RHETORICAL CITIZENSHIP AS A CONCEPTUAL FRAME IN ACADEME or:
WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT RHETORICAL
CITIZENSHIP
Introduction
In suggesting the theme of rhetorical citizenship for this conference, Christian and I and
the other conference planners hoped to learn more about what colleagues near and far
think about and do with this concept, what they consider it to cover, and where they find
its strengths and weaknesses. While we think that rhetoric has something valuable to
contribute to the study of citizenship, it cannot possibly do the work alone. Rhetorical
citizenship, we believe, is compatible with a much wider cross-disciplinary scholarly
project including political scientists, media scholars, philosophers, discourse analysts, just
to mention some.
During this conference, we have already heard several highly interesting presentations
showing the breath of what other people do with the notion of rhetorical citizenship.
However, we recognize an obligation to share some reflections springing from our own
work with rhetorical citizenship. We will do so by addressing the definition, purpose,
scope, and academic relevance of the concept.
1. Definition
Rhetorical citizenship was from the beginning an umbrella term. Lisa was interested in
ideas about rhetorical agency (in other words how citizens might gain access to and
influence on civic life through symbolic action); Christian was mainly interested in how
citizens may relate to and evaluate the public rhetoric in which they are involved not as
participants but as “recipients”. We have maintained this dual focus on what you might
call the participatory and the receptive aspects of civic discourse, and in the section about
scope we’ll try to illustrate it.
First of all, it bears underscoring that rhetorical citizenship is not a new idea. The notion
that rhetoric is what makes civilized society a possibility goes back to the ancients, and
many great scholars have prepared the way for our thinking of citizenship as something
that is in part discursively based. Also, plenty of theorists have written about how
citizenship is not just a formal or rights-based category but also a more qualitative,
participatory, process.
We see rhetorical citizenship is a conceptual frame that emphasizes the fact that legal
rights, privileges and material conditions are not the only constituents of citizenship;
discourse that takes place between citizens is arguably the basis of what it means to be a
citizen. With this conceptual assumption our aim was to figure out a research platform
that would allow different strands of rhetorical scholarship to come into contact:
including studies in public argumentation and deliberation on the one hand, and studies in
rhetorical agency on the other. Whereas argument and deliberation theories tend to rely
on normative standards that are too pure and clinical, rhetorical agency theory for its part
could do with more conceptual precision and a more concrete research agenda. We
thought either might benefit from being brought into contact with the other. For example,
argumentation studies and deliberative democracy theory might look more at real and less
than ideal practices, and rhetorical agency theory from being applied and exemplified in
case studies. If not synthesis, there might be synergy. Complementary strengths and
perspectives might coalesce in a common pursuit.
Rhetorical citizenship does not easily yield to definitional precision because we never
intended rhetorical citizenship as a theoretical concept as such, but rather as a conceptual
frame, and because our inspiration draws on rather heterogeneous theory and no one
methodological approach. In our introduction to Rhetorical Citizenship and Public
Deliberation we stated its core as “a way of conceptualizing the discursive, processual,
participatory aspects of civic life”. The goal of the book was to develop “an
understanding of citizenship as a discursive phenomenon in the sense that important civic
functions take place in deliberation among citizens and that discourse is not prefatory to
real action but in many ways constitutive of civic engagement.” You might also say that
rhetorical citizenship is about rhetoric in society as it relates to the individual citizen. Our
interest in the concept is related to “the trend in modern political theory which sees the
essence of democracy in the idea of deliberation. If we are to connect these two ideas,
citizenship and deliberation, and reflect constructively on their meaning in present-day
democracy, then we should not only talk about rights and freedoms, but also about
rhetoric”. Also, we might add that while rhetorical citizenship as a concept has no
ideological bent, it is clearly normative in its attention to notions of empowerment,
inclusivity, and discourse ethics. This is perhaps where our project differs the most from
some other approaches to citizenship.
