COMM 460
Fall 2014

Glossary

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  • Argumentative: A highly formal style of speaking, typical of legislative chambers, marked by formal debate with its characterization of the claims of others, clear statement of claims by the speaker, and providing of support for claims.

  • Authority: Also known by its Greek term "ethos." In communities, there are certain characteristics of the speaker that mark them as people who should be listened to. Authority maps that dimension of persuasiveness.

  • Camp Meetings: Large gatherings, often numbering in the tens of thousands, in clearings, particularly on the frontier of the United States. Camp meetings featured speeches, religious sermons or political speeches, or the entertainment of the Lyceum and Chatauqua movmeents. The occassions, however, were grand gatherings of people complete with salesmen of all stripes and sins ranging from gambling to prostitution.

  • Common Sense: A strategy of support for ideas as reasonable to anyone with a common set of experiences.
  • Covenant: A rhetorical act which binds people to each other in a commitment, generally invoking a sacred oath.  Covenants are necessarily acts of rhetoric.  Only with discourse can a covenant be made.

  • Cult of True Womanhood.  Sometimes called the Cult of Domesticity.  A belief widespread in and after the 19th century that differentiated women from men.  The belief was grounded in the natural differences between men and women that portrayed women as the gentler sex, with less strength than men, and thus in need of protection from physical harm.  As the factory economy replaced farm economies, workplaces separated from home and women were assigned responsibility for the domain of the household.  The household was valued as a peaceful refuge from the rough and tumble existence of the capitalist world.  More aggressive males were charged with defending the home and seeing after it from the outside world including the rough and tumble world of democratic government while women were to handle the needs of the household.  Finally, women were to be the nurturants of the gentler and moral characteristics of life, responsible for raising the young and instilling them with moral virtue.  In the cult of true womanhood, women who fit this description of the gendered women were valued by society. See Republican Motherhood.

  • The Enlightenment: The intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th century that spread from Europe, through the Scottish universities (the Scottish Enlightenment) and into British North America (later the United States). Ideas championed by thinkers of the Enlightenment included the notion of social contract, taken from Rousseau and others, the importance of common sense experience, from the Scottish empirical tradition, the notion of truth emerging from rhetorical exchange, from the Scottish rhetorical philosophers, and the doctrine of natural rights from Locke and others. The ideas of the Enlightenment were given firm character in government as the spreading population of the colonies had to invent government. Then the American revolution gave them expression in a firm national governmental form.

  • Enthymatic Style: A style of discourse in which the force of the speech is completed by the audience. The speaker's strategy is to use words, metaphors, narratives, and so forth that allow the audience to go beyond the speech itself and to fill in material from their experience.

  • Evangelical Abolitionist.  Abolitionists located in the church of the reform crescent who argued from a position that slavery was a sin against God.

  • Errand of Moral Inheritance: An appeal, particularly common in the discourse of the early 19th Century, that praises the accomplishments of ancestors and then motivates public action as a debt to ancestors of such great accomplishment.

  • Errand of Progress: An appeal that establishes the American mission as progress, praises the country for that progress, and motivates public action based on contribution to progress.

  • The experiential.  A style of argument in which proof is generated from the common experiences of the speaker and the audience. Contrasts with a rhetoric of system and historical proof. Authority in the experiential rests in having lived a rich set of experiences that support the wisdom of the speaker's judgment.

  • Farmer's Alliance: Founded in 1877, by the 1880s the Farmer's Alliance had passed the Grange in strength in the farm states. The Alliance was a product of the Grange's reluctance to get into politics. The Alliance was political from its beginning. The Alliance employed a system of electing Orators, borrowed from the system of the Grange, but focused on the ability to articulate the farmer's problems and their political solutions. The Alliance also founded today's Cooperative movement (nonprofit economic enterprises owned by their customers) to counter the economic power of capitalists. They organized grain elevators, mills, banks, and even in some cases railroads owned by farmers to protect the farmers from exploitive relationships. The rhetoric of the Alliance was polemic blaming the "money interests" for the dismal economic conditions of the farmers. The Alliance merged with the Knights of Labor who had a similar class rhetoric to form the Populist Party.

  • Feminine Style: The style of discourse that grew from the Women's Movement of the 19th century. The style is marked by certain characteristics that Karyln Campbell attributes to women's experience with craft contexts as a place for public life prior to the emergence of the movment.

