9 Political Rhetoric: Susan Condor Cristian Tileagă Michael Billig
9 Political Rhetoric: Susan Condor Cristian Tileagă Michael Billig
9 Political Rhetoric: Susan Condor Cristian Tileagă Michael Billig
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199760107.001.0001
Published: 2013 Online ISBN: 9780199984367 Print ISBN: 9780199760107
CHAPTER
9 Political Rhetoric
Abstract
The topic of political rhetoric concerns the strategies used to construct persuasive arguments in
political debate. The study of political rhetoric therefore spans a range of academic disciplines and
touches upon the fundamental activities of democratic politics. This chapter starts out by brie y
reviewing recent academic work on changing styles of political communication and on the rhetorical
strategies used in debates on emergent political issues. It then turns to focus on two conceptual issues
of particular signi cance to political psychology. First, the chapter considers how a study of
argumentation may enhance our understanding of political attitudes and cognition. Second, it
considers how a study of the processes by which identities are claimed, displayed, and attributed in the
course of political debate may enhance our appreciation of the role of ambivalence and vagueness in
democratic political life.
1. Introduction
THE topic of political rhetoric concerns the strategies used to construct persuasive arguments in formal
public debates and in everyday political disputes. The study of political rhetoric therefore touches upon the
fundamental activities of democratic politics. As Kane and Patapan (2010, p. 372) observe, “because public
discussion and debate are essential in a democracy, and because leaders are obliged to rule the sovereign
people by means of constant persuasion, rhetoric is absolutely central.” Going further, Dryzek (2010) notes
that rhetoric is also central to grass-roots political action: “Rhetoric facilitates the making and hearing of
representation claims spanning subjects and audiences … democracy requires a deliberative system with
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multiple components whose linkage often needs rhetoric” (pp. 319–339).
Since the previous edition of the Handbook in 2003, academic writing on political rhetoric has greatly
increased in volume and diversi ed in perspective. This work now spans a range of disciplines, including
linguistics, political theory, international relations, communication studies, and psychology. At the time of
writing, there existed no integrative accounts of this body of literature. The task of summarizing the eld is
complicated by the fact that dialogue between academics working in di erent disciplinary contexts is often
limited. In addition, the topic of political rhetoric is not always clearly demarcated from cognate constructs,
including political narrative (Hammack & Pilecki, 2012), framing (Chong, chapter 4, this volume),
communication (Valentino & Nardis, chapter 18, this volume), conversation (cf. Remer, 1999), discourse
(e.g., Fairclough & Fairclough, 2012), or deliberation (see Myers & Mendelberg, chapter 22, this volume).
Despite the diversity of approaches adopted and the overlap with other topics addressed in political
p. 263 psychology, it is nevertheless possible to identify some distinctive aspects to theory and research on
political rhetoric. First, contemporary scholars of political rhetoric tend to draw inspiration directly from
classical writings on the subject. In the case of rhetorical psychology, this has involved the use of classical
scholarship as a source of insights about human mentality as well as about the structure and function of
persuasive argument. Second, authors who write on the subject of political rhetoric often adopt a critical
perspective in relation to their academic discipline of origin. In political science, the study of rhetoric may
be presented as an alternative to established perspectives on political beliefs and decision-making. In social
and political psychology, interest in rhetoric arose as part of the “turn to language,” a movement that
involved a rejection of cognitivism, and a commitment to approaching talk and text as strategic
communicative action rather than as expressions of inner psychological processes, states, or traits (e.g.
Burman & Parker, 1993; Edwards, 1997; Harré & Gillett, 1994; Potter, 2000; Potter & Wetherell, 1987;
Although the subject of rhetoric clearly pertains to spoken and written language, empirical research has
generally proceeded independently of methodological advances in the analysis of communication. However,
some linguists have recently begun to advocate closer dialogue between students of rhetoric and researchers
concerned with the ne details of discourse and stylistics (Foxlee, 2012), and scholars in communication
studies have begun to consider the application of eld methods to the in situ study of the rhetoric of protest
movements (Middleton, Senda-Cook, & Endres, 2011). Similarly, unlike many other perspectives that
originated from the “turn to language,” rhetorical psychologists have not traditionally promoted any
speci c methodological technique. On the contrary: Billig (1988a) originally advocated traditional
scholarship as an alternative to methodology for the interpretation of ideological themes in political
rhetoric. More recently, psychological researchers have studied examples of political rhetoric using a variety
of research techniques, including discourse analytic approaches to assist the identi cation of interpretative
repertoires, and conversation analysis for the ne-grained analysis of the details of political speeches and
arguments. Researchers with an explicitly political agenda may also adopt critical discourse analytic
methods.
Classical accounts of rhetoric focused on formal, public speech (the term rhetoric derives from the Greek,
ρήτωρ, meaning orator). However, contemporary authors have extended the scope of rhetorical scholarship
to include informal talk (e.g., Billig, 1991), texts (e.g., Spurr, 1993), photography and visual images (Hill &
Helmers, 2004), maps (Wallach, 2011), cartoons (Morris, 1993), lm (Morreale, 1991), digital
communication (Zappen, 2005), architecture (Robin, 1992), graphic art (Scott, 2010), and even food (Frye &
Bruner, 2012).
Classical work on rhetoric was not con ned to the political sphere. Aristotle described political (deliberative)
oratory as argument that is concerned with weighing up alternative future courses of action relating to
nances, war and peace, national defense, trade, and legislation. He distinguished this kind of talk from
judicial (or forensic) oratory, practiced in the law courts, which focuses on questions of accusation, justice,
and truth concerning past events, and from epideictic (ceremonial) oratory, concerned with the attribution
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of praise or censure in the present. Contemporary scholars have further extended the sphere of application
of rhetorical studies, often believing like Booth (2004 p. xi) that “[r] hetoric is employed at every moment
when one human being intends to produce, through the use of signs or symbols, some e ect on another.”
However, as Gill and Whedbee (1997) noted, it is still commonly supposed that “the essential activities of
rhetoric are located on a political stage” (p. 157).
In the classical period, political oratory required a loud voice and formal gestures, as orators spoke in person
to mass audiences. In the modern world, political oratory is typically mediated to distal audiences by textual
p. 265 or electronic means of communication often blurring the distinction between politics and entertainment
(van Zoonen, 2005). This has impacted upon political rhetoric in a number of ways. For example, political
leaders now often adopt an informal, conversational style as evidenced in particular in the genre of the
televised political interview. The distinction between public and private aspects of political discourse is
collapsing (Thompson, 2011), resulting in a rise of self-expressive politics and the personalization of formal
political rhetoric. In addition, whereas classical work on political rhetoric focused on oratory, more recent
work has come to focus on what Barthes (1977) called the “rhetoric of the image,” which was not envisaged
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by the purely verbal logic of traditional rhetoric (Roque, 2008).
