affirmation of values that ‘renew the
covenant’ connecting leader and citizens, and the invocation of the origins of that
102 Rhetorical political analysis
covenant in a common historical experience (namely, founding the Republic; see
Campbell and Jamieson, 2008: ch. 2). The speech is therefore a safe opportunity
to say little of overt controversy but, rather, to enhance the President’s ethos – or
character – by invoking larger themes, thus inscribing him within depoliticized
expectations. As Campbell and Jamieson (2008) put it, the inaugural is a place to
start ‘creating’ the Presidency through words (see also Tulis, 1987).
It would be wrong, however, to think of the inaugural as being entirely outside
of domestic politics. Kennedy was aware that his personal authority had yet to be
fully established, having emerged the winner of the 1960 campaign against Richard
Nixon with only a small margin in the popular vote. He was not unequivocally
the people’s choice. Indeed, he was young, relatively inexperienced, a Catholic
and regarded as something of a playboy (see Dallek, 2003: 225). Furthermore,
he was conscious of a need for civic renewal in a society undergoing rapid eco-
nomic growth but still shaped by defensive and paranoid attitudes from the war.
So the inaugural provided a first opportunity to underscore Kennedy’s substance
and appropriateness for the post by presenting himself as a progressive, unifying
leader of the US and the world.
The wider context of the Cold War, however, provides the dominant exigence
for the speech’s strategy. The hostilities between the two superpowers – the USSR
and America – directly inform the sense of uncertainty and potential for violence
that the speech addresses. The Cold War was in many respects an unavoidably
rhetorical experience, in that its focus was rarely on actual ‘hot’ conflict but,
rather, on the perceptions of threat, definitions of strategic interests and negotia-
tions with the ‘enemy’ to avoid dangerous escalation. Designating a structured
space both of rivalry and of forced co-operation, the Cold War was marked by a
deep ambivalence that each rival sought to master (Scott, 1997: 4).
Kennedy therefore inherited a situation that had already been strategically
framed. Under President Eisenhower the US had not only completed a war in
Korea, but was also involved in continuing disputes with the Soviets over the
status of Berlin and had observed the Chinese revolution and the stirrings of com-
munist activity in Latin America and Cuba. Most importantly, the US military
was convinced of its own inferiority in weapons in relation to the USSR. The
arms race had begun in earnest and the capacity to send nuclear warheads on mis-
siles across Europe was an urgent priority. Soviet superiority had already been
demonstrated with its launch of the Sputnik satellites. Though Eisenhower had
been (rightfully) suspicious of the degree of Soviet advances in weapons technol-
ogy, a frantic, hawkish atmosphere pervaded US military and intelligence circles.
Eisenhower had initiated a form of national mobilization – funding universities
and research projects, as well as enhancing already massive military spending
(see Walker, 1993: 115–17). The prevailing sense, among some at least, was that
the USSR was on the offensive and could not simply be ‘contained’. The US had
to be prepared to defeat it.
In retrospect, if the structure of the Cold War remained relatively stable, at any
moment it was never clear precisely what advantage either side had over the other,
and that made for a constant sense of uncertainty. Moreover, underlying cracks
 Rhetorical political analysis 103
and fissures were never entirely resolved or predictable (not least because each
superpower had to rely on its partners, who pushed and pulled against it). So the
parameters of international political action had regularly to be defined, if only
to shape some foothold from which to proceed. Let us now look at how this was
sought in the rhetorical argument of Kennedy’s speech.

Rhetorical argument
Kennedy’s speech sets out an indirectly political argument addressed primarily
at an international audience. The arrangement and delivery follow a regular cer-
emonial format proper for a domestic audience, but the mode of argument and its
stylistic elements subvert that format noticeably. Having just sworn the Oath of
Office, his speech adopts a pattern of addressing named audiences in the world
and making pledges to them, too. Thus his argument is not that of logical claims
supported by evidence (an appeal to logos) but a series of personal pledges (ethos)
in keeping with the decorum of an inaugural. That combination of ceremonial
elements with wider themes allows him to set out ideas that, in projectile fashion,
challenge the audiences’ orientation to the prevailing situation and yet remain
disguised within an apparently depoliticized frame. As we shall see, the argumen-
tative topic is that of contraries – mutually incompatible positions (see Corbett
and Connors, 1999: 105–6) – that are to be overcome by a sense of common
endeavour.
As one scholar notes, the speech is unique as an inaugural by virtue of its
‘address system’ (Meyer, 1982). By tradition the inaugural is addressed to one,
generalized national constituency, but here it is uniquely utilized to address a vari-
ety of audiences. Of the speech’s twenty-seven short paragraphs, twenty-three
contain a direct or indirect address to a specific addressee (Meyer, 1982: 247).
For example:

To those old allies […]

To those new states […]
To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe […]
To our sister republics […].
(Kennedy, 1961: 298–99)

Kennedy also appeals to the United Nations, to ‘our enemies’, to ‘fellow

Americans’ and to ‘citizens of the World’. The safety of the inaugural ceremony
permits him to ‘hail’ his auditors as though he was renewing America’s pledge
to the world. By the end of the list it is also clear that his real focus is the Soviet
Union. This is evident when he switches to his repeated pledges, all of which
begin with ‘Let both sides …’ (ibid.: 300). The many named audiences are now
reduced to two hostile camps: a return to the dichotomous spatial logic of the Cold
War (see Meyer, 1982: 247).
Stylistically, the speech is filled with dramatic contrasts and oppositions,
as well as powerful imagery of conflict and reconciliation. These support the
104 Rhetorical political analysis
argumentative topic of the speech by signifying the risks of antagonism and
potential rewards for cooperative behaviour between the superpowers. In one
phrase, for example, Kennedy pledges ‘the loyalty of faithful friends’ taking up ‘a
host of cooperative ventures’, but then warns of being ‘divided’ and ‘split asun-
der’. He welcomes new states to the ‘ranks of the free’, but then alerts his audience
to the threat of ‘iron tyranny’. Almost every significant pledge is doubled up with
a contrary sentiment that qualifies it. The device even becomes part of individual
sentences focused on abstract principles (or aphorisms) that turn their original
meaning around, such as:

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few
who are rich…
Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.
(Kennedy, 1961: 299, 300)

The effect of these paradoxes and oppositions is to present a series of quanda-

ries that construct the international situation as an uncertain space of dilemmas,
choices and dangers. Kennedy offers the implicit metaphor of an exhausted
battleground, shaped by an extraordinarily costly and ‘uncertain balance of
terror’ (in the form of nuclear weapons). From that image of entrenched and
unwinnable warfare, however, comes a repeated invitation to reconciliation:
‘Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those
problems which divided us’.
Kennedy then uses the battlefield theme to call a truce – that is, to place both
sides on the same side and to open the door to co-operation. He invites the impe-
rious advance of ‘mankind’ (rather than states) not across national territories but
into other parts of nature – space, the seas, the deserts, as well as the arts – and
around ‘the common enemies of man’ – ‘tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself’.
A divided space of contraries now comes to be envisaged as a unified open space
of mutual endeavour.
As for the temporality of this situation, Kennedy conjures doubled-up images
of urgency and eternity. He talks of the ‘Hour of maximum danger’ and invites
an anxiety about swift and violent responses from the US when he offers to
oppose aggression anywhere in the Americas. The temporalities of conflict are
then combined with the eternal promise of peace. He announces the ‘trumpet
summons’ that calls him and his ‘embattled’ audience to a ‘long twilight strug-
gle’. So the twitchy anxiety of real warfare is superseded by the more assured
horizon of eternal justice. The metaphorical ‘torch’ being ‘passed to a new gener-
ation’ illuminates for Kennedy a future space and time that transcends the present
situation.
The paradoxical intertwining of present risk and future reward is also reflected
in that most memorable example of patriotic antimetabole (the repetition of a
phrase in reverse order) where the speech reaches its climax:
 Rhetorical political analysis 105
And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask
what you can do for your country.
(Kennedy, 1961: 301)

This famous line is emblematic of Kennedy’s argument. Reversing the order of the
first phrase performs the very inversion the audience(s) are challenged to make in
their own minds: to reorient their own priorities such that public duty overcomes
private desire. By this means Kennedy invokes an idealized audience to authorize
him to negotiate the contradictory space and time the speech has imagined.

Rhetorical effects
How did Kennedy’s various audiences react to his oration? The speech was well
received by his domestic audience, with the press noting its eloquence and econ-
omy (it was one of the shortest inaugurals). Rhetorical scholars drew attention
to its elegance and the patriotic theme that served the immediate purpose of
strengthening the speaker’s personal authority and providing healing after the
divisions of election (see Corbett and Connors, 1999: 461–72). This was very
much the reaction Kennedy hoped to have; later reports indicate that he wanted
a memorable address to enhance his personal appeal and worked hard on the
draft with his advisors, particularly Ted Sorenson, to achieve this (Dallek, 2003:
321–33, 324).
As a speech addressed to the international world, however, the reaction was
less effusive. The Soviets, in particular, were baffled. As one commentator
asks: ‘were they being invited to an international coalition to give foreign aid to
the poor, or to a nuclear war?’ (Walker, 1993: 146). The contradictory signals
in the speech – a battlefield scenario versus the forward march of mankind –
did not permit an unambiguous reading of Kennedy’s intentions. Furthermore,
in retrospect Kennedy’s administration did not achieve anything like the positive
advances proclaimed in his inaugural. Alongside his successes in facing down
the Soviets in Cuba might be set his failure to make advances elsewhere in Latin
America, Africa or the Middle East; his unsuccessful summit with Khrushchev
over Berlin, where East Germans were eventually walled in; to say nothing of
Vietnam (see Graubard, 2009: 20–21). Any sober assessment of the effect of
Kennedy’s intervention will take these details into consideration. Arguably, his
untimely death (in 1963) may have permitted his mediocrity as a president to be
set aside and his early promise to be magnified as his enduring legacy.
A brief sketch suggests that Kennedy’s inaugural sought to initiate an interven-
tion in international affairs by rhetorically refiguring the Cold War situation. That
he ultimately failed in this quest is not solely the fault of his rhetoric, either in this
speech or others. But his rhetoric does give us a clue to his limitations. Kennedy,
like other presidents after him, was unable to overcome the Cold War logic of
rivalry. The conciliatory tones of the 1961 speech were intrinsically linked to
those of censure – that is, to the demand that the enemy withdraw from overt
hostility and antagonism. Despite the enduring humanitarianism of his rhetoric,
106 Rhetorical political analysis
his strategy did not succeed in reshaping ideas to become a new language of
international co-operation.

Summary
In this chapter I have set out the rationale and a general method for rhetorical
political analysis. In so doing I have claimed that speech is a dynamic medium
for mobilizing ideas as a form of action. To explore such action requires that we
interpret how speech both responds to and acts upon a situation, utilizing ideas
both as relatively structured resources and as ‘projectiles’ that provoke reorien-
tation among audiences. A rhetorical approach to politics provides a wealth of
categories and terms for examining how arguments are deployed strategically –
that is, in specific times and places and for particular audiences. Important in this
account, however, is the claim that argumentative topics are a means to re-situate
prevailing circumstances. That view is taken from debates in rhetorical theory, but
is compatible with recent developments in political sociology that defend an inter-
active or dialectical account of structure and agency. Unlike classical rhetoric, a
dialectical political sociology treats discourse within the complex and shifting
terrain of modern states. Accordingly, a rhetorical response to a situation is an
intervention at the intersection of overlapping times and spaces that are partially
structured but also partially open to creative alteration. Finally, I have sketched
the basis of a method to analyse speech this way, underscoring three moments of
rhetorical significance: the context, the argument and the effects. The example
of President Kennedy’s inaugural was briefly employed to illustrate how such a
method might be applied.
There is, of course, a wide variety of other ways to explore how ideas and
arguments inform politics. A rhetorical approach can and should draw upon work
in linguistics and the analysis of ideologies, discourses or culture, for example.
These can illuminate many of the techniques of communication and the discursive
resources upon which political actors regularly draw, as well as the constraints
upon them when they utilize ideas. Rhetorical analysis is not incompatible with
such approaches and shares much with them. But the distinct advantage of the
rhetorical approach is its focus on speech itself as the locus of creative political
action. This is an action not simply of asserting preconceived ideas or applying
normative claims but, rather, of projecting these so as to reposition opponents
and refresh the audience’s perspective on the situation. As the Kennedy example
indicates, these strategies do not always succeed. Nonetheless, examining rhe-
torical speech helps illuminate one of the vital means by which actors do politics
with ideas.
7 Democracy, rhetoric and the
emotions

Democratic politics is, undoubtedly, an emotional business. Designed, seemingly,

to channel popular feelings into government but also to restrain them through
debate, criticism and compromise, democracy regularly stages our, often con-
tradictory, attitudes towards emotion. More often than not this plays out in a
rhetorical register – that is, in controversies over who can say what, where they
can say it, and how. Take, for example, the public dispute in October 2009 over
the appearance of Nick Griffin MEP, the leader of the British National Party,
on the BBC television show Question Time. A vocal constituency argued that
a public broadcaster was an inappropriate host for someone with highly conten-
tious views on immigration and who leads a party known for its fiercely prejudicial
views on race. Letting him speak on a legitimate platform was morally wrong, they
felt, because his opinions mobilized undemocratic sentiments. However, others
claimed that an elected representative was in fact properly required to expose his
views to criticism and should be permitted to appear, however objectionable those
opinions. The BBC held firm and, despite physical protests outside the studios,
Griffin took his place on the show’s panel. In the end, it was the live audience that,
with aplomb, took Griffin to task for the vacuity of his beliefs and opinions (see
BBC News, 2009).
The Griffin case exemplifies the difficulty that contemporary democratic
cultures often have in negotiating the tension between politics and the political –
that is, between routine exchanges of opinion and deeper questions of principle.
‘Normal’ politics operates typically by minimizing controversy, sometimes by
repressing intense, emotion-laden viewpoints in favour of a settled consensus or
set of conventions that moderate what can be said, by whom and how. Doubtless
that has the worthy effect of reducing unpleasant abuse, even harm or offence,
and making agreement more likely. Yet consensus and convention can also be
unduly restrictive, perhaps accentuating a sense of grievance felt by those whose
(controversial, unpleasant or just plain odd) opinions cannot always get a hearing.
At such moments, speech takes on a heightened importance – the words, styles
and techniques of public argumentation mediate exchanges that may bristle with
an underlying sense of fundamental disagreement over what is at stake. Here,
despite the best intentions of many democrats, the issues of what one says, where
and how carry an emotive force that, at times, imbues speech with a potential for
108 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions
danger, perhaps even violence. For that reason, as we saw in Chapter 2, political
philosophers have sought regularly to diminish the function of rhetoric in politics
(see Garsten, 2006).
How, then, are we to conceive of democracy as an environment in which
matters of deep conviction or controversy might be raised and debated? In this
chapter I explore the way democratic theorists connect emotions and democ-
racy via the question of rhetoric. I begin by taking issue with efforts by so-called
‘deliberative democrats’ to eliminate or minimize rhetorical exchanges in public
dialogue. As I shall argue, at work here is an unconvincing separation of reason
and emotion and an impoverished conception of democratic space as a neutral
realm of ‘transparent’ communication. I then sketch the insights of thinkers
inspired by neuroscience and psychoanalysis, both of which understand cognitive
judgement (or reason) as one moment in a wider, affective process. If ‘emotions’
are observable human responses with attendant feelings (such as anger or joy),
‘affects’ describe deeper, unconscious intensities and forces that provoke and
stimulate emotion. Rather than distortions of reason, emotions are better con-
ceived as conduits of affect that prompt feelings and shape cognition. Despite
important differences in locating and defining emotions, scholars influenced by
neuroscience and psychoanalysis foreground the dynamic network of connections
moving across memories, feelings and cognitions that helps to orient individuals
and position them in relation to their world and how they reason about it.
Emotions, then, are integral to the process – discussed in the previous chapter –
of situating audiences. They are, moreover, intrinsically receptive to modification
by techniques such as those found in rhetoric. Those techniques, which I go on
to label ‘affective rhetorical strategies’, invite an alternative conception of demo-
cratic encounters as sites of competition for attention and allegiance, not reasoned
argument alone. Such encounters require not the exclusion of rhetoric or emo-
tion but, rather, an appreciation of how these may be negotiated and contested.
Finally, I argue that a ‘rhetorical democracy’ – that is, a democracy attuned to
the function of rhetoric in helping to situate citizens in relation to the issues that
concern them – may well be one that is more deliberative in nature, but it will also
accept the role of emotions, however hostile or benign, in generating and sustain-
ing dialogue.

Deliberative democracy
The deliberative model of democracy came to prominence in Anglo-American
democratic theory from the 1990s onwards. It is now a well-established frame-
work taking a variety of directions, not all of which fully align (see Warren,
2002). Indeed, one commentator argues there are now at least three generations
of deliberative democrats, each with their own preoccupations and distinguishing
features (Elstub, 2010). In essence, the deliberative model promotes democratic
practices in which citizens take an active part by exchanging views and inform-
ing and persuading each other by giving reasons for their judgements prior to any
formal decision-making. In fact, not all deliberative democrats emphasize taking
 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions 109
decisions. Some conceive deliberation as an end in itself, one that produces a
dynamic and open ‘public sphere’ that generates informed opinion. Either way,
the term ‘deliberation’ here denotes an inclusive process of discussion and dia-
logue where different judgements and reasons are elaborated, defended, criticized
and revised. As Mark Warren summarizes: ‘Deliberation induces individuals to
give due consideration to their judgements, so that they know what they want,
understand what others want, and can justify their judgements to others as well
as to themselves’ (Warren, 2002: 173). That emphasis on the process (rather than
the outcome) of communication gives priority to the democratic legitimation of
opinion, decisions or legislation by shared speaking, listening and the forming
of mutual understanding (see Parkinson, 2003). Specific demands and claims
achieve legitimacy through practical deliberation and not because they purport to
be intrinsically rational, just or simply ‘in tune’ with common opinion.
The motivation for enhancing deliberation arose primarily from a sense of
the limitations of prevailing models of electoral democracy and its alternatives.
Deliberative democrats typically oppose themselves to the ‘aggregative’ model –
that is, the model of mass franchise, but limited participation, electoral democracy
now well established in Europe, the US and beyond. Goodin calls this ‘minimalist
democracy’ (Goodin, 2008: 1), and we can see why. Liberal democracy consists
primarily in an electoral system that sends representatives to legislatures on behalf
of citizens. Citizens’ votes are aggregated – simply added together – and govern-
ments with policy agendas are formed as a consequence of those accumulated
choices. While parties and politicians may seek to shape voters’ preferences, the
vital moment in this type of democracy is when citizens vote.
Deliberative democrats view this as an impoverished conception of democracy,
one that fails to grasp the vital importance of legitimacy in sustaining democratic
government (see Young, 2000: 19–21). For them, a sense of trust in government
is required to sustain our co-operation. If we lose, we must nevertheless feel as
though we lost fairly and that the system still deserves our support. That legiti-
macy, they argue, is better achieved by our actively taking part in ways other
than voting. Rather than remaining silent, we often prefer to voice our concerns,
to promote particular issues and to persuade others to change their preferences
or, indeed, invite them to change ours. That can be achieved only by offering
opportunities for greater deliberation among the public than is supplied by elec-
toral democracy. Crucially, the aggregative model refuses to treat preferences as
changeable. Its proponents assume people come to political encounters already
persuaded of their essential (self-) interest. For deliberative democrats, on the
other hand, preferences are always revisable – open to critical interrogation and,
subsequently, transformation in a process of dialogue.
How, then, is deliberation to occur? Proponents of deliberative democracy
envisage a variety of scenarios at different scales and degrees of formality,
from expanded ‘town hall’ style meetings, citizens’ juries or revised legislative
assemblies for regular and more inclusive discussion to specific issue-based
arrangements for gathering opinion locally or on distinct matters of public policy
(see Parkinson, 2006; Goodin, 2008; Fishkin, 2009). For some, deliberation can
110 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions
be added to existing institutions of electoral democracy; for others, they may
substitute those institutions. We might also include the numerous efforts at nego-
tiating agreement in community disputes or civil conflict peace talks such as
those in Northern Ireland in the late 1990s. There are many different venues for
employing deliberative methods where previously elite bargaining or secret talks
was the norm.
What has preoccupied deliberative democrats, however, is how to conceive
deliberation as a process of inclusive communication undertaken in conditions
that permit participants to meet as equals. Thus early proponents devoted atten-
tion to specifying the ideal form, or ‘normative preconditions’, for deliberation
itself. In short, it is claimed that arguments must conform to certain conditions or
standards if they are to be considered valid contributions. As Warren summarizes
it, these conditions are usually that such arguments appeal to common rather than
sectarian interests, such that everyone can conceivably agree to them; that they
involve factual and truthful claims rather than purely self-serving interpretations;
and that participants are sincere in employing their arguments, rather than seeking
to deceive others about their views or intentions (see Warren, 2002: 183).
How these normative conditions are defended varies from thinker to thinker.
Jürgen Habermas, for instance, has famously argued that deliberative rules are
implicit presuppositions contained in any communicative practice. To speak at all,
he claims, we have to assume a certain ‘ideal speech situation’: ‘anyone acting
communicatively must, in performing any speech action, raise universal valid-
ity claims and suppose that they can be vindicated’ (Habermas, 1996b: 119; see
also the discussion in Chapter 3). That is, all moral demands imply certain stand-
ards of rationality and impartiality that can be redeemed in the procedures of
democratic deliberation: namely, that the demands are universally understood,
that they are sincere and that they are true. Democracy should, in Habermas’s
view, approximate that ideal by eliminating ‘distortions’ to communication and
permitting moral claims to be collectively validated. Habermas’s ideal informs his
influential account of ‘discourse ethics’ (Habermas, 1996b: 180–95). Gutmann
and Thompson (1996), on the other hand, defend the idea of ‘reciprocity’ as the
root principle and precondition of deliberative encounters, along with notions of
publicity and accountability. For them, reciprocity demands that ‘a citizen offers
reasons that can be accepted by others who are similarly motivated to find rea-
sons that can be accepted by others’ (ibid.: 53). Regardless of whether it can be
presupposed of all communication, Gutmann and Thompson follow Habermas in
seeking a standard by which moral argumentation takes place on an equal footing;
where citizens can accept each other’s reasons as valid without necessarily agree-
ing with their conclusions.
Central to deliberative democracy, then, is the claim that dialogue should
be transparent and free of the distorting influence of interests or deception.
Deliberation must be honestly motivated and not manipulative. If it is not proposed
that participants free themselves entirely from ‘outside’ influences, neverthe-
less they must divest their arguments of any trace of strategy such that listeners
might be deceived into accepting reasons whose motivations are not fully evident.
 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions 111
Encouraging others to do so is tantamount to changing preferences by coercion.
As Dryzek (2000: 8) claims, there is only deliberation when ‘domination via the
exercise of power, manipulation, indoctrination, propaganda, deception, expres-
sions of mere self-interest, threats, and the imposition of ideological conformity
are all absent’. Presumably, then, that means not arguing from religious premises
or readings of sacred texts not shared by others, unless these can be translated
into more general claims. Equally, we must exclude overt expressions of ridicule,
mockery, contempt, anger or sarcasm; we cannot quietly hint at the prospect of
violence should others disagree, or flirt with and charm those who do agree.
It is for these reasons that many – though not all – proponents of delibera-
tive democracy explicitly reject rhetoric. By ‘rhetoric’ they tend to mean direct
appeals to emotion or to personal authority; what classical rhetoricians termed
pathos and ethos respectively. Efforts to change the preferences of others in the
process of deliberation must appeal solely to reason, or logos, which is deemed
entirely separate from ethos and pathos. Only rational deliberation, it is claimed,
can ensure transparent communication and common agreement. For arguments to
be deemed rational they must conform to standards of universality, truthfulness
and sincerity. Emotion, by contrast, is presumed to be manipulative in so far as
it bypasses reason and invites participants to accept arguments on the basis of
unexamined feelings and automatic responses to symbols that do not bear rational
scrutiny. Likewise, appeals to personal authority are thought to ask participants
to accept conclusions regardless of good reasons for doing so. In the words of
Habermas, persuasion should be achieved only by ‘the force of the better argu-
ment’, not the deceptive tools of rhetoric.
Not all deliberative democrats take this hard line on rhetoric, however. Iris
Marion Young (2000) and John Dryzek (2000), for example, are among those
who explicitly invite different kinds of communicative style. Young, for example,
rejects the notion of ‘dispassionate, unsituated, neutral reason’ as a ‘fiction’ with
‘exclusionary implications’ (Young, 2000: 63). While she endorses the ‘basic out-
lines’ of the deliberative model and even Habermas’s account of communicative
action (see ibid.: 26, 34), she prefers a less rigorous application of public reason.
All communication is rhetorical, she insists, because it tries to produce effects on
its listeners; meaning and effect (or ‘locution’ and ‘perlocution’ in the speech–act
theory employed by Habermas) are in practice inseparable. The important distinc-
tion for her is not between reason and rhetoric but between ‘communicative acts
that aim to further understanding and cooperation and those that operate strategi-
cally as means of using others for one’s own ends’ (ibid.: 66).
Thus for Young, rhetoric can have affirmative uses for inclusive democratic
communication, such as getting issues onto the agenda by introducing new topics,
allowing people to speak in ways appropriate to their situation, using language
in an idiom with which they feel comfortable and encouraging the formation of
judgements in situations of uncertainty. She highlights the value of ‘narrative’
forms of communication that express local and culturally ‘situated’ forms of
knowledge that might otherwise be excluded from ascetic versions of public reason
(ibid.: 70–77). Of course, giving licence to non-rational forms of communication
112 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions
in order to ‘enlarge’ the conversation may introduce the possibility of deception
and manipulation into the deliberative scenario. But for Young, only exposure to
broad public criticism, not adherence to a rigid conception of reason, can elimi-
nate or reduce such strategies. She remains convinced, perhaps optimistically, that
the inclusive and deliberative ends of communication and mutual understanding
can be achieved without interruption or distortion.
For Dryzek, too, rhetoric need not be exclusively a method of manipulation.
He concurs with the spirit of Young’s argument: namely, that rhetorical appeals
are particularly effective in reaching out to a wide audience ‘by framing points
in a language that will move the audience in question’ (Dryzek, 2000: 52). Being
able to ‘move’ the audience’s feelings provides an argument with greater thrust,
helping it ‘transmit’ its rational core further than it otherwise would (see the dis-
cussion of the ‘projectile’ character of rhetoric in Chapter 6). Dryzek cites Rev.
Martin Luther King’s oratory and the US Declaration of Independence as exam-
ples of successful appeals that have supported rather than undermined rational
judgements. The issue, then, is not to eliminate rhetoric entirely but, as he puts it
elsewhere, to minimize ‘categorically ugly rhetoric’ in favour of rhetoric that has
some positive ‘systemic’ effects – that is, that produces further rational delibera-
tion (Dryzek, 2010: 333). He cites President George W. Bush’s advocacy of a ‘war
on terror’ as an example of ugly rhetoric because of the ‘denigration directed at
any actor not totally aligned with the Bush Administration’s position’ (ibid.). Ugly
rhetoric inhibits further deliberation by closing down dissent or prejudging the
opinions of others, thereby eliminating the need to engage them in dialogue. Yet
at the same time, Dryzek also recognizes that some ugly rhetoric can contribute to
expanding deliberation, perhaps despite its intentions. For example, the virulently
opposed positions of the parties in the Northern Ireland peace talks later contrib-
uted to fruitful dialogue.
Although, as Dryzek goes on to claim, deliberative democrats are increasingly
open to rhetorical appeals (that is, to ethos and pathos) as legitimate devices in
deliberation, it is clear that for him, as for most others, reason remains both dis-
tinct and superior. As he reminds us, ‘emotion can be coercive; which is why in
the end it must answer to reason’ (2000: 53). Yet his aesthetic distinction between
ugly and positive rhetoric fails to provide a clear test to isolate negative speech
because, as he admits itself, it can never be certain whether sectarian, violent or
aggressive language eventually might lead to beneficial outcomes for deliberation.
In the end, the effort to affirm some types of rhetoric over others merely exposes
a prejudice that deliberation is, fundamentally, a rational process from which
emotions can be eliminated. As with Young (who is, admittedly, much closer to
Aristotle than is Dryzek), rhetoric’s primary virtue for deliberative democrats pre-
pared to endorse it is, as one commentator puts it, ‘in prising open the doors of the
deliberative forum and widening its agenda’ (Parkinson, 2003: 184–85). It gets
people heard, it expands the democratic community, it broadens our appreciation
of difference; but it should never replace reasoned debate.
The trouble with the overt anti-rhetorical dimension of deliberative demo-
cratic arguments, as Young herself acknowledged, is that it threatens to reduce
 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions 113
democracy to an arid forum that makes unrealistic demands on how participants
communicate and effectively excludes those who cannot comply with its stric-
tures. By emphasizing preconditions for legitimate speech deliberative democrats,
to varying degrees, remove communication from the world of controversy, pas-
sionate disagreement, intense attachments to principle and the weight of personal
experience – all dimensions that contribute to regular kinds of argument and strat-
egies of persuasion (see Olson, 2011). Deliberation is thus imagined as a practice
beyond the unevenness of power relations, a neutral and transparent space of
encounters where the orderly temporal succession of argument, justification and
eventual resolution are unforced by sensations of urgency, danger or risk.
In imagining democracy in that way, deliberative democrats effectively sup-
press the political dimension of politics – that is, the contingent and fundamentally
contestable nature of any decision or judgement and their grounding in contexts
circumscribed by differential relations of power. Doubtless that is connected to
its overwhelming orientation towards achieving agreement or consensus (see
Norval, 2007: 26). Having accepted in advance how they might be persuaded
on any matter, deliberating citizens are in principle far more likely to reach con-
sensus. Yet when its advocates do reintroduce ‘real-world’ situations into the
deliberative scenario – including contingencies such as sectoral interests, partisan
loyalties, ‘situated’ knowledge and local forms of expression, compromises and
intense disagreements – the normative foundations of deliberation appear rather
unrealistic, perhaps even utopian.

