Rhetoric - 2

We started out by looking at a number of linguistic rhetorical techniques that cannot in and of themselves be considered good or bad (or, more specifically, informative vs. manipulative), especially since they are nothing more than the cost of entrance to any political discussion, argument or debate. 

Whether you are entering the political process to change the world or line your pockets, if you cannot frame your points in an interesting and engaging way, you will never get the attention of friend or foe.  So just as the ability to write well is the first step to becoming a famed novelist (or even an unknown but good one), writing and speaking in a way that engages an audience is not a moral choice but a necessity.

But there are other rhetorical techniques that require their users to make ethical decisions, sometimes difficult ones, because of the persuasive power of these techniques (regardless of the quality or sincerity of the content they are used to present).  To illustrate what I’m talking about, I’m going to focus on a set of rhetorical devices that deal with how one acknowledges opponents and their arguments. 

One rather infrequently used technique, called dirimens copulatio, simply involves mentioning opposing facts in your own arguments, not to counter them but to demonstrate the speaker’s awareness that two sides of an issue exist.  An example of this might include “In international politics, there are rarely right and wrong answers or black and white situations.  Which is why there are many legitimate criticisms of the choices my administration has had to make.”

A far more frequently used technique is procatalepsis, which also acknowledges an opponent’s position but does so in order to anticipate and counter it in advance.  Statement such as “My opponent claims that I have been too eager to engage in war when peaceful alternatives were available.  To which I would respond, what alternatives are open to us when the nation is attacked?” or “Critics will call my spending plans wasteful and irresponsible.  But who is acting irresponsibly, someone trying to move the economy forward or someone saying “No” to every proposal to put people back to work?” are both examples of procatalepsis. 

The power of this rhetorical tool is that it allows you to define your opponent’s arguments in your own terms and to provide a rebuttal that your opponent must react to when he or she would have preferred an attack that put you on the defensive.  And even if that opponent manages to successfully reframe the point and respond successfully, he or she has lost the benefit of surprise and novelty inherent in being first to present a line of criticism. 

I haven’t found a name for a third (and extremely popular) technique of using the support of members of your opponent’s group (political, national or ethnic) to bolster your own cause.  I first encountered this in the 1980s in the form of a bumper sticker that read “Another Democrat for Reagan,” and since that time cross-overs from the opposing party taking center stage has become a standard feature at party conventions.

This technique sends out several powerful messages:

* That one’s opponent and his or her ideas are so far outside the mainstream that even his own party/group does not support them

* That you, while officially representing your own group or party, actually represent everyone (or mostly everyone)

* That your broad acceptability (and your opponent’s lack thereof) is so obvious that even people who should be your opponents are attracted to your banner

You can probably see right away how any of these techniques can be easily abused.  For example, if you are presenting an opponent’s position (either to acknowledge or anticipate and counter it), it’s all too easy to present a distorted, inaccurate or even parody of your opponent’s real positions (both to make their criticisms look ridiculous and give you an easier  - and self-serving - set of criticism to reply to).

And if you are making the case that people who would normally support your opponent really support you, this can’t be done (honestly, anyway) by inflating the importance or small numbers or trying to present an unrepresentative fringe as mainstream.  The example of such abuse that I’m most familiar with (and keep in mind my bias on this issue) is the critical role Jewish voices play in anti-Israel politics, all in an attempt to create the impression that hostility to the Jewish state (no matter how egregious and irrational) cannot be labeled as an example of hate directed towards a minority group since members of that minority participate and even lead such attacks. 

But if using these techniques dishonestly in a cinch, using them honestly presents serious challenges since an effective counter-strategy against procatalepsis (for example) is to declare that any interpretation an opponent puts on your positions is illegitimate (even if the user of this technique is characterizing an opponent’s arguments completely accurately while anticipating and preemptively rebutting them).  And, all too often, including opposition points of view in an argument represents nothing more than an attempt to appear to be even handed to a wider audience while simultaneously doing everything in one’s power to avoid actual legitimate debate.