The fact that political rhetoric is now often conveyed through television, newsprint, or e-communication
has resulted in a diversi cation of potential audiences. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969) distinguish
between the particular audience (the people being speci cally addressed in a particular communication) and
the universal audience, comprising all those who might in principle hear or dis/agree with the message. In
either case, the audiences may be composite in character, composed of subgroups with multiple, often
competing, views and interests. Van Eemeren (2010) distinguishes between two types of composite
audience:mixed audiences, comprising individuals and subgroups with di erent starting points in relation
to a communicator’s topic or message, and multiple audiences, comprising individuals and groups with
di erent (possibly incompatible) commitments in relation to the issue under discussion. The increased use
of mediated communication increases the potential diversity of the audiences that a political communicator
is expected to address in a single speech or text. In addition, the situation may be further complicated by the
fact that the audiences being addressed in a particular communication need not always correspond with the
constituencies that a speaker is claiming to represent, or toward whom she or he may be held politically
4
accountable.
The increasing importance of the mass and electronic media has also resulted in the e ective rhetorical
context of formal political communications becoming extended both temporally and spatially. The British
MP Harold Wilson once famously remarked that “a week is a long time in politics.” However, the fact that
records of political debates, speeches, and other forms of communication are increasingly easy to retrieve
through electronic search-engines means that political rhetoric can now have an in nite half-life, with the
consequence that words uttered or written at one point in time may be retrieved and used in a di erent
context (e.g. Antaki & Leudar,1991).
Since the previous edition of the Handbook in 2003, academic authors have been paying increasing attention
to the impact of new media technologies on political rhetoric. Bennett and Iyengar (2008) suggest that the
potential impact of new technologies might eventually render previous academic perspectives on media
e ects obsolete. In particular, they draw attention to the ways in which new technologies a ord increasing
selective exposure to political information, the fragmentation of audiences, and the decline of inadvertent
citizen exposure to political information through the media. Some authors have emphasized the
p. 266 democratizing potential of new technologies, which a ord cosmopolitan communication between
citizens (Mihelj, van Zoonen, & Vis, 2011) and which are capable of bridging di erent social networks
(Hampton, 2011). New technologies may facilitate direct communication between citizens and decision-
makers, citizens’ active production of political messages, and collective political protest. Facebook and
Twitter certainly facilitated the informal political communication of protesters in the Arab revolution,
indignados in Madrid, and the Occupy movement.
However, some authors have been more skeptical about the actual e ects of the digital revolution on
political rhetoric and engagement. For example, Jouët, Vedel, and Comby (2011) observed that French
citizens still obtain political information primarily from the mass media, and Jansen and Koop (2005)
reported that Internet discussion boards during British Columbia’s election were dominated by a relatively
small number of users. Deacon and Wring (2011) suggested that the promise of the Internet as a campaign
tool in the British general election of 2010 turned out to have been overrated. Similarly, in their analyses of
videos and comments posted to YouTube in response to the Dutch anti-Islam video Fitna, van Zoonen and
More commonly, research on political rhetoric focuses on real-world contexts of political engagement. This
has included work on the rhetorical strategies adopted by social movements (Chavez, 2011; Endres & Senda-
Cook, 2011), protest groups (Griggs & Howarth, 2004; Sowards & Renegar, 2006), and E-activist groups
(Eaton, 2010; Sommerfeldt, 2011). However, most empirical studies of political rhetoric continue to focus on
formal political communication, including parliamentary debates (e.g., Every & Augoustinos, 2007;
Vanderbeck & Johnson, 2011), political campaigns and marketing (e.g., Fridkin & Kenney, 2011; Jerit, 2004;
Payne, 2010), and high-pro le speeches, texts, or lms and historical documents (e.g. Terrill, 2009; 2011;
Tileagă, 2009; 2012). Popular awareness of Barack Obama’s rhetorical skill has led to a recent revival of
academic interest in the oratory styles of particular political leaders (e.g., Coe & Reitzes, 2010; Isaksen, 2011;
Grube, 2010; Toye, 2011; Utley & Heyse, 2009).
The substantive topics investigated in studies of political rhetoric tend to re ect political concerns of the
day. Current research continues to focus on issues related to political rhetoric in debates concerning
p. 267 national identity (Condor, 2011; Finell & Liebkind, 2010); immigration and citizenship (e.g., Boromisza-
Habashi, 2011; Every & Augoustinos, 2007); foreign policy (Kratochvil, Cibulková, & Beneš, 2006), and the
legitimation of war (Bostdor , 2011; Oddo, 2011). Recently, researchers have turned their attention to
rhetoric concerning climate change (Kurtz, Augoustinos, & Crabb, 2010), terrorism (De Castella & McGarty,
2011), and the “war on terror” (Esch, 2010; Kassimeris & Jackson, 2011; Kaufer & Al-Malki, 2009).
Empirical analyses of political rhetoric often focus on speci c argumentative devices, tropes, or
commonplaces. In this respect, researchers are inclined to foreground the micro-features of
communication that are often overlooked in research that treats political discourse as a re ection of
cognitive activity rather than as a form of communicative action. For example, analyses of conceptual or
integrative complexity in political talk and text typically treat clichés (“cryptic or glib remarks”), idioms,
satire, and sarcasm as unscoreable (Baker-Brown et al., 1992). In contrast, in rhetorical analyses, gures of
speech are typically treated as important argumentative devices. Contemporary research has focused on
questions related to the strategic use of metaphors (Ferrari, 2007), proverbs (Orwenjo, 2009), slogans
(Kephart & Ra erty, 2009), humor (Dmitriev, 2008; Timmerman, Gussman, & King, 2012), politeness
(Fracchiolla, 2011; Shibamoto-Smith, 2011), and appeals to common-sense values such as “change” (Roan
& White, 2010), “choice” (Gaard, 2010), and “community” (Buckler, 2007) in political talk and texts. Over
the past few years, scholars have demonstrated an increased concern over the use of religious language and
idioms in formal political rhetoric (e.g., Kaylor, 2011; Marietta, 2012; Stecker, 2011; Terrill,2007).
In view of the range of work that now exists on the subject, it is not possible to provide a comprehensive
account of academic perspectives on political rhetoric in a single chapter. In the following pages we will
focus speci cally on the ways in which recent studies of political rhetoric relate to two key topics of interest
to political psychologists: argument, and identity.
The term “argument” may be applied to a range of phenomena, including disputes between individuals or
groups, and to coherent sets of statements justifying a single premise (“line of argument”). In its most
inclusive sense, all verbal behavior might potentially qualify for the label of “argument.” For example,
Potter (1997) suggests that descriptive discourse necessarily has o ensive (critical) aspects insofar as it
explicitly or implicitly seeks to undermine rival versions of events, and defensive (justi catory) aspects
5
insofar as speakers attempt to shore up their accounts from attack by rivals.
In this section of the chapter we will focus on three areas of work of particular relevance to political
psychology: the rhetorical psychology perspective on the argumentative nature of thinking and attitudes;
the ideological dilemmas perspective on the argumentative aspects of ideology, and the rhetorical political
analysis perspective on the argumentative aspects of policy decision-making.