The affective unconscious: neuroscience and psychoanalysis

For many – if not all – deliberative democrats, rhetoric and reason are pitted
against each other as more or less opposites. Informing that contrast is a suspicion
about the role of emotions and emotional attachments in argumentative practices.
But, as critics point out, even Aristotle did not object to the use of emotional
appeals in his classic account of political deliberation (see Garsten, 2006: 135–39,
195–96). In the Rhetoric, Aristotle recognized the importance of emotions – such
as anger or pity – in shaping and altering judgements by connecting reason to
sensations of pleasure or pain (see Aristotle, 1991: 141). In legal disputes, where
disinterested discussion of the facts was required, emotion may not be an appro-
priate proof. But for Aristotle, as Bernard Yack reminds us, political reasoning
about the common good is ‘more like a contest for attention and allegiance’ than
a forensic examination of truth claims (Yack, 2006: 427). Such a contest concerns
not simply how we form judgements but, sometimes, that we should make them
at all. For Aristotle, it was never possible to make deliberative judgements simply
a matter of reason. ‘Decisions about future action’, continues Yack of the philoso-
pher’s conception of politics, ‘draw on an inseparable mix of desire and intellect,
emotion and reason’ (ibid.: 432).
Unlike Aristotle, however, contemporary theorists of democracy are less confi-
dent that their polities can ever be motivated by a substantial sense of the common
good. Of course, even Aristotle knew that politicians frequently had scurrilous
114 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions
intentions and were not always driven by a desire for the common good. But in the
modern age we have grown culturally accustomed to suspecting the motives of
others, instituting ‘rights’ to immunize individuals from each other (see Esposito,
2008). Liberals, in particular, are prone to viewing claims to the common good
as a guise of fanaticism, often of a ‘religious’ variety, where sentiments are mobi-
lized in order to impose moral claims partial to one group or another. On what
basis today, then, might emotions be reconnected to reason?
Below I consider two contemporary approaches that insist on the inseparable
nature of passions and the intellect; work inspired, respectively, by the fields of
neuroscience and psychoanalysis. Although different and internally diverse, both
fields examine unconscious, affective processes that support cognition. Such proc-
esses are deemed receptive to techniques of manipulation that activate memories
and associations with varying intensity, consequently shaping our ‘attention and
allegiance’ prior to – and in the process of – reasoning. Emotions are perceived by
advocates of these approaches to be at the heart of public deliberation, and not a
supplement or a distraction.

Neuroscience
In the western tradition of philosophy, emotions are typically conceived as antag-
onistic to reason: feelings and passions entail bias, an unreflective attachment
towards certain objects or outcomes that overrides reason and threatens to subdue
it; reason, on the other hand, involves the dispassionate use of logical, repeatable
procedures that do not favour any specific object or outcome. Emotion is partial
and reason is impartial or ‘neutral’. Since Descartes, the association of emo-
tion with unreasoned bodily instincts often accompanies this conception, while
thought is associated with an independent domain of rational cognition (see de
Sousa, 1987).
Neuroscientists, however, see this separation of two domains as untenable.
Emotions are not irrational reactions but material, physiological processes neces-
sary to perception and the preparation of conscious thought. Basic emotions such
as anger, fear, dread, joy and so on form the outward manifestation of deeper,
complex and otherwise unconscious processes that are constantly receptive to
environmental stimuli in a way that cognitive processes cannot be. Laying down
neural pathways and connecting different regions of the brain and body, emotions
operate behind the scenes of the conscious mind to filter and evaluate percep-
tual information. ‘Emotion systems’ undertake specific tasks, monitoring and
responding to sense experience prior to our conscious awareness and calling up
appropriate dispositions in the form of sensations, such as ‘moods’ and feelings,
before we actively deliberate (see Damasio, 1999; 1994).
The implications of neuroscientific research for understanding political behav-
iour have been explored by a number of scholars in political and social science.
Drawing upon Damasio’s notion of ‘somatic markers’, for example, George E.
Marcus (2002) has sketched the way that different neural systems steady or pro-
voke conscious reasoning. For example, our awareness of threats often arises
 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions 115
before we have consciously thought through a situation. Indeed, we ‘think
through’ a situation only because our ‘fight/flight system’ alerts us in advance and
generates sensations of imminent danger. Alternatively, the ‘disposition system’
monitors the success of our learned behaviours and alerts us, with a sense of suc-
cess or failure, when certain parts of a procedure are executed or are not. Finally,
the ‘surveillance system’ is sensitive to the gap between our intentions and the
actual performance of a procedure, reminding us with a sense of discomfort or
surprise if something interrupts the action.
Far from intruding on reasoning, emotions describe a constant background
activity between the body and the brain that triggers the appropriate dispositions
for reasoning. Thus for Marcus, ‘[r]eason must rely on emotion’ because the lat-
ter tap into our procedural memories, supplying responses to situations, focusing
us on what is required at any moment and initiating processes that take too long
if left to the conscious mind. Emotion is therefore the foundation of reason, the
support system that makes ‘strategic assessments’ of the context and disposes us
towards actions accordingly (Marcus, 2002: 76).
What implications does this view have for how we conceive of democratic
deliberation? Marcus argues that far from disparaging the emotions, we should
appreciate their role in political reasoning. He highlights two emotions in particu-
lar: ‘enthusiasm’ and ‘anxiety’. These serve to affirm or to stall habits, respectively,
creating conditions for deliberation. Enthusiasm – a variable sense of well-being
based on the successful accomplishment of habitual behaviour, registered in the
disposition system – is required not only if we are to promote causes but also to
recognize the successful exchange of views in dialogue (ibid.: 83). Without that
emotion indicating success or failure we would not recognize the accomplish-
ment of persuasion. Democratic participation needs habitual forms of conduct
whose performance must constantly and efficiently be monitored so that we know
when to correct, repeat or revise our contribution and whether to reward others by
affirming their success.
On the other hand, political engagement also prompts anxiety – that is, an emo-
tional resource rooted in the surveillance system that halts our habitual behaviour
and demands we think again. Anxiety interrupts habits and prompts us to ‘reason
things through’ explicitly. The painful or unpleasant sensation that things are not
what they ought to be inhibits thoughtless custom, focusing consciousness on the
fine details of an issue or activity so as to relearn our habits. For Marcus, anxiety
is the foundation of cognitive reason because anxious citizens are those who set
aside lazy assumptions in order to reconstruct argumentative positions and practi-
cal choices (ibid.: 103–4). Reason arrives not because a neutral survey will allow
facts to speak for themselves but because we are disposed (indeed, provoked) to
revise our views: ‘Anxious voters are willing to be persuaded; they are willing to
learn; they can and do change the outcomes of elections; they are willing to adopt
new and untried alternatives rather than insist on habitual commitments. They fit
the characteristics of traditionally conceived democratic citizens’ (ibid.: 106). His
conclusion is rather striking: ‘If we want everyone to be rational, the seemingly
effective solution is to make everyone anxious’ (ibid.: 108).
116 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions
For Marcus, democratic politics is largely dominated by the contrasting
emotions of enthusiasm and anxiety, of habitual practices and principles being
affirmed and habits being contested. Pleasure and pain intermingle, not as a
distraction from rational dialogue but as its very precondition. Emotion is trig-
gered not just at a conscious level – the naming of feelings by words – but also
implicitly, in the use of tone and style, arguments that confirm certain outlooks
and the use of metaphors and analogies that picture certain images for us. All
these devices assist in enveloping arguments emotionally, heightening levels of
enthusiasm, confirming our habitual understandings or (perhaps even at the same
time) raising anxieties by alerting us to their limits and shaking us from sedi-
mented habits.
Similar conclusions are drawn by the cognitive psychologist George Lakoff,
whose work on metaphors in American politics draws attention to the ways in
which electoral campaigns involve competing ‘framing devices’ that activate
deep-seated and largely unconscious associations and values related to notions
of family. Lakoff distinguishes the ‘strict father’ and ‘nurturing parent’ moralities
that, he argues, structure political discourse, but which are also rooted, via ‘neural
binding’, in the minds of most Americans (Lakoff, 2002; 2008). Here, images of
government modelled on contrasting feelings about the family are believed to
influence the way that public debate is polarized between authoritarian exhorta-
tions to self-responsibility or, alternatively, liberal assertions of the value of social
solidarity (see also Westen, 2007).
Marcus affirms the need for ‘political activists to create the circumstances that
invite the public to see and willingly reinterpret what it has seen many times in a
new way, with new eyes’ (Marcus, 2002: 140) – and that task, he admits, is one
that falls, at least in part, to practices of rhetoric (ibid.: 147). Only a lively, con-
flictual public sphere, he concludes, where enthusiasms and anxieties are brought
into play – along with institutions that channel them effectively – can supply
deliberation with the energy to keep democracy working well. For him, ‘emo-
tional politics is also a rational politics’ (ibid.: 148). Likewise, Lakoff and Westen
openly promote the application of neuroscientific findings to generate effective
Democratic party campaigns so as to match the powerful, emotive appeal of
conservative ideology in the US. Creating convincing political arguments, they
suggest, is primarily, if not exclusively, about persuading by means of a positive
emotional story.
Alternatively, the radical pluralist thinker, William E. Connolly, explores how
neuroscientific research supports a democratic politics attuned to difference and
creativity rather than mainstream party politics (see Connolly, 2002a). Drawing
upon Nietzschean and Deleuzean philosophies, Connolly traces the affective
dimension of pre-conscious perception in order to foreground the possibility for
alternative, ‘fugitive’ experiences that escape the coding inscribed in dominant
cultural norms. The receptivity of the affective unconscious to various techniques,
prior to the formation of judgement, opens the way to experimental forms of
thinking that enable memory and feeling to find new kinds of ‘composition’ that
cannot be grasped if we focus on language and cognition alone. Neuroscience,
 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions 117
he argues, brings to our attention the myriad, microscopic speeds and delays,
hesitations and hiccups, intensities and variations that underscore conscious think-
ing; it shows how ‘the composition of thinking and judgement is indissolubly
bound to complex relays between an intersubjective world and body/brain proc-
esses’ (ibid.: 92–93). Humans are embodied subjects but are also diverse in their
embodiments and receptive to ‘experimental tactics of intervention’ (ibid.: 86).
Such insights, he argues, can support a radical pluralist politics of difference,
transgression and new kinds of solidarity.

Psychoanalysis
The psychoanalytical approach to emotions offers a less materialist outlook than
that of neuroscience, though the two are not incompatible. Both share the views
that reason and emotion are interlinked and that consciousness is shaped by proc-
esses outside of its immediate purview. As a discipline, however, psychoanalysis
tends less to causal processes (such as the micro-signals and triggers in the brain)
and more to interpreting symptoms and their symbolic formation. It is therefore
a ‘hermeneutic’ form of enquiry that explores how meanings are constructed and
come to wield power within the psyche (see Craib, 2001: 9–10). For that reason
it, too, lends itself to a rhetorical approach to politics.
To be brief, psychoanalysis, founded by Sigmund Freud and now consist-
ing of numerous and diverse schools of thought, argues that human psyches
are constructed around an unconscious core of drives and repressed desires that
persistently irrupt into consciousness. The formation of the Ego in human devel-
opment typically entails subduing and disciplining those forces, which for Freud
were fundamentally sexual (or libidinal, stemming from the drives of the ‘libido’).
Repressed forces are then experienced as intense feelings of, for example, anxi-
ety, desire, anger, lust and attachment underlying our everyday behaviour. The
cultivation of ‘civilized’ subjects able to communicate and co-operate in society
requires that we control such feelings. But they can never be wholly disciplined
and regularly evade the defences of the Ego and rise to the surface, often with
pathological consequences. For Freud, social and cultural phenomena, such as
war and fanatical political movements, were evidence of how psychic instability
operates in the social world (Freud, 1991).
In this understanding of the psyche, reason and emotion are inseparable because
the subject is constituted through its affective relation to other objects (see Rustin,
2009). In that respect, emotions aren’t purely physiological reactions; they frame
the self as a coherent subject equipped with intentions and attitudes. Our emo-
tional dispositions – the precarious balance of desire and self-control achieved
to varying degrees – orient us towards the world, not only in reaction to it (see
Frosh, 2011). As Marcia Cavell puts it, from a psychoanalytic perspective, emo-
tions provide ‘framing attitudes’ or ‘background conditions for […] our perceptual
dispositions’, investing the world with a distinct tincture: ‘As orientations toward
the world, emotions have intentionality. A feeling of melancholy, or joy, is about
the world, the world conceived in a particular way, as empty, as full of promise,
118 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions
or as sad’ (Cavell, 2006: 133). A ‘feeling toward’, she continues, is not something
that can be simply ‘tacked on’ to a belief; it shapes the belief itself (ibid.: 136).
The advantage of psychoanalysis over neuroscience lies in the rich palette
of socially operative emotional dispositions it describes. Anxiety, depression,
paranoia, narcissism and so on comprise a variety of common affective states
that psychoanalytical therapy diagnoses as unconscious forces shaping rational
judgement. Moreover, the therapeutic dimension indicates that emotions are both
communicable and revisable. For some, therapy itself (the so-called ‘talking
cure’) is a form of persuasion open to the application of rhetorical techniques (see
Frank and Frank, 1991). Emotions are not just private and subjective, but shape
and are shaped by our social interactions and, both via therapy and in the course of
life generally, can be transformed and channelled (Cavell, 2006: 134–36; see also
Gross, 2006). The self that is formed through its emotions can be reconstituted
differently by giving shape to new channels for desire and identification.
Various contemporary political thinkers make use of psychoanalytical concepts
to explore how public arguments are framed through emotional orientations.
Judith Butler, for example, has examined reactions to the 9/11 terror attacks in
the US through the conceptualization of ‘mourning’ (Butler, 2004). Butler draws
on Freud’s claim in Mourning and Melancholia (Freud, 2005) that the process of
mourning involves grieving the loss of an attachment to someone or something.
After a while, the pain of loss diminishes and feelings are directed to a new object.
Yet if that process is not successful, a ‘melancholic’ disorder arises by which the
subject cannot ‘let go’ of the image and seeks forcefully to maintain it.
For Butler, the loss for many in the US after 9/11 (both personal and sym-
bolic) played out as a public feeling that some lives were grievable and others
not. That produced a ‘generalized melancholia’ – that is, a pathological mourning
that lashed out aggressively at others (2004: 37). But the government and media
did not regard the losses of those hurt by American foreign policy as worthy of
the same sense of grief. Indeed, in some instances, public grief for anyone other
than American civilians and soldiers was tantamount to support for terrorism.
Although, as Butler claims, ‘nations are not psyches’, disavowal and even prohi-
bition of grief in that way entailed a collective subject being invoked to represent
the nation:

In recent months, a subject has been instated at the national level, a sovereign
and extra legal subject, a violent and self-centred subject; its actions consti-
tute the building of a subject that seeks to restore and maintain its mastery
through the systematic destruction of its multilateral relations, its ties to the
international community. It shores itself up, seeks to reconstitute its imagined
wholeness, but only at the price of denying its own vulnerability, its depend-
ency, its exposure, where it exploits those very features in others, thereby
making those features ‘other’ to itself.
(Ibid.: 41)
 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions 119
What Butler describes is not a series of rational propositions isolated from
emotions but an affective structure that defines an argumentative stance. Here,
emotions shape the arguments, at least in so far as they validate specific objects
and distribute recognition. Using a psychoanalytical framework, Butler explores
an affective rhetorical strategy in which a collective self (the ‘nation’ in grief) is
given form. This resembles Sara Ahmed’s description – also ‘borrowing’ from
psychoanalysis – of the way that emotions work socially, rather than privately, to
create ‘surfaces of bodies and worlds’ by ‘sticking figures together’ and connect-
ing the self to an imagined collective body (see Ahmed, 2004).
Similar psychoanalytical readings of events can be found in the many writings
of philosopher Slavoj Žižek. Drawing upon his reading of the Lacanian school of
psychoanalysis, Žižek regularly examines the workings of ‘ideological fantasy’ in
people’s behaviour (see Žižek, 1989). Fantasy refers to the unconscious images
and desires that frame our reality, often regardless of what we consciously claim
to know is ‘really’ going on. Such fantasies include the image of the free market,
the unified nation or a world of ecological harmony where all organisms co-exist
in peace. Each fantasy scenario promises the fulfilment of selfhood, an impos-
sible but alluring ideal of completeness that focuses our libidinal investments and
invokes a whole register of affects. But this process occurs unconsciously, struc-
turing our thoughts and reasonings around a desire to overcome an intrinsic ‘lack’,
or absence of completion, in our psyches.
Žižek underscores the importance of ‘enjoyment’ as a factor at work in politi-
cal fantasy (see Žižek, 2008b). In his view, people get a perverse pleasure from
the perceived threat to the realization of their fantasies, a sense of enjoyment
invoked by identifying enemies who have ‘stolen’ the object of desire: foreign-
ers, bankers, religious fanatics and so on (see Daly, 1999). The identified enemy
simultaneously helps to account for the failure of the fantasy to be realized and
also sharpens the desire for it. Žižek insists that this affective structure is what
really motivates us, not our professed beliefs. We act according to unconscious
fantasies that drive us and give meaning to our world by investing it with purpose
and the promise of fulfilment.
These examples of psychoanalytical approaches to emotion explore the way
that public selves are constructed by channelling powerful psychic energies into
identification and abjection. Importantly, the affective dispositions described are
socially constructed, not merely instinctual processes. Practices of mourning or
fantasizing are fabricated ways of channelling feelings, calling up deep memo-
ries and reactivating traumatic experiences. To that extent, we might say they are
rhetorically crafted: they are, in part, assembled by actors seeking to direct public
discourse in particular ways by manipulating symbols for persuasive effect. But
that is not a rhetoric generated through reason alone, and sometimes it is not
generated through reason at all. Reason and emotions interweave in arguments
that inscribe subjects in emotionally structured frames, invoking anxieties, resent-
ments and pleasures in ways that rational discourse alone cannot.
The psychoanalytic approach presents a picture of emotional politics as
unwieldy and always potentially violent. This constrasts with the picture
120 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions
presented by many influenced by neuroscience, who tend to see a fit between
emotional politics and etablished institutions and forms of democratic leader-
ship. For Marcus these can prevent extreme emotions, such as ‘loathing’, from
spiralling out of control and threatening the orderly regulation of democratic
demands. For radical democrats, who are often influenced by psychoanalysis,
however, such careful steering is neither likely nor entirely desirable.
Chantal Mouffe’s democratic theory, for example, explicitly builds upon a
psychoanalytical conception of subjectivity (see Mouffe, 2000). Not unlike
Connolly, she underscores the possibility of a radical pluralism that emphasizes
diversity. For her, however, pluralism entails conflict: without the rationalist
assumption that desire can be quelled in favour of reason, democracy opens up the
prospect of ‘adversarial’ disputes among hostile, passionate differences of prin-
ciple, rather than the fetishization of consensus which she detects in deliberative
theories. For Mouffe, post-Lacanian psychoanalysis supports an ethics in which
multiple and contrasting forms of affective identification are acknowledged as
part of the democratic game, but none can legitimately claim pre-eminence over
all others (ibid.: 129–40). Democracy, in that vision, is a constant and ongoing
contest to ‘hegemonize’ identities by recruiting them to different overarching
projects. That ‘agonistic’ contest inevitably has rhetorical aspects, involving
efforts to domesticate identities by arguing for ‘common-sense’ principles.