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  • The Grange: An organization formed by Oliver H. Kelly of the United States Department of Agriculture in 1867. Initially known as the Patrons of Husbandry, the Grange was an organization designed to bring an education in the scientific principles of agriculture to the farmer. The Grange sponsored speeches by professors at the new land grant colleges designed to bring their research to the farm. The Grange suffered from the opposition of its national organization to political activity. In the face of growing farmer problems with the economic system, the Grange decliined in the late 1870s although the organization continues today. The rhetoric of the Grange employed the narrative of success to bring scientific principles to farming.

  • Ideograph: Words or phrases that are pronounced in discourse to capture commitments of a social community. Such notions as <democracy>, <liberty>, <freedom>, or <rights> are created in social contracts and social practices and exist because of the commitment of the social community to them. Words like these are employed explicitly in rhetoric to invoke those commitments motivationally. Note that ideographs are denoted in rhetorical analysis by use of brackets.

  • Irony:  A rhetorical figure in which the speaker says something different than s/he means.  Irony works by inducing the audience to construct the message rather than just absorbing it from the speaker.  Thus, the figure works by violating the expectations of the audience.

  • Jeremiad: A rhetorical figure or form that captures the events in the life of the community as a sign of God's dissatisfaction with the community, and calls the community back to a renewed commitment. Life is seen in terms of God's promise and our responsibility to him. Hardship is seen as God's disfavor or His test. This way of talking about events provided a powerful motivational rhetoric. The name is derived from the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah who in the book of the Bible that carries his name attributed the troubles of Israel to the breaking of its covenant with God.

  • Lyceum or Chautauqua: The Lyceum was founded in 1837 and was a form of entertainment and education that travelled from community to community presenting programs. The Chautauqua was founded in 1874 to provide the same function. In the early years of each the performances were at camp meetings, in large clearings that often became known as "the Chautauqua Grounds." In later years the performances moved in doors and even charged admission. The Lyceum and Chautauqua were important aspects of public life and provided a type of education for Americans of the 19th century.

  • Mass Communication: A technology for communicating marked by its one-directional quality and its disempowerment of receivers. Typically a few persons communicate with many people through the technology. Contrasts to public communication.

  • Material spaciousness.  A characteristic of the sentimental style of discourse in which the speaking draws verbal images that stress large expanses of space.  See sentimental style.

  • Motivation: The strategy accepted by a community as justification for public action. Achieving the support and participation of the community in pursuit of some action requires that speakers motivate the action in terms that the community recognizes as legitimate. When a public situation occurs in the community, discourse describes the situation in such a way that we can deal with it. This understanding becomes the grounds for the legitimacy of action in response to the situation. We can study these motivations in different communities to understand the strategies that succeed in the public life of the community and those that fail.

  • Narrative: A strategy for dealing with an idea by telling a story. Typically in the narrative strategy the story has a hero the public should admire and emulate, or it has a moral that should be followed.  Also the narrative style

  • Narrative of Success: A narrative that tells the story of humble beginnings and the rise of wealth and power. The narrative led to the drawing of the moral of the story as the power of hard work and diligence to lift a person to success. The narrative turned on the ideograph of <success>. The obverse narrative told the story of the poor as lacking in hard work and determination and thus deserving their low station in life.

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  • National American Women's Suffrage Association: Organization created by the merger of the National Women's Suffrage Association and American Women's Suffrage Association in 1892.

  • National Women's Suffrage Association: Founded in 1869, became one wing of the split Women's Movement in the 1870s and 1880s. Under the leadership of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony the NWSA differed from its counterpart because it sought to address a broad range of Women's issues and because it preferred a rhetoric of individualism.

  • The Parlor.  A room of a house in which people meet to discuss public affairs.  The parlor was an important arena in the Cavalier community where the men of the cavalier South met for their insular discourse of race and difference.  Parlors were also important, however, in the reform communities as places where reformers (male and female) gathered to talk about the events of the day.

  • Populist or People's Party: The product of the merger of the Farmer's Alliance and the Knights of Labor to form a reformist political party in 1892.

  • Pragmatic Rhetoric: A strategy for motivating change that justifies actions as appropriate and efficient means to acheive agreed upon ends. Problems considered from the perspective of a pragmatic strategy are analyzed for causes of the problems and solutions that remove the causes.