Billig contrasts this perspective on thinking as argument with cognitive psychology models that
characterize human reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making as a matter of information
processing or rule following. Drawing from the sophist Protagoras’s famous maxim, “In every question,
there are two sides to the argument, exactly opposite to each other,” Billig contends that just as public
argument is two-sided, so too is the solitary psychological process of thinking. Because both sides to an
p. 269 argument can produce reasonable justi cations, and both can counter the criticisms of each other, the
process of thinking is not necessarily motivated by a drive toward consistency. On the contrary, in the
course of deliberation people often nd themselves moved by the spirit of contradiction. Rhetorical
psychology hence substitutes the conventional psychological image of the human thinker as a rule-
following bureaucrat with the image of the human thinker as a deliberator “shuttling between contrary
opinions” (Billig, 1996, p. 186).
Psychologists have long considered the process of categorization to be “the foundation of thought”
(Bruner, Goodnow, & Austin, 1956), and it has often been held that categorization involves an economy of
mental or discursive e ort. For example, Morley (1886) described labels as “devices for saving talkative
persons the trouble of thinking” (p.142). More recently, Rosch (1978) famously described the function of
category systems as “to provide maximum information with the least cognitive e ort” (p.28). In contrast,
Billig suggests that these accounts of categorization presented a distinctly one-sided image of the capacities
of human beings as reasoning subjects. To accept the argumentative, two-sided nature of thinking is to
appreciate the capacity of people to employ categories, but also to engage in the opposite cognitive and
rhetorical operation of particularization.
Insofar as categories are understood as rhetorical phenomena, the process of categorization need not be
understood to save people the trouble of thinking. On the contrary, when used in the course of
These considerations have particular relevance to political psychology insofar as many of the basic
categories of contemporary political discourse are essentially contested (Gallie, 1956), that is, they are the
subject of continual disputes that cannot be settled by “appeal to empirical evidence, linguistic usage, or the
canons of logic alone” (Gray, 1978, p. 344), such as “power,” “democracy,” “representation,” and
“liberty.” Conventionally, social and political psychologists have been inclined to treat political constructs
as variables that can be relatively easily operationalized and measured. For example, researchers investigate
the “e ects of power” on political cognition or action, the situations under which intergroup behavior is
“determined by fairness motives,” the extent to which individuals or groups di er in their understanding of
“equality,” and so forth. In contrast, researchers adopting a rhetorical perspective are more disposed to
study the ways in which actors pursue political projects through exible and strategic appeals to particular
understandings of power, fairness, and equality. For example, Summers (2007) analyzed debates in Western
Australian parliamentary speeches supporting or opposing the Lesbian and Gay Law Reform Act, and
p. 270 observed how both sides of the debate used appeals to equality, human rights, democracy, and the
interests of children, which the speakers treated as rhetorical bottom-lines. Similarly, research has noted
how arguments designed to support, and to oppose, various forms of ethnic discrimination may both appeal
to shared liberal values of equality, fairness, and individualism (e.g., Augoustinos, Tu n, & Every, 2005).
Nick Hopkins, Steve Reicher, and Vered Kahani-Hopkins adopted a rhetorical approach to social
categorization in a program of research investigating the strategies used by politicians and political
activists for the purposes of political mobilization (e.g., Hopkins and Kahani-Hopkins, 2004; Hopkins &
Reicher, 1997; Hopkins, Reicher, & Kahani-Hopkins, 2003; Kahani-Hopkins & Hopkins, 2002; Reicher &
Hopkins, 1996; 2001). These authors based their work on self-categorization theory (Turner, Hogg, Oakes,
Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987) but argued that a reliance on laboratory experimentation could lead social
psychologists to overlook the extent to which social categories may represent the object of, rather than
merely a prior condition for, political contestation. As Hopkins and Kahani-Hopkins (2004) putit:
Whilst experimental research has many strengths, there is a danger that an exclusive reliance on
laboratory-based paradigms restricts the development of theory. Most obviously, as such
paradigms are weak in exploring processes of argument there is a danger that theories of
categorization underplay the importance of rhetoric and dispute.
(p.42).
In contrast, members of the UK Imams and Mosques Council argued that British Muslims were an integral
part of British society. Rather than viewing the West as embodying the antithesis of Islamic values, these
activists pointed to the existence of shared values. Proponents of this position not only challenged the idea
that participation in a Western community subverted Muslim identity, but also argued that identi cation
with non-Muslims was in fact an integral aspect of Muslim identity. In this case, the Islamic umma was
construed as a heterogeneous group that instantiated the very values of tolerance and diversity necessary to
function actively and e ectively in a modern multicultural society.
Rhetorical psychology does not treat an individual’s assertion of attitudes and opinions as a straightforward
7
report of their subjective appraisals. Rather, the act of claiming an attitude or o ering an opinion involves
8
an intervention into a public controversy. This means that not all beliefs qualify as attitudes (Billig, 1988b).
Within a given social context there will be certain matters that are treated as noncontroversial,
commonsensical. It is only on potentially disputable matters that an individual can be said to hold opinions
or express attitudes.
Insofar as attitudes constitute stances in a public debate, any line of argument (logos) only makes sense in
relation to alternative arguments (anti-logoi). Sometimes a speaker may explicitly set out the anti-logoi to
his or her own position. In other situations, a speaker may leave the anti-logos implicit. However, merely to
declare oneself to favor capital punishment is, by implication, to take a stance against the abolition of the
death penalty; to declare oneself pro-life is to oppose pro-choice arguments; to proclaim one’s support for
p. 272 gun control is implicitly to take issue with the arguments of the rearms lobby; to argue in favor of
multicultural policies of social integration is to take a position against the view that Muslim identity is
fundamentally incompatible with Western values.
In ordinary social life, advocacy does not simply involve adopting a position for or against some state of
a airs, as is normally required of research respondents when faced with an attitude scale or opinion survey.
When expressed in the course of everyday conversation, attitude avowals are typically accompanied by
reasons, whether these are direct justi cations for the views proposed or criticisms of competing positions.
The internal consistency of these lines of argument may represent an important consideration, but not
because human beings have an inner drive or need for cognitive consistency. Rather, the internal coherence
of attitude avowals, and the reliability with which an individual adopts a particular stance over a period of
time, may be rhetorically motivated insofar as charges of inconsistency may weaken the force of an
argument. It follows that individuals need not always attend to the logical consistency of their accounts.
Indeed, discourse analysts have often pointed to variation in positions that a speaker may endorse in the
ow of mundane talk. However, insofar as a speaker is publicly adopting a particular stance on a
controversial issue, the need to maintain (or at least be seen to maintain) a consistent argument may
become a relevant concern.
