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Samenvatting Political Rhetoric

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Hi, Ik ben een student uit het schakelprogramma Communicatiewetenschappen (academiejaar ) en ik heb een samenvatting gemaakt van het vak Political Rhetoric. Deze cursus werd gegeven door Julie Sevenans . De samenvatting bestaat uit de powerpoints, notities gemaakt tijdens de les evenals notities...

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  • 23 december 2022
  • 60
  • 2022/2023
  • College aantekeningen
  • Julie sevenans
  • Alle colleges
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Samenvatting Political Rhetoric
Practicalities

Lectures will be recorded
Written exam
● Analysis of a speech (classical rhetoric)
● Knowledge question(s)
● Insight question(s)
● Applied question(s)

Lecture 1: Introduction to political rhetoric

The importance of political rhetoric

No politics without persuasion
● Ex. Send an email to our local mayor to change something in our street
● Reason: uncertainty → this makes persuasion so important

Persuasion by speech vs. persuasion by force
● Voluntary decision to be convinced by the other person / identification by the person
who persuades you
● Violence → ex. fight in my war and if you don’t obey, I put you in prison

Persuasion is a symbolic process in which communicators try to convince other people to
change their own attitudes or behaviors regarding an issue through the transmission of a
message in an atmosphere of free choice.

Democracy is distinguished as a form of governance by the extent of persuasion relative to
coercion.

The fundamental political skill?

What is rhetoric?

Greek: ‘retoriketekhne’
● Rhetor = speaker
● Tekhne = art

Studying rhetoric = learning the practical skills of persuasion
● Learning the techniques (ex. which kind of arguments are the most promising)

Studying rhetoric = studying the persuasiveness of speech

Not limited to spoken word (oratory)
● Written word


1

, ● Visuals that you include in the background when you are speaking

Political rhetoric

Many areas in which the persuasiveness of messages is studied
● Ex. marketing, law (criminal court), organization studies, cultural studies, …

Persuasion in the political realm
● Not limited to politicians
● Many people can organize a demonstration, find a audience and try to convince
others
● Ex. Steven de Gucht (Covid times)
● Ex. Emma Watson (gender equality)

Warm-up exercise

“Most famous persuasive speech in history.” | Martin Luther King - I have a dream
● Activist leader of civil rights movement
● August 1963
● March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
● 100 years after Emancipation Proclamation (Lincoln)
● Do you find it persuasive?
● Elements which you think makes the speech persuasive?
○ Credibility as a person
■ Who he is
■ Displaying eloquence, expertise, reason
○ Arousal of emotion (metaphors)
■ Ex. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until
justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
○ Convincing arguments
○ Use of rhetorical devices
■ Ex. repetitions, allusions, rhyme
○ How he speaks

A diverse research field?

Different backgrounds, different questions
● Linguistics (ex. rhetorical figures)
● Psychology (ex. emotions vs. the cognitive)
● Political science (ex. questions of power → who can speak and who is not seen as a
political figure)
● Communication science (ex. mass media)

Each with their own terminology & research methods

Difficulty: they don’t always talk to each other

This course: eclectic approach


2

,Reminder of today

Reading: Handbook by James Martin (Chapter 1 & 2)
1) Is rhetoric a bad / dangerous thing?
● Roots of the debate: classical thinkers / political theorists
● Explanation by Martin: political vs the political
2) Situating rhetoric


Rhetoric, a contested notion

Words often associated with rhetoric: “mere”, “empty” → rhetoric is contrasted with reality

Association with danger
● Ex. Divisive political rhetoric a danger to the world, Amnesty says about Donald
Trump
● Rhetoric can contain false information
● Can people be persuaded of anything? → violence, misinformation
● At the same time: no democracy without free speech? → everyone is allowed to
express their opinion

Rhetoric was central to ancient democracy

History:
● Greece, 500 BC
● From aristocracy to democracy
○ Demos = people
○ Ekklesia = assembly
● Highly participatory system
○ Status of being citizen comes with obligations
● Rhetorical skills were important → ex. when you were accused of something, you
had to defend yourself in court
● Teachers: sophists → instructed people into the techniques of persuasiveness
○ Sophos = wisdom
○ Ex. Gorgias, Protagoras
● Culture of oral transmission

First classical thinker - Plato

Rhetoric is empty and dangerous
● It can persuade most people of anything; a ‘rudderless boat’; “sophostries” (trics to
convince people of things that are actually not true)
● Can do bad instead of good (death of his mentor Socrates)

Belief in one moral “truth”
● Allegory of the cave


3

, ● Only a small elite can see it as what they really are (concepts in their pure form)
● There is one big truth, but only a few of us are given the capacity to see the truth. all
the other citizens don’t have it.

“The Republic”
● Society should be based on reason
● Strict division: philosopher-kings, guardians and traders

Ideas were later criticized (ex. Popper)
● Defense of very totalitarian system
● You defend only a few people should have all the power, because they are better
than the rest

More sympathetic reading: argument for alternative type of rhetoric (dialectic: if you have a
conversation where you want to persuade people, than you have to come to the best
solution)
● Technocracy today (rhetoric would be empty and dangerous)

Aristotle

Student of Plato

More positive reading of rhetoric
● Man is a ‘political animal’
● ‘Good life’ is living in accordance with community (vs. Plato: natural state)

Rhetoric complements philosophical reasoning
● How should the best case be put, given the argument, evidence, audience?
● Best case is not always clear → sometimes there is uncertainty

“The art of rhetoric”
● He builds a systematic classification of techniques that are used in rhetoric
● Which kind of arguments that you can make, etc.

Disclaimer: exclusive notion of ‘citizen’
● Importance of ‘enthymeme’
○ Technique where when you make an argument it is not fully based on logical
premises but you somehow assume that your audience already shares some
knowledge with you.
● Degree of permitted disagreement is limited


Cicero

Great orator of the Roman world

Treatises on rhetoric (ex. “De Oratore”)



4

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