  • Public: This complex term lies at the root of our study. The key to understanding it is to: (1) understand the contested line between public and private concerns ; (2) understand the difference between public communication and mass communication; and (3) understand how the term then serves in concepts like public address, public life, public sphere, public situation, public space, public place, etc. The term does not mean "outing," the process of revealing some lewd or private matter for mass consumption.

  • Public Address: Speaking about public matters. The term is often defined merely as a speech that many hear, a speech in public. Our meaning is much more precise.

  • Public Life: That part of everyday activity which is conducted with other people concerning matters that we believe are properly addressed in conjunction with others. Contrasts with our private life and our family life.

 

  • Public Situation: In every culture there are situations that are considered situations that involve the public. Some situations are almost invariantly considered public situations regardless of culture. For example, killing another human being is seldom considered a private matter. Respect for life characterizes nearly every society and the taking of a life is defined as a public concern. Other situations will vary from culture to culture in whether they are a public situation. Planting time is a public situation in New England, a private one in Virginia.

  • Public Sphere: The place where a community can conduct communication about matters the community considers of common interest rather than private interest. Not to be confused with the political sphere nor the governmental sphere. Governments may justify their power by claiming to be the public sphere, and in some cases the political or governmental may be the place where such communication is conducted, but a public sphere is generally much broader than either the political or the governmental.

  • Radical Abolitionist.  Those who attacked slavery based on the promise of equality contained in the Declaration of Independence.  Their rhetoric focused on the ideographs of <rights>, <equality>, and <humanity>.

  • Republican Motherhood.  Prior to the revolution the colonists had thought of themselves as "republican" more than "democratic."  Republican beliefs held that leaders were not sent to govern their fellow citizens to represent their viewpoints so much as to represent what was right and best for the community.  This sense of what was right was known as "public virtue" and the citizens role was to elect those with public virtue to office.  After the revolution as democratic ideas spread, expectations developed that public virtue was a part of the training of the young.  The dilemma was how to reconcile the reality of the rough and tumble of democratic politics (such as the partisan arena of the early 19th century) with the disinterestedness and moral restraint represented by public virture.  The answer was to gender politics.  The role of active involvement in the rough and tumble of democratic politics was assigned to men and the task of instilling public virtue was thought to be the contribution of women to government.  See Cult of True Womanhood.

  • Rhetoric: The dimension of human symbolic behavior (including and dominated by language use) through which social community is accomplished and shaped. A rhetor is someone participating in public life through the use of language. The term rhetoric refers not only to this dimension of symbolic behavior as an object of study but also to the artifacts generated by communities in conducting their public life. Thus we refer to the speech of a community on public matters as rhetoric.

  • Rhetoric of Business: A frame for discourse employed by the American Federation of Labor and the craft union movement to motivate their share of the labor movement. The rhetoric of business argued that labor could improve its lot by acting like business. Thus, the craft union movement sought to restrict the supply of labor to increase the wages. The rhetoric also featured a theme of pride in one's craft and shared a theme of success in hard work and diligence with the narrative of success.

  • Rhetoric of Class: Generally, a rhetoric that justifies social hierarchy based on the superiority of one class over another.  Specifically, a frame for discussing the problems of labor that polemically contrasted the working and the capitalist class. The rhetoric often employed a war metaphor, and when not doing so, substituted other strategies of extreme division. The working classes were seen as victims and were motivated to organize to confront the power of capital. The Knights of Labor were an initially secret labor organization that built the rhetoric of class. Differed from the Rhetoric of Socialism and Anarchism by believing that organizing the working class into a counter-force to the capitalist class would rectify the problems of labor. Socialists believed that government should be captured to counter the power of capitalists; anarchists believed that government should be destroyed as the tool of the capitalists.

  • Rhetoric of Difference.  A rhetorical form that converts differences among humans into justification for superiority and hierarchy.  A rhetoric of difference may justify a power structure that gives one group power over another, or may simply justify superiority of one group over another.

  • Rhetoric of Idealism: A strategy for motivating change in which the present is rejected because it does not measure up to some ideal. The strategy requires that the speaker develop the ideal and describe the way in which the present fails to achieve it.  Motivational quality comes from the striving for perfection.

