Category Archives: Models

Examples we can productively study

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When Spellbinders Had Sway

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Was I mistaken to believe that even amidst the maelstrom that is adolescence, another person could still be mesmerizing?

A few years ago I asked my students in a persuasion course to describe some people in their lives beyond family who were spellbinders: perhaps teachers, priests or others who were incredibly interesting and transforming. Since I am a rhetorician, my bias led me to believe  that these college students could rhapsodize about some outsized influencers in their own lives. But the room was silent. I tried again, being more specific. Describe a teacher or mentor who could really hold a group in their thrall: probably someone who was a good storyteller. Silence again from a class that was usually forthcoming.

I must have been mistaken to believe that, even in the maelstrom of adolescence, another person could be mesmerizing. Perhaps the question required a response that was too personal. Then, too, after the early grades, it is apparently not so cool to see a teacher or leader as transformational.

Active Listening in the Classroom Heather Syrett.

Perhap because I am older–OK, a lot older– I have a settled list of mentors who shaped my attitudes and partly influenced what I would do for the rest of my life. These folks include a Methodist minister who reigned over a large Denver church with a thundering rhetoric of religious certainty; a devoted speech and drama teacher at Evergreen High School in Colorado who mercifully supressed her judgment that I was no actor; a youth group leader who was full of ideas for living that scared our parents; and a professor who turned me on to studying political rhetoric when there was still some dignity left in national politics.

I was a sponge for their forms of dynamic mentoring. In the years that came after I wanted my teaching to be the embodiment of the same intense engagement. In every case this meant that I would need to rise to the level of trying to perform my enthusiasm for whatever I was offering to others. This means using an emphatic style in presentation that models the enthusiasm you want from your audience. Ideally, this kind of in-the-room discourse with a group might unfold like a three-act play. Or, more accurately, a given session would develop as a set of engaging variations on a set theme. (A good presentation often unfolds in a way that Bach might have recognized.)

I saw fluent and forceful rhetoric as an energized engine for self-knowledge, as well at the tool for creating social change. But I’ve come to the conclusion that the sources of that kind of change now lie in digital realm and less in the performative mastery of one person. Just by virtue of their age, students are more predisposed to models of discourse that are a long way from older hortatory styles Martin Luther King, John Kennedy or even Professor Harold Hill. Think of this kind of presentation as a form of heightened conversation: less like Bill Maher and more like Bernie Sanders or perhaps Ken Robertson, sampled below.

The grand rhetorical gesture is in decline, or at least reduced to the 18 minutes of a TED talk or a speech as a rally. Everyday communication elements like texting are more private and ad hoc: fast whispers, but little more.

In my last years before retiring my colleagues would sometimes give me a puzzled look if I said I liked lecturing, by which I meant a session driven by the energy of rapsodizing about new ideas. But the preferred mode of teaching is now more interactive and experiential, and necessarily less directed. Professors now understand that they have less time to profess. Even so, when not driven by an effective mentor, any single session can easily dissipate the energy intensity that seeds learning.

I worry that too many students have filled their lives with inconsequential messages that has shrunken what should be time for a rapidly expanding consciousness. The heightened drama of a rhetorical challenge from an outsider is now often relegated to events like sports or concerts. Few of us are saving space in our lives for the equivelants of the old Chautauquas our forbearers knew, when spending time in the presence of a literary or academic giant had so much appeal.

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Where Is The Substantive Discussion?

Models, Problem Practices, Rhetorical Mastery, , , , , ,

Our political discourse is not only more coarse than in the recent past, it also suffers from people disinclined to explain the logic of their positions. 

These days an American needs to look hard to find substantive discussions of proposed federal actions that will have significant effects. Asserting a position is one thing. Supporting the assertion with genuine good reasons is another. Federal downsizing, budget levels, infrastructure expenditures, and grants for programs ranging from health care to the arts would benefit from some deep dives into the specifics of what a  federal response should be. But with the exception of some third-party experts, or back-bencher members of Congress, or some long-form  news stories, we get sound bites rather than details.  Our President can get about half way to one generic reason, but not the solid reasoning for a particular decision. Too often the default is the conversion of a substantive issue into an inconsequential battle of political personalities. The scattered debate about bombing Iraq was a rare and only partial exception. Of course, if a leader’s only reasons for a change in policy are spite or retribution, we are probably not going to hear it.

A necessary distinction for understanding political rhetoric is between instrumental talk and expressive talk. As this broad difference suggests, instrumental discussion is focused on the merits of arguments or routes to a compromise for a given proposal. Instrumental talk is not about people or personalities, but about their ideas, values, goals, and whether evidence exists for their claims. Even as it becomes distressingly rare, It is the more substantial rhetorical form that is basic to decision-making in an open society. By contrast, expressive talk is about the theater of policy and its players. For example, do we really have not heard compelling reasons for why funding for the Voice of America was cut, or why NOAA kneecapped, in spite of evidence that it provides essential environmental data to corporations and citizens,  And Do we have an administration position on the total closure of USAID?  Or must we accept Elon Musk’s arrogant conclusion based on no evidence that USAID was “a criminal organization?”  Even with its life-saving work especially for children, he simply asserted  that it was “time for it to die,” and enjoying “the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.” I have not seen other administration arguments for the cuts to these and many other programs. And has any American heard a sustained and compelling explanation for the high tariffs put on our northern neighbor and former ally?  It has been a long summer season of drama, but little public discussion.

National Politics is Personalized 

Expressive communication is centered on the personal characteristics of the people with a stake in a given outcome. In its most common forms it involves name-calling, the questioning of another side’s motives, and dismissive and self-serving summations of what others are trying to achieve with a given legislative act. One of Donald Trump’s recent claims for why Elon Musk abandoned his earlier advisory role is mostly attributed to Musk’s unhappiness with the President’s policy of not allowing tax credits for the purchase of electric automobiles. Musk called the portion of the proposed fax bill with this provision a “disgusting abomination.”  Trump, in turn, noted that Musk “went crazy” over the bill. Both are headline-grabbing expressive responses: noticeably devoid of any substantive discussion of the reasons for providing financial incentives for purchasing electric cars.

In our national politics expressive language is rhetorical candy: gratifying for its obvious effects, but having little value in shedding light on the substantive reasons for an action. “Dogs,” “losers,” and “enemies of the people”–all Trumpisms–don’t cut it as terms of substantive discourse. The problem is made worse by the obvious news value of including a sound bite of a politician in full flight, guns of indignation blasting.

Try using these distinctions in your own assessments of another’s political discussion. Do the parties have real reasons that are given? Can they outline what is at stake? Or are we just getting a recital of attitudes that, in the end, amount to little more than pseudo-responses? At the next town meeting with a federal or local official a good question is to inquire about why the politician will support or vote against a pending piece of legislation. Political “showhorses” will typically seek a way to attack a group or person. A “workhorse” will explain what he or she thinks are the merits of the pending legislation.