2. Purpose
As I just said, rhetorical citizenship as a conceptual frame has a descriptive and a
normative side and its purpose is ultimately critical, just like any other kind of rhetorical
criticism. But by understanding the particular communicative event in relation to a
greater social context (whether representative or extraordinary) our focus is less how
effective the particular utterance is, but more how suited it is to contribute to constructive
civic interaction. We are interested in this at different levels: most fundamentally, there is
a descriptive element in simply mapping how people present arguments or positions in
the public realm. Such basic analysis leads to questions about how this behavior reflects
ruling discursive norms. By examining such norms, whether they are recognized or not,
we have a better basis for critique because it takes into account the ruling doxa and social
and other constraints which can sometimes be at odds with more abstract idealizations of
civic discourse. Such grounded criticism is, we believe, one way to supplement crossdisciplinary scholarship on citizenship, which is often primarily theoretical or focuses on
greater trends and quantifiable observations. Case studies are useful in two respects: First,
they are suited for pedagogical purposes because they are concrete and easy to remember.
Also, they allow for studying what’s odd or somehow marginal. Whether under the aegis
of rhetorical agency or not, rhetorical critics of e.g. minority and women’s’ rhetoric have
expanded of our appreciation of the multiple ways in which rhetorical citizenship is
manifested. To sum up, we think of rhetorical citizenship as an impetus to forge more
explicit links between particular utterances and their role in the maintenance and
development of civic life. We’re trying to give renewed emphasis to the critical and
social potential of rhetoric by teaching students to appreciate that the way we “do”
citizenship discursively and the way we talk about society are both constitutive of or
influential on what civic society is and how it develops.
Thomas Farrell said that “important civic qualities – such as civic friendship, a sense of
social justice – are actively cultivated through excellence in rhetorical practice” (82). This
line of thought echoes founding rhetorical thinkers like Isocrates and Cicero who
believed that human societies could not have been built and sustained without rhetoric;
most recently, Robert Danisch (2012) has maintained that the sophists, from Protagoras
on, saw rhetoric as a ‘prudential pragmatism’ and taught it to equip citizens to participate
in their polity. If this is so, then citizenship inherently has a rhetorical side. And rhetoric
is not merely persuasion but also society-building.
3. Scope
Rhetorical Citizenship as a conceptual frame emphasizes the fact that laws, rights, and
material conditions are not the only constituents of citizenship; discourse among citizens
(in other words: rhetoric in society) is arguably just as constitutive and important. The
concept gathers under one heading citizens’ own discursive exchanges – the active or
participatory aspect of rhetorical citizenship – and the public discourse of which they are
recipients. At the same time it integrates two complementary aspects of both these
categories: on the one hand, the rights that we, as citizens, are accorded and the
expectations they are entitled to have in regard to discourse among citizens; on the other
hand the expectations that other citizens are entitled to have to us precisely because we
are citizens; you might also refer to these as our discursive responsibilities or duties as
citizens.
These two dimensions, much like the cardinal directions of a compass rose, define four
broad areas of interest. The North-South axis here represents the active or participatory
aspect versus the ‘passive’ or receptive aspect; the West-East axis represents the citizen’s
rights versus their responsibilities or duties.
Active
Rights
Responsibilities/Duties
Passive
This compass rose shows how various rhetorical concerns are connected, but also how
much recent thinking in other disciplines addresses rhetorical concerns; thus
interdisciplinary contact becomes an obvious agenda. For example, the idea that
citizenship not only involves citizens’ rights but also what might be expected or
demanded of them is stated clearly as an emerging insight in an overview on citizenship
research by the philosophers Will Kymlicka and Wayne Norman from 2000: “most
theorists now accept that the functioning of society depends not only on the justice of its
institutions or constitutions, but also on the virtues, identities, and practices of its citizens,
including their ability to co-operate, deliberate, and feel solidarity with those who belong
to different ethnic and religious groups”.
As for the distinction between the active and the receptive aspects of rhetorical
citizenship, it parallels what the political theorists Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson
call the “principles of accommodation.” These principles, they say, "make two kinds of
general demands on citizens; one concerns how citizens present their own political
positions, and the other how they regard the political positions of others" (1996, 80).
The compass rose, as we saw, encompasses four quadrants or sectors, which we have
numbered 1-4 in the figure below.
The citizen’s ...
rights:
duties:
with regard to ... the
1) Rhetorical agency
2) ’Responsible’
active/participatory
public rhetoric
aspect of rhetorical
citizenship:
with regard to ... the
3) Access to public
4) Engagement in
passive/receptive aspect rhetoric that enables ’deliberation within’,
of rhetorical citizenship: ’deliberation within’
‘listening rhetoric’
Sector 1 is about a citizen’s rights or rightful expectations with regard to rhetoric in
society. Citizens not only have the right to speak, they also need the capacity and position
to speak so that they may be heard. Studies of rhetorical agency and how it is achieved by
some and denied to others belong here. How is rhetorical agency manifested – or
contested: what does it take to gain a hearing? What counts as participation in public
debate? What counts as legitimate points of view in issues of common concern? How can
we account for changes in these categories?
