Rhetorical Techniques: Ideals, Norms, and Moral Appeals

Introduction

People use various rhetorical techniques in order to have an impact on their audience. Four of these are: (a) conveying a sense of their own reality by invoking ideals; (b) reverting to cultural norms to teach a lesson or persuade; (c) making a transcendent appeal; and (d) framing argument within the moral arena of have and have not. Each of these techniques can be illustrated through the essays and speech examined below.

Teaching Reality and Invoking Ideals

Cathcart's essay best exemplifies this technique. The author discusses when and when a movement can and cannot be described as confrontational. He goes to great lengths discussing the term "confrontational" against other related terms and arguing whether it can be accurately applied in this sense. The author tries to get to the heart of the meaning of the movement — to touch its reality. Man, he argues, acts as a "symbol maker." We often attach symbols to things that distort the rhetoric of the moment. There is also a dialectical ambiguity in discourse that can subvert morals and can inject rhetorical form with political or social agenda.

Cathcart concludes that his most genuine definition of a movement would be "confrontational" in an agonistic manner — where loyalties are affirmed, tested, and changed, and where people work together to produce change. Confrontation can also be redemptive. He also identifies two types of movements: positive and negative. What Cathcart achieves through his rhetoric, in other words, is invoking ideals through a discussion of reality and through careful analysis of etymology.

This technique appears in the film as well, in the scene where buses and students' rights are discussed and the essence of the theme about fees and transportation is debated to its root. The three presenters discuss various aspects of the issue, approaching it from its core reality, and students debate that core reality directly.

Reverting to Cultural Norms

Beasly demonstrates how presidential rhetoric has been the vehicle for shaping American identity as "one of us" rather than "one of them." Certain U.S. presidents — especially Wilson, Harding, and Coolidge — achieved progressiveness by asking Americans to include minorities as part of "us." It was in this way that they helped advance women's suffrage and helped women gain voting rights. Presidential rhetoric taught cultural norms through inclusive messages. According to Rorty, whom Beasly frequently quotes, rather than some Hegelian metaphysical spirit shaping American change, it was presidential rhetoric focused on institutions that created cultural norms and customs. It was this rhetoric that shaped progress.

In the film, during one episode in which presenters argue for students to take buses, they revert to cultural norms — for instance, a woman arguing that it would cut costs, which everyone wants, as well as reduce pollution. These are shared values the audience already accepts, and the speaker leverages them to build her case.

Conclusion

Each of the four rhetorical techniques examined here — invoking ideals, reverting to cultural norms, transcendent appeal, and the moral have/have-not frame — demonstrates how rhetoric shapes both political change and everyday persuasion. From Cathcart's analysis of confrontational movements, to Beasly's study of presidential identity-building, to Johnson's civil rights address, rhetoric emerges as the essential vehicle through which shared values are constructed, challenged, and affirmed.