Reading in Public No. 47: The return of magnificent rhetoric

Four questions to ask when considering persuasive speech

Hey readers,

If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen that last week I was hardcore nerding out over the convention speeches at the DNC and—even moreso—over Ezra Klein’s analysis of those speeches on his podcast. After the drudgery of Trump vs. Biden, my language loving heart was delighted to see the return of compelling speeches and beautifully crafted sentences. Don’t get me wrong, rhetoric—the art of persuasion—was never fully gone from American politics. But the intentionality, the literary virtuosity, the emphasis on big noble ideas had been largely absent from political speech for quite some time.

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From 2014 to 2020, I taught AP Language and Composition to high school juniors. If you’re unfamiliar with that class, it’s entirely about rhetoric. We read fiction, yes, but the exam my students were preparing for was entirely about analyzing rhetoric and writing argumentatively. I loved teaching this class although it got increasingly harder over the years as the tenor of political discourse changed around us. But no matter what was happening in the world, teaching young people to see the arguments around them, understand who was trying to persuade them of what and why, and craft their own argumentative claims about the things that mattered to them always felt important. Last week I started feeling nostalgic for those lessons. The DNC speeches and analysis they provoked were a reminder of what thoughtful rhetoric can and should do.

In response to my Instagram stories, many people asked if I could recommend any books on rhetoric, and unfortunately I don’t have much to offer. While I’ve read and taught several works on rhetoric (this and this were favorites), they are mostly geared towards classroom instruction and aren’t what I would call compelling reads. If you do have a recommendation for a fun book on rhetoric and persuasion, please share in the comments! I myself would love to pick one up and I know many other people would too.

But instead of that, today I’m sharing four of the big picture questions I ask whenever I set about to analyze rhetoric. These have become so ingrained in my thinking that I don’t really consciously ask and answer them anymore. Instead, they are foundational to how I read (or listen) to any text—even fiction! You don’t have to pull up YouTube clips of the DNC to practice applying these questions. They’re a useful framework for considering everything from political speeches to podcast episodes to commercials to novels. Everything is rhetoric!

First things first, as we will see, one of the most important aspects of rhetoric is defining your terms. Rhetoric is broadly defined as the art of persuasive speaking, but I prefer Aristotle’s more nuanced definition of “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion¹.” Rhetoric, then, is largely about a rhetorician’s capacity to notice the persuasive tools available at any moment and the ability to then apply those tools most effectively towards a given audience. This definition understands that while rhetoric is largely about langue itself it is also about tone of voice, relationship building, setting, body language, and even attire. Rhetoric uses all available means to persuade.

With that definition in mind, let’s get into the questions you can ask about any rhetorical text.

1. What is the relationship between the speaker, the audience, and the subject? Whether you are preparing your own persuasive piece or analyzing that of someone else, understanding the relationship between those three key pieces is essential to success. A politician is going to give a different speech to supporters than they will give to undecided voters. A podcaster discussing a book for a group of avid readers will use different strategies than if their listenership is people discovering a love of books for the first time. Both the speaker and the audience’s relationship to the subject also comes into play here. Are the audience members experts in the subject—say, foreign trade policy—or average citizens? Considering these questions during analysis allows you to elevate yourself above whether you personally found a speech or text compelling and to consider who it was intended for and whether or not it is effective within this triangular context.

2. What is the tone of the piece? Tone means the speaker or writers attitude towards the audience and/or the subject. Determining tone isn’t inherently tricky, but the more nuanced and specific we can be, the more we can understand rhetorical effectiveness. Because of that, I think the best way to begin to identify tone is to learn different ways to describe tone. In knowing various tonal strategies, you can begin to perceive and identify them at work. For example, you need to know the term hortatory (encouraging to action) to recognize a speech that uses a hortatory tone. Of course, even without fancy language, you can ask, “What is this speaker’s attitude towards their audience?” and “What is this speaker’s attitude towards their subject?” You can easily recognize when politicians are condescending towards their audience or when they are reverential towards the office they seek. But since I’m a rhetoric nerd and you might be one too, here is my list of 70 tone words I used to share with students. And next time you read a book review, consider the tone! Is the critic talking down to you? Are they dismissive of the book? Are they disappointed? Offended? Generous? Flippant? Pretentious? In locating this, you will better know how seriously to take the review and you may learn a lot about the tone of writing you prefer when it comes to examining art.

3. What terms is the speaker or writer attempting to define and how are they defining them? There’s a reason rhetoric classes spend so much time on what’s known as “the definition essay,” and that’s because much of persuasion comes down to who can shape an audience’s perspective towards their own definition of the subject. In American politics, you will hear the parties vying to give prominence to their definitions of freedom and safety. Neither party would ever say that they are not for freedom² and safety, yet the way they define these terms and what they mean for ordinary people is drastically different. Before either can convince you that they will make you more free and more safe, they need to win you over to their definition of those values. The same thing happens in the book world. Readers and reviewers are all for “good books,” but how we define good can vary wildly.

4. What are the primary and secondary purposes of the piece? Perhaps this should be question number one, but I often find that while I can easily locate the primary purpose of a rhetorical work, it takes answering questions 1-3 to know the secondary purposes. For example, of course, the primary purpose Kamala Harris’s convention speech was to convince undecided voters to vote for her. But there was a lot more happening. One secondary purpose was to convince her supporters that she is presidential and ready to take on that role on day one. Think even about her choice of suit (rhetoric is using all available means to persuade and, yes, that means clothes too)—it was strong, tailored, a tiny bit feminine, and entirely presidential. Another purpose was to link her personal story with the story of America itself. You heard this in her repetition of the terms “unlikely journey” and “unlikely story” to describe both her own arrival at this moment in time and the history of the country she wants to lead. It was masterful! I think about secondary purposes often when I write and read book reviews. A primary purposes is almost always to convince the audience to read or not read the book. But the best reviews are also making claims about what it means for a book to be good or offering an argument about the literary landscape. Very few pieces of writing have a single purpose and examining the layers beyond the surface is crucial to understanding the rhetorical forces working on use every day.

I have so much more I could say about rhetoric, rhetorical devices, poetic language, reading fiction as rhetorical analysis, and book criticism as persuasive writing, but I will stop here for today. This might be of interest to absolutely nobody, but I am delighted to get to use my newsletter to dive into one of my favorite nerdy subjects.

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Happy reading!

Sara

1. Definition from Conversations in American Literature.

2. This Ezra podcast about the Democratic Party’s attempt to reclaim the idea of freedom is exceptional rhetorical analysis.