The Roles And Uses Of Political Rhetoric Politics Essay

The Roles And Uses Of Political Rhetoric Politics Essay This paper discusses how Aristotle defined rhetoric and analyzes the reasoning that went into development of a persuasive speech. This paper looks at the three types of rhetoric Aristotle described as well as the explanation for the role and place of rhetoric in todays political environment. Political Rhetoric Rhetoric as defined by Aristotle was the ability, in each particular case, to use the available means of persuasion. In general, rhetoric is the energy inherent in emotion and thought, transmitted through a system of signs, including language, to others to influence their decisions or actions(Kennedy, pp. 5-8). Aristotle introduces rhetoric as an art which focuses on persuasion and the various methods used to convince an audience of a specific point of view. Some people see rhetoric as a technique of manipulation and not a form of persuasion, however, as with everything that point is debatable. In general, rhetoric is the art of public speaking and debate. Rhetorical skills are valued in such professions as teaching, law, religion, news reporting and politics. While the purpose of rhetoric concentrates on the emotional response of sensitive topics such as religion and politics, the ultimate goal of rhetoric is to sway ones opinion. Professional rhetoricians dont have to be honest in the speech, they do, however must show a form of entertainment and be effective. Aristotle described three major rhetorical means of persuasion; ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos uses trust to persuade the audience. A politician uses his or her respective reputation and what is perceived and said about them; however there is a close connection between reputation and reality. Credibility depends both on expertise and how this is portrayed. In order to persuade the audience, you must first believe in yourself. Pathos does not directly involve the argument itself; instead pathos relies on the emotions of the audience. An efficient way to move the audience is to appeal to their values. Logos is Greek for logic and is used to persuade the audience by demonstrating the truth and is based on scientific facts. Logos is also used to appeal to the intellect of the audience, and is considered an argument of logic. The use of rhetoric is very apparent in political speeches and the outcome is measured by a vote placed by each member of the audience. Aristotelian rhetoric assumes that you believe the politician, and disbelieve all other politicians that have different views. The persuasiveness or manipulation of a speech not only depends on the nature of the speech, but also on the believability of its origin and beliefs shared by the speaker and the audience. The audience is attracted to the integrity, passion and reasoning of the speaker. The speaker must find the proper balance of the aforementioned qualities in the debate in order to be effective. In the end the audience is persuaded because they sense that the speaker is an expert on the topic based on his or her substantial confidence and the amount of emotion involved. Rhetoric used in the past The foundation of the modern approach to society, including the entirety of the modern political system, is fallout from the medieval rediscovery of Aristotles work; during the Crusades, Europeans re-discovered Latin translations of Aristotle in various libraries throughout the Islamic world. When rhetoric is applied to political speech, therefore, it may be concluded that the politician is attempting to sway the publics opinion in a manner that is unjust and false. Today political parties in the United States play an integral role in political elections, local, state and national. Parties have become a vehicle for exerting the ideas and agenda of large and collective groups of citizens. However, political parties in colonial American and the early Republic were viewed negatively, by both early politicians and philosophers. Even the founding fathers had issues with political parties. Parties were thought to divide Americans. Also, thinkers of the time thought that forming parties would result in spawning a winning side and a losing side in elections, which would further split Americans. People in society today are greatly influenced by what they read. The articles in the newspapers skew peoples beliefs of political affairs and current events in the same way that biased articles in popular magazines seem to shape the way the general public views different types of cultural aspects. Keeping this in mind, it is especially important to note that during the 1800s, the people lacked other forms of media and communication that people in modern times are influenced by. Instead, they relied heavily on literature to entertain themselves, most of which shaped the way they viewed culture, politics, and life itself. Consider how politicians use rhetoric to promote their policies. We focus on a particular type of rhetorical appeal-those based on emotionally charged predictions about policy consequences. For politicians, we emphasize maximizing and strategic behavior, reflecting their full-time employment in politics and large personal stakes in political outcomes. Political leaders want