This is a particularly important dilemma in our saturated media age when members of this wider audience may only hear or see snippets of a particular debate edited to fit the needs of a newscast or (more sinisterly) the TV commercials created by one of the campaigns.  And in a world of partisan blogs and web sites dedicated to spinning every word spoken by every candidate, how can a Presidential campaign ever involve genuine debate vs. the generation of quotes and catch phrases for the media maw?

There is no simple answer to these questions, but it is worth pointing out that political debate has always taken place with a wider audience in mind.  When Roman leaders verbally duked it out in the Senate a couple of millennia back, they understood that they were not just trying to win out over their immediate political debate partner, but to convince the Senators in the audience (and the public at large) regarding the rightness of their positions.

Today, mass media, editing software and spin machines complicate the relationship between debaters and audiences, but we can still hope that enough leaders (and follower) grasp the notion that the most powerful resource one can bring to debate is that unique form of integrity called ethos.  And while political power can be won through trickery and abuse of rhetoric, ethos can never be earned in such a manner.

Rhetoric – 1

As the presidential primaries roller coaster towards what will ultimately be the selection of a Republican interlocutor to argue his case with a Democratic incumbent, it will be useful to look at some of the language (or rhetoric) that is likely to make up such arguments.

It’s a pity that rhetoric (now thought of as mere rhetoric) has moved from being one of the primary subjects of study for an educated person to something treated with suspicion if not outright contempt.

I suppose if you look at rhetoric as nothing more than a bag of verbal tricks designed to pull the wool over the eyes of an easily duped audience, it’s an easy category of human knowledge to dismiss.  But it’s never been clear to me that once we have rid ourselves of nasty and cynical old rhetoric, what exactly is supposed to replace it?  Will the world be transformed into a place where only honest and purely sincere discourse reigns?  Or is it more likely that those who have not chosen to ignore a study of rhetorical techniques (such as advertisers and politicians) will use those skills as they like, with the rest of the population no longer familiar that there is even a subject of rhetoric to be studied?

We’ve already talked about one component of rhetoric: Aristotle’s three modes of persuasion (logos, pathos and ethos).  But there are a whole host of rhetorical devices which, like fallacies, have mostly Latin names and are fun to illustrate with familiar (or wacky) examples.  And while we’ll take a look at rhetorical techniques over the next few postings keep in mind that (as with fallacies) one needn’t be familiar with every one of them to be on the lookout for ones most likely to be used in a modern Presidential campaign.

Let’s start off with the category that makes up the bulk of most lists of rhetorical devices: those that rely on linguistic styling.

Some of these will be familiar from the introductions to poetry we had in grade school, such as alliteration (repeating consonant sounds as in Spiro Agnew’s describing critics as “nattering nabobs of negativism”), assonance, the same technique with vowel sounds (as in “I Like Ike”), metaphor, simile, allusion and analogy (each of which relate one thing to another in a verbally interesting way - as in "no man is an island").  It should come as no surprise that word choice and sentence structure that make poetry and prose more interesting impact readers and listeners of political oratory in a similar fashion.

Then there are techniques relating to word sequencing such as antistrophe (repeating the same word or phrase - as in “Yes we can!” - at the end of successive clauses or phrases), tricolon (capping a part of a speech with a group of three words or phrases, as in Hilary Clinton’s appeal to "my supports, my champions…my sisterhood!”), and that perennial favorite chiasmus (relating two clauses via reversed structure as in “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”)

In researching this piece, I was surprised to discover that my own writing makes extensive use of the parentheses device, in which a word or phrase appears in the middle of a sentence (enclosed in either dashes or parentheses, like this).  This technique lets you disguise an important point as an informal aside, drawing attention to a critical component of an argument by making it almost seem a disposable afterthought.

My surprise derived from the fact that, like most of you, I have never formally studied rhetoric but have simply developed a writing style over time by both writing and reading the political writing of others.  And at some point during that period, I must have encountered political writing using this device that I found particularly persuasive, internalizing it in the process (along with other informal asides such as starting a sentence with “In truth,…” or “But stop and think for a moment…”). 

One of the reasons it’s good to start this discussion of rhetoric with linguistic examples is that they are harder to dismiss as intrinsically manipulative.  After all (there I go again), we want our politicians to engage us when they speak, not read out dry passages of text and policy proposals.  In fact (I can’t seem to help myself), any politician who does not pepper his or her speeches with interesting language choice and word sequences is likely to be dismissed as “boring,” “dry” or the dreaded “uninspiring.”

