Criticism of Language, Stories, & Persuasion: Understanding Power and Culture John A. Cagle.

Criticism of Language, Stories, & Persuasion: Understanding Power and Culture

John A. Cagle

Graber, Doris A. Verbal Behavior and Politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976. Politics is by definition a social activity which involves interaction

among people, through various forms of communication, to make and enforce rules for their social system. . . .

Through description and analysis of verbal behavior studies pertaining to politics, the book seeks to show how and why knowledge of verbal behavior is important to an understanding of politics.

This endeavor calls for a discussion of the function which verbal behavior performs

in the conduct of politics, the manner in which those functions are performed under

various circumstances, and the consequences of verbal behavior, including the

inferences which may be drawn from it.

Referential Symbols. When referential symbols are used, the message carries its meaning in a given cultural setting through the culturally shared denotations of the words in their syntactical context.

Instrumental Symbols. Besides carrying manifest meanings, these symbols are instrumental in evoking latent meanings—meaning not readily apparent from the denotations of the words. Understanding of the latent meaning usually requires insight into the context in which the verbalization has occurred. An instrumental message may also carry attitudinal messages which are not apparent from the wording. Social relations may also be expressed instrumentally. Edward Sapir claimed that “one of the really important functions of language is to be constantly declaring to society the psychological place held by all of its members.”

Connotational Symbols. These symbols carry a variety of specific cognitive, emotional, and evaluative meanings for different audiences and individuals. These meanings tend to vary not only from audience to audience, but also from time to time and place to place. The denotation is what the message means generally to audiences when symbols have a standardized empirical referent. The connotation is what the message means to a particular individual or group at a particular time when it is placed into the context of personal or group predispositions and experiences.

Attention Arousal Establishing Political Linkages and Definitions Creation of Reality Sleeves: The political linkages thus far create

particular perceptions of reality by linking a new event to a familiar cause, concept, or analogy, creating new perceptual realities for receivers who accept the linkages, which in turn become prisms through which future information is filtered and shaped. Some of these become reality sleeves—conceptual straightjackets which tightly enclose the minds of individuals and groups and prevent them from accepting conflicting perceptions.

Effects of Verbal Commitment: In the process of creating reality sleeves for others, political leaders often create a map of the territory of experience and commit themselves to its accuracy and to the political course they have charted. Commitments often remain binding even if the map is later found to be inaccurate.

Creation of Policy-Relevant Moods The Use of Words to Stimulate Action The Use of Words as Action The Use of Words as Symbolic Rewards

A condensation symbol is a name, word, phrase, or maxim which stirs vivid impressions involving the listener’s basic values. The symbol arouses and readies him for mental or physical action.

Verbal condensation symbols are the most potent, versatile, and effective tools available to politicians for swaying mass publics. Politics abounds in such symbols. Democracy, social progress, self-determination,

socialism, communism, capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, repressions, racism, freedom fighters—the list is ever-changing, endless.

When mass audiences respond strongly and uniformly to the appeals of such symbols, the symbols become Pavlovian cues: the audience reacts automatically to the cue, rather than to the facts of the situation.

McGee, Michael Calvin. “The ‘Ideograph’: A Link between Rhetoric and Ideology.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 66 (1980): 1-16. If a mass conscious exists at all, it must be empirically “present,”

itself a thing obvious to those who participate in it, or, at least, empirically manifested in the language which communicates it….

Since the clearest access to persuasion (and hence to ideology) is through the discourse used to produce it, I will suggest that ideology in practice is a political language, preserved in rhetorical documents, with the capacity to dictate decision and control public belief and behavior.

Further, the political language which manifests ideology seems characterized by slogans, a vocabulary of ideographs, easily mistaken for the technical terminology of political philosophy.

An analysis of ideographic usages in political rhetoric, I believe, reveals the interpenetrating systems or “structures” of public motives. Such structures appear to be “diachronic” and “synchronic” patterns of political consciousness which have the capacity both to control “power” and to influence (if not determine) the shape and texture of each individual’s “reality.”

Assumptions of Narrative Analysis

Humans make sense of their world by the stories they tell about it

Beliefs and behaviors are based on good reasons

Narrative is a persuasive and vital form of interpretive discourse

Stories are symbolic actions that create social reality

Nature of Stories

Stories are linked to experience Stories are linked to values Narratives are based on experience, is a

product of the memory, has a sense of chronology, is coherent, defines a central subject, and has closure.

Chararacteristics of Narrative

Theme Plot Structure Characters Narrator Setting Time and Causality

Criticism of Narratives

Mythic Narrative paradigm Dramatistic Fantasy theme analysis Fictitious Archetypal ETC.

Dramatism: Kenneth Burke

The range of rhetoric is wide. All life is drama. Drama features human motives. Hierarchy is fundamental to human

symbolism. Rhetoric promises transcendence.

Rhetorical Analysis of Narrative

Kenneth Burke’s Pentad: act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose

Pentadic ratios can be used to define the central relationship of any story: scene-act, scene-agency, scene-purpose, act-purpose, act-agent,

act-agency, agent-purpose, agent-agency, and agency-purpose.

Burkean Critical Probes

Can principles of hierarchy be found in discourse?

What is rhetor’s vocabulary of motives? Who or what is being scapegoated? Are strategies of transcendence in

evidence?

Myth—the Substance of Culture:Ferdinand de Saussure

Myths are master stories that describe exceptional people doing exceptional things and that serve as moral guides to proper action.

Types of Myth

Cosmological myths: why we are here. Societal myths: the proper way to live. Identity myths: what makes one cultural

grouping different from another. Eschatological myths: quo vadis?

Why use myth?

Heightened sense of authority Sense of continuity Sense of coherence Sense of community Sense of choice Sense of agreement

Structuralism: Claude Levi-Strauss

Myths worldwide are similar at the structural level although content is different

Critic should track the source of the myth Effectiveness is tied to how mythic elements

are combined Task is to discover the unique harmony (of

emotions, images, ideas, etc.) myth provides

Fantasy themes: Ernest Bormann

Fantasy themes are mythic shorthand Purpose is to dramatize ideas for listeners

Fantasy Themes Critical Probes

What are people like? What are possibilities for group action? On what people can you most depend? What is mankind’s purpose on earth? What are measures of right and wrong? How can success be measured? What information is most valuable?

What is Ideology?

A system of shared meanings that represents the world for us.

A network of interconnected convictions the influence how people see the world, truth and reality.

Politics, science, morality, and religion are forms of ideology.

What does Ideology do?

Shapes people’s identity by determining how they see the world.

Functions to determine a community’s set of beliefs.

Constrains the emergence of political expression.

Expresses and defends the interests of the powerful.

Rhetoric and Ideological Criticism

Rhetoricians seek to: Understand the integration of power and

knowledge in society. Identify the rhetorical strategies that maintain

power differences or create unification. The study of symbols is often central to this work

Consider what interventionist strategies might be appropriate to effect social change.