Affective strategies and emotional orientation

What, then, do the insights of thinkers drawing upon neuroscience and psychoa-
nalysis bring to our understanding of the relationship between rhetoric, emotions
and democracy? In this section I want to suggest that, despite their differences,
the two approaches point us towards what I have called ‘affective rhetorical strat-
egies’ in democratic politics. Far from being a necessarily pernicious force that
blocks or interrupts transparent communication, emotions are productive of polit-
ical subjectivity, inciting citizens’ attention and allegiance to particular issues and
ideals and, in so doing, shaping the spaces and forms of democratic engagement.
Although they locate them differently (in the brain and in the psychosocial world,
respectively), in both approaches emotions serve to situate subjects in relation
to their world, orienting them towards its objects with degrees of proximity and
urgency, sympathy and concern, aversion or hostility. These emotional orienta-
tions are never fixed or complete but are open to contestation and negotiation,
mediated often (though not exclusively) by rhetorical argument. As I shall claim
in the next section, however mainstream or ‘radical’ we might prefer it to be, a
rhetorical democracy – that is, a democracy inclined to endorse rhetorical engage-
ment – is one that recognizes and enhances the prospects for affective strategies
to unfold.
As we saw earlier, deliberative democrats typically dispute the value of emo-
tions because they are thought to disrupt the transparency of communicative
exchanges, urging participants to adopt positions despite their rational judgement.
That worry is not dissimilar to the hostility to Griffin’s television appearance
 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions 121
noted at the start of this chapter. There, too, we find concerns over the neutrality
of debating space being tarnished by unjustified or inflammatory arguments that
mobilize harmful and disruptive feelings. Calling into question who is or is not
entitled to be a citizen via forms of ‘hate speech’ (see Butler, 1997), ridicule or
(in the case of President Obama’s disputed nationality and religion, for example)
campaigns of misinformation is often to exert a pernicious force that invites alle-
giance without reflection. To that we might add highly partial media messages
attuned primarily to scandal and outrage, professional media ‘spin’ and negative
campaigning in elections and generally manipulative forms of propaganda and
‘political marketing’. Mankind may be born with a capacity for emotion, but
everywhere emotion seems to place it in chains. No wonder deliberative demo-
crats suspect its value for reasoned dialogue.
Yet it is the very idea of a neutral space of dialogue, one that sweeps away
the distracting clutter of feelings, that research into emotions and affects calls
into question. Democratic encounters, it suggests, unfold at the intersection of
numerous strategies and power relations, not outside them. Inevitably, demo-
cratic subjects are formed in and through these uneven relations and encounters.
Although they differ in important ways, neuroscience and psychoanalysis invite
us to think of subjectivity in terms of complex networks of layers and circuits,
with distinct temporal dynamics and patterns of connection in which interventions
are constantly being made. The focus in neuroscience is the circuits between the
brain and the body, while psychoanalysis attends to circuits connecting the psyche
to language and social relations. Yet each identifies affective processes that con-
nect memories to cognition and charge conscious thought with associations and
emotional density. In both approaches, emotions function like movements behind
and across consciousness, remapping the perceptual field, distributing degrees of
intensity and ordering its orientations and cognitive responses to the wider world.
Rather than spontaneously rational psyches interacting in neutral space, subjects
are more like lost tourists trying to work out which way round the map should
be, whereabouts they are ‘on’ it and how they can get to where they want to go.
The space around them alters as they respond to different clues, revolving the
map to place themselves where they think they might be. As they do, some land-
marks get closer and more urgent, others further away. Persuasion, like a kindly
intervention by a tour guide, acts upon this fragile (dis)orientation. Interestingly,
both Connolly and Mouffe conceive such interventions as being akin more to
‘conversion’ – transformations that work on judgement affectively – than rational
argument alone (Connolly, 2002a: 44–45 and 2002b; Mouffe, 2000: 102). It might
be better to say that conversion is the first step towards speaking (and listening)
differently.
So neuroscience and psychoanalysis support the view that emotions work to
orient individuals in time and space. This connects to the idea of the rhetorical
situation discussed in the previous chapter. In operating affectively, rhetorical
strategies work on our subjectivity, triggering perceptual responses, invoking
symbols and fantasies that pull us unconsciously and often stimulate emotional
excess and intensity around certain objects so that we reason in specific ways.
122 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions
Like the tour guide in the illustration above, such strategies are rarely creating
something entirely new but, rather, lead us to new places via those which we
already know how to feel about.
Take, for example, former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s remarkable response
to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, on 31 August 1997. Blair’s eulogy –
performed in an apparently extemporaneous discourse before the media and in a
‘sincere’ manner of pained, hesitating speech – exemplifies a rhetorical strategy
based around ethos and pathos (see Blair, 1997b). Diana’s death in a car crash
in Paris was a shocking and tragic end for a celebrated personality who had, in
equal measure, enthralled and infuriated the public for some years. The object
of much admiration (for her work for charity) as well as censure (for her public
separation from her husband, Prince Charles), Diana’s passing brought a huge
outpouring of emotion in the UK and around the world. Blair’s two-minute speech
in the immediate aftermath of the news acknowledges the initial shock and confu-
sion, channelling it towards a process of shared remembrance. His speech seeks
to appropriate a situation of loss and shock by defining it as a bereavement for her
immediate family but also for the world more generally. Blair names the appropri-
ate feelings attached to the news (pathos) – ‘we are today a nation … in Britain …
in a state of shock … in mourning … in grief’ – but also alliteratively redefines
Diana as a part of public identity (ethos) – ‘she was the people’s princess … and
that’s how she will remain … in our hearts and in our memories’. Playing on the
fantasy image of the princess as an idealized figure of desire, Blair restores the
lost Diana as a public object, emotionally orienting the audience away from shock
and horror towards a sense of itself in mourning.
Blair’s was not the only speech about Diana in the aftermath of her death
(see Montgomery, 1999). But unlike others, it worked affectively to channel
the intensities of the moment into legitimate feelings of grief – rather than, say,
anger or resentment. Here pathos helped frame the public’s perception about
what Diana’s death meant. This is a common role for political leaders in response
to tragic events that put affects into circulation (see, for example, Bill Clinton’s
speech in response to the Oklahoma bombing). At such moments, emotions are
often guided towards key symbols, such as the family, through performances
whose delivery and style seek to trigger a sense of appropriateness for the feel-
ings on show. Of course, such interventions do not prevent people from reasoning
critically about the situation, but they do help to prioritize what people (and the
media) reason about.
But are affective rhetorical strategies and emotional orientation, as I have
described them here, not simply crude forms of manipulation and control?
Sometimes, no doubt, they can be. Equally, there is a degree of ambiguity here:
what is a moving expression of sentiment for some might, for others, be a dis-
tracting and mawkish display of crass sentimentality that favours certain groups in
society over others. How can we possibly tell the difference? There is no absolute,
objective answer but a rhetorical approach involves asking, further, how the
public display of emotions situates its audience in relation to the wider circum-
stance. Does it help them reason it through in a new or more satisfactory way?
 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions 123
Does it illuminate a fresh perspective on the situation or enable people to speak
where once they could not? Can difficult issues be spoken of in a way that they
could not have been before? To approach such questions requires us not to dismiss
emotions in advance as dangerous forms of power but to think of them as ways
that can help or hinder (and perhaps both) how audiences view themselves and the
situations they face.
Research into neuroscience and psychoanalysis invites us to think of sub-
jectivity as a negotiated boundary between its inside and outside, with affects
and emotions as forces and mechanisms that position that boundary and colour
experience in different ways. Subjectivity is not simply an interior state; rather,
its layers, speeds and connections persistently link to bodies within wider social
and material contexts. The velocities and motions, directions and interconnec-
tions of selfhood mesh with and ricochet against the overlapping times and spaces
of nature and society. Emotions are therefore physiological/psychic relays in the
wider movement of affects, which can be viewed as ‘transindividual’ movements
that disperse across the landscape of social relations (see Massumi, 1995; Protevi,
2009; Williams, 2010). Nigel Thrift (2007: 171–97) argues, for example, that
cities have a distinctive character as sites of layered, sometimes clashing, affec-
tive networks where different subjectivities are calibrated and co-ordinated (for
example, sites of pleasure, work, rest, danger, and the flows between them). In
this, urban spaces mirror what neuroscience and psychoanalysis, in their different
ways, tell us about subjectivity.
Rather than a negative force blocking free movement, emotions can be con-
ceived as productive processes, supplying channels and connections for thought
and experience that enable responses to the wider pressures of social space and
time. Of course, that is not to say that emotions cannot be manipulated or ‘get out
of hand’, exceeding the situation and laying down traces that inhibit further, per-
haps more effective, reorientation. Emotions are always doing this, for sure. But
so too, in its ways, does reason (for example, bureaucracy can create infuriating
confusion and delay in the name of efficiency and order). The problem here is not
power but, as Foucault once argued, domination. Power, in his view, is coextensive
with society and the ‘strategies by which individuals try to direct and control the
conduct of others’ (Foucault, 1997: 298); we are permanently caught up in efforts
to shape each other’s conduct and there are no spaces of liberty outside power
relations. However, domination occurs when the mobility of power is constrained,
when further strategies to modify it are blocked (ibid.: 283). Foucault’s distinction
can help separate persuasion from insidious forms of manipulation such as propa-
ganda or techniques of political marketing; but there is no absolute difference
here. Persuasion offers us prompts and grounds to believe or act, although we may
contest them; propaganda deliberately disguises its own contestability (see Jowett
and O’Donnell, 2006). We might argue, then, that democratic encounters are con-
strained when affective strategies are locked in place, when it is barely possible
to challenge emotional appeals or recirculate feelings and further transform them.
In such situations it is difficult to think and feel otherwise, to resist the clamour
for agreement, to invoke ambiguity and doubt over dominant emotions and the
124 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions
arguments they support, perhaps to take seriously what is otherwise treated with
ridicule. The point here is not to eradicate emotions, but to work with them more
inventively. How might we imagine a democracy like this?

A rhetorical democracy?
Instead of viewing democracy as a space from which emotions need to be evacu-
ated, it may be better to think of it as an uneven network constantly (re)generated
in and through affective strategies that assemble and reshape communicative
practices by working on popular attentions and allegiances. Those strategies, as
we have seen, are deployed ‘to direct and control the conduct of others’ by mobi-
lizing metaphors and imagery, invoking memories and shaping perceptions or
reactivating traumas and the promise of resolution. Whether we prefer a more
rhetorically vibrant representative democracy (as with Marcus or Lakoff), where
existing parties confront each other more or less equally, or a pluralist democracy
(as with Connolly or Mouffe), where potentially hostile differences co-exist and
clash creatively, we need to think of emotions as the forces that position subjects
for such engagement. A rhetorical democracy, however restricted or diverse, is
one where emotions are brought to the fore, not held back, so that they are produc-
tively contested and challenged through argumentative controversy.
Despite their philosophical differences, both the deliberative and radical plural-
ist accounts of democracy have something to offer here. Where the deliberative
model seeks to achieve greater participation by circumscribing the way citizens
exchange their views in order to reach an understanding on the basis of equality,
the radical model seeks no such constraints and emphasizes the contestation of
common understandings and the very terms of equality. In that respect, radical
democrats more readily acknowledge and engage the dimension of the political.
That is, they highlight the contingency of shared principles and their foundation
in decisions that are always open to critique and transformation. For that reason,
radical democrats of a postmodern bent tend to be more sensitive than liberals to
the way language and power operate rhetorically.
Yet, as Bryan Garsten points out, it is also perfectly possible to imagine a
type of deliberation that endorses rather than excises rhetoric. Here deliberation
can be conceived as a matter more of persuasion than of justification. It invites
individuals to make considered judgements not on the basis of renouncing their
own partisan feelings, emotional dispositions and personal commitments, but by
asking them to reflect upon them (Garsten, 2006: 191–96). That kind of delibera-
tion can allow for varying degrees of private motivation (rather than wholesale
public transparency) and will require an element of respect for (but not necessar-
ily agreement with) others (ibid.: 196–99). For Garsten, such principles are not
founded in universal reason but are merely intuitive, pragmatic ways of sharing
a discussion by accepting certain grounds as a starting point. They require us to
show some degree of self-restraint, although they cannot rule out the potential
for manipulation or demagoguery. ‘The politics of persuasion is a risky enter-
prise’, he rightly reminds us (ibid.: 199). In rhetorical deliberation, we need not
 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions 125
submit our judgements to the sovereignty of reason, but only take responsibility
for them and allow them to be tested.
Likewise, Aletta Norval (2007) offers a conception of democratic argumentation
that accepts both the virtues of deliberation and the disruptive effects of certain rhe-
torical strategies. In her view, we need to overcome ‘the false dichotomy between
consensus and contestation’ offered to us when the deliberative and radical mod-
els are contrasted (ibid.: 55). Democratic dialogue entails a permanent negotiation
between established forms of reasoning and struggles to contest and transform
consensus. It is possible, however, to reconceptualize democratic participation, not
exclusively in terms of ways of following procedures or of challenging consen-
sus, but in a manner of steering ‘a path between radical rupture and continuity’
(ibid.: 117). Procedures of deliberation are important, argues Norval, if democracy
is to become a regularized way of displacing violence, but they will only work if
they are open to innovation and challenge via diverse rhetorical styles. Like Mouffe,
she underscores the importance of an encompassing democratic ‘ethos’ favourable
to dissent, passion and criticism, rather than one specific type of regime; for these
are ways to keep returning participants to the very idea of what it means to be a
democratic subject alongside others (ibid.: 185–86).
A rhetorical democracy, then, is one that offers ways of forming public judge-
ments through numerous practices of persuasion and, in so doing, exposes politics
to the uncertainty and riskiness of the dimension of the political. That may entail
a wide variety of institutional forms, including those suggested by deliberative
democrats, but also the non-formal and controversial types of intervention includ-
ing protest and dissent that polemically challenge social and political customs.
Whether it is directed at producing agreement or cultivating and sharpening areas
of disagreement, rhetorical persuasion involves mobilizing both reason and emo-
tions, in order to constantly renew the terms of our allegiance to democracy.

Summary
I have argued that, like rhetoric, emotions are an integral part of democratic com-
munication because they help to situate us in relation to matters of controversy.
Anxiety, joy, fear, anger, contrition, love, as well as ambivalence, hatred and desire
are better conceived as prompts and devices for orienting citizens than simply as
distractions from serious debate. It is for this reason that emotions have always
been important to rhetoric and its idea of persuasion based on the combination of
ethos, pathos and logos. Recent work drawing upon neuroscience and psychoa-
nalysis, I have claimed, further affirms this view by underscoring a view of the
human subject as part of a wider network of affects. Far from separating reason
and emotion, these fields demonstrate how unconscious forces that emotionally
orient them in their reasoning constantly shape individuals and society. Rhetorical
political strategies work upon such forces to encourage people to reason about
particular objects in specific ways.
The tradition of deliberative democracy is wrong, then, to be so suspicious
of emotion and the rhetoric that appeals to it. Although there are signs that such
126 Democracy, rhetoric and the emotions
suspicion is diminishing, an obsession with the ideals of rational justification,
transparency and inclusivity cannot help to tame controversy. Undoubtedly there
are moments when uncontrolled and violent feelings are best subdued, when alle-
giances are more productively reflected upon than uncritically endorsed. But the
alternative to eradicating power and emotion from democratic discourse is to do
democracy differently. That may mean a number of things: developing a greater
awareness of the way rhetorical strategies work, of how specific spaces are organ-
ized affectively; formulating a vocabulary of affects that operate in public life,
learning how to argue through emotions yet without the excess and intellectual
silence that so often accompanies thoughtless outbursts; developing affective
strategies that support new and difficult encounters rather than relying on habit
and custom. In short, it means constantly innovating in democratic speech to find
new and more productive ways of negotiating controversy.
8 Media rhetoric
Speaking for the public

How do contemporary ‘mass’ media influence practices of persuasion? This

question has surely been at the heart of social and political debate for over a
century. While there is still little agreement as to the precise effects on its audience
of media such as the press, radio and television, there is wide acknowledgement
that they have profoundly altered the ways politics is communicated. Today dem-
ocratic representation is so deeply interwoven with mass media that it is difficult
to make a clear distinction between the two – when events occur, they often seem
designed to have an impact in and through media. Political news and information,
the activities of governments, leaders’ speeches, party announcements and politi-
cal commentary, cultural values and aspirations, debate and scandal, are all now
regularly communicated via the technologies and organizations of mass media.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, politicians cultivate close relations with newspaper
editors and journalists, they have media advisors, they hire PR companies to mar-
ket their policies and they offer themselves as celebrities and pundits to court
publicity as well as sell their policies.
Moreover, the proliferation and expansion of mediatic forms in recent decades
has created a vast network of channels and platforms reaching across the globe,
disseminating information at astounding speeds such that it is impossible to know
what is going on in world politics without them. Media shows and reports are
accessed from TVs, newspapers, radios, computers and on hand-held devices and
phones from almost anywhere in the world, increasingly inviting consumers to
participate by sharing their opinions. ‘Media’, then, no longer names just one set
of activities among others but, rather, a vital system of social representation itself.
Contemporary politics takes place inside, not merely alongside, a ‘media culture’
(Kellner, 1995; Thompson, 1995; Street, 2001).
In this chapter I discuss some of the ways in which mass media influence the
practice of rhetoric. That requires us to think of media as a range of sites through
which particular strategies of persuasion are enacted but also, more generally, as
shapers of what it is that can be communicated, by whom and how. In keeping with
the focus in Chapters 6 and 7, we can say that mass media contribute significantly
to the way that rhetorical situations are appropriated. Media do not merely dissemi-
nate public discourse, they influence the manner and means by which such discourse
unfolds, if at all. In that respect, media undertake a political role in shaping what
128 Media rhetoric
is said and sayable in public – that is, in determining how communicative space is
constructed and how citizens might position themselves within it.
Certain kinds of persuasive strategy are therefore enhanced by media tech-
niques, and others diminished. For many critics that entails the trivialization
of public culture, an excessive emphasis on ‘style’ over matters of ‘substance’.
In rhetorical terms, we would call this a preponderance of appeals to ethos and
pathos – character and emotion – rather than logos, or reason. Media help fash-
ion rhetorical situations by amplifying personalities and heightening sensation to
make events seem directly relevant to us. At the same time, the mass mediation
of public life disconnects speech from specific contexts and resituates it in a vir-
tual world fabricated by the voices, characters and styles of the media. Mediated
rhetoric encourages strategies that conform to techniques designed to grab
people’s attention and secure their allegiance, above all, to specific forms of media
themselves. Yet, although media compete to recruit and retain audiences, they
obscure their rhetorical features by trying to minimize the gap between rhetor and
audience, claiming to speak, authentically, ‘on behalf of’ the public. Therein, I
want to suggest, lies the media’s distinctive rhetorical power.
In what follows, I sketch the way a mediated public domain shapes rhetorical
strategies around what constitutes ‘the public’. It is this ambivalent concept that
lies at the heart of media’s appropriation of situations and which invites com-
municative styles by political actors that for some resemble marketing strategies
and for others are more like show business. I go on to sketch the kind of rhetoric
that media often produce by drawing upon the distinctions and categories set out
in Chapters 4 and 5, using the example of TV news. Finally, I briefly question the
possibilities for alternative forms of media to stimulate ‘counterpublic’ rhetoric to
resist the purported trivialization of politics in public life.