An interactional requirement for consistency need not, however, lead to rhetorical in exibility. When
presenting their attitude on a particular issue, people do not merely have a set of relevant considerations
Billig (1989) distinguishes two ways in which individuals may be understood to hold a view in relation to a
public controversy. Intersubjective perspectives presume the existence of a singular, ultimately discernable,
empirical reality. In this case, disagreement may be attributed to initial error on the part of at least one of
the parties concerned. In contrast, multisubjective perspectives treat dispute as the result of plural, and
potentially irreconcilable, values or points of view. Like anything else, the intersubjective or multisubjective
character of a dispute may, itself, constitute an object of contestation. Moreover, individuals need not
always adopt a consistent position on whether a particular clash of political views should be regarded as a
disagreement over matters of (singular) factor of (multiple) competing values. For example, Condor (2011)
reported how the same UK politicians could treat an attitude in favor of multiculturalism as a matter of
p. 273 multisubjectivity when discussing the EU (displaying respect for the rights of other EU states to adopt
assimilationist policies of social integration) while treating this as a matter of intersubjectivity in a UK
context, in which case all alternative perspectives were presented as irrational and misguided.
(p.15)
We noted in section 2 that a good deal of current empirical research involves identifying the use of virtue
words (McGee, 1980, p. 6) such as “community,” “change,” or “choice” and mapping their rhetorical
functions in speci c arguments.
McGee suggests that ideographs may provide a basis for shared understanding between speakers and
grounds for coordinated action, “when a claim is warranted by such terms as “law,’ “liberty,’ “tyranny,’ or
“trial by jury,’ … it is presumed that human beings will react predictably” (McGee, 1980, p. 6). However, the
fact that the key terms of political debate are essentially contestable means that although speakers often
treat appeals to values such as fairness, the national interest, or human rights as if they were
noncontentious, there is no guarantee that their audience will necessarily accept their argument. In
practice, it is always possible for these appeals to be opened up for critical consideration or for exceptions to
be made for particular cases.
Many social scienti c accounts of ideology treat social actors as the passive recipients of inherited belief
systems. From this kind of perspective, ideology is viewed as a conservative force, preventing challenges to
the political status quo (Jost, Federico, & Napier, 2009) and imposing an overarching consistency to
thoughts, beliefs, and values (cf. Nelson, 1977). Billig suggests that an understanding of ideology as systems
of social and psychological “constraint” could be corrected by attending to the presence of contrary themes
within ideological systems. Social scientists often draw attention to the contradictory nature of social
maxims (many hands make light work but too many cooks spoil the broth). Conventionally, such
contradictions have been viewed as evidence of the irrationality of common sense (cf. Billig, 1994; Shapin,
Billig’s (1987) ideas concerning the productive potential of opposing topoi were developed in the text
Ideological Dilemmas (Billig et al., 1988), which presented a series of case studies illustrating how
contradictions within liberal ideology (between competing values of equality versus respect for authority, of
fairness as equity or equality, of individualism versus the common good) played out in everyday debates
concerning gender, education, prejudice, health, and expertise. The ambivalent quality of these arguments
was not seen to re ect a lack of engagement or sophistication on the part of the speakers. On the contrary, it
was precisely the availability of opposing themes that enabled ordinary people to nd the familiar puzzling
and therefore worthy of deliberation.
Although Billig and his colleagues assumed a liberal democratic political culture as part of the background
against which everyday talk took place, they did not explicitly consider how dilemmatic themes operate in
deliberation over political issues. However, subsequent research has applied the ideological dilemmas
approach to everyday political reasoning on issues such as unemployment (Gibson, 2011), gender inequality
(Benschop, Halsema, & Schreurs, 2001; Stokoe, 2000), and nationality and citizenship (e.g., Bozatzis, 2009;
Condor, 2000; 2006; Condor & Gibson, 2007; Sapountzis,2008).
Billig and his colleagues note that communicators do not always attend to dilemmatic aspects of discourse
overtly. On occasions, “Discourse which seems to be arguing for one point may contain implicit meanings
which could be made explicit to argue for the counter-point” (p.23). An example of implicit ideological
dilemmas is provided by Condor’s (2011) analysis of political speeches in favor of “British
multiculturalism.” Condor observes that the speakers often referred explicitly to their anti-logoi: arguments
in favor of ethnic or cultural nationalism, exempli ed by Victorian imperialist discourses. However, analysis
of the texts of these speeches showed that the arguments put forward by advocates of British
multiculturalism rested upon the claim that the contemporary UK represented a “special case.”
Consequently, far from opposing the general ideology of ethnic nationalism, the speakers were in fact
presupposing a normal social order of national ethnic homogeneity. Moreover, the speci c topoi that the
speakers invoked in the course of justifying British multiculturalism in fact closely echoed the ideograms
employed by previous generations of politicians in epideictic rhetoric celebrating the aesthetic, moral,
economic, and political value of British Imperialism.
Finlayson notes that democratic politics is premised on the assumption of the “irreducible and contested
plurality of public life” (2007, p. 552) and that political ideas and beliefs “are always turned into arguments,
into elements of contestable propositions… which, if they are to survive, must win adherents in a contest of
persuasive presentation” (p.559). Politics is hence not characterized by beliefs or decisions per se, but by
“the presence of beliefs in contradiction with each other” (p.552). Finlayson argues that political rhetoric
deals both with areas of empirical uncertainty (in Billig’s terms, intersubjective disagreement) and also
disputes that result from the fact that citizens approach the same issue from di erent perspectives (Billig’s
multisubjective disagreement).
Like Billig, Finlayson suggests that political categories typically constitute the object of contestation. Taking
the example of poverty (cf. Edelman, 1977), he observes that political deliberation does not only concern
“the best policy instrument for alleviating poverty but how poverty should be de ned (and thus what would
actually constitute its alleviation), whether or not poverty is a problem, and if it is, then the kind of problem
it might be (a moral, economic, social or security problem)” (2007, p. 550).
At present, little research has been conducted within the RPA perspective (although see Finlayson &
Martin’s [ 2008 ] analysis of Tony Blair’s last speech to the UK Labour Party Conference in 2006). However,
Finlayson (2006; 2007) provides a general outline of the ways in which future empirical work might
10
develop. First, RPA would approach any particular political debate in relation to its original rhetorical
context, and also with a view to the ways in which the mediated character of contemporary politics can serve
to render rhetorical situations uid and ambiguous. Second, analysis should consider how the topic (the
point of the controversy or bone of contention) is itself argumentatively established. Speci cally, this would
involve (1)factual conjecture: if/that a state of a airs exists (e.g., has Iraq attempted to purchase yellowcake
uranium from Niger?); (2)de nition: naming the issue, (e.g., “the Iraq war,” “war in Iraq,” “Operation Iraqi
Freedom,” “preventive war,” “occupation of Iraq,” “illegal invasion”); (3)assessment of the nature of the
act or policy (e.g., is Western military intervention in Iraq a defense of national interests, a response to
human rights violations, “the central front in the War on Terror,” or a “fatal mistake”?); (4)the boundaries
of legitimate argument: the rules concerning who, when, and where an issue may be discussed.
p. 276 Third, RPA would analyze the substantive content of any particular political argument. This would include
attention to (1) the ways in which the policy under dispute is framed in relation to the axes of the universal
and the particular; (2) the formulation of speci c states of a airs through metaphor, and narrative
sequencing, and the use of rhetorical commonplaces; (3) modes of persuasive appeal: whether the speaker is
appealing to ethos, pathos, or logos; (4) genre: how speakers cast their talk as deliberative, forensic, or
epideictic; (5) how particular policy recommendations are rhetorically linked to general ideological or party
political commitments.
