Holy crap.
I leave you people alone for, just over two weeks and look at what happens.
There was an actual assassination attempt on a presidential candidate since I last talked to you.
We have all half-way joked about living in a banana republic in the last few years, but who are we? What is going on? What have we become?
But we didn’t stop there! No! We then continued to blow up the election cycle by ditching one candidate and replacing him with a historically significant other.
I was halfway through writing this week’s episode when this happened. I had a few options: I could scrap what I was doing and start all over and do something like one episode on the rally and a series on Biden or Harris. I could just go on with what I was working on and put off discussing the assassination attempt and the election at a later date. But I’ve actually chose option # 3. Because as I thought about it, I decided that what I was originally working on may have somewhat informed what happened in the last two weeks. At least in my own bizarre thinking. So, bear with me while I string a few thoughts together.
Most people’s understanding of rhetoric, if they have any associations to that word at all, comes from their composition classes. We learn basic Aristotelian rhetoric as we progress through our instruction on argumentative writing, starting in grade school and right on through college.
On the one hand, this is about as easy as it gets. On the other hand, there’s not a lot of change from what you learn in junior high to what you learn in freshman comp, so apparently it is complicated enough that you need to learn it over and over again for years on end for you to get it. But ultimately what we want you to know is you need to make a claim, support it with well-founded information, have solid reasoning, conclude your ideas, and transition on to the next one. When you’re done, tie it all together.
Honestly, we spend about 8 years teaching you that. And, based on what I see in public, and the confusion in many of my college students, we need longer than those 8 years to even get that far.
But teaching you that in your language arts classes is kind of a one-off from where we started.
This “formula” if you will, was actually meant for speech, not writing. Aristotelian rhetoric was designed for public speaking. It’s just in the 18th and 19th centuries we kind of decided to apply it to writing.
Some people will take public speaking classes in which they will learn these basic ideas all over again, but this time for speech. And it always amazes me how people act like they are learning something completely new. No, you know this. You have been doing this since you were 10. Now you are just doing it out loud.
But thinking of this process as a verbal one instead of a written one kind of changes the game a bit. When you are doing things verbally you have to think more about things like presentation, audience, timing, and delivery. There are aspects to verbal persuasion that don’t come up in written persuasion. So, it’s kind of weird that we have taken Aristotle, who was specifically talking about oral persuasion, and have applied him to writing. It raises questions of what we are trying to teach and to whom.
I’ve got a lot I want to tie together today, but I want to guide it with an overarching question: can craft (or maybe talent) be taught?
I’ve asked that before, but I want to explore it a bit more fully today. That may seem a bit far afield from where we have been, but I promise it ties in.
Let me give you a few things to chew on:
My husband and I are watching a show that premiered a few years ago called Evil. I am not recommending this show to you because it is wild and creepy and I don’t know if it is the kind of thing that is up your alley, but it is really good and we are enjoying it a lot. There are a couple of specific people I want to mention that are involved in this show: Katje Herbers (I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing her name right, and if I’m not I am so apologetic) and Michael Emerson.
Katje Herbers is the lead of the show. She is pretty much what you’d expect from a female lead. She is conventionally attractive. She is thin and has a pleasant speaking voice. Her face is nice and symmetrical. She doesn’t look like a Kardashian, but she’s not average, either. She is, by all accounts, a good actor. Until the second season I would have said, yes, she’s good, she was a fine choice for the casting, and I had no complaints.
And then there was a scene in the second season that made me sit up and take notice and say, “Hold that phone. This is FIRE.”
There is a scene where her character, Kristin, confesses to her friend, a priest, to something. I won’t tell you what because that would be a huge spoiler, but it’s a big moment in the series.
FRIENDS.
That scene was a gift. Her acting shook me. It was transcendent. There are times when somebody’s acting is so good you are just enveloped in the scene, and you are completely taken in by it. For me sometimes the acting is so good I am shaken by it, and I think, “Please, yes, more of this!” This is because I appreciate craft. I love to see an artist or an athlete or a woodworker or whoever show off the skills they have spent time cultivating and produce something amazing. I think people deserve credit for the amazing work they do. And in that scene Herbers did amazing work. I was captivated. It was less than five minutes of film. But in those five minutes I am convinced she earned her paycheck.
Then there is Michael Emerson. He’s a well-known actor, even if you don’t know his name. He was in Lost and he was just in Fallout – he’s one of those people that even if you don’t know his name, if you saw his face you’d immediately say, “Oh, yeah, I know THAT guy.”
