including human culture, rhetoric is a powerful force for the survival and well-being of the individual,the family, and the social group as these exist at any given moment.
This quote from Kennedy stands out to me as indicating the scalability of rhetoric in human society. Our interpretations of what Rhetoric is are innumerable: ask any student, or even ask any teacher, and you'll probably get a different answer. Broader theories that these interpretations fall into exist, and have no shortage of labels which are tangential to the point I'm going after here. What strikes me particularly is how broad the spectrum of what we call "rhetoric" is both in what it contains - for instance, many would argue that something as minute as the smell of a woman's perfume or the angle at which one's glasses rest upon one's nose, and by the same token many argue that rhetoric's domain is the lofty political speech that changes the fate of nations - and in who performs it. Kennedy argues that many animals have their own types of rhetorics, but on the opposite end of the spectrum, we could argue that entire nations present their own rhetorical arguments.
a territorial division containing a body of people of one or more nationalities and usually characterized by relatively large size and independent statusMerriam Webster Online Dictionary
Of course, a nation is not a thinking being in the way an animal or a human is. It is an amalgam, composed of a broad variety of people. They are not always multicultural or even united, but a nation presents its own kind of rhetoric as a medley of those within it. It might seem common sense that the stances and positions of a state originate from within the government or official ruling bodies, but is this the case? Let's take a look at an extreme example, our own nation, the United States of America. Without a doubt, our government plays a major role in creating the image we present to the world, whether as individuals we approve of it or not. Yet if you consider the construction that is the "Image of the United States", a cornucopia of factors pile in. We export culture, technology, finance, technical skills and even our own stereotypes to the entire world daily. We present ourselves in particular ways, some good, some bad, for all to see, and around that we create a mythos of what America is. The simplest manifestations of this mythos, for all countries, not just ours, is in stereotypes, both positive and negative. I won't go into them here, but surely when you think of certain countries specific traits and values comes to mind.
This goes beyond simple impressions as well. The rhetoric of nations centers first and foremost on their continued prosperity and survival. The most basic image that a nation can project through its policies, people, structures and actions is that of Strength. Authoritarian governments, strong armies, vast wealth, strong defenses and power projection are all evidence that countries present for the argument that they are strong. It is this image of strength that is often more effective than large numbers of soldiers. For example, look at Switzerland. As Europe blazed around them during WW2, they were left alone in a position of neutrality. Why? The Swiss have always been militaristic, their citizens were motivated, their natural defenses strong and the reward for conquering them would be little. Like an animal bristling against a predator, they present an argument as a nation that it is in no way worth it to attack them. Like Kennedy says, "Stripped to
its bare minimum, rhetoric is a defense mechanism(10)." These rhetorics exist to ensure the longevity and prosperity of the state, while those unable to present these rhetorics fall. Viewing this as the only factor in the fall of a nation is of course dramatically oversimplifying, but it may not be too much of a stretch to view history as a kind of "Survival of the Rhetorical" on a wider scale than Kennedy discusses.
Hey Sean,
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I really enjoyed your discussion of Kennedy's article. Your opening paragraph touches on some of the stuff I wrote about in my own blog.
Kennedy provided this definition of rhetoric, which I absolutely fell in love with:
"Rhetoric in the most general sense may perhaps be identified with the energy inherent in communication: the emotional energy that impels the speaker to speak, the physical energy expended in the utterance, the energy level coded in the message, and the energy experienced by the recipient in decoding the message."
I totally agree that everyone would give you a different answer. Rhetoric is a very broad term. But I really think Kennedy captured something here. No matter how an individual defines rhetoric, energy is always, at some level, involved.
I find myself repeating that rhetoric is simply the art of persuasion a lot more often than usual these days, but I had never thought of the idea that it might be critical to survival until now. Think about how people act when they're sick - we'll make our symptoms readily apparent in hopes of receiving pity or care from our colleagues. In comparison, prey animals like birds are notorious for not showing any kind of symptoms until they're right at the brink of death. But rhetoric for survival isn't just physical - one can say that when you argue an idea, you're arguing for it's very survival; if you fail, that idea my very well die with you and cease to exist in the future.
ReplyDeleteSuddenly, rhetoric seems far more important to the way our world works than it did before, and that's saying a lot.