In many respects, Finlayson’s RPA is similar to Billig’s approach to rhetorical psychology. However, there
are three important di erences between the perspectives. First, RPA focuses on formal political decision-
making, emphasizing public clashes of views between individuals or groups, each adopting one-sided
(largely institutionalized) standpoints. In contrast, rhetorical psychology often focuses on private
deliberation on the part of individuals. This is re ected in the di erent ways in which the two perspectives
consider the “ideological” aspects of political argument (rhetorical psychology emphasizing con icts
within wide-scale ideological systems, RPA stressing the consolidation of distinct political belief systems).
Second, RPA focuses on political decision-making, the resolution of dispute, and the ways in which political
actors may construct robust arguments that can subsequently form the basis for collaborative action. In
contrast, rhetorical psychology tends to stress the open-ended quality of argumentation. Billig draws on
Shaftesbury’s idealized view of a society in which there is a wonderful mix of “contrarieties,” lled with
debate, di erence, and mockery: “In this image of utopia, the lion does not lie down in silence with the
lamb, but the Epicurean and stoic meet again and again to argue, to seek truth and to laugh” (Billig, 2008, p.
134).
Third, RPA does not consider issues relating to the construction of self or social identity, matters that
Finlayson devolved to discursive psychology (e.g., 2006, p. 539). As we shall see in the next section,
rhetorical psychology, in common with many other perspectives on political language and communication,
regards identity concerns as centrally and necessarily implicated in all political rhetoric.
As we noted in section 2, Aristotle argued that audiences could be swayed not only by the style and content
of an argument, but also the character projected by the speaker (ethos). Classical theorists identi ed three
categories of ethos:phronesis (involving wisdom and practical skills), arete (morality and virtue), and eunoia
(goodwill towards the audience).
In contemporary studies of political rhetoric, questions relating to ethos are often framed as a matter of the
Rhetorical strategies are often polyvalent, serving a number of communicative functions simultaneously. In
this case, through the act of siding with the “ordinary people” in opposition to the “the elite,” Hanson was
also rhetorically enacting her commitment to populist political ideology. However, in democratic political
contexts, communicators who identify with more mainstream political parties are often confronted with a
rhetorical dilemma. As Ilie (2003) observes, formal political debate often involves competing normative
injunctions:
Parliamentary debates presuppose, on the one hand, a spirit of adversariality, which is manifested
p. 278 in position claiming and opponent-challenging acts, and, on the other hand, a spirit of
cooperativeness, which is manifest in joint decision-making and cross-party problem-solving
processes in order to reach commonly acceptable goals regarding future policies and suitable lines
of action at a national level.
(p.73)
More generally, although democratic political discourse operates within what Atkins (2010) terms the
context of hegemonic competition, at the same time, politicians who adopt an overtly adversarial stance may
be criticized for their adherence to a particular ideology (Kurtz et al., 2010), charged with prioritizing
partisan party interests over common national interests (Dickerson, 1998), or accused of negative political
campaigning (cf. Fridkin & Kenney, 2011). Moreover, when individuals or groups are attempting to mobilize
support in a majority-rule political system, it is often in their interests to appeal to as many sectors of their
universal audience as possible.
One strategy that a politician may employ to avoid being seen to side with a particular section of the
audience or community of representation involves presenting an argument in such a way as to appear to
incorporate a range of divergent points of view. Fløttum (2010) reported a strategy that she termed the
polemical not, in which a speaker suggests that his or her rhetorical project goes beyond current divisive
arguments. As an example, Fløttum quoted from an address by Tony Blair to the European Union in 2005:
The issue is not between a “free market” Europe and a social Europe, between those who want to
retreat to a common market and those who believe in Europe as a political project.
A related technique that politicians commonly use in formal public addresses is to present adversarial
politics, itself, as their own personal anti-logos. In the United States, this kind of rhetorical strategy may be
given a particular in ection when it is used in conjunction with an appeal to what Beasley (2001) termed the
“shared beliefs hypothesis,” according to which American national identity is essentially grounded in an
adherence to a shared set of political principles. As an example, we may consider Barack Obama’s famous
“Yes We Can” speech presented after his success in the Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina
in 2008.
We’re up against decades of bitter partisanship that cause politicians to demonize their opponents
instead of coming together to make college a ordable or energy cleaner. It’s the kind of
partisanship where you’re not even allowed to say that a Republican had an idea, even if it’s one
you never agreed with….
So understand this, South Carolina. The choice in this election is not between regions or religions
or genders. It’s not about rich vs. poor, young vs. old. And it is not about black vs. white. This
p. 279 election is about the past vs. the future. It’s about whether we settle for the same divisions and
distractions and drama that passes for politics today or whether we reach for a politics of common
sense and innovation, a politics of shared sacri ce and shared prosperity.
Once again, we can see the use of the polemical not, this time applied to a gamut of forms of “divisive”
identity politics and “bitter” partisan political positions. By opposing opposition, and demonizing
demonization, Obama presented himself and his policies as opposing nobody.
Reicher and Hopkins (2001) illustrate this process in a program of research conducted in Scotland, in which
they show how electoral candidates attempted to maximize their appeal by framing both themselves and
their audience in national terms. However, candidates de ned this superordinate national identity in such a
way as to present their own party’s political program as expressing the qualities and values that they
attributed to the Scottish people in general. Members of the left-wing Labour Party characterized Scots as
inherently egalitarian, welfarist, and opposed to privilege. In contrast, Conservative Party candidates
characterized Scots as hard-working and entrepreneurial. In all cases, the candidates presented themselves
as prototypical members of the national community, not simply endorsing but also instantiating the virtues
ascribed to their imagined community of representation.
As we noted earlier, rhetorical strategies are often polyvalent. Aclear example of the ways in which the act of
appealing explicitly to a common rhetorical in-group may also entail framing a political issue in a particular
way and establishing the legitimacy of a particular course of action (cf. Finlayson, 2006) is provided in
Tileagă’s (2008) analysis of the former president Ion Iliescu’s addresses in the Romanian Parliament during
o cial commemorations of the Romanian revolution of 1989. These o cial commemorations took place in
the context of a series of ongoing political controversies, including competing accounts of over the “events”
of the revolution (the thousands of innocent deaths), and debates concerning Iliescu’s own role in the
p. 280 overthrow of Ceauşescu and his own sudden rise to power. In addition, commentators were questioning
the absence of speci c policies designed to confront the legacy of the communist past, for example, the
Tileagă notes how, against this background, Iliescu used the occasions of the o cial commemorations to
establish a particular identity in relation to the Romanian people, which also served to promote his own
preferred version of the revolution. In the opening section of his speeches, Iliescu used both formal forms of
address (“Ladies and gentlemen, senators and deputies,” “Distinguished members of the legislative
bodies”) and informal forms of address (“Dear friends from the days and nights of the December
revolution,” “Dear revolutionary friends”). The formal forms of address indexed Iliescu’s institutional
identity and representative capacity. Through the informal forms of address, Iliescu positioned himself
within the imagined community of “revolutionaries” (a post-1989 descriptor conferred on anyone who was
seen as having actively taken part in the revolution). In so doing, Iliescu presented himself as the possessor
of rsthand, insider knowledge of the revolutionary events This identity claim thus established Iliescu’s
category entitlement to pass judgment on the events in question, which he used to warrant his preferred
version of the events as “pure” revolution, and in so doing countered alternative versions of the Romanian
revolution as a coup d’etat involving the Securitate (the secret police), or a foreign plot to force Ceauşescu
from o ce.