The thing about Emerson is he is not a conventionally attractive guy. He is never going to be your traditional “leading man.” But he did something in this show that made me sit up and take notice again when it comes to craft that I just have to tell you about.
Emerson’s character is just the worst. He’s a bad dude, and he moves from simpering to manipulative, depending on what scene he is in and who he is talking to. He is the worst kind of character. But he puts on a particular act with one specific relationship that the show portrays, and I was just gobsmacked.
Part of the plot of the show is that Emerson’s character has to seduce someone as part of a nasty set of machinations. As I said, he’s not conventionally attractive. BUT. What Emerson knows is that THAT DOESN’T MATTER. When Emerson’s character goes into seduction mode his manipulative powers go into hyperdrive. And he puts on a façade that is confident, willful, charming, and without shame. He acts like he is an entirely different person.
And I ABSOLUTELY GET IT. In one scene he goes from being repulsive to kind of sexy. And it is JUST in how he acts toward people.
Friends, this is all Emerson’s craft. This is an actor that understands appeal has little to do with how you appear and everything to do with how you act. So, he acts in a way that is appealing. It is a spectacular performance. And it isn’t going to win him any awards. It doesn’t dig deep into the well of human emotion or tap into the depths of our souls – it is just a truly honest and excellent representation of who we are as people and how we react to each other. And I love it.
Now, I don’t know these two actors’ backgrounds. But as somebody who has done a fair bit of acting myself, I am always curious when I see a really good performance – is this somebody who just intuitively GETS people – who just knows how to act? Or is this something they cultivated and learned through study and observation?
This is a question I think about a lot as a teacher. As somebody who is called upon to teach both speaking and writing, two skills that most people are notoriously bad at, I ask myself all the time – why do some of my students seem to just waltz on through these things and some of my students never seem to make any headway? Yes, there are those that improve over the course of the semester. But honestly, most people just…don’t. Most people just don’t seem to understand that these things are a craft and that you can improve in them.
Which actually leads me to ask…can you?
This brings me back to the Aristotelian question…why do we teach it that way?
Aristotelian rhetoric is great for some fundamentals. But is it really good? Are you really going to improve as a speaker if you do it that way?
Here’s the thing – most of the people that we think of as “great” speakers weren’t exactly Aristotelian in their approach. MLK didn’t set out to establish a claim, then support it with proofs, then conclude, then move on. Neither did William Jennings Bryan. Neither Mary Fisher. And they didn’t necessarily assume a rational audience either.
The thing about Aristotelian rhetoric, is that if you follow the formula that is set out in your basic speech class, and by that, I mean if you do what your teachers tell you to, for the most part you will be a pretty mediocre speaker.
The speech will be …fine. There won’t be any problems with it. But it won’t be great, either.
So, I have to ask, why do we teach it that way?
Could it be that we know we aren’t going to teach any of our students to be great speakers?
The thing is, we teach to the median. And I am afraid that is because that is all we expect of our students. I think when these classes were designed there was an underlying understanding that our students would never learn to be great speakers. So, we didn’t set out to teach them.
And I honestly don’t know if that is fair or not.
If we were more familiar with great speakers, could we emulate that? And if we really leaned into thinking about what makes a speaker great as opposed to adequate could we do something about it?
Consider Burke for a minute.
Burke said that rhetoric wasn’t persuasion. It was identification. We could spend hours talking about what that means, and at this point maybe we have, but it really isn’t that much harder than what it sounds like. Rhetoric is when you, as the speaker, get your listener to realize that the two of you are “one” in some way.
How different would a speech class be if we taught our students to reach their audiences in that way?
And honestly, that’s the difference between and Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Kerry or a Joe Biden.
Okay. So, what does this have to do with Trump getting shot at?
Well, here’s a question for you: is Trump a good speaker?
In the Aristotelian sense, absolutely not. I mean, he is one of the worst I have ever heard. He is rambling, illogical, confused, offensive, disorganized, and incoherent. Honestly, he is maybe the most terrible speaker in the public I can think of. It is an affront to my sensibilities.
This is actually why I am kind of fascinated by the discussion about JD Vance as a candidate. The Vance of the RNC was a good speaker – he was measured, intelligent, cogent, and even laid out possibilities for future campaign elements. He’s everything the Trump campaign needs. But the rumors are that Trump is already thinking of ditching him. He isn’t “popular” enough. This seems to translate to he isn’t “entertaining” or “polarizing” enough. Or maybe it just means he’s in an inter-racial marriage. If any of that is the case then the next 100 days are going to be straight-up gladiatorial, because it seems very clear that the GOP has little interest in governing and has put all of its eggs in the “sensationalism” basket.
