38 Rhetoric is Political, but not Politics

Politics can be rhetorical, but too often people use the terms interchangeably. Politics is about getting things done with groups of people, or, as Saylor Academy puts it: “Politics describes the use of power and the distribution of resources.” Since any political activity requires persuasion to get groups of people to share power and resources, politics usually relies on rhetoric. But politics may set aside persuasive strategies to find other ways to effect change. For example, law and war can be coercive instead of persuasive, and may be a part of how political decisions are enforced as opposed to decided on by two or more consenting parties.

We often hear that a senator or president or mayor is using rhetoric, as when someone says, “That kind of rhetoric is dangerous!” Rhetoric is also often misunderstood as “just talk.” You’ve probably heard people’s positions dismissed as “mere rhetoric.” This way of talking about rhetoric dismisses the power of words to implement change—through talking, writing, and creating. Talk is powerful stuff. It’s so powerful that there are whole disciplines devoted to understanding it (communication studies, education and teaching, literary criticism, philosophy, and, yes, rhetoric as a discipline). The next time you hear the word rhetoric used by politicians, political analysts, or in media editorials, think about their intention. Are they dismissing another person’s viewpoint by implying that it’s just a bunch of hot air? Are they implying that another person’s stated position on an issue is somehow inherently dangerous? Or do they use the word “rhetoric” in a way that indicates they really understand the tactics of persuasion that may be at work?

And yet, rhetoric certainly has political roots. The Greco-Roman tradition categorizes speeches into three categories, which include forensic, deliberative, and epideictic. Forensic has to do with making a believable case for what happened—as is the case when someone tries to prove their innocence to a jury by offering evidence for an alibi. Epideictic texts or speeches are for ceremony or show—to praise or to blame in ways that aren’t necessarily legally consequential. But the last speech type—the deliberative speech—has always been about getting an audience to adhere to a position on what actions should be taken. Deliberative rhetoric is clearly tied to politics and the “deliberate” drafting of legislation as one way of working with diverse groups of people. Of course, other aspects of our communication may be connected to politics in subtle ways. If someone writes an epideictic letter to a newspaper editor praising the life of former Texas governor Ann Richards, might we have some reason to take that praise as a public endorsement of Richards’ politics, too? Or if a nonprofit research team makes a forensic case that community access to arts and cultural events improves educational outcomes, we might read it as implying that arts should enjoy increased public funding. Politics, like rhetoric, is widespread and touches on nearly all aspects of our lives.

In short, we often find that “mere rhetoric” is conflated with politics. But as we have seen, political (or deliberative) communication is only one purpose of many potential purposes driving rhetorical choices. Rhetoric contains politics, but is not limited by it. Rhetoric is much bigger than mere politics.