  • Rhetoric of Individualism: A strategy for motivating change based in the Declaration of Independence's vision of each individual endowed with certain rights. The ideograph of <rights> or <natural rights> is a common characteristic of this rhetoric. This rhetoric was central to the radical reform movments of the 1830s and was one of the two major rhetorical strategies to motivate the call for Women's suffrage.

  • Rhetoric of Life Hereafter. A motivational form used in slave sermons that urged the slaves to tolerate the pain and suffering of the their life on earth with the certain promise of a glorious life after death.

  • Rhetoric of Moral Expediency: A strategy employed by the Women's Movement in the late 19th and early 20th century that justified Women's suffrage based on the need for women to fulfill their roles as the moral defenders of society. The strategy accepted the notion that women's special role was their responsibility for moral virtue and converted that special role into support for their acquiring the vote.

  • Rhetoric of Obedience.  A motivational form used in slave sermons that argued from the biblical injunction to slave masters to care for thier slaves, and to slaves to obey their master.

  • Rhetoric of System: A way of arguing in which life is viewed as dictated by the systems around us. Typically the rhetoric of system may compare one system with another, or it may characterize the situations of our life by how they are dictated by the way our system works.  Also called the rhetoric of machine when it uses a machine metaphor.  Also called pragmatism when it emphasizes means and ends.

  • Rhetoric of Race.  A rhetoric that emphasizes characteristics that separate human races and that justifies power and hierarchy based on those difference.

  • Rhetoric of Revolt.  A motivational form used in slave sermons that used the story of the children of Israel's escape from Egypt as a metaphor for the slavery of the quarters. The rhetoric spawned the search for the Black Moses who would lead his people out of slavery.

  • Rhetorical Form: A characteristic pattern that is learned by those in the community that organizes their common experiences a certain way. Examples of rhetorical form are the jeremiad, the rhetoric of revolt, and argument from expediency.

  • Rhetorical Theme: Any characteristic of rhetoric that is learned and repeated in the rhetoric of a community. Thus, ideographs, styles of speaking, and rhetorical forms are all examples of rhetorical themes.

  • Sentimental Style: A style of speaking, particularly characteristic of the formal orations of the epideictic arena in the early 19th century, marked by its material spaciousness and definitive sentimentality.

  • Social History: A type of historical study in which the focus is on the behaviors of ordinary people in communities. Contrasted with "great man" theories of history which view historical events as driven by the actions of leaders; and scientific history which views historical study as the uncovering of the material record of the past.

  • Strategy or Rhetorical Strategy: A term used to characterize the choices of the rhetor designed to accomplish his/her rhetorical goals or satisfy the rhetorical requirements of the moment. The term is part of a cluster of terms with rhetorical goals, rhetorical requirements, and rhetorical situation. For example, in "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" Patrick Henry's strategy for weakening British America's identity as British (a rhetorical goal) was to refer repeatedly to his compatriots as "Americans" (rhetorical stategy). A speech contains many rhetorical strategies designed to achieve many different rhetorical goals.

 

  • Tallness: A characteristic of American frontier rhetoric in which the truth of the tale was ambiguous. The stories were large, exaggerated, so much so that their truth is called into question. They were "tall tales." Their truth is in their moral: the illustration of the moral lesson in the story. Whether they are factual takes a back seat.

  • Transcendence: A strategy that gives concrete events meaning and significance by placing them into larger contexts. The strategy turns concrete events into motivation for grander commitments. Transcendence reaches it fullest power in Transcendentalism. Transcendentalists believed that reality lay not in material things of the here and now world, but in the ideas and ideals that persist through history. The things of the here and now world attained their significance, and their reality, through their participations in transcendent truths.

  • The Transcendent Style: The transcendent style points to the material events of the world, but gives those events their significance by lifting them into greater truths, causes, movements, or commitments. There are many forms of transcendent style from the Puritan's seeing significance in the relationship of the here and now to God's plan to Lincoln's seeing the Civil War as part of the American task of bringing the promise of democratic freedom, to Ronald Reagan's call upon the American spirit of exploration and adventure.

     

  • Ungenteel Style: A style of speaking, particularly charactersitic of the American Frontier of the early 19th century, marked by tallness, a crudeness of language, call-response with its active audience response including an open hyper-sentimentality, and reflecting the crudeness of the pioneer experience.