Mediating the public domain

It has been the common fate of rhetoric and modern mass media to be regarded as
vital ingredients of democratic life and, simultaneously, its absolute scourge. On
the one hand, it is difficult to think of modern democracies without a ‘free press’
through which to exercise the other freedoms of speech and expression and to
hold governments (and other powers) to account. An independent media, political
theorists have argued for centuries, is the cornerstone of a free society (see Keane,
1991). How else would we get news of political corruption, such as President
Nixon’s deceit in the Watergate affair, if not for the investigations of journalists
such as Woodward and Bernstein? Yet, on the other hand, no part of democratic
life has been subject to so much critical interrogation for its negative impact on
politics and society. The 2012 Leveson Enquiry into the ethics of the press in the
UK – following revelations of widespread illegal phone hacking and other callous
intrusions into individuals’ private lives – demonstrated how some journalism
exceeds the boundaries of civil conduct. The media, like rhetoric in its day, treads
a fine line between the ideal of a robust, transparent public life and the reality of
a vapid and tawdry obsession with scandal and celebrity.
 Media rhetoric 129
For radical critics in the 1960s a popular, if perhaps exaggerated, critique of
media was as forms of authoritarian conditioning designed to ‘manufacture con-
sent’ among citizens (see Herman and Chomsky, 1995). It is certainly the case
that in the course of the twentieth century, politicians and governments have
found it opportune to make direct use of mass media (see Davis, 2007). A myriad
of examples support this view: from the recruitment of the newspaper magnate,
Lord Beaverbrook, to the UK Ministry of Information during the First World
War, to the more insidious ‘ministry of propaganda’ run by Joseph Goebbels in
Nazi Germany or the dissemination of pro-western views by Radio Free America
during the Cold War. Today, however, the idea of media as part of an authoritar-
ian system imposing itself on society is less convincing. Although structures of
media vary from country to country – some pluralistic and others more closely
linked to the state (see Davis, 2010: 7–9) – the sheer diversity of media suggests
that, if powerful and unaccountable interests are undoubtedly at work, there is
no one organizing centre and rarely one point of view. If democratic states once
(and occasionally still) used mass media purposefully to disseminate preferred
messages, it is important to remember the difference between ‘propaganda’ and
persuasion, noted in the last chapter. Whereas propaganda typically works by pro-
moting one, entirely unassailable point of view, persuasion assumes a degree of
choice; the receiver of the message is required, to some degree, to make up her
own mind (see Jowett and O’Donnell, 2006). As opportunities have multiplied in
the global marketplace, media have had to compete to make consumers choose
among them. That does not mean that they do not serve very powerful interests
with a consequent bias in the messages they disseminate, only that there is no one
overarching interest or authority they serve.
Instead of trying to understand the power of media exclusively by reference
to interests and organizations operating behind the scenes, a rhetorical approach
ought to reflect on the practice of communication itself. In the terms established
in previous chapters, we can think in terms of the way media help construct situ-
ations. Here it is important to think about the idea of the ‘public’ to which both
media and politics claim to be subservient. As Michael Higgins (2008) points out,
the notion of the public and qualities of ‘publicness’ are enormously significant
in liberal democracies: the public, conceived as a more or less unified subject,
is a source of authority that confers legitimacy and significance on judgements
made in its name. Notions of ‘public good’, ‘public service’ or ‘public interest’ are
rhetorically powerful because they invite automatic assent and a setting aside of
what is deemed private or particular. To be able to speak ‘in the name of’ the pub-
lic is therefore to command attention and allegiance.
The term ‘public’ has both formal political and informal cultural sources. The
formal political representation of the public comes as an ensemble of distinct
‘publics’ and as a unified public body in the parliaments, legislatures and execu-
tives of democratic government. In societies with extensive mass media, however,
the ‘public domain’ in which this privilege is exercised extends beyond the for-
mal powers of the state, into the wider society and its informal means of cultural
self-representation. In some countries a public broadcaster – such as the BBC in
130 Media rhetoric
the UK – may assume a primary role in laying claim to represent public values.
But as channels of information and opinion, all media take on informal public
roles in so far as they transmit the views of leaders, comment on politics and
events and convey popular opinion back to political representatives, as well as
entertaining audiences around boundaries of public taste.
‘The public’ therefore functions as the primary rhetorical figure – one of
ethos – by which a democratic society imagines itself and legitimates its own
self-governance. Yet it is also an ambivalent notion in that it names both the object
and the frame through which objects are perceived. What is classed as public is
usually something under examination (opinion, policy, the behaviour of politi-
cians, the actions of other states and so on), but also an aperture through which
to do the examining (debating ‘in public’, inviting the glare of ‘publicity’, public
scrutiny and so on). Invoking the public is a matter of deciding both what needs
to be discussed (objects) and also whether it is discussed at all, and how (frames).
Very often objects become public simply by virtue of their capacity to be put into
the public gaze. To take up a public perspective, then, is another distinctively rhe-
torical activity, one of situating issues for the purpose of judgement for or by the
community by bringing those issues into view. Parliaments and legislatures serve
as exemplary, formal means to do this while, on the other hand, artists, academics
and mass media provide a largely informal means. The rhetorical power of the
media, I shall argue later, consists less in making specific judgements (supportive
of vested interests, for example) and more in their capacity to influence whether,
what and how issues are situated ‘before the public’.
For all the moral force of the term, the parameters of ‘the public’ are rather
flexible, dependent upon the means that brings them into view. As is well known,
media technologies (such as TV and the internet) have persistently expanded the
public gaze and increased the velocity of information transmission such that formal
political conventions for collecting and deliberating issues are subsequently dimin-
ished. Publicness has consequently accrued a number of contradictory meanings and
accents. On the one side, the traditional qualities of publicness include hierarchi-
cal values such as transparency, accountability, bureaucracy, formality, ‘high-brow’
cultural distinction, duty and elitism – qualities that elevate public over private.
On the other, they increasingly include levelling qualities such as anti-elitism,
informality, popularity, cultural unification, popular participation and pleasure –
qualities that reconnect publicness to aspects of the ‘private’ realm. With the advent
of mass democracy, the formal, political qualities of the public, where citizens are
defined by their separation from and deference to political power, are increasingly
confronted with less formal, ‘cultural’ senses of the public that accentuate connec-
tion with audiences, ‘authenticity’, immediacy, participation and pleasure.
Speaking ‘for’ the public, then, has become increasingly problematic. On the
one hand, as a marker of authority, what is public retains its distinction and to
speak for it remains highly prized. But on the other, political institutions and
democratic representatives can no longer assume automatic or exclusive access
to that authority. Media such as TV and the press also claim to speak for the pub-
lic. The high degrees of audience participation that media can mobilize in, for
 Media rhetoric 131
example, ‘reality’ TV shows or press campaigns suggests they have a strong claim
to represent the public and ‘its’ values, too (albeit without the trappings of formal
elections). But this is a public that has become ever more indistinct from qualities
previously attributed to the private realm. As Michael Warner (2002: 417–19)
argues, mediated public discourse is peculiar in that (unlike formal public proce-
dures) it is simultaneously intimate and rather impersonal, addressing its numerous
audiences as individuals but also as members of the wider group. A ‘virtual’ sense
of community connecting the private individual with others is being perpetually
fabricated through media, for instance in its presentation of political news and
information deemed important enough to concern us, or its repertoire of sport and
entertainment designed to meet our personal tastes. Constantly at stake here are
values and desires that purportedly connect us to each other and join our personal
preferences with wider norms and expectations, placing what is private in public
and treating what is public as something private to be uniquely ‘revealed’. Thus
the public represented in and through the media is – unlike the virtuous and sober
citizens often imagined in a democracy – a citizenry often characterized by intense
feelings and attachments of which politicians (ever weary of declining voter turn-
out and increasing apathy) can only dream. But, as John Hartley (1992) points out,
these citizens are strangely ‘fictional’ rather than directly present before offices of
power. They are inclined to view the world in terms of images rather than complex
arguments, but they are also difficult to distinguish from the very media that claim
to be on their side and voicing their views.
A mediated public domain blurs the distinction between the formal and infor-
mal senses of the public and, consequently, what and how issues should be
situated before it. By consequence, media of different types (but particularly press
and TV) have become sites for competing strategies to control what comes into
view and how. This competition takes organizational and, as we shall see, rhetori-
cal forms. In terms of organization, most media are formally independent of the
state, although subordinate to the rule of law. But as platforms for publicity, they
articulate and shape the norms of public life to which democracies are account-
able and upon which governments are ultimately dependent. That places media
in an ambivalent position in relation to politics: they are both a subordinate and,
at the same time, extremely valuable source through which legitimacy is sought.
Politicians need the media to promote and justify their policies and arguments,
but the media need politicians to provide them access to the stories and comment
that sustain their market share of the audience. The relationship is a fraught one of
simultaneous dependence and competition over the limits of the public and who
can properly speak to and for it. How, then, does a mediated public domain influ-
ence the actual communication of political rhetoric?

Public sphere, marketing or showbusiness?

It has long been acknowledged that the development of modern mass media
has created the space for a certain kind of rhetorical agency. Media make pos-
sible independent comment upon the activities of the state such that strategies
132 Media rhetoric
of speech and argument might counterbalance its power. We can appreciate how,
on the back of the expansion of literacy and the technologies of printing in the
sixteenth century, media became integral to generating a common awareness of
place and responsibility. In Benedict Anderson’s terms, by these means the nation
was constituted as an ‘imagined community’ where once distant and dispersed
events were experienced as occurring within a common, ‘national’ horizon (see
Anderson, 2006; Thompson, 1995: ch. 2). Media overcame barriers of space and
time by assembling many and distant matters of concern in one place at regu-
lar moments, thereby generating a virtual space for speakers to communicate as
if directly with an audience. From that perspective, the mediation of public life
through diverse and critical media institutions allows for the flow of information
and opinion between governments and citizens, helping to represent and shape the
common interest.
Yet the communicative space generated through mass media is also perceivable
not as an open channel of unhindered communication but, rather, as an unequally
structured set of relations, with some interests dominating over others. Here, in
fact, public life becomes ‘mediatized’, or taken over by the demands and preoc-
cupations of private media interests and values. The space of publicity is thus
‘colonized’ by the expectations, pressures and techniques of commercial media.
Media present themselves, ad nauseam, as a wholesome and noble part of a demo-
cratic order, the ‘fourth estate’ speaking truth to power. Yet their practices regularly
demonstrate a cynical preoccupation with maximizing audience share and safe-
guarding the interests of their owners, seemingly at the expense of factual truth
(see Hobsbawm, 2006; Sparks and Tulloch, 2000). Often that entails minimizing
substantive critical content and openness to deliberation in favour of populist
spectacle and, frequently, a conservative politics that effectively narrows citizens’
critical participation in public life (Kellner, 2005; Edelman, 1988). Too often, main-
stream media seem willing to limit their critical potential to the intrigues of regular
politics, leaving aside deeper questions of political principle and controversy. This
is particularly noticeable during wars and military ventures, where mainstream
media regularly appear willingly complicit in sustaining official interpretations of
events (see Thussu and Freedman, 2003; Taylor, 1998).
Furthermore, we might note the deleterious effect of mass media on political
speeches and speech-giving since the media’s expansion in the twentieth century.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson (1988), for example, highlights the substantial shortening
of speeches in the age of television and the reduction of time devoted to political
debate. The ‘compression of political discourse’, she argues, has the consequence
that citizens are not able to hear all the nuances of an issue and so cannot evaluate
arguments in sufficient depth (ibid.: 13). Politicians then try to simplify their argu-
ments by using short phrases and soundbites, employing hyperbole rather than
subtle argument and relying upon the logic of ‘association’ rather than evidence
and well-crafted enthymemes that draw upon a deeply held common knowledge.
Furthermore, she continues, the proliferation of hired speechwriters has resulted
in ‘the sundering of thinking from speaking’ (ibid.: 27); public speech becomes
heavily formulaic rather than an expression of a speaker’s personal views or stock
 Media rhetoric 133
of knowledge and experience. Regularly, politicians do not know in detail their
own arguments, because they never thought them up in the first place, nor did
they participate in crafting the speeches they deliver – a situation that can have
serious consequences for a politician’s credibility when called to account (see
ibid.: 218–19).
Of course, the contrasting perceptions of media are not mutually exclusive: one
might hold to the ideal of unrestricted communication that mass media promise
but be nonetheless conscious that the reality falls somewhat short. In the work of
thinkers such as Habermas and other followers of deliberative ideals, the media
constitutes a potentially vital mechanism in the emergence of freely formed public
opinion (see Habermas, 1989; Garnham, 1992). In his account of the emergence
of the ‘public sphere’ in Europe from the eighteenth century onwards, Habermas
underscores the vital role of ‘men of letters’ in the development of critical opin-
ion that can subject the state to rational critique. Yet Habermas also notes the
‘decline’ of the public sphere with the emergence of modern mass media, which
are concerned more with advertising and appealing to what is ‘popular’ to service
its commercial interests, so restricting the capacity to deliberate (Habermas, 1989:
181–222). That concern is reinforced by recent research suggesting that, although
current media platforms regularly appeal to the public and claim to disseminate its
views, increasingly they diminish the actual demonstration of citizen deliberation.
Letters pages in newspapers are disappearing, television broadcasts limit their
conversations with members of the public to short vox pops rather than to debate
and discussion with politicians has assumed a rather cynical, interrogatory style
that automatically assumes the likelihood of wrongdoing on their part (see Wahl-
Jorgensen, 2001; Lewis, Wahl-Jorgensen and Inthorn, 2004). Thus proponents of
deliberative democracy underscore the importance, in principle, of the media to a
pluralistic and robust exchange of opinions. But in order to approximate a more
rational deliberation where opinions can be expressed and evaluated, the media
need, in their view, to undertake serious structural change. Such a view informs
much progressive opinion: to mediate public life effectively, mass media must cre-
ate more opportunities for different opinions to be expressed, cease functioning as
the mouthpiece of corporate interests and reduce their obsession with sustaining
(rather than challenging) popular prejudices (see Chambers and Costain, 2000;
Butsch, 2007). In short, effective democratic rhetoric requires media that cultivate
genuinely autonomous public spheres.
An alternative, less idealized way of looking at the mediation of public spheres,
however, is to view politics as irremediably bound up with media, its forms of
representation and the interests and powers that support them. That does not rule
out giving greater space and more seriousness to deliberation. But that can only
happen with and through a media culture, not by juxtaposing that culture to the
ideal of free communication. This is where we can see a greater role for rhetoric
and a rhetorical understanding of politics. For a mediated public sphere need not
be condemned outright as a distortion of communication, based on the dubious
assumption that if we remove that distortion, communication will flow freely;
instead, it can be conceived as a strategic field where politics and media interact
134 Media rhetoric
and compete to define what and how issues are made public. The question here
is not whether the media should be restrained in order to live up to an ideal, but
what the media actually supplies that enables some communicative strategies to
work rather than others.
One way that we might characterize the rhetorical relationship between politics
and the media is in terms of marketing. As organizations attuned fundamentally
to winning audiences, media outlets provide an extensive means of contact with
citizens that politicians themselves crave (see Davis, 2010: 36–9). It is no sur-
prise, then, to find that democratic parties and campaigning organizations have
adopted the ‘professionalized’ techniques and strategies of commercial media.
Indeed, the platforms and personnel of media are, increasingly, an integral
part of formal democratic politics (see Negrine et al., 2007). Media advisors
(frequently former journalists and press editors: often referred to as ‘spin doctors’),
professional pollsters and advertising and marketing experts are now integral
members of party campaign teams. Close relations with journalists and press
barons have long been part of liberal democratic politics, but now it is common
to find such people working full-time for the parties and closely with politi-
cal leaders. Accordingly, the manner of political communications has come to
resemble that of the private media more generally: simplified styles of writing
and communicating, the use of popular idioms and imagery in political advertis-
ing, the deliberate provision of soundbites for quick circulation through media,
the employment of anecdotes to suggest contact with genuine people and expe-
riences (see Atkins and Finlayson, 2013), targeting of key voter segments and
the ‘market testing’ of policies on an identified audience demographic prior
to campaigning (see Lees-Marshment, 2009). In short, a mediated politics is a
‘packaged’ politics where messages and modes of appeal are fashioned to be as
popular as possible so as not to alienate key constituencies. Winning an election
is now like winning over a TV audience.
The marketing model of political communication directs attention to the
myriad techniques that are now commonplace in democratic politics (see
Lees-Marshment, 2008; Davis, 2010: ch. 3). The recent successes of the Democrats
in the US or the Labour party in the UK (packaged as ‘New Labour’; see Negrine,
2007), for example, were built upon extensive and sophisticated use of polling
data, high quality advertising and often vacuous but easily digestible political
messages that invoke sensation more than practical goals (for example, President
Obama’s tagline, ‘Change we can believe in’). The language of professional poli-
ticians is increasingly disciplined by media advisors who ensure that they stay
‘on message’ (that is, do not diverge from the official line of argument), that the
primary message remains uppermost in their own discourse when interviewed and
that a turn of phrase or epithet is persistently recalled to help define the situation.
These techniques ensure consistency and simplicity in a media environment that
all too readily exposes inconsistency and dismisses complexity.
The picture of the relationship between politics and media provided by the
political marketing model is not one that would please deliberative democrats.
Indeed, it broadly converges with models of economic rationality favoured by
 Media rhetoric 135
political scientists in the 1950s, noted in Chapter 6. Here the voter is conceived
essentially as a consumer seeking satisfaction in the political marketplace and
political parties act like firms to meet that demand by competitively marketing
their products (policies and leaders). Political rhetoric is thus reduced to a good
‘sales pitch’ and good communication reduced to success in maintaining popu-
larity. But if that model undoubtedly illuminates the style of campaign speeches
delivered by parties, nonetheless its conception of human motivation and the
way politicians respond to it is rather restricted and unrealistic. Indeed, for some,
it treats citizens as fundamentally passive and even weakens democracy (see
Hamelink, 2007). If we understand citizens’ motivations to be more complex than
ranking preferences, then we might also consider how a mediated rhetoric extends
beyond salesmanship.
That is precisely what John Street argues in his alternative to the political mar-
keting model. A mediated politics, for him, functions more like showbusiness than
sales and marketing (see Street, 2003; 2004). Politicians, claims Street, are not
simply selling policies. In adapting to media techniques they also change the ways
in which they address citizens and the kind of arguments that appeal to them.
Above all, they are marketing themselves as personalities. As evidence Street
points, in particular, to the emergence of the ‘celebrity’ politician. This refers
not to entertainment celebrities who participate in politics, but to politicians who
adopt a communicative repertoire that owes more to the techniques of showbusi-
ness than to the marketing of commodities. According to Street, politicians do not
sell objects of use whose value can be compared and calculated. They are selling
themselves and their own performances. As he points out, amplifying sensation is
similar to political marketing, but the public celebrity strategy is less instrumental
and more cultural or ‘expressive’. That is, it involves promoting images and ide-
als with which citizens can personally identify, rather than material objects for
consumption (Street, 2003: 90–91).
Politicians increasingly act like public celebrities by hiring media consultants,
controlling access to themselves by managing interviews and photo opportuni-
ties, associating themselves with other celebrities and attending celebrity events,
modelling clothes or appearing on entertainment shows on television (Street,
2004). The aim here, claims Street, is to cultivate and manage their symbolic
status through the manipulation of style (2003: 94). Mass media have therefore
enabled not simply the branding of parties and politicians for electoral market
advantage, but also accentuation of celebrity status so that politicians may fashion
themselves as distinct personalities, making associations with images, ideals and
activities such as music, film or art that are deemed ‘authentic’ or outside the cold
rationality of official party politics.
A notorious example of this celebrity model is former Italian Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi, who achieved considerable electoral success in the 1990s
and early 2000s. Berlusconi, a media magnate who owns a vast proportion of
private media in Italy but had previously had no direct experience of politics,
originally modelled his party, Forza Italia! (‘Go, Italy!’), on a football support-
ers’ club; that is, as a vehicle to promote its leader (himself, with the help of
136 Media rhetoric
his vast television network). Despite achieving little in terms of public policy,
Berlusconi’s ‘personalized’ politics came to dominate Italy for many years.
His success was built upon an amplified image of himself as a dynamic busi-
nessman with a ‘can-do’ approach to politics, authentically in touch with the
aspirations of ordinary people and yet also with good looks and a ‘star’ quality
reminiscent of 1950s movie actors – features that distinguished him from regu-
lar party politicians (see Ginsborg, 2005; Fabbrini, 2012). The effort to present
oneself as authentic but fascinating can be seen in other celebrity politicians
who accentuate their personalities for the purpose of media consumption, such
as the Conservative Mayor of London Boris Johnson, former French President
Nicholas Sarkozy or even US President Barack Obama.
In rhetorical terms, we can understand the phenomenon of the celebrity politi-
cian as, once more, an accentuation of the dimensions of ethos and pathos. Mass
media, particularly television, permit politicians to fashion personalized authority
and a sentimental connection with their electorate, allowing them to speak as a
type of stylized character. In that way, the politician’s dislocation from context
is overcome by fitting with existing cultural commonplaces. In this, the affec-
tive rather than purely rational aspect of communication plays an enormous part,
encouraging the public to associate politicians with the world of feelings and per-
formance more proper to the artiste than to the salesman (for further discussion,
see Davis, 2010: ch. 6; BJPIR, 2012).
Does the emergence of celebrity politicians diminish the role of critical delib-
eration in politics? Are citizens being communicated with simply as passive
admirers and star-struck fans? For Street, celebrity politics should not always be
dismissed as empty populism. Indeed, he argues that it accentuates the aesthetic
nature of representation in the modern age underscored by Ankersmit (discussed
in Chapter 3). Communicating through style has always been a part of poli-
tics, but it is now increasingly visible. The celebrity politician responds to the
media’s enormous receptivity to such characters and to a thirst among elector-
ates to see representatives in tune with their own tastes. While many aspects
of style and celebrity are highly fabricated and relatively flimsy (on occasion
the public mask drops), the need to catch people’s attention and to hold their
allegiance is paramount in democratic politics, especially in an age when other
distractions are increasingly available. These may well be the first step in con-
necting people to issues, arguments and forms of deliberation that they would
otherwise miss. At the same time, we may remain suspicious that a stylized
politics is one that obscures the mediatic frame through which it operates – that
is, the way in which it positions audiences as recipients of entertainment. By
accommodating a mediatized public sphere, celebrity politics diminishes other
ways of doing politics that, for example, demand attention to detail, precise
argument and judgement over fine distinctions. Celebrity rhetoric thus exhorts
from a stage where elites strut and perform for their publics but do not always
invite greater critical attention.
 Media rhetoric 137
Media rhetoric: the example of TV news
I claimed that mass media stage contests over the dimensions and qualities of
the public and publicness. If politicians’ own media strategies constitute a vital
dimension of this contest, it is in the ubiquitous discourse of the media itself that
it is most evident. In the course of recent decades, a vast amount of critical atten-
tion has been paid to the form and content of media output. Much of this attention
has been highly critical, noting its peculiar biases and purported accommodation
to establishment values (see Glasgow University Media Group, 1995). Whole tra-
ditions of analysis – such as media and cultural studies – have also emerged to
explore the way the press and, especially, TV broadcasts work ‘ideologically’ to
reproduce dominant norms and values, as well as sometimes to challenge them
(see Bell and Garrett, 1998; Berger, 2005; Edelman, 1988). From studies of press
and TV news coverage to analyses of ‘soap operas’ and sci-fi shows, the links
between media and power relations in the wider society are regularly sought in the
content of media output that produces, ‘encodes’ and recirculates dominant mean-
ings (see Turner, 2011; Corner, 1998; Finlayson and Martin, 1997).
Much of this work on media discourse is highly relevant to rhetorical enquiry,
particularly its concern with language and its effects on the wider public (see
Matheson, 2005; Talbot, 2007; Fairclough, 1995). But what is distinctive to rhe-
torical political enquiry is not only whether or how discourse reinforces power
relations located elsewhere but, as already noted, how it responds to and reappro-
priates situations, thereby shaping the kinds of intervention that might be made.
Here it is important to underline the partially disembedded or ‘de-situated’ nature
of media discourse: the medium of print or television broadcasting draws us to
specific events and issues but also seems, itself, to have no fixed location in time
and space (Thompson, 1995: 31–7). Media reportage on events is usually after
the fact but presented as up-to-date, last-minute or ‘live’. Improbable gaps in time
are overcome, presenting situations that may have happened or are even yet to
happen. Equally, media outputs are received spatially in very intimate surround-
ings, in the workplace and domestic environments where people read, listen and
watch. So media discourse addresses audiences by collapsing the normal param-
eters of space and time and yet is experienced as deeply intimate, right in front
of them, often at regular intervals. By consequence, public events are strangely
doubled, occurring somewhere specific in the world but also ‘in’ the paper or ‘on’
TV (see Scannell, 1996: 76; Couldry and McCarthy, 2004).
What are the consequences of this peculiar circumstance? One is that media are
constantly recruiting audiences into their own space by presenting themselves as
privileged portals for grasping situations. In this, media are themselves rhetorical
devices. They must simultaneously hail their audiences by getting their attention –
ensuring their allegiance as readers, listeners or viewers – and successfully deliver
the information they promise. As Robert C. Allen puts it in the case of television, it
‘constantly addresses, appeals, implores, demands, wheedles, urges, and attempts
to seduce the viewer’ (Allen, 1992: 102). Form and content work together so that
the distance between rhetor (the media form) and audience (viewers, listeners
138 Media rhetoric
or readers) is reduced and media can appear to function as direct windows on
events. This is partly a consequence of the fact that most media is commercially
funded and each medium has to recruit audiences for its advertising. But it is also
because, unlike literature or cinema (where consumers give themselves over to
the medium), mass media such as television and newspapers cannot assume that
audiences will stay attentive. The impact of these circumstances on the way media
discourse works are profound. As Allen argues, television (but we can extend
this to the press and radio as well, to an extent) is compelled to adopt what he
calls a ‘rhetorical mode of address’ – that is, a simulated face-to-face encounter
where a voice constantly speaks as though directly to the audience. That mode of
address seeks to make audiences feel like participants in a ‘communication trans-
action’, persistently provoking them to respond, invoking an implied ‘contract’
(Allen, 1992: 117–19). Media are constantly calling out to potential audiences
to pull them into the situations which they tell them, ideally, that they already
want, amplifying issues and defining situations in familiar formats and packages,
such as ‘Friday evening’s viewing’, a celebrity-led campaign appeal on behalf
of war veterans or a ‘major debate’ among politicians. As linguist Mary Talbot
underlines, media discourse is not uni-directional speech. It is highly interactive,
forever engaging its audiences in interpersonal exchanges to make them complicit
with it (Talbot, 2007: 9–10, 14–16). If this form of address is so prominent, then
might we also use rhetorical categories to explore how it works?
Let us set aside entertainment and leisure, which dominates media output (see
Brummett, 2011), and think for a moment of TV news. It is here that much of
what is understood as routine politics and argument is consumed (but see Couldry,
Livingstone and Markham, 2010). Although news media present themselves as
disinterested and authoritative gateways to the truth, we can find regular tech-
niques that demonstrate rhetorical choices in accordance with the mode of
address noted above (see Neuman, Just and Crigler, 1992; Edelman, 1988). These
techniques align closely with the categories of rhetoric enumerated in Chapters 4
and 5, namely discovery of argument, arrangement, style and delivery.