No doubt there are interesting psychological explanations as to why this word choices or cadences have a particular impact on human cognition and emotion.  But for purpose of this discussion, mastery of these techniques represent an entrance point for persuasive speech, an ethically neutral set of tools which can be used by anyone who masters them for good or ill.

And one of the best ways to ensure we are not manipulated by these or other forms of rhetoric is to develop and understanding of these techniques so that we can recognize and appreciate them (without being suckered by them, especially out of ignorance).

Sorted

During the 2008 election, I ran into an interesting book while working on my Undecidedman blog, a book entitled The Big Sort by Bill Bishop.

The thesis of Bishop’s book, summed up in the title, is that America has sorted itself over the last 35 years into communities of the like minded where agreement on key political issues is assumed and thinking outside this consensus shunned.

Bishop’s evidence for this phenomenon is compelling. Looking at an electoral map from 1976, Bishop discovered that 26% of voters lived in so-called “Landslide Districts,” that is districts in which one candidate beat the other by a margin of over 20% of the vote. Fast forwarding to 2004, the writer discovered that that number had almost doubled to 48%, meaning half the voting population lives in districts where one political candidate (and, one assumes, one political disposition) reigns supreme.

I’ve not found any recent data that would show if this trend has continued, declined or leveled off,  but I think it’s safe to assume that the specific type of polarization many of us experienced in 2008 will likely be as intense this election cycle (if not more so).

Bishop theorized that much of this polarization derives from fact that most of the people taking part in discussion and debate over the election do so within environments where it is very unlikely they will ever hear an opinion that dissents from their own. Fold in narrow-casted cable TV and Internet sites that allow people to only receive news and opinion they already agree with and you’re left with half the nation (maybe even more today) living in a world where rarely is heard a political opinion outside the consensus shared by neighbors, friends, colleagues and relatives.

You can begin to see the challenges this type of mindset poses to anyone engaging in critical thinking about the upcoming presidential vote.  For thinking in a political context pre-supposes interaction with others, ideally in the form of dialog with interlocutors whose minds are open – at least a little bit – to considering options they might not naturally gravitate towards.  Keep in mind that the does not require people to ultimately accept those options (much less act on them), but just to try them on for size – if only for the sake of conversation.  

But if trying on different ideas that cut across your personal-political grain is already somewhat unnatural, how much more unnatural will such explorations be for those who have not only never thought this way in the past, but who have never interacted with someone who does not share their world view?  When we all agree with our family members, our friends and our neighbors (except, perhaps, for that odd uncle or person up the street, with whom we agree to disagree in silence), how can being asked to think about the most important decision we can make in a democratic society seem anything other than positively weird?

I’ve noted how imagination gives us a small opening to consider options we might not consider once a two-man race is truly on (if only because it allows us to imagine candidates even more like us than the ones we have to choose from).  But that window will close more and more tightly once election emotions begin to run high, leaving anyone contemplating the election through a less-than-predictable lens (such as the lens of critical thinking) looking more and more out of place.  You can anticipate blank stares or polite nods from people trying to figure out what you’re really up to. And if you’ve been a loyal partisan up until now, expect questioning as to why you don’t come right out and admit that you’ve actually switched sides (the only possible explanation for why someone would think outside the tribe).

How to explain to them that spending yet another election cycle interacting only with like-minded friends and colleagues means that they are effectively opting out of the political process altogether? 

To take the most obvious example, here in Massachusetts (the bluest of blue landslide states), our vote doesn’t even matter!  More specifically, no presidential candidate will campaign here because we, like most Americans, do not live in a “swing state,” meaning our state-level landslide status has already caused us to be taken for granted. Thus the very consensus my neighbors cling to make us completely irrelevant to this year’s vote. With luck, we’ll get some spillover commercials from a neighboring state of “swingers,” but for the most part we’ll spend this election wringing our hands over events that we have opted out of taking part in.

Think about that the next time you think the election is so clear cut there is no point in thinking about it any further.