to win policy debates and they employ rhetoric in an effort to move public opinion to their respective sides. The very reason for public political debate between parties is to sway those preferences in one or the other direction. Politicians often try to shape citizens beliefs about current conditions and the likelihood that particular outcomes will occur if a policy is or is not put into law (e.g., Jerit, 2009; Lupia Menning, 2009). Politicians can attempt to form and change such beliefs, fundamentally, because of the role of uncertainty in policy decisions. There is always considerable and sometimes enormous uncertainty about the impact of proposed policies (see, e.g., Riker, 1996).1 Not even experts really know the consequences of a policy in advance. We agree that value-based arguments are an important part of politicians rhetoric. If politics were solely about values, each side would assert its values early, and citizens would line up on one side or the other. Politicians say many things during the course of a policy debate, and so the first task is to identify the forms that political rhetoric and argument can take. From the perspective of politicians seeking to persuade citizens, the three potentially most valuable forms are assertions of core party values and principles, predictions of future states,3 and factual descriptions of current circumstances. All three forms of political rhetoric are motivated by party leaders desires to sway opinion in the preferred direction, although each form has its own purpose. If parties can shape beliefs, and thus preferences, by taking advantage of uncertainty and strategically using rhetoric, then winning elections and winning policy debates through rhetorical persuasion are both possible, if not mutually reinforcing. Political rhetoric will not evolve in precisely the same way across different policy debates. We have offered several propositions about how politicians should behave when they believe they can shape citizens beliefs. They also show that neither politicians nor the media seem to provide citizens with reliable, readily identified cues to help distinguish those that are worth taking seriously from those that are just hot air. Under such circumstances, what can we reasonably expect from citizens who are asked to render political judgments? Speculations on Citizens Responses to Political Rhetoric To address citizens responses to predictive rhetoric, we first comment on two important perspectives in political psychology that appear to suggest grounds for expecting quite competent performance. test is crucial to understanding the uses of predictive rhetoric and its consequences for citizen competence. Unfortunately, we are about to navigate largely uncharted waters. 11 Citizens Assessments of Asserted Links in Predictive Arguments Assuming that citizens care about the outcome, they will consciously or unconsciously consider the claimed link between the focal policy and that outcome. Does an important causal linkage exist? To avoid effort, and lacking expertise in the policy area, citizens will limit their answers to a simple categorical question: Is there a genuine, significant link of the sort claimed, or is the claimed link minimal or nonexistent? Unlike experts, ordinary people generally will not bother with refined distinctions, for example, attempting to distinguish between a very important and a somewhat important link. To avoid being manipulated, unaligned citizens will not take politicians at their word, but rather will try to assess the validity of an alleged link independently. In searching for independent corroboration, they will employ simple heuristics, including the following three in particular. We concluded that rhetorical predictions about the consequences of policies create obstacles for citizens who seek to make reasonable decisions. Conclusion In this very exploratory chapter, we have considered the political logic of policy rhetoric; the prominence of appeals that rely on extreme and mostly negative predictions and seek to elicit an emotional response; the processes that citizens use in determining their response; and the consequences of those processes for the competence of individual and collective decisions about policy. To put our findings simply, the information environment in which citizens make decisions about policies presents a constant stream of dramatic, emotionally salient predictive claims, covering a wide range of outcomes, and presented largely without supporting evidence or other diagnostic information. The highly partisan cope with this constant stream by adopting the party line. The unaligned have no such luxury, and thus must try to make sense of the political rhetoric. Sometimes the dire predictions elicit some form of corroborating information-a pertinent schema, an example from daily life, or the like-in the minds of these citizens, thus ringing a bell with them. There is little reason to suppose that the predictive appeals that ring a bell in this way correspond at all closely to the considerations that would prove decisive in an environment that encouraged deliberate judgment on the basis of realistic claims and the best available diagnostic information. But, then, there is no reason to believe that taking party cues does, either.