Discovery of argument
Although formats vary, most TV news consists of a series of reports on selected
items of social and political significance. The rhetor in this instance is typically
a newsreader or ‘anchor’ who, in addition to short items by different reporters,
speaks in various voices – as personable representative of the corporation, as
authoritative narrator reading a script or as interlocutor speaking on behalf of the
public or for different sides of a debate to illuminate their opposition. The anchor
fulfils the role of rhetorical mode of address by acting as an identifiable individual
seemingly talking directly to, and acting for, the audience.
The presentation of TV news items frequently takes the form of a summarized
narrative description of events: who was involved, what happened and with what
consequence. While such reports profess to be objective and factual descriptions,
nonetheless they consist of certain kinds of argument. Inevitably, editorial choices
 Media rhetoric 139
are made and rules followed regarding how to present reports in a way that
amplifies their newsworthiness, adopting the different voices expected by view-
ers. For news broadcasts are premised on the argument that what is to be delivered
counts as ‘news’ for an audience rather than simply routine events. Already, news
programmes are rhetorically structured by answering an implicit question: ‘what
is the news today’? The news addresses its audiences as viewers hungry for knowl-
edge about what is deemed important for them. It is the job of news reporters and
editors, then, to filter out items of news from routine or normal day-to-day busi-
ness. As Meyer (2002) argues, news journalists typically seek out certain kinds of
‘events’ that disrupt or diverge from this supposed normality. Events that cannot
be so categorized are unlikely to make it to the news or even to the news desk.
Meyer lists some further characteristics that make for news events:

Certain important factors of reportage enhance the newsworthiness of the

events to be described: whatever has happened should have a short time-span
and if at all possible have an already concluded episode; it should stand in
close proximity to the observer, spatially, politically, and culturally; the infor-
mation should have surprise value in terms of themes already introduced to
and known by the audience; the events should involve conflict; and, finally,
feature serious harm to somebody, or else great successes or achievements.
(Meyer, 2002: 30)

These features help to dramatize the news item as an event outside normal life but
in proximity to something familiar, allowing the reporter to redescribe it in terms
that accentuate its distinctiveness. In short, they present us with a situation defined
by what Bitzer called an exigence (Bitzer, 1968). The exigence may be a contro-
versial public statement or speech, an election result, a scandal (see Thompson,
2000), a policy debate, a natural disaster, etc. Its status as news is defined by its
actual or implied controversy within the horizons of a presumed, or ‘ideal’, audi-
ence (see Black, 1999). The narrative style of argument, as we noted in Chapter 4,
usually allows for a coded redescription of the event in terms that reveal certain
key ‘facts’: the sequences that led up to the event, the various moments or fac-
tors relevant to it and the actual or possible result. Although journalists typically
refrain from assigning overt moral responsibility to human subjects, it is common
to talk about news events via topics such as ‘cause and effect’ or ‘consequences’.
In these ‘objective’ redescriptions, as many critical analysts of the media argue,
lies the potential for a wide variety of subtle prejudices or biases to operate.

Arrangement
Narratives provide a recognizable structure that influences the rhetorical arrange-
ment of the news. What counts as ‘news’ has to be formatted to fit the space and
time of the broadcast and the descriptive format of the items under discussion.
News reports will typically be produced in short segments of a certain length,
perhaps just a few minutes at most, that permit them to be inserted in the ‘magazine’
140 Media rhetoric
format of news programming. That means reporters and editors must condense
their information in a way that, overall, resembles the telling of a short story. As
Kozloff points out, television stories employ relatively formulaic structures that
insert situations into a recognizable time frame, often in which an initial equilib-
rium is perceived to have broken and, later, may be (or have been) restored (see
Kozloff, 1992: 69–77).
Within this story ‘arc’, a number of variations are possible. For instance, Meyer
talks of the importance of personification. The story is usually about people
who take up dispositions towards situations or other people, rather than about
abstract systems or processes. That allows the story to unfold as a tale of human
subjects with choices, grievances or demands that personalize the event in ways
with which audiences can identify. Thus the story might be about a dictator who
is clinging on to power, a dispute between political parties represented by spe-
cific people or an earthquake that has destroyed the lives of ‘ordinary people’.
Likewise, Meyer mentions the importance of drama to the narrative. Stories tend
to dwell on conflicts between individuals, on the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in a situa-
tion, allowing the story to focus on the different ‘sides’ of an issue of contentious
debate and the possibility of eventual reconciliation. Elections, for instance, pro-
vide a ready-made structure of conflict and resolution that can be easily packaged.
Furthermore, in the telling of news stories we often find the recurrence of clas-
sic archetypes: mothers and fathers, friends and enemies, innocent victims and
powerful wrongdoers, and so on. Archetypes permit the personified characters of
narratives to resonate with the audience’s already held understanding of social and
moral conflict. Finally, Meyer points out the importance of verbal duels between
the characters in the story. For the conflict to resonate and keep our attention, it
helps to have concrete evidence of opposed characters arguing either with each
other or to camera. If the individuals concerned cannot be viewed, then others
might be brought into the studio in support of each side. Thus we regularly bear
witness to fabricated ‘heated debates’ between political leaders or representatives
of certain social groups. Again, this playing out of a conflict gives momentum to
the story, inviting the audience to anticipate an outcome (perhaps even a ‘win-
ner’) and permitting the reporter to present the story at a distance, as an objective
observer. Equally, if there is no actual antagonist, by switching voice the anchor/
reporter might offer up points of view on behalf of ‘the public’ or another absent
constituency to which interviewees may respond as though in a debate.

Style
Rhetorical style, as we have seen, originally referred to spoken language. In
TV news we tend to hear language that is concise, uncomplicated and descrip-
tive rather than openly evaluative. News reportage tends to be in the third person
rather than a direct address from the perspective of the newsreader (which con-
trasts with the ‘demotic’ speech of tabloid newspapers, which regularly speak
as if voicing the popular conscience), although sometimes reporters on location
will talk to the anchor of what they witnessed or have been told by witnesses.
 Media rhetoric 141
Expert commentators (such as reporters on economics) may even summarize
their own opinion of an event. But for the most part, narration takes a loosely
formal style that is accessible and simple, purposefully making clear the issue
for an audience presumed not to have expert knowledge. That is often evident
in the brief headline statements that announce the items to be discussed, but it
continues in the language of narration. Anchors may ask rhetorical questions on
behalf of the audience, which are then subsequently answered in the report (see
Kozloff, 1992: 80). Regular use is made of metaphors or similes to help convey
the issues in a nutshell: thus political elections are usually described as ‘races’.
Indeed, the metaphor of competitive sport is common in narrating various kinds
of domestic and international conflict, because it imposes a clear structure: dis-
putes become intelligible as purposeful, ultimately resolvable situations (with
different sides seeking to become the winner) and the reporter adopts an observer
role, keeping the audience ‘updated’ as the competition unfolds.
In addition to the reportage, the news anchor – who functions like a chairper-
son to direct and order the segments of news – will often adopt a speaking style
that helps retain the audience’s sympathy and a tone that will prepare the audi-
ence for what follows. For instance, that might include the welcoming address at
the opening of the broadcast, the humorous quip between segments of news, or
the ‘sincere’ parting remarks. Very often male, mature and with a deep voice, the
anchor speaks as a (gendered) source of authority indicating the professionalism
of the whole programme and its entitlement to deliver news – all of which are
markers of ethos.

Delivery
Finally, as regards delivery, it is clear that television is itself a peculiar combina-
tion of sound and vision. Television is known for the constancy of voices that
can be heard (see Kozloff, 1992): most programming involves a high degree
of spoken narration to guide the viewer through the schedule. TV news is no
less dominated by the presence of voice. When there is no voice, there is some-
times music. The opening credits, for instance, play a peculiar type of musical
announcement – drums or a herald fanfare – to draw attention to the broadcast
and hail the viewer.
But if voices are a fundamental part of the delivery, so too are visual images.
From the insignia of the opening credits, to the summary footage of reports
announced at the start, through to the reports themselves and the linking segments
in the studio, TV news unfolds a constant stream of visual information to which
the spoken narrative is an accompaniment. On television, images are expected to
be arresting but also informative, exciting our interest (perhaps by showing foot-
age of the event in question) but also guiding us through elements of action. When
delivering reports, it is important for us to identify the story with the images – a
possibility enhanced by the ‘live’ shot outside of the studio, where the reporter
speaks from the site of the event itself. At the same time, the news screen can con-
tain a whole variety of textual information related to the event under examination
142 Media rhetoric
(the summary headline), and also other news (for instance, in scrolling news
‘ticker’ at the bottom of the screen). Likewise, visual simplification in the form of
photos, graphs and iconography permits complex data to be communicated acces-
sibly and in keeping with the need to flow through a narrative.
Finally, in addition to the sound and vision of the programme itself, the sched-
uling of the programme influences delivery (see Kozloff, 1992: 89–94). In order
to maximize its audience, news has to be delivered at a time that coincides with
viewers turning on their televisions and making themselves available as viewers,
although the advent of 24-hour news channels has enabled audiences to choose
for themselves when they might be viewers. Nonetheless, news programmes still
come in different lengths at key moments of the day: short bulletins on the hour, a
longer lunchtime news summary and a more ‘serious’ evening news just as view-
ers settle down to watch the evening schedule or before they go to bed. The timing
of the news also influences the way the narrative arguments unfold; in commercial
TV, especially, segments must fit around the necessity for advertisement breaks.
The latter are often incorporated into the broadcast by advance warning of upcom-
ing items before a break in order to heighten (and retain) audience interest.
This, admittedly brief, account of how TV news communicates its content
demonstrates a particular form of rhetorical stance common in contemporary
broadcasting. TV news might be said to constitute a rhetorical ‘genre’ in which
distinctive techniques of argument, arrangement, style and delivery are combined
to create a portal through which situations can be appropriated as news events for
its audiences (see Street, 2001: 44–46). Often these techniques are so familiar as
to go largely unrecognized as a rhetorical strategy – we hear the message and do
not always grasp its peculiar form. As we have seen, politicians and campaign-
ers adapt their own arguments and interventions so as to coincide with the news
genre by tactically timing the release of statements, supplying their own facts
and figures for narration, simplifying issues and identifying areas of conflict, in a
language that directly contrasts with other points of view.
There are, of course, other genres of TV broadcasting concerned with news and
public controversy that present alternative ways to engage politics and argument.
The political interview, for example, is a genre that lends itself to the ‘confes-
sional’ nature of television (putting private thoughts into public) and the testing of
personal ethos. The interaction of two personalities offers a potentially adversarial
scenario, a species of deliberative combat that is often tantalizing and sometimes
openly confrontational. As Higgins reminds us, at stake in this scenario are often
the meanings we properly attach to the public (Higgins, 2008: 39–44). Politicians
and interviewers wrestle, via their arguments, to speak ‘truthfully’ for the pub-
lic: the politician through her defence of policy and the journalist in her role as
democratic ‘advocate’, holding the politician to account. In some instances, this
struggle is a type of rhetorical jousting, with a series of questions serving as tech-
niques to expose inconsistency and answers as efforts to evade exposure.
Other genres include the documentary broadcast, an extended report that may
combine forensic narrative with one-to-one interviews, as well as audio-visual
footage such as fabricated re-enactments of events. Instead of the brief report,
 Media rhetoric 143
the documentary affords opportunities to look in more depth at social issues and
weigh up different points of view in greater complexity. In some instances, how-
ever, the documentary may be a dramatized account of an event (with actors)
or even be hosted by a popular celebrity. The latter represent ‘hybrid’ forms of
media discourse that combine elements of entertainment with serious delibera-
tion (Talbot, 2007: 29–33). While to some this may seem to diverge from the
factual purposes of news broadcasting, it may still be said to follow the rhetorical
convention of ‘revealing’ the truth of an event (see Corner and Rosenthal, 2005).
In media discourse, as we have seen, ethos, pathos and logos are rarely easy to
separate.

Counterpublic rhetoric
The picture sketched in the previous sections suggests that a mediated rhetoric is,
typically, a rather conservative force. Conventional political strategies that work
with mass media adjust their arguments to align with the format that effectively
delivers the message. That means working within the time scales of media pro-
duction and the values and symbols demanded by them. While popular tastes and
participation may be incorporated into these strategies – and there are periodic
struggles between politicians and media that seek to redress the balance between
the two – mediated public domains offer little opportunity for critical engage-
ment with their form, nor do they provide for alternative modes of speech and
address. To many critics, a mediated politics constitutes a deceptive ‘spectacle’
that obscures rather than reveals the workings of power, numbs us to genuine con-
troversy and distracts us from the issues we should be talking about (see Edelman,
1988; Postman, 2005). This is (and has long been) the view of many scholars of
media, not without good reason. The question arises, then, as to whether media
might ever furnish opportunities for rhetorical strategies that resist, perhaps even
transform, dominant discourses.
It might help to think about this question in terms of what Warner (2002:
423–24) calls ‘counterpublic’ discourse. That term describes modes of address
that are self-consciously directed against dominant accounts of the public and
what constitutes publicness. There is an implicit subversiveness to counterpublic
discourse in so far as it resists the assumed universalism of dominant media forms
and norms, perhaps by addressing a distinctive constituency and broaching topics
thought improper in public. Thus we could say that lesbian and gay magazines in
the 1970s and 80s helped cultivate a counterpublic sphere by addressing groups
who were typically marginalized in institutionalized media discourse. Such
magazines discussed topics such as same-sex relations and sexual practices that,
elsewhere, were not counted as worthy of debate. Moreover, this discourse helped
prepare a progressive understanding of how to respond to HIV and AIDS in the
wider public domain in the 1980s.
That example is useful in reminding us that counterpublic rhetoric is not simply
the practice of servicing a minority. Rather, it takes issue with the dominant val-
ues that frame the public domain at any particular moment and, eventually, may
144 Media rhetoric
even transform that domain by providing a new means to address citizens and talk
about situations. Counterpublic rhetoric, then, emerges through controversies over
the nature of situations, which political actors seek to appropriate in new ways.
We might reasonably hypothesize that any public sphere consists of dominant and
marginal media that compete to represent publicness, with the latter occasionally
threatening to displace the former as authentic portals on events. With this hypoth-
esis in mind, I want briefly to consider two areas: first, initiatives in traditional
media and second, the emergence of so-called ‘new media’ as sites of democratic
engagement. In both, there is thought to be a greater possibility of addressing
publics as critical citizens, and not simply as consumers of entertainment, than is
the case in mainstream media. Regarding initiatives in traditional media, ‘public
service’ channels on various regional or national television networks, for exam-
ple, offer broadcasts concerning social activities that address audiences in various
ways, often as ‘concerned citizens’ or as seekers of information and critical ques-
tioning of dominant social norms. Likewise, local newspapers seek to maintain
a close connection with specific audiences, providing them with information and
advice concerning their locality. Like public service broadcasters, these papers
usually have a relatively small audience and are under pressure to give way to
the more powerful national newspapers or the increasing use of internet services.
Nonetheless, they often permit individuals to speak for themselves and in their
own idiom, to address others with similar concerns and to provide examples of
local, self-organized public encounters that differ from the highly managed con-
ventions of ‘national’ debate.
Public service broadcasters and local newspapers are perhaps unlikely sources
for mobilizing effective counterpublic rhetoric, since they are often underfunded
or, in the case of local newspapers, still dependent upon commercial revenues.
A more significant example, however, might be Al-Jazeera, an originally Arab-
based news channel that reports on the Middle East and its politics, explicitly
presenting itself as an alternative to western news services. Al-Jazeera has news
channels all over the world and in many respects presents itself in a similar
format to that used in mainstream news delivery (as discussed above). Yet its
explicit effort to report on events that get missed or ignored by western media
and, in particular, its incorporation of reportage from citizens involved in such
events set it apart from mainstream news. Particularly after the Al Qaeda attacks
in 2001, Al-Jazeera developed a reputation for journalism from warring regions
of the Middle East and for openly adopting a critical perspective on western
reporting itself. The latter, it has been argued, are often too accepting of their
governments’ official statements and unduly prone to ignore the experiences of
people displaced by their government’s actions. Notably, Al-Jazeera journal-
ists collaborate with citizens of the countries on which they report in order to
broaden their coverage, and they regularly invite citizens to comment on their
programmes (see Miles, 2005).
What these alternative media provide, then, is a focus on the particular and
the marginal, as opposed to the universal and western national scales that domi-
nate mainstream media. Addressing audiences as citizens and as participants in
 Media rhetoric 145
the events they cover, being concerned with their locality or interested in specific
social identities, they refuse the homogenization of the public domain that main-
stream western media generate. They offer an emphasis on publicness more in
terms of particularity than universality. As such, they provide points of resistance
to the output of mainstream media and offer alternative ways of addressing audi-
ences and different kinds of argumentative stance.
In contrast to alternative forms of traditional media, which are often expensive
to fund and require specialist expertise, the internet and digital communications
technology has provided relatively cheap and massively participatory access to
media. Indeed, the internet has aroused spectacular excitement as a potentially
revolutionary form of communication by virtue of its global extension and minimal
costs. The question arises, then, as to whether it can enhance democratic citizen-
ship (see Dahlgren, 2009). The use of digital media platforms, such as Facebook,
Youtube and Twitter, during the Arab Spring in 2010/11 sparked a great deal of
interest in the possibility of such media offering a radically new sense of the
public domain, especially for social movements (see Donk et al., 2004).
The very idea of communication in ‘cyberspace’ is sustained by a powerful
sense of unconstrained movement and non-hierarchical (or ‘horizontal’) oppor-
tunities to speak about whatever and to whomever one wants. Unlike traditional
media, which require one or more fixed locations to site technology (TV stu-
dios, radio broadcasters, newspaper printing and so on) and experts to operate the
equipment, the internet operates in a uniquely mobile context where messages
can be relayed to and from an infinite set of locations by almost anyone. It also
permits a high degree of interaction, unlike traditional types of media. Social
media applications, for instance, permit members to stay permanently in touch
with each other and also to make new contacts across the world. Meanwhile,
a vast number of websites allow almost any groups or individuals to publicize
themselves or their ideas, often with minimal interference from public authorities.
The flow of information across the internet is on a scale that is utterly unthinkable
for traditional media.
But it has been easy for the internet and digital technologies to have their poten-
tial for reviving political engagement vastly overstated. Precisely because they
offer such a high degree of participation, states and private companies struggle
to retain control over their use. Indeed, there is strong interest among authorities
for such media to remain an extension of entertainment industries rather than
challenging the political public domain. It is also evident that social media and
web applications enable increased communication, but not always with rhetori-
cal dexterity. For all its evident abundance, the web is not a uniformly effective
medium to routinely transform judgements or formulate inventive ways of argu-
ing, since it is largely insensitive to the diverse situations and character of its
audiences. Likewise, ‘social media’ provide a further means for public confession
of private opinion, but they do so with a notorious inability to help participants
judge decorum. They offer an intimate and immediate sense of direct participa-
tion in events, but in privileging a politics of personal gratification they cannot
of themselves sustain either the commitment or the argumentative repertoires
146 Media rhetoric
necessary to advance political movements (see Nusselder, 2013). Certainly,
social media permit expression and circulation of opinions and observations
that might be informative and provocative. They can help recruit and coordinate
communities of resistance to states and other powerful organizations, as events
such as the Arab Spring and the ‘Occupy’ protests demonstrate. But, as sober
commentators increasingly observe, social media are not in themselves intrinsi-
cally radical or revolutionary (see Hindman, 2008). At their most effective they
have helped ‘choreograph’ assemblies of activists by employing the peculiar
public intimacy of media to provide an ‘emotional narration’ to concrete events
(Gerbaudo, 2012). As such, they may contribute to rhetorically re-appropriating
situations (such as dissent and protest) that might otherwise be hidden from the
view of mainstream media or neutralized by prevailing institutions. In this they
help to build audiences and enable incipient forms of popular representation to
emerge, at least temporarily, outside traditional parliaments and assemblies (if
these exist at all). But sustaining that appropriation is still dependent on other,
material modes of organization and assembly (such as, for example, camps and
occupations) that physically transform public spaces and bring people into actual
(rather than merely virtual) proximity with each other.
Digital communications and social media have provided important new ways
to develop counterpublic discourse. They offer a means to bypass conservative
political and media institutions and to initiate rhetorical interventions that pro-
voke citizens to think again about the situations they face. In this they contribute
to expanding the struggle, undertaken by all media platforms, to determine the
nature and dimensions of what is public. But that is not a struggle that, in and
of itself, always results in the successful transformation of public discourse. We
should beware, as Jodi Dean (2002) argues, that the promise of publicity in what
she calls ‘communicative capitalism’ can be itself deeply illusory, a veneer of ever
expanding transparency that obscures our complicity with elites in power.

Summary
I suggested earlier that there are similarities between our attitudes to the media
and to rhetoric. Both provide for the discursive representation of the world and
involve the purposeful selection of communicative techniques to present situa-
tions to audiences. As a consequence, both receive regular praise and blame for
how they shape – and perhaps manipulate or distort – the ways in which we under-
stand what is going on in the world. Yet the media is also a vast and powerful
set of organizations and practices and its reach extends far beyond the limited
judicial, ceremonial and political spaces of persuasion for which rhetoric was
originally developed. Dominated by a relatively small number of wealthy cor-
porations, media can do what rhetorical instruction never could: that is, supply
vast communities with representations of themselves far beyond the constraints
of local times, spaces and political authorities. Democratic representation is now
defined more by the techniques of mass mediation than by the arts of practical
deliberation and persuasion. Indeed, we might say that media platforms and their
 Media rhetoric 147
techniques have replaced classical rhetoric as the repository of knowledge and
instruction in public communication.
As we have seen, the consequences of mass media expansion for democratic
politics are ambivalent for those who cherish reasoned debate. Political marketing
and the cultivation of public celebrity are well-established responses by politicians
that prioritize appeals to ethos and pathos more than to logos. Media can certainly
provide space for some arguments and for rigorous political debate but, as we
noted in relation to TV news, the rhetoric of media discourse tends to appropriate
situations with strategies that suit its own medium. As a consequence, mainstream
output conforms overwhelmingly to standardized dramatic narratives, clichéd
modes of presentation and simplified forms of argument and debate. These are
designed, above all else, to persuade individuals to become and remain audiences
by regurgitating commonplace values and affirming a limited set of expectations.
But if this can make contemporary media seem like an improbable environment
for developing particularly radical or critical arguments, the contest to speak ‘for
the public’ is itself a rhetorical dispute that can never be absolutely resolved.
9 Embodied speech
Rhetoric and the politics of gender

It could hardly have escaped anyone’s attention that throughout most of the
history of rhetorical enquiry, public speech has been imagined as an activity of men.
Aristotle’s deliberating citizens, Cicero’s eloquent orators, even Rousseau’s guid-
ing legislator – all were assumed, naturally, to be male. It is, of course, men who
have been associated with the capacity to reason, judge and debate with such skill
and consistency that only they could deliberate the serious matters of public life.
Women, on the other hand, have been characterized by a different sort of speech:
typically, ‘emotional’ speech – a way of communicating that is thought to be
excessive, uncontrolled and drenched in sentiment, easily swayed or prone to
misunderstanding. More often than not, women’s talk is dismissed as the chatter
of the household, the nagging domestic matriarch, the stern overseer of child’s
play or the gentle singer of lullabies. Politics, it seems, is thought to be a man’s
business, suited to those with aggressively competitive but also sharply rational
qualities (see Jamieson, 1988: 78–81).
Women’s relegation to speakers in the private realm and the denigration of
how they speak in public marks out another, fundamental way in which rhetoric
connects to the dimension of the political. The basic questions of who speaks,
how and what can be said are closely bound up with the gendered allocation
of social roles and capacities. In democratic cultures, the formal public realm
is almost universally coded ‘male’, while private life is ‘female’. When these,
often unconscious, principles are flouted – when private speech enters into public,
for example, such as when intimate or personal matters are openly discussed or
‘domestic speech’ is employed to talk about political issues – there arises a sense
of transgression. Yet despite continued efforts to make the private/public divi-
sion map on to a male/female dichotomy, from the perspective of rhetoric, such
efforts seem rather futile. For persuasion implies a softening of rigid distinctions
and hardened oppositions, if not their complete dissolution – that is why rheto-
ric is often defined as ‘seductive’ speech, a term that implies stimulating bodily
arousal and desire. If not all efforts at persuasion are obviously sexual, nonethe-
less rhetorical speech retains a sense of enticing an audience to relinquish barriers
to agreement, to soften their principles or extend them in unanticipated ways,
perhaps to give themselves up to the judgement of another. Politics may well be
a competition for power, but it is also about making friends, building coalitions
 Embodied speech 149
and bringing people ‘on side’. The ‘masculine’ quest for control runs alongside
a ‘feminine’ need to sustain relationships. Thus television, as a modern arena for
personal self-disclosure and narrative, is thought to be more suited to a feminine
style of communication (ibid.: 82–89). The fluid gendering of persuasion that
occurs within public life, then, complicates the purportedly firm divisions and
hierarchies that support it.
In this chapter I explore the relationship between gender and rhetoric. I begin
by reconsidering how rhetoric is traditionally conceived as being embodied in
the performance of a speaker, usually thought to be male. The way that gestures
and voice – as well as argument – are inflected in public performances reminds
us that gender has always been a dimension of the rhetorical arts, albeit one that
is unacknowledged, and hence a feature of how interventions are made to shape
situations. I then discuss the vital importance of feminism in critically illumi-
nating the strategic dimension of a politics of gender by exploring power and
oppression, the nature of male rhetorical domination and the ways it might be
transformed – insights that, often, involve an explicit and critical awareness of
rhetoric. While there is no single feminist position on how to conceive or resolve
male domination, feminism has nonetheless been crucial to illuminating the ways
in which conceptions of masculinity and femininity structure politics and com-
munication. Finally, I use the insights of feminism and gender theory to interpret
political rhetoric by taking examples of speech about British nationality in which
the peculiar ambivalence of gender is played out.

