The Task of Rhetoric (Again)

So, the Washington Supreme Court has ruled that the law making it unlawful to lie about political candidates is itself unconstitutional and thereby has given politicians the freedom to lie about their opponents. And this, of course, is not an uncommon situation; Washington is just one state to rule that truth is not required when talking about politicians. The law allows lying and, in fact, will encourage politicians to develop deceptive strategies as long as they work. The only criterion that would need to be considered is effectiveness. Ethics doesn’t have to enter the equation. Here, then, is just another example of why a useful path (maybe not the only path) for rhetoric would be the focus on deception in public discourse. Someone or some group needs to be there to point out the deceptions such rulings will encourage as well as those deceptions that just seem to have become standard political discourse. No group seems better qualified than our own rhetoricians who already have an arsenal of methods and research strategies to apply to what seems to me to be a pretty important issue. Or should we rewrite our textbooks in public speaking, persuasion, public relations, and advertising to exclude ethics from the equation?

The Task of Rhetoric

Aristotle said that rhetoric was the art of observing in any given case all the available means of persuasion. Francis Bacon said rhetoric was the art of applying “reason to imagination for the better moving of the will.” George Campbell called it eloquence and defined it as “the art or talent by which discourse is adapted to its end.” I. A. Richards, perhaps trying to give rhetoric a really useful mission, said that rhetoric ought to be “a study of misunderstanding and its remedies.” And Kenneth Burke argued that rhetoric should focus, not on persuasion, but on identification. And there are hundreds of other suggested foci proposed over the 2300 years since Aristotle.

I’d like to propose yet another focus and task for rhetoric and that is that rhetoric should be the study of deception in public discourse, its causes and effects. A case in point: President Bush claimed recently that “This government does not torture people.” Well, here’s a perfect opportunity to illustrate just how much in error that statement is. Rhetoricians would be serving a unique and extremely useful purpose in devoting at least some of their energies to the study of deception in public, why people lie in public, and what effects these deceptive messages have on an audience and a nation.

The Rhetoric of War

It's interesting--tho' disheartening--to read about the 15 British service personnel who apparently were in Iran's territorial waters and the response this is generating--the war chants seem to have begun soon after this event took place. Is this Blair's WMD, his excuse to invade Iran? And if so, will Bush be far behind?