Political Rhetoric and the English Classroom

Abstract

Clearly, language pollution is alive and well. A quick review of any major daily newspaper will confirm this. As teachers of language, we have an important opportunity and an obligation to help students learn to interpret persuasive discourse. This concern is interwoven with history of our profession. Beginning with Aristotle's Rhetoric, systems of rhetorical analysis have been used in attempts to help students/citizens avoid being victimized by language. Much more recently, Hugh Rank (1991, The Pitch, Park Forest, IL: CounterPropaganda P) and Donald Lazere (1992, Teaching Political Conflicts: A Rhetorical Schema, College Composition and Communication 43.2 [May]: 194-213) have proposed particularly useful classroom approaches to analysis of persuasive discourse and teaching of political conflicts. Additionally, NCTE's Committee on Public Doublespeak is devoted to exposing abuses of language by public officials and promoting classroom activities to help students interpret deceptive language. When issues of language pollution are addressed in English classrooms, they have traditionally been taught through analysis of faulty reasoning. For example, James M. McCrimmon's Writing With a Purpose (1974, Atlanta: Houghton) has long included a chapter on identifying logical fallacies in persuasive discourse. Labels familiar to English teachers such as name-calling, red herring, context, and extension are explained. When, for example, ignoring context is detected, the way to correct it is to reexamine whole context and show how omission misrepresents original (328). Following explanation of each type of fallacy, students are encouraged to check their ability to detect manipulative rhetoric in a set of fifteen questions. The text warns: Do not be content with naming fallacy. The skill you are trying to develop is not identification but analysis; it is more important to explain errors than to name them (332). With these cognitive skills, it is assumed that student will be forearmed against misleading or manipulative rhetoric. However, application of this (or any) schema does not provide a direct means for unlocking complete thought process. There is an intermediary step between rhetoric and thought: preexisting values and attitudes of individual students.