Rhetoric's Baggage

There's a trunk and two suitcases.

A black and maroon travel sticker, "Persuasion," is stuck on that trunk, and it isn't coming off. It can't, it belongs there. The problem is that that sticker means "bad" or "evil", when actually, it's morally neutral.  I'll probably have to chat about that off and on for the rest of my life.

I'm stuck with that trunk. It's what rhetoric is.

It's those two suitcases.  One was a gift from English Departments, trying to upgrade the teaching of writing, also known as Composition.  Composition is a fine thing, but it only partially overlaps rhetoric. It's like going camping in late spring and being handed lots and lots of swimsuits. Ok, maybe I'll need one or two, but twenty?  And to say that I really don't need the rest of my clothes because I'll be swimming all the time in the hot weather?  In springtime? Not everyone lives in Hiawai'i (and anyhow, they do get snow in the mountains).  I can hand that suitcase of extra swimsuits right back to its owner, with my thanks for the one or two I need.

The other suitcase is a far older gift, possibly old enough to break my metaphor. Rhetoric has been tied to politics at least since Plato's Gorgias, and certainly politicians use rhetoric.  But not all rhetoric is political and not all political work requires rhetoric (despite the necessity of fundraising and vote-raising).  So sometimes, I might want to dig something out of that suitcase, and it's a huge suitcase. But really, rhetoric isn't limited to politics. So why dig through a suitcase that's already had lots of other people digging through it?  We can had it off to the political science people, and rhetoricians interested in politics, and not need it.

But rhetoric has to keep that trunk.  Persuasion follows patterns; it shows up just about everywhere; it need not be serious.  Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. Rhetoric is the art of herding cats.