Political Rhetoric: Overview

Introduction

Rhetoric is the art of speaking or writing in a way that communicates a point clearly, often with the goal of persuading an audience of the merit of a particular point of view. Political rhetoric deploys this art in the service of government and society, and has been since at least the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The twenty-first-century context adds a new twist to the operation of political rhetoric, which is that people around the world now use a wide range of new media to communicate with one another, enabling all kinds of rhetoric to reach more people than ever before.

Good political rhetoric presents facts in a way that convinces audiences of the merits of a policy or political position, usually by generating an emotional response in addition to an intellectual one. In a democracy, political parties compete through political rhetoric, each trying to persuade a majority of voters that its position is the best for the community, state, or country as a whole. In the United States in the first decades of the twenty-first century, a debate began over whether mainstream political rhetoric in its current form facilitates or subverts the establishment of common ground on key issues. Some argue that modern political rhetoric "preaches to the converted," issuing emotional appeals that solidify party support and isolate those who disagree with it, thus making compromise difficult or impossible. Others say public debate in the United States is entirely in line with the historic operation of American democracy and should not be cause for concern.

Understanding the Discussion

Deliberative rhetoric: Rhetoric that tries to persuade an audience to act, employed in the context of political decision making.

Epideictic rhetoric: Rhetoric that is ceremonial in nature, offering praise or blame for a person, thing, or event.

Forensic rhetoric: Rhetoric that focuses on guilt or innocence in a legal or judicial context.

Partisanship: Dedicated support for a particular political party, in the US context either the Democratic or Republican Party.

History

In the Western world, the most influential early articulation of the principles of rhetoric comes from the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Writing in the fourth century BCE, he argued that humans are, by nature, social beings, and that many of the institutions and concepts they have developed are the natural results of their social tendencies. For example, Aristotle saw rational speech as a tool to draw humans together, and he saw communities as extensions of human families. Political states, he argued, exist to satisfy the desires of those communities.

One of Aristotle’s best-known works of political philosophy, Rhetoric, presents a three-part analysis of how rhetoric, or persuasive speech, works. Aristotle argued that speech can persuade an audience based on the character of the speaker, the emotional state of the audience, or the rational argument the speaker is making. Aristotle also argued that there are three different types of rhetoric. The first is the deliberative form, in which the speaker advises the audience to do or avoid doing something; deliberative rhetoric is typically concerned with establishing what is useful to the people and what is dangerous for them, and has widespread political applications. Forensic rhetoric, the second form, is more focused on convincing the audience of an individual’s guilt or innocence; such language, which takes into account evidence, motivation, and the mindset of the audience, is commonly used in judicial contexts. The third form is epideictic rhetoric, which is largely ceremonial in nature, used to issue praise or blame on formal occasions.

Aristotle’s formulation of the workings of rhetoric has remained influential in formal approaches to the subject down to the present day. With the decline of the Greco-Roman world and the rise of Christian Europe, political oratory in the Greek democratic tradition fell away, but the need for the educated few to guide the masses and persuade the established powers remained. Religious imagery drawn from the Bible came to suffuse Western political rhetoric through the Middle Ages and into the modern era, joining with the revival of the ancient concept of democracy in the establishment of the United States.

Historically, American political rhetoric viewed as the most successful has effectively distilled the concepts most important to the United States as a nation. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln penned what many consider to be the greatest political speech in American history, the Gettysburg Address. The speech was only three hundred words long, but its words were both epideictic and deliberative, and it would be used to help heal the wounds of the Civil War. Other great American speeches, from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1933 inaugural address to Martin Luther King Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech, have had a similar effect: they did not necessarily contain concrete proposals or facts; rather, they energized the emotions of the nation to effect (in the minds of most people) positive social change.

Not all political rhetoric unites, however. In a democracy, deliberative rhetoric is competitive, pitting opposing points of view against one another in a battle for a critical mass of public support that will confer political power on the winning side. Usually, however, it is not a complete win for one side or the other, but some form of compromise.

Political rhetoric in the twenty-first century has continued to evolve. Its deliberative, epideictic, and forensic forms are still manifest, although it may be argued that, in light of the overwhelming array of information resources now available, there is an equally overwhelming amount of rhetoric to which people are exposed, and through which they have to sort. Whereas the American colonists used pamphlets to spread the word about their cause during the Revolution, today political actors use email, blogs, and social media to spread their messages, in addition to television, radio, and print media.