Situating gender
Men and women are commonly believed to have distinct types of voice. Based on
natural differences that produce physiological changes during puberty, men (with
their larger larynx) are expected to speak with a deep voice (at about 120Hz) and
women with a higher-pitched voice (about 225Hz) (see Karpf, 2006: 154). The
deeper and louder sound common to men may once have supported their role as
hunting animals able to scare away predators and protect the group, while wom-
en’s voices lent themselves to comforting and nurturing children. This supposedly
‘natural’ distinction is perhaps mythical, but it underscores much of the way in
which societies continue to distinguish men and women as speakers. Public speech
is regularly associated with a masculine propensity to battle verbally with others,
while private and domestic speech involves care and intimacy. Men are typically
expected to do the first, women the second.
The idea that public speech is a distinctly ‘manly’ activity is found in the clas-
sical literature on rhetoric (see Brody, 1993). As I noted in Chapter 3, citizens of
ancient societies (who were always and only men) were often expected to com-
bine the skills of speech and physical combat as integral parts of active political
membership. It is no surprise, then, that the one and the other are closely associ-
ated: prowess in persuasion is akin to a form of combat where the audience comes
under the mastery of a dominant male. Ancient rhetoric, scholars point out, is
rooted in an agonistic tradition of ‘verbal duels’ and ‘fighting words’ between
150 Embodied speech
adversaries (see Worman, 2009). There is, by consequence, a long history of
misogyny in classical commentary on rhetoric that proscribes the vice of effemi-
nacy in favour of the virtue of manliness. Rarely are women’s voices heard as
authoritative in ancient literature, except perhaps as idealized singing Muses or,
as in Homer’s Odyssey, the lethal Sirens who lure sailors to their deaths with
irresistible harmonies (see Homer, 2003: 158; Cavarero, 2005: 95–116). Thus in
his Institutio Oratoria Quintilian recommended a ‘manly form of eloquence’ that
eschewed excessive ornamentation in style (see Brody, 1993: 14). The latter, in
his view, was effeminate because it made a man seem, unnaturally, like a woman.
‘Effeminate eloquence’, however pleasing or alluring to the audience, was, like
the Sirens, deceitful and not to be recommended in the education of the citizen.
Quintilian compared ornamental speech to a eunuch being dressed by a slave
dealer to make him more attractive: essentially without virility, yet with a bodily
appearance fashioned to please. As Brody points out, Quintilian’s reference to
the eunuch’s deception was ‘a metaphor for all deceitful language. Cloaking the
orator’s spurious purpose in ornamentation, such discourse was always hollow
and vicious’ (ibid.: 20). Such language ceased to be truthful and honest – qualities
associated with the virtuous (male) citizen – and undermined clarity in the orator’s
representation of the world.
Quintilian’s admonishment of the effeminacy of ornamentation had a lasting
impact on later generations of rhetoricians, particularly during the Renaissance
and the Enlightenment. Instruction in the arts of speech and persuasion remained
primarily directed at the education of young gentlemen for their participation
in public life. For most rhetoricians in the Renaissance and after, women were
simply expected to be silent. By consequence, the overwhelming denigration of
femininity as an alluring deception to be contrasted with clarity and reason also
remained at the heart of rhetorical instruction. The arrival of the Enlightenment in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did little to challenge this view, despite
its appeal to reasoned thought and empirical evidence as the basis of judgement –
indeed, it tended to reinforce it with arguments based on the authority of science.
Men came to be associated with culture – ‘rising above’ natural attributes by dint
of their reason – while women, partly because of their capacity for childbirth, were
associated with nature and emotions, which were seen to be an obstacle to cool,
independent thought. Although Enlightenment thinkers often took gender-neutral
‘man’ as the source of the universal authority of reason, that figure obscured the
general tendency to assume a male as its original model. Hence even the French
revolutionary appeal to the ‘universal rights of man and citizen’ imagined the
citizen as a man and not as a woman (see Landes, 1988).
Although a great deal has changed in the intervening centuries, it remains the
case today that men’s voices are the most heard and valued, even in democracies.
Of course, women have made tremendous progress in getting heard, not least as
a consequence of the feminist movement in the twentieth century. Increasingly,
political and public roles are undertaken by women and legislatures are less and
less the self-evident ‘men’s clubs’ they once were. Figures such as Indira Ghandi,
Margaret Thatcher, Benazir Bhutto and Angela Merkel – to name just a few – have
 Embodied speech 151
been powerful and vocal politicians in their respective countries. Yet those notable
examples stand out partly because democratic politics still distributes speaking
and leading roles primarily to men. Even as women participate in democratic
politics in ever greater numbers and with ever more success, the nature of public
speech and communication continues to be defined to a great extent as mascu-
line (see Cameron, 2006). The well-known example of British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher deliberately deepening her voice in order to sound more like
a ‘statesman’ underscores this point well. Even as women enter more frequently
into public life, it seems, politics remains predominantly a masculine business.
At this point, we should underline the important distinction between ‘sex’ and
‘gender’, for the emergence of greater sexual equality does not automatically
translate into a gender-neutral environment. Whereas sex denotes the physical
differences between ‘male’ and ‘female’, gender refers to the social and cultural
expression of that difference, often as ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ respectively.
Sex differences are typically thought to be biologically determined and so largely
invariant, while gender differences are understood as social, hence conventional,
historically variable and possibly more diverse than just two given differences.
We will return to this illuminating but troubled distinction shortly, but for now it
is reasonable to say that an increased appearance of people sexed as women in
the public domain need not automatically result in a de-gendering of that domain.
Public life can, conceivably, be gendered in ways that do not immediately reflect
the sex of the people who comprise it. Thus party politics in representative democ-
racies continues to be coded by traditional masculine values and behaviours such
as an aggressively competitive style of communicating and responding to adver-
saries, expectations about loyalty and hierarchy, modes of dissent and strategies
for dealing with disagreement (see Shaw, 2006). If, now, men are not always the
actors in politics, masculine values and assumptions nevertheless pervade politi-
cal life such that it is hard for any politician (professional or otherwise) to avoid
reproducing them in their own speech and behaviour.
Reflecting on gender rather than sex alone brings us back to the political dimen-
sion discussed in Chapter 1. Gender is a primary means of characterizing the
horizon of values and principles that render legitimate or illegitimate certain kinds
of speech and behaviour. How does it do this? Gender, as Judith Squires points
out, refers us to an ontological realm – that is, to the fundamental being of individ-
uals and their basic relationships to each other (see Squires, 1999: 5–6). Gender
describes not simply abstract qualities but, moreover, ways in which the body
and desire are practically organized and displayed in society so as to demonstrate
those qualities, how that display fits with normative values and what counts as a
transgression of those norms. In that respect, to express gender entails adopting
conventions in deploying physical attributes, movement, dress, visual appearance
and voice. Established gender roles prescribe various, culturally specific ways
in which bodies and desire are made present both in private and in public, as
well as prohibit those that should not be present. Usually such roles conform to
clusters of established (though still variable) ideas about masculinity and feminin-
ity which offer a repertoire of gestures and mannerisms deemed ‘appropriate’ to
152 Embodied speech
certain sexes. These include informal rules about women wearing skirts and men
wearing suits, for example, or how each walks, sits or speaks (see Young, 2005).
Women, for instance, are often assumed generally to be more polite than men –
that is, prepared to speak publicly in a more formal register than men (see Talbot,
2010; Mills, 2003). As the denigration of women and femininity implies, such
roles, repertoires and assumptions articulate wider power relations in society that
diminish so-called female qualities and validate those of men (see Connell, 1987).
Men, for instance, are regularly portrayed in the media as active subjects in public
life – virtuous citizens pursuing civic causes – while women are objectified and
defined by their physical appearance. Yet these culturally specific and unequal
gender roles are treated as though they were based on the invariant foundation of
sex – consequences of nature rather than fabrications of social convention.
The field of gender, then, is political in the sense that what counts as a legitimate
citizen with rights and freedoms is conceived in and through varying moral and
cultural norms that inscribe themselves upon human bodies and their behaviours.
As many feminists have made clear, gender is not incidental to the formation of
modern states and societies. On the contrary, it forms an integral, if usually unac-
knowledged, role in the modern separation of the state from society by defining
the formal public domain in masculine terms (Squires, 1999: 24–32). The citizen
is regularly imagined to be a creature that reasons about his self-interest by set-
ting aside emotion, intimacy and responsibility to others (such as family and,
particularly, children). The ‘domestic’ and emotional aspects of individuality are
effaced in the modern idea of citizenship and relegated to the private realm, where
they are ascribed to women, who are thought to be less instrumentally rational,
more susceptible to emotion (conceived as excess) and naturally oriented towards
intimacy and the care of others (see Prokhovnik, 2002; Litosseliti, 2006). The
formation of liberal states organized around the principle of protecting individual
liberty, then, is premised on the exclusion of women and the eradication of femi-
ninity from the citizenry and public affairs (see Pateman, 1988; Landes, 1988).
That women are now enfranchised as citizens does little in itself to alter this
gendered construal of the citizen and politics. Others even argue that the sovereignty
of the state – with its claim to wield a monopoly of legitimate violence –
expresses an intrinsically masculine ideal of power and control that genders all
politics from the start (see Hoffman, 2001).
The gendering of modern politics is not always expressed through legal pre-
scriptions or official directives but, instead, forms part of taken-for-granted
assumptions about social identity and the proper organization of society. Setting
aside the frequent examples of lewd behaviour or outright misogyny still displayed
in public life, more or less silent assumptions about gender are a routine part of
democratic politics and supply some of the commonplace assumptions that make
it a meaningful and successful activity – for instance, the absence of children and
child care arrangements from the legislatures, the time required to be spent away
from home by politicians or the inappropriateness or sensitivity of certain topics
of debate. But when these assumptions are brought into question, when they are
discussed as cultural norms that might be altered in some way, then the political
 Embodied speech 153
dimension comes to the fore. In disputes over women in politics, breastfeeding
in public, how people treat each other at work or debates over ‘gay marriage’, to
name some examples, the political gendering of politics often explodes into clam-
orous debate, exposing the contestability, perhaps even instability, of identities
and arrangements otherwise thought to be set out by nature.
If gender relations structure modern democratic politics, then what is their
impact on rhetoric? Again, it will help to think about this in terms of the rhe-
torical situation discussed earlier in the book. Gender forms an integral part of
how situations are defined through practices of persuasion and how speakers
perform rhetorical interventions. Gender roles provide ready-made platforms to
craft agency in ways that affirm structured conventions and expectations, even as
they limit that agency to certain kinds of script; but such roles are not wholly pre-
determined and can also be subverted. Our focus of attention here, however, is not
only on argument conceived as a string of ideas (or logos) about the situation, but
also, and rather, on the body as a locus through which situations are ‘appropriated’
in gendered performances. The embodiment of gender has been a focus in recent
social and political theory and focuses on the ways in which social identity is
performed, regulated and subverted through the lived experience of the body (see
Howson, 2005; Butler, 1999; Bourdieu, 1990). While embodied aspects of gender
are frequently non-linguistic (Uhlmann and Uhlmann, 2005), nonetheless they
do contribute to shaping discourse. Rhetorical speech can be said to be embodied
in two important ways: first, in the voice of a distinct physical body addressing
other bodies – what is sometimes called ‘embodied discourse’ (see Poynton and
Lee, 2011) – and second, in the representation of the ‘body politic’, or discourse
about the common body. In both these respects, rhetoric articulates ideas of gen-
der to shape the way that situations are defined and to orient the audience. Here,
once more, ethos and pathos are of distinct importance, for gendered ideas about
who can speak, about what and how, involve issues both of authority and identity
(ethos) and allegiance and attachment (pathos). Let us look at each in turn.
As regards embodied discourse, it is common for many political speakers to
ensure their bodies conform to commonly understood gender conventions con-
cerning appearance, sound and general comportment in delivery. In the case of
women, in particular, questions of dress and appearance are often critical points
of reference in the public reception of their authority to speak. This is not so much
a decisive issue for men; only women, it seems, have their credibility damaged if
they are regarded as dressing badly or appearing poorly in public. Likewise, the
expression in public of deep personal emotions that, for example, induce tears is
something that is more acceptable for women than it is for men. Moreover, politi-
cians often present themselves as idealized or fantasy versions of the people who
(they think) their constituents admire: the sharp-suited executive types, the flirta-
tious heterosexual, the respectable ‘family man’ or chaste and supportive wife.
Paradoxically, most mainstream politicians live quite unconventional lives, sepa-
rated from their families or unavailable for the kind of committed relationships
which they themselves endorse. Nonetheless, politicians speaking and looking
154 Embodied speech
as if they embodied gender ideals is a regular part of the rhetoric of politics and
counts a great deal for how seriously they may be taken as speakers.
Representations of the body politic (or society) are also structured around
assumptions about bodies and their relationship to each other. As we will see later
on, metaphors of community are regularly invoked in gendered terms in politi-
cal arguments. Politicians offer up idealized representations of what society is or
needs in order to be properly itself. Such images usually contain gender-related
claims about what kind of collectivity society is and how it calls upon our alle-
giance, perhaps identifying a social constituency that best expresses its essence:
for example, patriotic soldiers, hard-working families, sporting heroes or indus-
trious entrepreneurs. Images of productive masculinity, athletic androgyny or
harmonious heterosexuality supply authoritative metaphors with which audiences
can easily identify. Other kinds of idealized image include those of moral author-
ity, often used implicitly in arguments about what the state or government should
do (and hence what society should expect). George Lakoff’s (2002) distinction –
discussed in Chapter 7 – between ‘nurturing parent’ and ‘strict father’ morality in
US political debates is a good example here. Each of Lakoff’s metaphors invokes
a gendered image of how citizens should relate to authority: one as an interven-
ing (maternal) parent that actively provides resources for its children to learn and
grow, the other as a distant, stern figure that promotes citizens’ self-responsibility
by refusing to intervene. For Lakoff, images of the family are deeply rooted in
US culture and political thinking. They function not simply as isolated images
but as frameworks that structure and connect a series of moral arguments about
how individuals relate to each other as though the social body were a family. Even
outside contemporary US politics, the metaphor of the community as a family has
long been a powerful resource, not least because both in ancient times and now,
familial connections provide ready-made cognitive maps by which to discern
individual qualities or to invoke mutual obligations.
These representations of the speaking self and the wider community provide
a repertoire of gendered rhetorical references to help define situations and the
ways audiences might be persuaded in them. We could say, then, that gender
helps situate speakers and their auditors, supplying a powerful means to achieve
persuasion. Even when gender is not itself the direct object of speech or com-
munication, nonetheless it helps position us affectively towards the issues at hand
and so permits us to form judgements about them. But that is not to say that
gender provides a neutral or uncontested terrain for rhetorical persuasion. On the
contrary, it is precisely because gender relations have been exposed as unequal
power relations and contested by feminism that we now understand them as
political. It is to feminism’s insistence on a politics of gender that we turn next.

Feminism and rhetoric

Feminism has had an enormous part to play in our understanding of the rela-
tionship between language, gender and power. Arguing that male domination is
achieved, at least in part, through control over who can say what, where and how,
 Embodied speech 155
feminism has expanded a rhetorical understanding of politics. Our appreciation
of the marginalization of women’s voices and their continued subordination to
those of men is a consequence of feminist interventions across the last century
(see Whelehan, 1995). More than most socio-political movements, feminism has
drawn attention to language itself as a medium of domination and has encouraged
profound shifts in the vocabularies we use in public life (see Talbot, 2010). More
than that, however, feminism promotes the greater inclusion of women in politics
and, hence, the opportunity for women to speak and be heard as equal citizens.
In this, distinct attention is given to the ‘situatedness’ of speech in order to hear
and see women in places – such as the home or the workplace – where they are
not given equal recognition. Feminism’s impact on public speech has been enor-
mous, even if it is still contested and, in some instances, resented. In both theory
and practice, then, feminism has helped define the stakes in a rhetorical politics
of gender.
It would be wrong, however, to imagine that feminism constitutes a homogene-
ous and unified political or intellectual outlook. While many feminists identify
obstacles to women’s equality in the persistence of male-dominated institutions
and practices and seek to redress these in order to enhance the opportunities for
women, there is considerable disagreement about what that domination ultimately
consists in and how women’s lives may be improved. In this section I want to
survey some of these differences, not to sketch the length and breadth of feminism
but because these differences highlight a range of ways in which rhetoric relates to
gender. Some of the key disagreements over a politics of gender (and the place of
rhetoric in it) stem from the distinction between sex and gender, noted in the pre-
vious section, which posits male and female social roles as conventional. While
the distinction has enabled feminists’ general opposition to biological determin-
ism, there are important differences over how it is conceived and with what social
and political implications.
Squires (1999: 3–5) usefully identifies three separate types of political strategy
associated with feminism that stem from differences over the sex/gender distinc-
tion. She calls these the strategies of ‘inclusion’, ‘reversal’ and ‘displacement’.
While there are many overlaps and complexities within and among these posi-
tions, each helpfully describes a distinct cluster of arguments about the politics of
gender that, as I will show, has implications for how we understand rhetoric. Let
us look at each in turn.

Strategies of inclusion
Strategies of inclusion involve efforts to identify ways in which women are
excluded from public and political life in order then to get them included. That
approach is often associated with reformist or liberal forms of feminism in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as the suffragette movement, which
argued for women’s political inclusion in democratic representation. Here the sex/
gender distinction addresses the way that women’s exclusion from full citizenship
is based on conceptions of their purported intellectual inferiority and material
156 Embodied speech
dependence on fathers and husbands. As Squires points out, in such arguments
sex remains a natural foundation for distinguishing men and women (Squires,
1999: 59), and the early feminist responses relied primarily on contesting con-
ventions built upon sexual difference in the established spaces of formal politics.
Early feminists such as Mary Wollstonecraft, for example, disputed the claim that
women were less capable of reason than were men (see Wollstonecraft, 2008). It
was women’s enforced lack of education and confinement to the domestic sphere,
she argued in 1792, that limited their opportunities to participate in public life.
Wollstonecraft rubbished the picture of women as delicate, sensual creatures
concerned with frivolity and appearance. Such qualities were the consequence
of their exclusion from public deliberation and not reasons for it. Women should,
therefore, be permitted equal rights to participate in public life as men.
The objective of strategies of inclusion, then, is to enable women to participate
on an equal footing as men in the public domain, to include them where they have
been excluded rather than to contest the character of public life as such. Because
sex remains an accepted category (upon which ‘false’ beliefs are then con-
structed), early feminism did little to challenge the ways that speech and argument
were conceived and delivered. The central issue was to get women recognized as
intellectual equals by removing what were conceived as artificial barriers (social
conventions and irrational beliefs) to their participation. The underlying assump-
tion was that women and men were fundamentally the same as regards their
abilities and modes of speech. Doubtless women’s participation was expected to
bring greater sensitivity to issues of concern to them and to diminish the dis-
criminatory habits of some men. But the full integration of women into public life
was not understood as a wholesale transformation of politics and society as such.
Indeed, if anything, inclusion would be the fulfilment of modern liberal society’s
potential to enable rational deliberation over matters of common concern.

Strategies of reversal
The achievements of early, or ‘first-wave’, feminism should not be diminished. By
the end of the Second World War, most democratic countries had granted women
full political citizenship. The so-called ‘second wave’ of feminism, however,
developed more profound critiques of gender conventions by locating them in the
deep structures of society more widely, particularly in the realms of culture, the
family and work (Whelehan, 1995). The kinds of radical feminism that emerged
after the Second World War were concerned not simply with encouraging women
to participate in existing institutions, but more with reversing the way those insti-
tutions had been monopolized by men, with masculine norms taken for granted
at the expense of any other gender qualities. So-called strategies of reversal are
based on a more thoroughgoing critique of gender conventions in society with the
goal not of reuniting men and women in a gender-free realm but, rather, of high-
lighting their distinct contributions and advocating greater autonomy for women
to cultivate their differences, often separately from men.
 Embodied speech 157
Central to many feminist strategies of reversal is a critique of the public/
private distinction. Where strategies of inclusion tended to accept the idea that
the public domain could permit a gender-neutral politics, second-wave feminists
have largely regarded that distinction as part of the problem. For them, public life
is inherently masculine: the separation of private from public realms involves an
implicit denigration of the private/domestic as an inferior realm. That means that
family life, domestic labour, the care of children and even personal intimacy, are
all marginalized as non-political and unworthy topics of debate or sources of dis-
pute. Even though these form a central precondition for public life (both the life
of civil society generally and the formal political domain), they are treated as at
best, secondary dimensions of existence or at worst, irrelevancies that amount to
private matters for individuals. Not only women as persons, then, but also all the
realms and activities associated with their daily lives are silenced. Post-war femi-
nists therefore drew critical attention to the often absurd and inaccurate portrayal
of women as creatures of the home and domestic comforts. These were images
that represented men’s preferred view of (harmless) female qualities and (limited)
aspirations. Missing from such images were women’s authentic voices and argu-
ments about private and public issues (see Friedan, 1963).
Feminists were not looking simply to challenge the picture of domesticity that
post-war consumer culture had foisted on them, but to assert their rights to define
what was public in their own way. The oft-repeated phrase ‘the personal is politi-
cal’, associated with feminism of the 1960s and 70s, highlights the view that what
men consider political excludes the power relations that exist in the home. Private
life was neutralized and rendered invisible and inaudible from the public domain.
The feminist challenge, then, was to reverse the masculine hierarchies and stand-
ards that shaped all aspects of society to the detriment of women. For many, that
also involved identifying and valuing what was distinctive about women’s own
contribution to society.
For instance, feminists such as psychologist Nancy Chodorow affirmed the
uniquely ‘relational’ psychology of women – that is, the ability to relate to and
care for others (see Chodorow, 1989: ch. 2). This was not a natural capacity
endowed by sex but a consequence of early gender development and uncon-
scious, pre-Oedipal identity formation. Girls, she claimed, were less individuated
as a consequence of close relationships with their mothers, which ensured that
female ‘ego boundaries’ were weaker than men’s. Boys, on the other hand, learn
to separate from their mothers and, as a result, grow to disavow attachment to
and responsibility for others – values that are then expounded in public life as the
norm. If female psychology is more attuned to care and to valuing relationships,
then women’s capacity for judgement is also different from the masculine ideal.
Women might be said to judge non-instrumentally, with less focus on ego and
with greater concern for the wider effects of their choices. Yet modern society
denigrated feminine capacities and orientations in favour of the masculine. In the
work of Carol Gilligan, the focus on feminine psychological traits was developed
into a theory of the ways in which women speak and make moral judgements (see
Gilligan, 1982). For Gilligan, women possess a unique capacity to speak with
158 Embodied speech
attention to others, to take into account other points of view and to listen. That
contrasts with masculine modes of speech and communication, which, as we saw
earlier, are often perceived as aggressive and competitive, designed to subdue
opponents rather than accommodate them.
The argument of feminists such as Chodorow or Gilligan is that women’s gen-
dered identities and capacities can be valued in themselves and used for the better.
That chimes with the general orientation of second-wave strategies of reversal that
sought not simply to have women accommodated in male-dominated structures
of power, but to reverse the polarity that made female subordinate to male. Public
and private domains had to be transformed, and not simply repopulated with more
women. The impact of those strategies on how we speak and listen today have
been enormous. There is now not only increased awareness of the presence of
women in public life, but also a greater concern with how people speak to and
about women (in ways that recognize their equality), that women themselves are
given opportunities to speak and, moreover, that the language used in public does
not ridicule women or denigrate femininity.
But if those strategies have altered much of official public discourse, they
remain nonetheless attached to a conception of gender that is still tied to sexual
difference, presuming ‘a stable category of sex upon which gendered identities
are constructed’ (Squires, 1999: 59). Sexual difference is still regarded as the
organizing centre of gender, dividing gender into either masculine or feminine
orientations. The problem with this retention of sexual difference is that, as a
political strategy, it has the tendency to universalize certain qualities as though
they pertained to all women. As many feminists came to argue, however, gender
conventions are not uniform but vary in relation to other social differences, such
as class and race (see Nicholson, 1999: ch. 4). Not all women share the same pro-
pensities to relate and care, or do so in the same way. To identify certain qualities
as feminine, rather than masculine, was to reduce attention to the ways in which
femininity could be differently experienced, subverted or not present at all. The
limitation of strategies of reversal, then, is that the sex binary remains implicit and
imposes conceptual and ethical barriers on the reception of women who do not
conform to the qualities associated with women. If they lend support to an appre-
ciation of the different ways that women might speak and argue as autonomous
subjects, such strategies are nevertheless less receptive to the multiplicity of ways
that gendered subjects can be cast.

