My Reaction to "Rhetoric"

While Susan C. Jarratt’s essay, “Rhetoric” is an eye-opening display the multifarious views of rhetoric’s place in history and the world, more importantly, it re-asserts the importance of critical inquiry in language and literature. Jarratt’s essay prompts such immediate assessment of the present moment’s crisis of language that I could not help but to reflect upon my own rhetorical values. Yet, given that I am new to the scholarly exploration of rhetoric and my personal thoughts on the matter still fragmented, I would like to focus this blog on the classical rhetoric of Aristotle and Cicero (which Jarratt describes in her essay), and the striking resemblance it bears to the modern-day formal rhetoric of Barack Obama.

Though Jarratt presents an overwhelming array of scholarly opinion, she is clear in her motive when she states, “Our time presents its own urgencies and moments of desperation. Like the ancient Greeks, we fear the violent potential of language but, at the same time, have a sense that language can help us contain or master violent forces. Scholarship in rhetoric takes up these tensions and is invigorated by them in a time when terror, war, and states of emergency create an urgent need for analyses of public arguments; when manipulations of language cause grave concern and erode the legitimacy of government” (74-75). I concur with Jarratt that our own times are desperate times – and this desperation is by no means countered by the mediocrity of most rhetoric in this era. But when reading Jarratt’s “short version” of rhetoric’s origins, I immediately attached the “art of good judgment and civic engagement” to Obama’s rhetorical style.

Turning to one of Jarratt’s sources, in A Rhetoric of Motive Kenneth Burk states that “For the orator, following Aristotle and Cicero, will seek to display the appropriate ‘signs’ of character needed to earn the audience’s good will. That is a lesson that many contemporary speakers or writers have not learned. Or if they have learned it, they have chosen to ignore it.” Although Obama’s gifts in his own rhetoric have been deemed “all talk” by his Republican rival, he is incredibly persuasive in his sensitive, genuine, and honest approach that is most effective. Interestingly enough, the September issue of The Atlantic features a story by James Fallows in which he addresses the unusual style of Obama’s orations – he even quotes Cicero’s maxim “The effect is in the affect,” in regards to Obama’s rhetorical style. Fallow’s hits Aristotle dead on when he writes, “Based on his rhetoric, Barack Obama would arrive not because of support for his list of programs, although he has offered them, but because of support for his cast of mind. His speeches and debate answers show us how he thinks, much more than they reveal exactly the policies he would advance…but for some presidents, cast of mind is a central feature – the person, much more than the plan, represents the promise of the presidency. Obama is one of these.” Here, Fallow’s directly answers the third stasis – of what value is rhetoric – presented in Jarratt’s essay.

For me, Jarratt’s essay did exactly what it intended to – it prompted me to examine rhetoric’s role in contemporary society. Even more importantly, Jarratt’s essay excited me to pursue further inquiry on the subject – so much that I took it upon myself to look up a considerable amount of Jarratt’s own works cited and further reading.