Some people feel that American political rhetoric has moved away from the goal of democratic compromise and toward ever more rancorous partisanship. In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, Americans were seen as irreparably divided over issues like health-care reform, the national budget, immigration policy, gun control, abortion, and the war on terrorism. Many were concerned that the kind of rhetoric being used on both sides of these issues prevented compromises from being struck. Others have said these deep disagreements are simply in the nature of democratic politics, and are not anything new to history.

In fact, there is evidence that political rhetoric as of the end of the 2010s had not entirely focused on persuasion. Studies showed that the type of rhetoric commonly used in public debate may not persuade people to change their minds about issues but merely drive them further into their respective camps and increase the issue’s intensity. This trend, in the eyes of some, has undermined the very political discourse that Aristotle’s ideal of rhetoric is supposed to promote: By pushing people with firm opinions further apart and alienating many of those who are uncommitted, opponents of this type of rhetoric argue, political divisions will continue or worsen without any substantive policy action being taken.

Others can point to the highly venomous nature of disagreements in American politics going back to the first years of the republic—to say nothing of the actual fracturing of the nation over the issue of slavery in the Civil War. The social and political discord of the civil rights era and the Vietnam War can be held up as examples of partisanship. From this point of view, the divided nature of American political rhetoric is just in the nature of an open society with freedom of speech. Furthermore, the technological innovations of the twenty-first century have been seen by many as much more of a boon than a burden, offering those who want to educate themselves about the issues an abundance of opportunities to do so—provided they can sort logic from emotion.

Political Rhetoric Today

Discussion around the nature of American political rhetoric became increasingly prominent following the 2016 presidential campaign and the November 2016 election of Donald Trump. Many commentators noted that throughout his campaign and presidency, Trump, who had a particularly large presence on Twitter as compared to previous presidents, maintained a style of rhetoric seen as heavily partisan and even inflammatory. Some, especially Democrats, expressed concern that the president's rhetoric regarding issues such as immigration and race was dangerously divisive in favor of appealing to his base of supporters, while others felt that his rhetoric was being unfairly blamed for factors such as hateful attitudes and violence. Debates over the possible role of political rhetoric in the motivation to commit acts of violence were not new by that point, as cases like the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords in 2011 had brought the issue increasingly to the fore. A 2019 Pew Research Center poll indicated that 85 percent of the American public felt that political debate had become more negative while 73 percent believed that elected officials should avoid using heated language for fear that it could incite violence. As more attention was paid to potential links between Trump's rhetoric and instances of violence, including a review conducted by ABC News in early 2020 in which the organization reported finding fifty-four criminal cases of violent acts in which Trump and his rhetoric had been invoked, some contended that such direct connections should not be made while also highlighting that this argument had not been the focus of other violent incidents with political relevance. This included the case in 2017 when a gunman who had volunteered for the presidential campaign of longtime independent Bernie Sanders, and had promoted shared views such as higher taxes on the wealthy, had opened fire during a Republican congressional baseball team practice in Virginia.

The contentious and controversial 2020 presidential election only further stoked this debate surrounding political rhetoric. It was widely noted and discussed that during the campaign leading up to the vote in November 2020, incumbent president Trump had once again heavily employed negative rhetoric about both his opponent, Joe Biden, and the electoral process. Through social media and public rallies, he continuously attempted to use rhetoric pertaining to the validity of the electoral process, particularly the increased implementation of mail-in voting prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, to sow doubts in voters' minds about this democratic institution. Following the election, Trump, as well as several Republican politicians, used rhetoric in which they labeled the election and its outcome granting victory to Biden as fraudulent as well as "stolen." When a large group of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, to disrupt Congress's certification of the counted Electoral College votes, many commentators pointed to Trump's rhetoric, particularly in a speech he gave shortly prior to the incident, for inciting such violence. As a House select committee conducted an investigation into the attack, by 2022 it had gathered significant evidence that, it argued, demonstrated how many of the people involved in the attack had been directly motivated by Trump's tweets and speech in the weeks prior.

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