Rhetorical Exigencies

Rhetorical Mastery, , , , , ,

Listening to the President issue his bellicose threat against North Korea made people around the world wonder: why now?

Early in their college careers students of rhetoric are introduced to the enduring idea that a leader’s public remarks are shaped by some kind of precipitating event.  As the University of Wisconsin’s Lloyd Bitzer noted decades ago, public figures respond when they believe their words will answer a problem, bending it’s trajectory in ways the speaker imagines will be positive. In the short version of the idea, rhetoric is a response to an “exigency.” It doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it’s almost always a piece of a larger conversation provoked by a significant event. George W. Bush was slow to react to Hurricane Katrina, taking a lot of heat for the delay. He was better in assuring Americans after 9/11.

This simple notion that has not gone unchallenged, but it is also more than an empty academic term.  It rewards us by asking that any comment be set in the context of immediate past events, not just as an isolated island of thought.  When a president or public official speaks, we expect that there are clear reasons–significant antecedents–for steering our attention toward certain issues. The theory goes on to note that in significant ways the antecedents will govern the response.  The glaring lateness of Donald Trump’s denunciation of white hate groups last Sunday is a violation of the principle. But his tone deafness on key events always been one of his problems.  His comments are too little too late or too much too soon.

Of course  Pyongyang is always making threats, but nothing coming from them seemed to warrant an out-of-the-blue threat to engage them and the world in a potentially catastrophic nuclear exchange.

Listening to the President issue his bellicose threat against North Korea on August 7 made people around the world wonder: why now?  At the time he was in the midst of a meeting on the nation’s opioid crisis, and yet the warlike language on North Korea is how he unburdened himself when reporters were ushered into the room:

North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. [Kim Jong-un] has been very threatening beyond a normal state and as I said they will be met with fire and fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.

Apparently only after his comments did we learn that the North Koreans blustered that they were looking at options for attacking Guam, some 1800 miles away. Of course Pyongyang is always making threats, but nothing coming from them seemed to warrant the President’s out-of-the-blue challenge to engage them and the world in a potentially catastrophic nuclear exchange.

This was troubling because the sabre-rattling affair would make more sense if the exigency for his words was after North Korea’s threat. But no. Trump commented first on a Tuesday of last week. The North Korean’s comment came on Wednesday. In the short term, the larger exigency resided with the Koreans.

It is so like Donald Trump to make inaccurate and combative comments for reasons that only he understands. Too often his reference points are still the former president and Ms. Clinton. In his rhetorical wanderings he often seems like a befuddled fisherman casting a line miles from the closest stream. In this case he did have legitimate bragging rights after the unanimous United Nation’s vote to increase sanctions against the North. Any other President would have used the occasion to build off this diplomatic success. But on the sanctions he was mostly silent.

In this strange pattern there is a lesson in how much we are hardwired to place the flow of a person’s ideas in a larger frame of reference.  Meaningful rhetoric is almost always a moment in a river of known events.

Exigency theory explains how we arrive at attributions of other people’s motives. We naturally search for the antecedents that seem to trigger strong reactions in individuals. There is a form to these things. We expect to be able to identify contributing factors for a significant presidential statement. This feeds into the dialogical form that is second nature to us. We mentally ‘build out’ from a person’s words to make conclusions about what likely gave rise to them. When we ask questions like “why did Mary say that?” we are looking for the triggering exigency. When we can’t find one, we worry that we are missing something important, or that the speaker has a chaotic mind that has drifted into magical thinking.

No Thanks. I’ve been Warned.

Models, , , , ,
                      Wikipedia.com

 Research studies suggest that ‘immunized’ audiences are surprisingly resistant to later appeals. 

Our cat has the daily trauma of making decisions about whether to cross the threshold of the front door to come in or out. It’s her call, and it’s always a tough decision. She prevaricates, pauses, reconsiders, and, when coming inside, frequently looks back as if she will never see the great outdoors again. We wait while she decides. And then we wait some more. I’m told it’s called “threshold anxiety,” a pattern not uncommon among cats.  This behavior may explain why they have so successfully evolved.  It seems like a waste our of time. Even so, there is a kind of parallel in our behavior. Experimental research on what motivates people to change shows that we are also a wily species prone to stay put.

To humans, an attractive gateway to a new attitude almost always looks like a trap. We don’t like to rearrange the mental furniture that is in our heads. And so we stay as we are, even when what is on the other side of the threshold looks so inviting.

There is a persuasion strategy that builds off this tendency.  Used at the right time, it’s almost foolproof.

The effective appeal is called inoculation. An inoculation message is a warning to not be taken in by certain communications from a different source that soon will be heard from. This tactic is entrenched in many forms of persuasion—from political campaigns to court trials to prevention messages in health campaigns. The theory predicts that a persuader who delivers a message of caution about a future ploy to win us over can “inoculate” us to resist. When trial lawyers begin their opening statements to a jury noting that the other side “will try to convince you . . . ” they are inoculating.  Likewise, when a friend tells us that another friend is making the rounds looking for volunteers, we may be motivated to arm ourselves with a good excuse to say no. The first warning increases already-high levels of audience skepticism, thereby ruining the second persuader’s chances. The warning is a trigger to freeze in place.

In persuasion research there aren’t many strategies where you can bet the farm on an outcome. But you can pretty much count on an immunized audience to not be effected by a later appeal.

There is strong evidence to suggest that exposure of preteens to inoculation messages work well.

Think of inoculation in terms of its metaphoric origins. Just as immunization can prevent disease by introducing a benign form that triggers the body’s defenses, so it seems equally possible to do much the same in a persuasive message. For example, there is strong evidence to suggest that exposure of preteens to anti-smoking messages work if they play out scenarios that suggest manipulation.  For example: “films and friends may try to convince you that smoking is cool,” or “cigarette companies try to make you addicted so that you will be a customer for (a shortened) life.” Older  teens?  Not so much.  It’s clear that a prime condition for effective inoculation involves being the first in line to issue a warning.  Older kids have been inoculated in a different way. They have heard so many warnings that they have become immune to new lectures.