Abstract
What insights and advantages do rhetorical approaches offer over other methods of exploring social and political discourse? This article aims to clarify the contribution of rhetorical analysis by exploring its distinctive, hermeneutic attention to public speech. Public speaking is, accordingly, viewed as a practice of assembling meaningful interpretations in specific situations. Central here is a temporal dimension. Analysing rhetoric involves grasping discourse, on the one hand, as concretely situated in response to proximate constraints and, on the other hand, as a medium to move beyond the situation towards a future. Following John Caputo’s reading of Derrida, I argue that, examined rhetorically, public speech enacts a ‘negotiation’ of past and future, intertwining conditional – and hence partially calculable – positions with an ‘unconditional promise’ to prepare for what comes. Although compatible with other approaches, rhetorical analysis is uniquely attuned to this intrinsically ethical and political quality of discursive action.
Highlights
What does rhetorical enquiry bring to the analysis of political discourse that other approaches do not? What is it to explore something called ‘rhetoric’ when more elaborate theories of discourse are readily available? Rhetorical analysis, I will argue, is attuned to fundamental, hermeneutic dimensions of discourse, that is, to its qualities as an activity of assembling and re-assembling the meaning of a situation
Where systematic analyses of discourse seek out generic patterns that align to wider problematics, rhetorical enquiry takes as its initial object the particular ‘moves’ and strategies that generate, innovate and mobilise such discourses and give them singular expression
Rhetorical analysis is, compatible with other approaches to discourse and contributes productively to their application. It starts out by exploring discourse at a finer scale than many discourse theories, observing the formulations and gestures of concrete ‘performances’. It reveals its origins in the ancient study of public speech and oratory, with a focus on practical rather than theoretical knowledge
Summary
What does rhetorical enquiry bring to the analysis of political discourse that other approaches do not? What is it to explore something called ‘rhetoric’ when more elaborate theories of discourse are readily available? Rhetorical analysis, I will argue, is attuned to fundamental, hermeneutic dimensions of discourse, that is, to its qualities as an activity of assembling and re-assembling the meaning of a situation. What does rhetorical enquiry bring to the analysis of political discourse that other approaches do not? Rhetorical analysis is, compatible with other approaches to discourse and contributes productively to their application. It starts out by exploring discourse at a finer scale than many discourse theories, observing the formulations and gestures of concrete ‘performances’. It reveals its origins in the ancient study of public speech and oratory, with a focus on practical rather than theoretical knowledge. Rhetoric named and classified the many observable, yet flexible, formulations of words and symbols employed in delivering verbal arguments on particular occasions. Speakers were instructed to give attention to an occasion’s practical purposes, its peculiar conventions, and the character of its audiences, each of which was perceived to constrain the proper organisation of discourse
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