Rogers (2012) suggests that the use of aspirational (rather than descriptive) appeals to common identity
may have particular purchase when a speaker is acting as advocate for a group that is currently positioned
outside, or on the margins of, a particular political community, as exempli ed in Martin Luther King’s
11
(1963) “I Have a Dream” speech. Rogers focuses in particular on the strategies that W. E. B.Du Bois
employed in his collection of polemical essays, The Souls of Black Folk (1903). Rogers argues that Du Bois was
faced with a speci c rhetorical problem when addressing white audiences summed up by the question,
“How will you move the people so that they will embrace an expanded view of themselves?” (p.194). He
suggests that Du Bois managed this by constructing an in-group that shared a common political horizon
rather than a common identity in the historical present (cf. Dunmire, 2005).
Du Bois started out by extorting his (white) readership to sensitivity concerning the experiential aspects of
p. 281 social and political exclusion. Having established the audience’s normative commitment to his rhetorical
project through appeals to empathy, Du Bois went on to evoke in the reader a sense of shame for complicity
in the su ering of black folks (“Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth”). Throughout, Du Bois
adopted a complex authorial footing that invoked a distinction between (white) readers, the author, and
black folk, but at the same time presented them all as participating in a common ideological project “in the
arrival of a truth hitherto unavailable” (p.196). This shared horizon involved for the white audiences the
12
prospect of a new, extended sense of selfhood based on a sense of common emotional dispositions.
4.4. Implicit Displays of Rhetorical Alignment
Although studies of the microfeatures of political rhetoric often focus on the ways in which political
communicators overtly proclaim their membership of a particular category, researchers have also drawn
attention to the ways in which social identities may be agged implicitly, though dress, body posture, style
of speech, and use of pronouns. The political alignments that people project through nonverbal media of
communication do not always square with the ways in which they describe themselves. Condor and Abell
(2006) consequently argue for the need to distinguish between explicit identity avowals (verbal acts of self-
description) and implicit identity displays (the public performance of an identity).
An interesting example of the use of clothing to implicitly display multiple political allegiances is provided
by Ahmed’s (1997) analysis of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the “Great Leader” of Pakistan (see also Reicher &
Perhaps the most obvious way in which a speaker may implicitly display alignment with others is through
the use of rst-person plural pro-terms:“we,” “us,” or the possessive “our.” Moss (1985, p. 86) suggests
that the repeated use of “we” in political rhetoric serves to coalesce speaker and audience “so that the
immediate impression is one of unity and common purpose.” In addition, we may note that a particular
advantage of pronouns lies in their capacity to signal a supposed unity and common purpose implicitly.
Some research has mapped the ways in which historical transformations in political alignment have been
signaled through a communicator’s use of the rst-person plural. For example, Ventsel (2007) analyzes
speeches made by the new political elite after the Soviet occupation of Estonia in 1940. He notes that
immediately after the occupation, “we” was used simply to refer to the local communists who had carried
out the coup, but it soon came to be used in a more inclusive sense, to construct a uni ed subject including
both communist leaders and the people. However, within a year, a new addressee-exclusive “we” emerged,
one that indexed the new leaders’ alignment with the Party as opposed to the People.
Other research has compared the ways in which di erent politicians use personal pronouns to implicitly
p. 282 align themselves with particular groups. For example, Proctor and Su (2011) analyze the ways in which
the various candidates used pronouns in interviews and debates in the run-up to the 2008 US presidential
election. They noted that, in interview settings, Sarah Palin generally used “we” and “our” to signal
solidarity with Americans and Alaskans, but rarely to signal solidarity with her running partner,
presidential candidate John McCain. In contrast, Hillary Clinton generally used “we” to identify with the US
government and the Democrats, but more rarely to indicate national identi cation. Barack Obama was most
likely to use the rst-person plural to refer to his campaign crew and to Americans.
4.5. Who Are “We”? Flexibility and Vagueness in the Use of First-Person
Pronouns
Although there are some circumstances in which it may be expedient for a speaker to index his or alignment
with a particular section of the audience, as we have already noted, politicians are often concerned to
maintain alignment with diverse groups. Some analyses of political rhetoric have emphasized how
communicators adopt a segmental technique, addressing di erent sections of their composite audience
sequentially. In this context, rst-person plural pronouns may represent a useful resource insofar as the
use of “we” and “us” can enable a speaker to align him- or herself sequentially with di erent (possibly
con icting) subgroups without obviously appearing to shift narrative footing. For example, Wilson (1990)
and Maitland and Wilson (1987) analyze speeches presented by Margaret Thatcher while she was prime
minister of the United Kingdom. Within the same speech, and even within the same sentence, she could use
“we” to align herself with the Conservative Party, the Government, the British citizenry, or all right-
thinking people.
Myers (1999) observed that one problem with the segmental technique is that it does not enable speakers to
ingratiate themselves “simultaneously to the diverse components of a composite audience” (p.56). Studies
of political rhetoric have noted how communicators often employ strategic ambiguity, formulating
arguments in a manner that is su ciently vague as to admit a variety of possible interpretations. Vague
formulations can serve a dual rhetorical function for a political communicator. First, they may be acceptable
to (or at least di cult to challenge by) various sections of a heterogeneous audience. Second, while
appearing decisive, they do not in fact commit the speaker to any particular course of action, therefore
allowing for future exibility in political rhetoric and policy decisions whilst maintaining an apparent
stance of ideological commitment and consistency of purpose. Fortunately for political communicators, the
precise referent of rst-person plural pronouns can be so vague as to elude even professional linguists
(Borthen,2010).
Duncan (2011) reports a particular variety of strategic ambiguity that he terms polemical ambiguity. This
involves a speaker using strong dualistic formulations, but expressing them through forms of wording that
are so vague that the precise nature of the argument is unclear to potential allies in the audience, while
p. 283 potentially alienated groups perceive a clear message with which they can identify. As an example, Duncan
And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region
now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day
forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United
States as a hostile regime.