Strategies of displacement
Differences and disagreements over feminist strategies of reversal opened the way
to new claims about gender and its politics. Strategies of displacement describe
the orientations of so-called postmodernist and ‘queer’ theorists who dispute alto-
gether the idea that gender has any necessary relationship to sex. That is not to say
that there is no difference between male and female sexes but, rather, whatever
physiological differences there are cannot be treated as uniform or as ‘founda-
tional’ to gender. Bodies fall under the sway of cultural interpretation, too, and
 Embodied speech 159
are therefore ‘mobile’ (Squires, 1999: 64–72). As a consequence, gender cannot
be said to rest upon stable sex differences and hence need not therefore be binary:
what counts as masculine and feminine are themselves complex and varied. It
might be possible to conceive gender not exclusively as ‘heteronormative’ – that
is, as constructions of male or female – but, rather, as contingent ‘performances’
that include shades in between: butch, camp or asexual, for example (see Butler,
1999). Of course, society is still dominated by ideals of masculinity and feminin-
ity and these are typically treated as extensions of natural sexual differences. But
alongside such conventions are a whole range of accents and composites that
make for a much more complex picture.
So instead of seeking to reverse the male and female binary, postmodern femi-
nists and queer theorists have sought to displace the dominance of a narrow framing
of gender around two, mutually exclusive poles. The primacy of one version of
gender (masculine) cannot be undone simply by prioritizing the other (feminine).
Rather, the dichotomy itself is brought into question so as to legitimate a range of
gender variations. In practice, that implies strategies to eliminate discrimination
not only against women, but against lesbians, gay men, transsexuals and intersex
individuals, too. For example, the legalization of marriage or child adoption for
same-sex couples has been hugely controversial because it takes a social institu-
tion (the family) that has for centuries been dominated by heteronormative culture.
Debates over marriage have brought into the public realm moral arguments, often
of a religious nature, about the ‘proper’ sources of partnerships and the socially
acceptable types of personal relationship. Given that marriage is an arrangement
that has considerable financial and personal consequences (regarding insurance,
mortgages, administering medical treatment and wills, for example) these debates
are not purely moral, but are arguments over the nature of democratic citizenship
(see Chambers, 2003: ch. 6).
Strategies of displacement have an important rhetorical element in as much
as they dislodge the primacy of the feminine/masculine binary divide in pub-
lic discourse and explore the complex ways in which gender is assembled, both
in argument and in behaviour generally. Certainly, the emphasis on gender as
multiple has problematized the feminist emphasis on women as a singular and
identifiable category. Many feminists have found this difficult to square with a
coherent resistance to patriarchy. But the gain has been to bring into view the
stylization and performance of genders that can vary widely. Masculinity, for
example, need not be conceived as exclusively the dominant other of femininity,
but instead as a complex composite of varying qualities encoded bodily, not all of
which are necessarily threatening to women or exclusive of feminine (or, indeed,
non-gendered) elements (see Squires, 1999: 74–77; Connell, 2005). The ‘hege-
monic’ male figure that dominates western domestic and international politics
is usually treated as gender-neutral but, on reflection, can be said to articulate a
masculinity that is complex, varied (Carver, 1996), and dismissive of other, more
feminized masculinities (Hooper, 2001; Dudnik, Hagemann and Tosh, 2004).
The three types of feminist strategy sketched above need not be viewed as
mutually exclusive, nor need we make a choice among them. But they do illuminate
160 Embodied speech
the different degrees to which a politics of gender may contest patriarchal relations
of power. In rhetorical terms, they draw attention to different ways that speech
mediates the dimension of the political: namely, by excluding women and their
voices (strategies of inclusion), denigrating the distinct qualities and experiences
they may bring to public life (strategies of reversal), and forcing both men and
women to communicate according to narrow and constraining cultural stereotypes
that refuse the multiplicity of human identity (strategies of displacement). While
all are relevant to rhetorical analysis, the latter, in particular, invites us to see how
persuasion can involve a complicated, sometimes ambivalent, articulation of ele-
ments that combine both in embodied discourse and in figures of the collective
body. Let us now explore some examples of how political rhetoric works in and
through representations of gender.

Gender and the nation

One of the most common sources of gendered political arguments is the idea of
the nation, which informs much of modern political speech at both domestic and
international levels (see Yuval-Davis, 1997). Stemming from the Latin root, natio,
‘nation’ shares its origins with words such as ‘birth’ and ‘nature’. As a term for
political community, ‘nation’ therefore links to ideas of reproduction, family and
naturalized identity. It has powerful connotations as a figure in political argument
because it can command automatic allegiance to notions of collective unity and
cultural distinctiveness. One need only talk of ‘national qualities’ or the ‘needs
and interests of the nation’ to set these ideas in motion. In so doing, the nation
functions as a key argumentative device, a metaphor blending together various
ideas and ideologies by simultaneously naturalizing the connections it makes. The
nation itself can be coded in both masculine and feminine ways depending on
what case is being made. This is clear in references either to the ‘fatherland’ or
to the ‘motherland’, the first as a source of pride, status or legitimacy, the second
as a source of nurturance and belonging. In the latter case, arguments for the
nation invite us to identify with the gendered idea of a maternal body (from which
we were born) that unifies us and serves as a source of identification. Moreover,
however they are coded, appeals to the nation or national identity articulate ideas
about gender roles for individuals, if only implicitly, by conceiving the nation as
the family writ large.
We can see these connections between the nation and gender if we look at
speeches concerned with Britain and Britishness. Britishness is a complex con-
cept. Formally, ‘Britain’ refers to Great Britain, the union of England, Scotland
and Wales under a single parliament and crown. The entire territory of the state
is, officially, the ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’ (the lat-
ter lying outside the formal union). Moreover, there is often a tendency to regard
the British state as simply England. Part of the confusion here lies in the histori-
cal dominance of England over other nations of the UK, a cultural, political and
economic dominance that means British politicians are often English and British
institutions (such as parliament, the Church of England and public schools) are
 Embodied speech 161
typically located there. Of course, in the recent past Britain was also an Empire
with connections across the world and cultural influence flowing in and out of
the state from all parts of the globe. Britishness, then, refers less to a single,
homogeneous and territorially circumscribed state than to a complex, historically
changeable, culturally diverse and politically uneven administrative structure.
Making some kind of ‘imagined community’ out of the British state has always
been a controversial exercise, since for several centuries much of what was sup-
posedly British lay outside national territory.
In the late nineteenth century, for example, national identity in Britain was
strongly inflected by ideas about the English middle classes, the Victorian idea
of family that supported that class and Empire. The English middle classes came
to be seen as the leading agent of British modernity, with its purported independ-
ence of mind and industrious spirit. The Victorian idea of family upon which this
middle class was built tended to divide gender roles starkly: the home was the
place of feminine domesticity and intimacy, while public life was the domain of
the competitive, entrepreneurial male. The ideology of Empire provided the key
frame within which national sentiment could combine these elements of class and
gender. Britain’s imperial domination provided both an image of outward adven-
ture for young men (idealized in popular stories featuring figures such as Robert
Scott) and, as Rutherford (1997: 2–23) argues, an actual escape route from the
cloying femininity of the home. Young, white, middle-class men were encouraged
to view the Empire as a place to relinquish domesticity and achieve manhood
alongside other men. Imperial manliness was thus defined by emotional separation
from women and the home, a no-nonsense ‘stiff-upper-lip’ disavowal of sentiment
and a sense of adventure through friendships with other men (prefigured in sport
and games at school). This was a conception of masculine national identity rein-
forced through public schools and the institutions of the British establishment, all
populated by men. Thus the Imperial nation set in play distinct ideas of class and
gender, mobilizing a sense of belonging to a symbolic maternal authority (with
Queen Victoria as the Empress) that reinforced male dominance by separating
women and men.
The decline of the British Empire across the twentieth century, however,
entailed a strange loss of status for the British middle class and the gender roles
imagined through it. The rise of working-class politics, the enfranchisement of
women and the settlement of non-white communities in the UK all contributed
to a growing sense of decline of British supremacy, compounded by relative
economic decline and the resistance of colonial independence movements. As
post-war politicians dealt with the pluralization of British society, it became
important to try to reassert and redefine a new sense of nation as the backdrop
to specific situations that comprised day-to-day politics. As Britain has changed,
a variety of rhetorical strategies have been adopted to address the theme of the
nation as the ultimate backdrop of social change and future progress. Each has
been characterized by a notable rhetorical gendering figured both in the argu-
ment of the speech but also through the distinctive styles of the speakers. Let us
look at some examples in the speeches of three key politicians.
162 Embodied speech
Conservative Member of Parliament Enoch Powell was one of the first and
most striking speakers on the right wing of his party to articulate distinctive ideas
of nationhood and national identity in the post-Imperial age. His notorious ‘Rivers
of Blood’ speech of April 1968 (see Powell, 1968), in which he predicted social
unrest and catastrophic national decline as a consequence of continued immigra-
tion to the UK from overseas, expressed a populist nationalism that attacked the
paternalism of Conservative party policy and the post-war liberal establishment
generally (Rutherford, 1997: 113). Once a romantic supporter of Empire, Powell
had come to accept the end of British supremacy only by adopting an insular and
bitter nationalism obsessed with a racial threat to the purity of his homeland.
A scholar of Greek and Latin and a poet, Powell was uniquely aware of the
importance of rhetoric in giving form to a sense of collective identity, and he culti-
vated a particular style of statesmanship to achieve this. As Rutherford points out,
his distinctive, eloquent manner of speech – ‘his meticulous attention to detail, his
carefully chosen sentences and exacting syntax, the precision of his diction and the
pre-eminence he gives to logic’ (1997: 116) – expressed a type of masculinity that
disavowed open emotion and softness. Thus his argument in the 1968 speech is
ostensibly one of logos, delivered not in overtly emotional terms but as an intellectual
forewarning of future ‘peril’ by reference, at one remove from his own experience,
to a series of reports on statistics and anecdotes from concerned constituents. His
reference to Virgil’s prophecy of the river Tiber ‘foaming with much blood’ is a sign
of both his learning and the detached manner with which he approaches his topic.
Powell’s underlying message is nevertheless deeply emotional and evocative of
the gendered dimensions of nationhood. His attack on immigration is expressed as
a lament for a national mother-figure under threat of fragmentation by the influx of
black and Asian immigrants, whose arrival has made native Britons ‘strangers in their
own country’, unable to nurture their children and safeguard their neighbourhoods
(Powell, 1968: 388). Powell gives expression to a subdued outrage ‘among ordinary
English people’ due to ‘the sense of being a persecuted minority’ (ibid.: 389). This
message is supported by his rhetorical use of an anecdote, again given as a report,
from an unnamed constituent who writes of an old lady – ‘who lost her husband and
both sons in the war’ – under attack for refusing to permit ‘Negroes’ into her boarding
house. The old lady (whose actual existence is uncertain) functions as a metaphor for
the nation – namely, as a vulnerable woman under attack by foreign bodies.
Powell’s speech brings into play a racialized as well as gendered approach
to nationhood. In its hostility to immigration, its attack on liberal policy and its
appeal to working people’s experiences, it construes the national community (still
labelled as English) as a threatened integrity requiring ‘resolute and urgent action’
via the forced repatriation of immigrants. That view endorsed the sentiments
of many lower middle and working-class voters in the late 1960s, increasingly
concerned about their prospects in a period of stagnant economic growth. Not
overtly racist in its language, the speech was nonetheless incendiary and viewed
by many as a provocative attack on the post-war political consensus, giving legiti-
macy to racist opinion. Powell was sacked from his shadow cabinet post in the
Conservative party and was marginalized in British politics thereafter.
 Embodied speech 163
Margaret Thatcher is often regarded as having inherited Powell’s populist
critique of Britain’s liberal establishment, but without the racialized overtones that
destroyed his career. Thatcher is, of course, recognized as one of the most signifi-
cant and successful post-war Conservative politicians, having won three general
elections and served as Prime Minister for twelve years. To that distinction is
added her ideological success in challenging and transforming the post-war con-
sensus concerning the social democratic welfare state. Her branch of neo-liberal
conservative ideology came to be known as ‘Thatcherism’ and extolled the virtues
of free enterprise and individual self-reliance alongside a conservative defence
of the family and law and order, and unrelenting hostility towards socialism (see
Gamble, 1988; Hall, 1988).
What is also important about Thatcher as a figure is the obvious fact that she
is a woman. Although no feminist, Thatcher is still the only woman to lead her
party and serve as UK Prime Minister. As a woman in a world dominated by men
and masculine competitiveness in politics, Thatcher cultivated a sense of her own
intransigence and robustness as a right-wing ‘conviction’ politician with a style
of speech characterized by stark oppositions and simplified, populist language
(see Charteris-Black, 2005: ch. 4). Adopting the epithet given to her in the Soviet
Union, the ‘Iron Lady’, Thatcher combined masculine and feminine qualities in
ways that at times dazzled and confused both her supporters and critics. At times,
she spoke as the hectoring, upper middle-class nanny, scolding those who disa-
greed with her (particularly her cabinet ministers, known as ‘wets’); at other times
as the aggressive, petty bourgeois ideologue, promoter of domestic values such
as hard work and thrift; but also, elsewhere, as a sympathetic maternal figure. In
short, Thatcher defied a singular gender role and often confused those who saw the
world through such roles. This eclecticism often worked in her favour, permitting
her to be viewed, as one commentator puts it, as an object of fantasy (see Nunn,
2002): attractive yet inaccessible, potentially excessive but politically committed,
simultaneously deploying feminine qualities and combining these with sometimes
bellicose, masculine traits. For both friend and foe alike, Thatcher’s evident, rather
conventional femininity (her pristine hair, skirt-suits and handbag) jarred with
the virulence of her opinions and the radicalness of her policies. This made her a
singularly distinctive politician, the object of intense allegiance or hatred.
Thatcher’s curiosity as a female political leader with overt masculine qualities
gave her a position of strength from which to address the idea of the nation. In
speeches on a variety of topics, she often extolled a bullish idea of national qualities,
imagined in the form of the entrepreneur in a competitive world. As early as 1975,
in her first conference speech as party leader, Thatcher presented a classic ‘vision’ of
the British middle class as industrious and inventive, principled and independent:

Let me give you my vision: a man’s right to work as he will, to spend what he
earns, to own property, to have the State as servant and not as master – these
are the British inheritance. They are the essence of a free economy and on
that freedom all our other freedoms depend.
(Thatcher, 1975: 412)
164 Embodied speech
Here, in the form of a parallelism linking related virtues and the threefold
repetition, in different forms, of the symbolic term ‘free’, Thatcher offers an image
of Britishness that revolves around the male head of household, defined by work,
property and economic liberty. That concept of ‘economic man’ – the entrepre-
neurial individual separate from the household and independent of responsibility
for anyone – was central to her politics throughout her career, especially later
as Prime Minister. To that, however, should be added a notoriously combative
dimension, especially following the divisions brought by her policies and by
international events. For example, in military ventures such as the defence of the
Falkland Islands in 1982 or against ‘enemies within’ such as trade unions (for
instance, during the year-long miners’ strike in 1984), Thatcher evoked a sense of
Britishness as a libertarian refusal to surrender interests or power to any version
of collectivism. With echoes of Churchill’s war speeches, she proclaimed in the
aftermath of the victory in the South Atlantic, ‘When the demands of war and the
dangers to our own people call us to arms – then we British are as we have always
been – competent, courageous and resolute’ (Thatcher, 1982: 435). These military
qualities, she pointed out, offered ‘a lesson which we must apply to peace just as
we have learned it in war’.
In one notable, but also controversial, speech – the ‘Bruges speech’ of
September 1988 (see Thatcher, 1988) – Thatcher speaks directly to the idea of
Britain as an economically and politically independent state. Arguing against
what she infers is the dilution of sovereignty through membership of the European
Community (now the European Union), she again points to Britain’s record as a
‘sanctuary from tyranny’ during world wars, prepared to do battle to defend free-
dom (ibid.: 465–66). While she affirms the country’s fellowship with the other
European states, she also warns of the dangers of suppressing national independ-
ence through a ‘European super-State’. Here, again, is the appeal to Britishness in
combat mode, defined by its resistance to collectivism and any incursions on eco-
nomic sovereignty. Thatcher’s aggressive nationalism was never racially posed.
Rather, it mobilized a masculine view of market economics, sturdy independence
and hostility to threats to the ‘strong state’. Ironically, Thatcher was eventually
deposed by her own party (nearly all men) while in office, in part because of her
utter intransigence on the question of Europe.
Finally, Tony Blair’s speeches offer a fascinating insight into the legacy of
the Thatcher governments. Although Blair was the new leader of the Labour
Party which had opposed Thatcher for nearly twenty years, his innovation was
to rebrand Labour as ‘New Labour’ – that is, as a party that accepted much of
Thatcher’s restructuring of the British economy around free-market principles
(see Driver and Martell, 1998). Importantly, however, New Labour supplemented
the Conservatives’ emphasis on family and personal responsibility with a social
democratic conception of the state as an ‘enabler’ to society, actively helping get
people to work or retraining them for a global economy. In this, its vision was less
divisive and more inclusive and socially liberal than that of the Conservatives.
New Labour developed a communications strategy to connect progressive social
democratic goals to a hyper-competitive market economy. It did this by appealing
 Embodied speech 165
to a sense of Britishness as entrepreneurial, youthful and ‘modernizing’, but also
morally inspired – not to punish those who can’t adjust to the economy so much as
constantly to assist and include them in the community (see Atkins, 2011).
Blair’s distinctive style of speech and argument has been much examined, often
in relation to his transformation of Labour Party policy in favour of markets (see
Fairclough, 2000; Finlayson, 2003; Bastow and Martin, 2003; Charteris-Black,
2005: ch. 6). But his success as a politician (up until his support for the Iraq war)
was premised greatly on his personal ethos, which he viewed as the lynchpin of
Labour’s success (see Finlayson and Martin, 2008). Blair offered a softer, younger
than usual image of a politician that chimed with voters less inclined to support
parties out of habit than was the case in the past. In his halting speech, glottal
stops (the informal non-pronunciation of ‘tt’) and broad smile, Blair appeared the
modern man: open to his feelings, comfortable with modern society and popular
culture, undogmatic but earnestly authentic. He was an archetype of the femi-
nized man who relinquishes overt formality and speaks not to self-aggrandise
or to crush the opponent, but to illuminate ordinary experience and sympathize
with others. Blair therefore embodied an erotic image of youth and aspiration with
which he wanted the electorate directly to identify.
In his first speech to conference following his landslide election win in 1997,
Blair’s populism and modernizing zeal was given expression as a celebration of
national values and a renewed sense of unity (see Blair, 1997a). His ‘thanks’ to the
‘British people’ construed Britishness not as hostile to the outside world, fearfully
protective of tradition, but as embracing of change and welcoming of risk: ‘The
British don’t fear change. We are one of the great innovative peoples’ (ibid.: 513).
He goes on to list the technological achievements of the British, underscoring the
national character as adventurous, creative and pioneering, a ‘beacon to the world’
for the twenty-first century. But in addition to this entrepreneurial spirit, fit for a
dynamic global economy, Blair emphasizes British ‘compassion’, the importance
of community and a sense of duty to others. His task, he claims, is to restore
family life and to provide a suitable and supportive environment for rearing
children and caring for the elderly. Synthesizing his modernizing programme with
a sense of compassion and openness to difference, Blair issues a challenge to the
nation with missionary zeal:

Help us make Britain that beacon shining throughout the world. Unite behind
our mission to modernize our country for all our people. For there is a place
for all the people in new Britain, and there is a role for all the people in its
creation. Believe in us as much as we believe in you.
(Ibid.: 517)

Here terms such as ‘mission’, ‘creation’ and ‘believe’, the metaphor of a ‘beacon’
and the repeated phrase ‘all the people’ give his argument about modernization
the form of a religious sermon, addressing the audience as a guide and protector
on a spiritual journey. Like the figure he seeks to embody, Blair’s rhetorical nation
is a mixture of masculine entrepreneurialism and maternal warmth, creative and
166 Embodied speech
competitive but compassionate and yielding. New Labour’s strategy to reconcile
a market economy with social democratic goals was a similarly novel, perhaps
improbable, combination and, in order to work, required popular faith and belief
in Blair himself. Following the Iraq war and disagreements within the party,
however, that faith gradually dissipated and Blair’s premiership came to an igno-
minious end.
The three examples surveyed here demonstrate how, in different ways, the idea
of the nation functions as a rhetorical device to help appropriate situations. It
does so, I have argued, by assembling images of the political community through
implicit reference to gender. Both in their peculiar embodiment as speakers and in
the arguments themselves, politicians articulate aspects of the nation by inflect-
ing gender with other ideas – of class or ethnicity, for example. Whether it is as
a defensive protector of racial purity (Powell), an aggressive promoter of market
freedom (Thatcher) or an inclusive, meritocratic modernizer (Blair), a gendered
rhetoric is never simply about being either a man or woman, or even just mascu-
line or feminine, but requires a combination of various elements at once.