But what about that from a Burkean perspective?
Well, Burke says that a speaker must find common ground with their audience. Burke calls it consubstantiality. It happens in the sub-stances of the speaker and audience.
Trump seems to have mastered that.
He seems to really know where his audience lives. Trump knows he’s not talking to me. In fact, he seems intent on ticking me off. But there are people who are NOT me that he knows how to reach. People who don’t care if he doesn’t make sense but can pick out the small parts here and there that they can latch on to as those sub-stances and say, “Yeah! I GET that.”
In that sense, Trump may be not just a good speaker, but a great speaker.
So, let’s continue talking about Burke for a minute.
Burke’s theories on rhetoric weren’t just disconnected, pie-in-the-sky ideas about words. They were, in some ways, a warning.
When Burke started thinking about rhetoric, it was in context. Burke witnessed the horrors of World War II and asked himself, “What have I just seen? How did this happen?” And set out to make sense of it.
Burke’s rhetorical theory was, in many ways, an attempt to make sense of Hitler. He even wrote a whole piece about it. But for Burke, these ideas of identification and dissociation weren’t just, hey, here’s some wild ideas about how people talk, it was a way to explain how one person galvanized a whole population of people to think, “Yeah, taking over the world and killing millions of people sounds like a great idea.” Because that is some comic-book level villainy. Literally. American comic books had whole story lines about the Axis powers. So, Burke was trying to figure out how this made sense to LOTS of people.
So, this idea of identification is a double edged-sword. It’s fantastic when somebody like MLK does it. Terrifying when somebody like Hitler does it.
Enter Trump.
Trump is following a playbook we have seen before. He has mastered identification and dissociation. And he is not mirroring MLK.
And he is not alone. The discourse in America has been heating up for years. But we have seen a masterclass in identification and dissociation.
And it has brought us to where we are. There was an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate.
The thing about Burke is that on the one hand, he can be really useful in helping to understand how to be persuasive. He can also lead you down a road toward propaganda. And when you head down that path, things can get divisive. Real fast.
So, can we teach our students to be great speakers? Maybe we could. But I guess the question is, should we?
Nothing about a normal speech class is designed to teach students to be great speakers. It is designed to make them adequate speakers to a rational audience. If we were going to teach them to be truly great we would talk about identification, context, language, and style. But we don’t. For one thing, that’s really hard. I’m not convinced you even can teach that kind of thing in the course of a semester. And certainly not as a “skill” the way bean-counter admins want core competencies taught. If we were going to teach kids to be truly great speakers we would immerse them in listening to and reading great speakers, we would analyze the shining examples of oratory from the past and present, and engage in a study of what it means to communicate. Speech classes as they are are basically where you learn to outline. Because that is teachable in a semester, and we can expect average students to be able to pull that off, and that means we can do things like meet our learning objectives. Nothing in any of that leads to great speakers.
We would also have to contend with the idea of “greatness.” For some people, it doesn’t get any better than Trump. That is objectively nonsensical, but that is why Burke is helpful in understanding how we communicated – because it is NOT about anything objective and has EVERYTHING to do with who we are and how we identify. This will be interesting to watch in the coming weeks as Harris tries to thread this needle. Will she talk to us like we are all rational people who should be swayed by a logical argument? Or will she try to meet people closer to where they live? I actually think we’re seeing some smart politicking from her campaign right now. The huge Zoom meetings of people who share a demographic or background tells me she is looking to form a truly diverse coalition. The question is, will Harris be able to identify with all of those groups? She’s got a lot that she has to figure out, here. People are already talking about how she “lacks charisma,” which is generally code for, “I prefer to hear men speak and disrespect women’s voices,” but at the same time, she has to push hard against people who will play into stereotypes that as a woman or a Person of Color she is too emotional or too irrational to do a white man’s job. So even as she thinks about how to identify, the Harris campaign is thinking about craft.
The way we do things matters. If you don’t think you were ever given the tools to be an effective communicator – if you don’t think you have the ability to partake in craft – the questions we have to ask are why weren’t you taught and what difference did it make to whom?
Music in this episode is “Fearless First” by Kevin MacLeod at https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3742-fearless-first.
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