The meaning of phrases such as “aid or safe haven to terrorism,” or “harbor or support terrorism” is
unclear, and Bush’s argument would be hard to refute on either epistemological or moral grounds. Of
particular relevance to our current concerns is the ambiguity of Bush’s use of pronouns: we, us, and you. In
all cases, these pronouns clearly do not include “the terrorists” (whoever they may be). However, in
context, you could refer to “any nation, nations, or peoples, whether currently an ally, enemy, or neutral”
(Duncan, 2011, p. 458). We and us could mean “the United States, all Americans, Republicans, supporters of
the Bush administration, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members, the Western world, peace-
loving peoples, or just the winners” (p.458).
So, too, in the matter of housing, recreation and crime we seem here to assume that a knowledge of
the facts of discrimination and of the needs of the colored public are su cient, with faith, hope
and charity, to bring ultimate betterment.
p. 284 Du Bois was arguing that mere knowledge of the disadvantages faced by African Americans would not be
su cient to ensure progressive social change. Consequently, he was not using we to signal his acceptance of
a common point of view. Rather, his use of we in this context is indexing his empathy with, and goodwill
toward, the audience. In other situations, political commentators may include themselves in the pronoun
“we” but exclude their audience. The use of an addressee-exclusive “we” is perhaps most obvious in cases
where politicians use rst-person plural pronouns to refer speci cally to their political party or to the
government. The following example was taken from a speech by Vernon Coaker MP, delivered to the
14
Centenary Conference of the Irish Labour Party in 2012 :
We in the Labour Party will speak up for the peace and progress—as the party who in government
helped with others to bring about the Good Friday Agreement and all that owed from it—and we
will stand up for fairness in tough times.
Even in cases such as this, the precise referent of the pronoun may remain underdetermined. Coaker, a
member of the British Labour Party, regularly slipped between using “we in the Labour Party” as
15
(nationally) audience-exclusive and as (politically) audience-inclusive.
Addressee-exclusive we’s can also be used to soften disagreement. Fløttum (2010) quoted the following
Blair was presenting the discourse of “crisis” as his antilogos. Consequently, in this utterance, we actually
means “they” or “you,” and us means “me.” One might reasonably suppose that Blair’s objective in
referring to his political adversaries as “we” was to display a general sense of empathy and goodwill.
However, we cannot tell whether audiences did, in fact, interpret his words in this way. Depending on
context, speaker-exclusive “we’s” can be interpreted as markers of empathy, or as coercive or
condescending.
The referents of rst-person plural pronouns are not con ned to the narrative present. As a consequence, a
communicator can use terms such as “we” or “our” to display consubstantiality with historically expanded
social categories, and to construct aspirational in-groups (Condor, 2006). This is illustrated in the following
extract from a speech presented by George W. Bush to the Pentagon in 2003:
We cannot know the duration of this war, yet we know its outcome: We will prevail … the Iraqi
people will be free, and our world will be more secure and peaceful.
Bush’s rst two uses of we are within present-tense clauses and conjure up the image of shared experience
p. 285 between people existing in the narrative here-and-now. However, his third and fourth use of the
rstperson plural (we will …, our world will …) projects his rhetorical in-group into an indeterminate future,
possibly beyond the lifetimes of the people included in his rst two synchronic we’s.
Linguists have noted how the referent of rst-person plural pronouns may “wander” (Petersoo, 2007)
within speeches or texts and even within single sentences or phrases. The slippery nature of terms such as
“we” and “us” means that they can be used to link a potentially contentious political concept to a relatively
benign one. For example, in political discourse, authors may start out by using “we” as a reference to
themselves and their immediate audience, but then slip to using “we” to refer to the government, and to
using “our” to refer to the economy or the armed services (e.g., “the strength of our economy”). In this
way, a speaker may subtly elide the interests of the audience with those and with the government, the
military, or corporate business (Fairclough, 2000).
This capacity for construct elision through referent slippage takes its most extreme form in what Billig
(1995) terms the syntax of hegemony, in which the vagueness of rst-person plural pronouns establishes a
functional equivalence between a particular group and universal humanity. As Billig (1995, p. 90) observes,
by mobilizing a nonspeci c “we,” political orators can present the interests of their party, government,
nation as coinciding with those of the entire world, “so long as “we’ do not specify what “we’ mean by
“we,’ but instead allow the rst person plural to suggest a harmony of interests and identities.”
This kind of rhetorical formulation has been most extensively studied in New World Order rhetoric on “the
war on terror” (e.g., Coe et al., 2004; Leudar, Marsland, & Nekvapil, 2004; Lazar & Lazar, 2004). As we saw
from the quotation from George W. Bush’s 2001 speech cited above, in US foreign policy statements, “we”
can both be used to signify the United States and also to refer to a US-led system of collective security. An
example of the use of the syntax of hegemony can be seen in the quotation from George W. Bush’s 2003
speech cited above:
We cannot know the duration of this war, yet we know its outcome: We will prevail … the Iraqi
people will be free, and our world will be more secure and peaceful.
p. 286 From the context, “we” could refer equally to the United States or to the coalition. However, “our world”
could be interpreted as a universal referent, suggesting that the US national or international military
alliance is defending universal interests and universal values of freedom, security, and peace.
Fellow Scots! It gives me great pleasure to welcome you all here tonight. And when Isay “fellow
Scots” Iinclude all those categories excluded by Nicholas Fairbairn. And Ialso include all our
English friends who live among us, and who have chosen to throw in their lot with us, more than a
few.
Reicher and Hopkins’s original analysis focused on the explicit message conveyed in this stretch of talk.
They noted how the speaker was invoking an inclusive in-group, thus potentially maximizing his potential
constituency of representation. In his meta-discursive move (“And when Isay “fellow Scots’ ”), the speaker
argued that this category construction re ects his party’s ideological commitment to a civic understanding
of Scottish identity, one that was not shared by the Conservative Party (whose more exclusive de nition of
the category of Scots had been exempli ed in a speech made four days earlier by the MP Nicholas Fairbairn).
For present purposes, however, the signi cant aspect of this stretch of talk lies in the way in which, in the
very course of proclaiming his inclusive understanding of Scottish identity, the speaker uses pronouns to
implicitly exclude people born in England (“our English friends”) from the Scottish national“us.”
5. Concluding Remarks
The study of rhetoric is necessarily a re exive enterprise. Anyone who writes on the subject of rhetoric is
also using rhetoric. Throughout this chapter, we have noted some of the di culties involved in
summarizing the topic of political rhetoric for a mixed and multiple audience of political psychologists. In
the rst place, it is not easy to place the subject into a tidy academic pigeonhole. Work on political rhetoric is
not the province of any particular discipline, and there is no single essential feature that can be used to
distinguish theory and research on political rhetoric from work on political argument, debate,
p. 287 communication, or discourse. In part, our aim in this chapter has been to provide a coherent overview of
theoretical and empirical work that was originally conceived and written within a variety of academic
traditions.