Summary
I have argued that gender relates to rhetoric not merely as something to be spo-
ken about but, moreover, as something through which speech and communication
itself works. That is to say, gender is not simply a topic of debate, but also a means
to persuade. Who it is that speaks, how they speak and what they speak about are
all determined in some way as questions of gender. Because rhetoric refers to the
‘situated’ character of speech, it necessarily points us to the embodiment of voice
and argument – the material locus of gender – through which situations are appro-
priated. This is an unavoidably political dimension, not least because the field of
gender concerns relations of power and strategy. As I have argued, the work of
feminism has been crucial in drawing attention to, exploring and contesting the
ways in which women have had their bodies removed from spaces of deliberation
and their voices and experiences diminished in favour of those of men. Gender,
then, is not only a rhetorical means to persuade; it is at the same time a set of une-
qual relations of power that sets limits to the who, what and how of persuasion.
Equally, however, debates in gender theory remind us that the terms of gender
are unstable categories open to all sorts of variation and combination. More than
just a perspective to explore women’s oppression, gender analysis permits us to
see the ambivalence of both masculinity and femininity, their unevenness and their
interrelated character. This is of particular significance in the realm of rhetoric,
where hard-and-fast distinctions such as male/female are important as platforms
from which to persuade but are also open to displacement and refashioning. The
example of speeches on British nationality was thus used to explore the different
inflections displayed by a gendered rhetoric.
Afterword

In this book I have offered a broad examination of the ways in which rhetoric is
manifest in politics. In these final remarks I summarize some of the major claims
I have made along the way, which might stimulate the reader’s further reflection
upon – and exploration of – practices of persuasion. Perhaps it will help to begin
modestly, underlining what the book has and has not sought to do: it has offered
an account of the historical background to rhetorical political enquiry, but not a
detailed analysis of the development of rhetoric and its relevance to all political
thinkers and rhetoricians; it has noted the key classifications and techniques of
ancient rhetorical instruction, but not comprehensively surveyed all the devices
that can be found; it has set out a way to apply these techniques to contemporary
politics, but there are many variations and methods by which this application can
be made and I have avoided an explicitly ‘normative’ approach; and it has looked
at some key areas in which rhetorical enquiry can be illuminating, but a wide
variety of relevant themes and issues could also have been included (such as the
rhetoric of war, the rhetoric of dissent, policy rhetoric, right-wing rhetoric and so
on). Rhetoric is not a narrowly circumscribed body of ideas to be summarized in
one go or mobilized with one method alone. It is a prodigious and open-ended
source for investigating practices of persuasion. Where this book undoubtedly
falls short there are, thankfully, many others (as well as specialist journals) that
can fill in the details, take alternative lines of enquiry and come to different con-
clusions. Such is the way with arguments.
My overriding concern has been to introduce the way politics can be thought of
in relation to rhetoric, not exhaustively to demonstrate its many actual or poten-
tial permutations. Doubtless, scholars both of rhetoric and of politics will find
inexplicable gaps or missing references. But what has been important to me is,
above all, to set about thinking of politics as an activity that is itself unavoidably,
intrinsically rhetorical. Where there are disputes, disagreements, uncertainties,
choices or decisions, then politics stops being a routine process of management
or administration and, instead, presents its citizens with opportunities to formu-
late, express, contest or legitimate shared judgements. At such moments, I have
claimed, politics becomes a matter of inventively recasting principles to fit the
circumstances and addressing audiences in order to rebuild certainty. This is what
rhetoric is for: it is a practical form of guidance to assist the process of making
168 Afterword
persuasive arguments for judgements that cannot make themselves. It does not
always succeed but, in politics, success will be impossible without it. The col-
lection of accumulated techniques and instructions known as rhetoric constitutes
a peculiar form of knowledge. It is neither systematic nor founded upon precise
scientific grounds. Its boundaries with other disciplines are porous and its content
varies markedly with the traditions and contexts in which it is practised. In short,
like politics generally, rhetoric is more ‘art’ than science, dependent upon the cre-
ative capacity of its practitioners than on theoretical knowledge as such. Rhetoric
is not something that can ever be exhaustively described in one volume.
But if rhetorical persuasion constitutes an art rather than a science, that does
not mean we cannot think about it theoretically. Indeed, it is precisely because it
is difficult to classify according to absolute rules that we need to reflect upon what
guides our application of it. In this book I have appealed to a number of guiding
principles to conceptualize the relation of rhetoric to politics. Let me sketch them
here and show how they have informed the discussion in the preceding chapters.

Politics and the political

My opening argument was that rhetoric undertakes a mediating role between the
routine activities of politics and the confrontation with basic principles that char-
acterizes the dimension of ‘the political’ (see Chapter 1). In all the arguments,
claims and counterclaims of routine politics, issues of principle are regularly con-
fronted and evaded, affirmed or recast. Effective rhetoric works both sides of this
division at once, drawing us towards some principles but bending or obscuring
others. It is never easy to be absolutely certain which principles are at stake, or
to what degree. The distinction between politics and the political is a guide to
questioning, not a way of answering once and for all. Rhetoric is never defined
by one or the other but operates at the boundary between them, alerting us to
fundamental principles (our rights and freedoms, who belongs and who doesn’t,
right and wrong, life and death) while taking others for granted or downplaying
their contentious nature. To regard persuasion as a political practice means asking
how and with what success rhetorical action mediates what is certain and what is
controversial. Modern citizens find themselves constantly facing matters of con-
troversy as their rights clash or as states and other powers limit their freedoms.
Although it has been downgraded as a political art in modern times, rhetoric is
vital to the ways in which a common life among citizens is fashioned and repre-
sented (see Chapters 2 and 3). Here it is difficult to avoid clashes of principle and
demands that some issues should have priority over others.

Space and time

I have argued that political rhetoric has an important role to play in orienting us
towards issues. It does this by imagining space and time in specific ways – that
is, by defining our situation in order to position us as audiences towards problems
and dilemmas (see Chapters 4 and 5). Rhetoric, I have underscored, describes the
‘situated’ character of speech. It takes place at specific moments, adopting what
 Afterword 169
meanings are available and appropriate in order to speak to audiences that are
present there and then and to guide them through a situation. I have argued that to
apply rhetorical categories to the analysis of politics is to focus on this situated-
ness and to ask how particular situations are ‘appropriated’ through speech (see
Chapter 6). That is not to deny that speech can have unintended consequences or
that the meaning of speeches transforms over time. Nor does it mean that speech
has only one original meaning which we can grasp by close analysis of the context
or intentions of the speaker. On the contrary, all meaning is polyvalent and co-
existing accents can always be noted and different meanings found. Nonetheless,
the best way to start thinking about that possibility is to highlight the way that
rhetoric serves to prioritize certain orientations over others. I set out a general
method to begin doing this in Chapter 6; the question of how situations are rhe-
torically appropriated was also central to Chapters 7 (on democracy), 8 (on the
media) and 9 (on gender).

Language as action
Finally, I have insisted on the importance of thinking of rhetoric as a way to
understand how language ‘acts’. That is to say, although rhetoric inevitably draws
attention to what we say, its focus is not on words as discreet containers of mean-
ing but more on their movement in relation to situations. Rhetorical analysis in
politics is not simply a species of literary studies or linguistics, although it shares
much with those disciplines. When we look at rhetoric we are examining a proc-
ess of intervention, not only a textual object. We must certainly read speeches
and examine the words, phrases and meanings they gather into arguments. But,
conceived as arguments, these are ways of acting upon the world, upon other
subjects, and upon ourselves. This is what in Chapter 6 I called their ‘projectile’
character – meanings that come at us and try to rearrange the way we perceive or
feel things. What matters here, as Chapters 7 and 8 noted in particular, is how this
movement unfolds – for example, as affects articulated in networks of emotions
and feelings or as ways of recruiting us as audiences willing to view the world
through media. Often, when we are persuaded – however briefly – it is because
we are ‘moved’ to reason in a particular way about some issue. Sometimes the
most obscene or improbable ideas can seem acceptable because of the way we
have been positioned rhetorically. Rhetoric can’t do without language, but it is not
reducible just to the qualities of a text. Perhaps it is better conceived as a ‘prac-
tice’ or a ‘performance’ – that is, as a discursive activity that gathers meaning and
distributes it in a specific way. As we saw in Chapter 9, this gathering is as much
about bodies as it is about ideas or words.
With these guiding principles in mind, I have endeavoured to prompt a rhe-
torical appreciation of politics that might subsequently be taken in all sorts of
possible directions and applied to areas that I have not covered here. Undoubtedly,
one virtue of politics is that it produces a never-ending stream of arguments and
controversies for rhetoricians to explore. A book of this kind, then, should be
conceived as only one step in an enquiry that entails asking that most political of
questions: how are we persuaded?
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Index

Ahmed, S. 119 Berlusconi, S. 135–6

Al-Jazeera 144 Bernstein, C. 128
Al Qaeda 144 Bevin, A. 84
Allen, R.C. 137–8 Bevir, M. 92, 93
Amossy, R. 58, 71 Bhutto, B. 150
anadiplosis 76 Billig, M. 92–3
analogy 78–9, 80 Bitzer, L.F. 95, 139
anaphora 75 Blair, T. (UK Prime Minister) 57, 76, 85,
anastrophe 76 100; on Britishness 164–6; on Diana,
Anderson, B. 132 Princess of Wales 122
anecdote 77, 134, 162 body 84–5, 94, 121, 123, 148–66, 169
Ankersmit, F. 41–2, 44, 47, 136 Brody, M 150
antimetabole 76; in JFK speech 104–5 Brown, G. 74
antithesis 76 Burke, K. 3, 4, 6, 57
aphorism 61, 74, 79, 104 Burke, R.J. 45
appeal: to ethos 57–8, 63–4, 68, 71, 72, 83, Bush, G.H.W. (US President) 75
93, 103, 111, 122, 128, 136, 141, 143, Bush, G.W. (US President) 72, 80, 93, 112
147, 165; to logos 57–62, 68, 93, 103, Butler, J.: on mourning 118–19; on
111, 128, 143, 147; to pathos 57–8, 63, performativity 85–7
64–5, 68, 71, 72, 83, 93, 111, 122, 128,
136, 143, 147 capitalism 37, 46, 98, 146
Arab Spring 5–6, 145, 146 catachresis 82
Arendt, H. 35, 38 Cavarero, A. 20
argument: see discovery (inventio) Cavell, M. 117–18
Aristotle 12, 15–16, 26, 52, 53, 59, 88, celebrity 87, 128, 135–6, 147
93, 148; on citizenship 35; on emotions Chamberlain, N. 6–7
113; on rhetoric 21–4; on syllogism and Chambers, S. 10
enthymeme 60–1 Chodorow, N. 157, 158
arrangement (dispositio) 13, 51, 52, 65–9, Churchill, W. 3, 74, 84, 94, 164; ‘Blood,
70, 87, 103; in TV news 139–40, 142 Toil’ speech 75, 77
asyndeton 76 Cicero, M.T. 26, 34, 148; on delivery 83; on
Atkinson, M. 77 eloquent speech 64–5; on rhetoric 24–5;
Austin, J.L. 10, 85 on status theory 56; war speeches 6–7, 86;
citizens: ancient 15, 16–18, 33, 34–6,
Ball, T. 28 39–40, 50, 149–50; and Aristotle
BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) 22–3, 24, 148; and Cicero 25, 34; and
107, 129 contemporary political philosophy
Beaverbrook, Lord W.M.A. 129 43–50; and deliberation 13, 44–5,
behaviouralism 90–1 46–7, 49, 108–10, 113, 124, 133;
 Index 185
and feminism 154–60; and gender democracy 3, 13, 21, 39, 72, 82, 84, 88,
149–54; and Hobbes 27, 28; and 107–26, 146, 169; and gender 150–2;
media 128, 130–6, 144–6; and Plato aggregative model of 109; deliberative
20; and Renaissance politics 25–6, 28; theory of 13, 47, 108–13, 124–5, 133; in
and representation 33–4, 38–43; and ancient Greece 15–18, 40; radical theory
Rousseau 29–31; and the political 5, of 49, 117, 120; rhetorical 124–5
33, 41, 42, 50; modern 13, 33–4, Democratic Party (US) 116, 134
36–8, 40–1, 50, 82, 150; rhetoric as tool Demosthenes 16
for 12 Derrida, J. 48
cliché 74 Descartes, R. 114
Clinton, B. (US President) 122 dialectical analysis 89, 97–9, 106
Clinton, H. 85 Diana, Princess of Wales 122
Cold War 101–3, 105, 129 discourse: concept of 11–12; embodied
common sense 62, 73, 74, 98, 120 153, 160; ethics 46–7, 110; Foucault’s
communitarianism 43 theory of 11, 48; moral 46; media 127,
conclusion (peroratio) 66, 68–9 137–43, 147; rhetorical approach to
confirmatio 66, 67–8, 69; see also proof 11–12, 91–4, 100
Connolly, W.E. 116–17, 121, 124 discovery (inventio) 13, 51, 52, 57–65, 68,
consensus: and democratic theory 113, 70, 73, 87; in TV news 138–9, 142
120, 125; and liberalism 45; and Downs, A. 89–90
rhetorical dispute 6, 24, 79, 107; media Dryzek, J. 111, 112
manufactured 129; post-war British 162,
163; rational 46–7 Eisenhower, D.D. 102
Conservative Party (UK) 80–1, 91, 136, emotion 65, 72, 83; 107–26, 169; and
162, 163, 164 deliberative democracy 111–13, 121;
Consigny, S. 95–6 and gender 148; and neuroscience
Constant, B. 37 114–17; and psychoanalysis 117–20;
Corax 16 see also appeal to pathos
critical theory 43, 45–7, 49–50; see also empty signifiers 82
Habermas Enlightenment 150
enthymeme 60–1, 98; see also Aristotle
Damasio, A. 114 epanalepsis 76
Darwin, C. 59–60 epistrophe 75–6, 76–7
Dawkins, R. 59–60 epithet 74, 134, 163
Dean, J. 146 European Union 79, 164
Declaration of Independence (US) 112 exigence 95, 96, 99, 100; in JFK’s speech
decorum 55, 100, 103 102; in TV news 139
De Gaulle, C. 99
deliberation: and Aristotle 23–4, 113, Facebook 145
148; and citizen participation 13, 38; Falkland Islands 164
and contract theory 26–7, 28, 30, 31; family: and ethos 63; and gender 157; and
and democracy 108–13, 124–5; and nation 160, 161, 163, 164, 165; as an
discourse ethics 47, 49–50; and analogy 9; as a metaphor in US politics
emotion 114–16, 124–6; and gender 116, 154; as a symbol 122, 153; debates
148, 156, 166; and logos 58, 62; and on 82, 159
media 130, 132, 133, 136, 142, 143, fantasy 119, 122, 153, 163
146; and occasions of speech 52–3, feminism 149, 154–60, 166
54, 85; and Plato 20; and Renaissance figures of speech 75–83, 93, 160; see also
politics 26; and spaces of dialogue metaphor
54, 89, 166; and the political 41; and Finlayson, A. 92–3
thinking 92 Foot, M. 84
delivery (pronuntiato) 9, 13, 51, 52, 65, Foucault, M. 11, 48, 123
70, 71, 83–7, 93, 100, 101, 103, 122; Freeden, M. 41
and gender 153; in TV news 141–2 Freud, S. 117
186 Index
Garibaldi, G. 74 kairos 35–6, 52, 95; see also time
Garsten, B. 30–1, 32, 124 Keating, P. 74
gender 11, 12, 14, 45, 85–7, 148–166, 169; Kennedy, J.F. (US President) 76, 85, 89;
and sex 151, 155 inaugural speech analysis 101–6
genres of arrangement 69 King, Rev. M.L. 3, 93, 112
genres of speech 52–5, 100, 142–3; see Kinnock, N. 77
also occasions of speech Khruschev, N. 105
Gettysburg Address 74 Kozloff, S. 140
Ghandi, I. 150
Gilligan, C. 157–8 Labour Party (UK) 77, 81, 91, 134, 164–5;
Goebbels, J. 129 see also New Labour
Goodin, B. 109 Laclau, E. 39, 82
Gorgias 16, 19 Lakoff, G. 116, 124, 154
Gramsci, A. 7, 62 language: and affective unconscious 116;
Greece (ancient) 8, 15, 34–5, 40, 53, 82 and gender 154–5; and human nature 28;
Griffin, N. 107, 120 and media 140–1; and politicians 134; and
Guttman, A. 110 postmodernism 47–50; and rhetoric 9–10,
12, 93–4, 124, 169; and style (elocutio)
Habermas, J.: on discourse ethics 72–83, 140; and violence 6; constructivist
45–7, 50, 110, 111; on the public idea of 9; denotative and connotative
sphere 133 aspects 73, 75; instrumental idea of 72–3
Hartley, J. 131 Lefort, C. 39
hate speech 121 Levenson Enquiry 128
Hay, C. 98 lexicon 65
Higgins, M. 129, 142 liberalism 10, 28, 40, 43–5, 49, 75, 114;
Hitler, A. 6, 78, 84 and feminism 152, 155–6; and modern
Hobbes, T. 16, 31, 32, 45, 80; on rhetoric citizenship 36–8
26–9, 81 Lincoln, A. (US President) 74, 76–7, 94
Homer 150 linguistics 11, 93–4, 106, 169
Hume, D. 37, 38 Locke, J. 43
hyperbole 81, 132 Lyotard, J. -F. 47

ideas 10, 89–94, 98, 106 Machiavelli, N. 38, 88

ideology 10–11, 12, 40–1, 58–9, 92–3, Macmillan, H. 97
106, 119, 137, 161, 163 Marcus, G.E. 114–16, 120, 124
immigration 81, 107, 162 Marx, K. 36, 40
inaugural address (US) 53, 69; JFK’s 76, Marxism 43
89, 101–2, 103, 105, 106 media (mass) 13–14, 83, 87, 118, 127–47,
inductive and deductive reasoning 59 169; new 144–6; social 145–6
International Court of Justice 54 memory (memoria) 13, 51, 52
introduction (exordium) 66 Merkel, A. 150
invention (inventio): see discovery metaphor 27–8, 77–81, 116, 141, 154, 160,
Iraq war 54, 57, 166 162, 165
irony 81, 84 metonymy 79, 80
Isocrates 16, 18, 34 Meyer, T. 139, 140
issue, the 13, 35, 52, 55–7, 62, 66, 70, 81, Mill, J.S. 43
83, 88, 96, 98, 130; see also stasis Mouffe, C. 120, 121, 124, 125
Mussolini, B. 84
Jamieson, K.H. 132–3
Jessop, B. 98 narration (narratio) 66, 67, 69; in TV news
Jesus 76 138–40
Johnson, B. 136 nation 11, 14, 31, 41, 80, 97, 98, 118–19,
Julius Caesar 76 122, 132, 149, 160–6
 Index 187
Nazis 6, 129 psychoanalysis 13, 117–20, 121, 125
neuroscience 13, 65, 108, 113, 114–17, psychology: 8; cognitive 91, 92; women’s
118, 120, 121, 123, 125 157
New Labour 164–6; see also Labour Party public: realm 128, 129–31, 136, 142,
(UK) 143–7; sphere 131–6, 148–9, 151–3,
Nixon, R. (US President) 85, 102, 128 156, 157
Northern Ireland Peace Process 82, 101, puzzle–solution format 77
110, 112
Norval, A. 125 Queen Victoria 161
Quintilian 25, 34, 150
Obama, B. (US President) 72, 121, 134,
136 race 11, 45, 107, 158, 162, 166
occasions of speech 52–5, 56, 84–5, 94, Radio Free America 129
100 Rancière, J. 20, 24, 82
Occupy protests 146 rational choice theory 89–90, 91
Rawls, J. 44–5, 46
Palestine–Israel conflict 79 Reagan, N. 72
Palonen, K. 8 Reagan, R. (US President) 72
paradiastole 81–2 refutation (refutio) 66, 68, 69
parallelism 76 Renaissance 150
parts of speech: see arrangement rhetoric: aesthetic dimension of 41–3; -al
pathos 31 question 77, 141; -al situation 88, 94–7,
performativity 85–7 99, 105, 106, 121, 127, 128, 137, 153,
Pericles 17 154, 169; and education 34; and gender
platitude 74 13, 85–7; and ideology 40–1; and other
Plato 12, 15, 16, 23, 24, 29, 32, 40, 45, 88; disciplines 7–8; and representation 34,
on rhetoric 18–21 38–43; and sovereignty 26; canons of
political marketing 121, 123, 134–5, 147 13, 87, 138; ceremonial (epideictic)
political science 1, 13, 89; interpretive 23, 52–3, 54; counterpublic 143–6;
approach 89, 91–2 definition of 2, 168–9; deliberative
political, dimension of the 2, 4, 9, 21; (political) 23, 53–4; forensic (legal) 23,
and democracy 124, 125; and gender 53; humanist 25–6; schemes 75–7, 82;
86, 148, 151, 152–3, 160; and modern tropes 75, 77–83; versus ‘truth’ 3, 12,
society 33, 34, 38, 41, 45, 50; and 22, 31
politics 3–7, 13, 15, 34, 51, 88, 107, Rhodes, R. 92, 93
113, 168; and rhetorical delivery 86 Rome 8, 34–5; republic 24–5, 29
Popper, K. 20 Rorty, R. 43
postmodernism 43, 47–50 Rousseau 12, 16, 26, 148; on rhetoric
Powell, E. 162, 166 29–31
power: and deliberation 113; and discourse Rutherford, J. 161, 162
11; and gender 154–60; and rhetoric 2,
3–4, 7, 19, 128, 130; and sovereignty Sarkozy, N. 136
26–9, 152; and modern state 38–40, Schmidt, V. 92, 93
152; vs domination 48, 123–4 Schumpeter, J. 90
private: and gender 148, 149, 151–2, Skinner, Q. 38, 67, 81
157–8; and General Will in Rousseau simile 78
29–30; and the media 128–31, 142, 145; situation: see rhetorical situation
in ancient and modern citizenship 33, Socrates 18–19
35–8, 40, 42, 43–44, 50; realm 13; see sophists 15; and Aristotle 22; and Plato 18,
also public 20; and rhetoric 16–18
proof 67, 71; see also appeal soundbite 73–4, 87
propaganda 3, 111, 121, 123, 129 sovereignty 4, 6, 16, 26–31, 36, 38, 74, 81,
Protagoras 16–17 152, 164
188 Index
space: and time 9, 10, 12, 14, 35–6, 41, 52, time: and space 9, 10, 12, 14, 35–6, 41, 52,
94–5, 98, 99, 106, 121, 123, 132, 168–9; 94–5, 98, 99, 106, 121, 123, 132, 168–9;
in JFK speech 104–5; in TV news 137–8 in JFK speech 104–5
Squires, J. 151, 155, 156 Tisias 16
stance 56 tone 65
stasis 35–6, 52, 95; see also status; see topics (topoi) 61, 96, 103
also space Toulmin, S. 61–2
state (modern) 26, 31, 36–7, 38, 40, 43, 50, tricolon 76–7
98, 152, 168; British 160–1, 163–4; see Twitter 145
also sovereignty
State of the Union Address (US) 54 universal and particular 10, 39–41, 43, 45,
status 35–6, 42, 56–7; see also stasis 49, 50, 145
strategy 88, 94–9, 115, 128, 134, 142, 143;
affective 120–4; feminist 155–60 Vatz, R.E. 95
Street, J. 135, 136 Vickers, B. 17
structure and agency 89, 97–99; see also violence 5–6, 108, 152
dialectical analysis voice 84–5, 94; and gender 149–50, 166;
style (elocutio) 13, 51, 52, 65, 70, 71, in TV news 141
72–83, 87; in JFK speech 103–4; in TV
news 140–1, 142 Warner, M. 131, 143
syllogism 60–1; see also Aristotle Warren, M. 109, 110
synecdoche 79–80, 80–81 Westen, D. 116
Wollstonecraft, M. 156
Talbot, M. 138 Woodward, B. 128
Thatcher, M. (UK Prime Minister) 74–5,
77, 150; and Britishness 163–4, 166; Yack, B. 113
and delivery 84, 151; and metaphor 79; Young, I.M. 111–12
and the epithet 74 Youtube 145
Thatcherism 163
Thompson, D. 110 Žižek, S. 6, 119
Thucidydes 17