Any discussion of rhetoric in general, and political rhetoric in particular, cannot easily be delimited
historically. In this chapter we have emphasized recently published work in order to update the information
conveyed in the previous edition of the Handbook. However, because contemporary scholars continue to use
classical terminology and to draw upon the writings of Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero, we cannot simply
con ne past writing on rhetoric to academic history. More generally, it is di cult for an author to structure
an overview of work on political rhetoric in the standard narrative form conventionally used for reviewing a
body of psychological research. Many contemporary authors would resist the idea that their work is
“progressing” beyond the classical tradition. Moreover, much of the recent work on political rhetoric tends
to take the form of individual piecemeal studies, rather than systematic, incremental, research programs.
On the one hand, the disconnected character of much current research on political rhetoric might
reasonably be regarded as a problem. Certainly, the lack of cross-referencing between articles on similar
issues (especially common when this work has been conducted by academics with di erent disciplinary
a liations) is regrettable, not least because individual authors often coin neologisms, leading to a
confusing diversity of terminology to refer to what are, essentially, similar considerations. On the other
hand, it is important to recognize that many of the apparent problems that confront anyone attempting to
review work on political rhetoric are also re ections of the very nature of the subject matter. Rhetoric is
essentially and inevitably complex, re exive, argumentative, uid, and contextual. Consequently, political
psychologists who have been trained in the technē of operationalization and experimental control may nd
the study of rhetoric something of an intellectual culture shock.
In the worlds of political rhetoric, constructs cannot be marshaled into dependent, independent,
Consideration of the ways in which people structure and respond to political arguments shows that their
actions are not solely determined by particular norms rendered salient by a speci c social context, nor are
they motivated simply by a need to reduce subjective uncertainty. On the contrary, political communications
are typically formulated with a view to dilemmatic epistemological and moral concerns, and to competing
prescriptive norms for action. Kane and Patapan (2010) describe political rhetoric as the “artless art,” in
recognition of the fact that political leaders need to use rhetoric without appearing to do so. E ective
political communicators also need to deal with a range of additional competing demands, such as
demonstrating consistency in defense of a particular ideological project while avoiding charges of partiality;
p. 288 or mobilizing identity categories while at the same time maintaining the appearance of rational
disinterest (Potter & Edwards,1990).
Billig ([1987] 1996) borrows the 16th-century rhetorician Ralph Lever’s term “witcraft” to describe the
skilful and creative ways in which professional politicians and ordinary social actors formulate arguments
in the context of debate. By paying attention to the ne details of political argumentation, we can appreciate
how speakers can mobilize similar considerations to support quite di erent rhetorical ends, and how the
same rhetorical project may be supported by an in nite number of possible lines of argument. In short,
political communicators use language and other symbolic resources exibly, creatively, and ironically to
construct new patterns of argument, and to undermine the newly constructed claims of their opponents.
Consequently, any quest for general laws, which neatly map particular rhetorical forms onto speci c
functions, will necessarily be doomed to failure.
for researchers accustomed to parsing human behavior into factors and levels, into stable entities or
quanti able dimensions, the study of political rhetoric confronts us with the apparent chaos of an
underdetermined and monstrous realm where utterances are polyvalent, actions evasive, and values
dilemmatic, and where factual assertions and appeals to consensual common sense may be successful
insofar as they are, in practice, radically ambiguous. For the scholar of rhetoric, on the other hand, these
complexities are regarded as evidence of witcraft, of the inventiveness, playfulness, and deadly seriousness
of human social and political life.
Acknowledgment
The authors wish to thank Nick Hopkins, Alan Finlayson and Neil Foxlee for their help in preparing this
essay, and Leonie Huddy for invaluable editorial advice.
Notes
1. Contemporary commentators o en suggest that rhetorical scholarship may itself promote a democratic message insofar
as it holds out the “promise of reason” against the “brute force” of violence, or authoritarian coercion (Gage, 2011).
Theorists who adopt a rhetorical perspective o en challenge deficit models of mass publics (Troup, 2009) insofar as they
recognize, and celebrate, ordinary citizensʼ capacity to engage in open-ended reasoning and rational debate about public
a airs.
2. Garver (2009) has questioned whether actual instances of rhetorical argument easily fit into this classificatory scheme.
3. Notwithstanding an in-principle recognition of the importance of the visual aspects of political rhetoric, most empirical
research continues to focus on the spoken and written word, seldom even considering the ways in which information and
p. 289 evaluation may be conveyed through intonation, facial expressions, or hand movements (cf. Mendoza-Denton &
4. Political “representation” may itself be understood in various ways (Pitkin, 1967; Saward, 2010). In democratic regimes, an
elected representative may be positioned as delegates, acting as spokesperson for their constituents, or as trustees,
charged with using their expert skills to serve the best interests of those they represent, even if their arguments do not
necessarily reflect the immediate will of the people themselves. Spokespeople for nongovernmental organizations may
claim to represent the interests of a particular constituency without the members ever being consulted. Finally, an
individual or group can adopt the stance of defending the interests or rights of animals or “the planet,” a practice that
might be understood as a form of stewardship.
5. This inclusive notion of rhetoric is not universally accepted. For example, Bitzer (1968) restricted his construct of the
rhetorical situation to settings in there is an exigency that is capable of being modified though discourse, and where there
is an audience that is potentially capable of being influenced by the discourse and acting as mediators of change.
6. Billig (1996; Shotter & Billig, 1998) noted parallels between rhetorical psychology and Wittgensteinʼs (1953) understanding
of language as the vehicle of thought (remark 329), and Bakhtinʼs (1981) perspective on thought as inner speech.
8. In this respect, rhetorical psychology focuses on what social psychologists have traditionally termed verbal or public (as
opposed to private and implicit) attitudes.
9. At the time that Billig was developing rhetorical psychology, social psychologists typically endorsed what subsequent
commentators called a file draw model of attitudes, according to which individuals hold opinions on all manner of issues
that they simply retrieve from memory for the purposes of responding to survey questions. More recent perspectives on
attitudes as online constructions (e.g. Schwarz, 2007) di er from Billigʼs approach insofar as they regard attitudes
primarily as mental phenomena, but share his concern for the ways in which attitude statements are formulated in local
interaction.
10. Although Finlayson distinguished RPA from linguistic and critical discourse analytic approaches, in practice his account of
the ways in which RPA might inform empirical research has much in common with these perspectives. In addition,
Finlaysonʼs focus on the use of rhetoric in political decision-making has clear parallels with Fairclough and Faircloughʼs
(e.g. 2012) critical discourse analytic approach to practical reasoning.
11. Du Bois had received training in classical rhetoric at Harvard (Rampersad, 1976).
12. This observation has parallels with recent social psychological work that has considered the role of intergroup emotions
such as empathy (Dovidio et al., 2010) shame and guilt (Lickel, Steele, & Schmader, 2011) in promoting support for
minorities on the part of majorities.
15. In addition, when a politician uses a political-party or government “we,” it is not always clear whether the speaker is
necessarily signaling his or her own personal commitment to the content of a message. Bull and Fetzer (Bull & Fetzer 2006;
Fetzer & Bull, 2008) have noted how politicians may on occasions use a collective (normally party) “we” to avoid being
held personally accountable for a potentially contentious view or course of action.
p. 290
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