Sector 2 has to do with the responsibilities or duties incurred by those who speak. If there
are such things as standards of responsible discourse or even of deliberation, they belong
here.
Many scholars in other disciplines than rhetoric have reflected on what such standards
might be. Recently, Political theorist John Dryzek has recognized rhetoric as a necessity
in democracy, while not per se a positive factor. He argues for a “systemic” test to
distinguish between “desirable and undesirable uses of rhetoric,” and after analyzing how
rhetoric may be either ‘bridging’ or ‘bonding,’ he concludes that we should be “asking
whether or not the rhetoric in question contributes to the construction of an effective
deliberative system joining competent and reflective actors on the issue at hand” (2010,
335).
Simone Chambers is another political theorist who has addressed the ‘standards’ issue.
She believes that deliberation is needed in a democracy, but also that “the mass public
can never be deliberative.” Democratic deliberation in small groups of citizens is fine, but
it is not enough. However, she believes in the potential of the public rhetoric we hear,
mainly through the media, for providing deliberation. Regrettably, such rhetoric is not
always deliberative, which means that it does not engage citizens’ “capacity for practical
judgment”; much of it is what she calls “plebiscitary,” based on pandering and
manipulation. So we must critically assess public rhetoric and the media that gives it to
us, because we do have the task and at least some means of “making the mass public
more rather than less deliberative.” “If rhetoric in general is the study of how speech
affects an audience then deliberative rhetoric must be about the way speech induces
deliberation in the sense of inducing considered reflection about a future action” (2009,
335).
Chambers’ call for public rhetoric that is truly deliberative belongs in sector 2, but also
shows the connection between sector 2 and sector 3 and 4, which concern the rhetoric
whose receivers or audience we are.
Sector 3 is about what a citizen, as a deliberating member of the polity, has a right to get.
We citizens have a right to expect that public rhetoric is deliberative precisely because it
may then help us deliberate on shared issues – by providing information and reasons that
help us make informed choices of what policies to endorse, and whom to elect. But just
as we have a right to expect this, so the polity may expect from us that we will indeed
weigh in our minds the information and reasons we hear. Even citizens who do not
actively participate in debate and other discursive exchanges have a responsibility to
listen to reasons, even those supporting other views than their own, and to information
that is new and perhaps unwelcome.
The political theorist Robert Goodin has emphasized the importance of what he calls
‘deliberation within,’ pointing out that “very much of the work of deliberation, even in
external-collective settings, must inevitably be done within each individual's head” (2000,
83). In modern nation states there is no way everyone can speak up and be heard by
everyone else on any issue. But we may “ease the burdens of deliberative democracy in
mass society by altering our focus from the ‘external-collective’ to the ‘internalreflective’ mode, shifting much of the work of democratic deliberation back inside the
head of each individual.” Goodin adds that “internal-reflective deliberations might hope
to secure better representation of the communicatively inept or the communicatively inert
than external-collective deliberations ever could.”
Sector 4 is about what the non-participating but deliberating citizen can be expected to do
in relation to the discourse of which he or she is a recipient. One important reference here
might be to the rhetorician Wayne Booth’s concept of ’listening-rhetoric’ (2009).
4. Academic relevance
We believe that rhetorical citizenship has potential as in interdisciplinary conceptual
frame to interpret the relevance of rhetoric studies, in their practical as well as their
theoretical and/or critical manifestations.
One thing rhetorical citizenship might certainly be is a pedagogical project: With an
increasingly heterogeneous population, public education has a growing responsibility to
teach students not only about democracy and civic rights, but also about their own roles
and obligations in civic life; and that should include training them in the practical skills
necessary to participate in, and to receive public discourse.
In 1998, a committee in Britain, led by the political theorist Bernard Crick, published a
report, Education for citizenship and the teaching of democracy in schools. The report
identified a number of “skills and aptitudes” that schools should teach, and most of them
might clearly be seen as parts of a rhetorical education. Among them are the abilities “to
make a reasoned argument both verbally and in writing,” “to consider and appreciate the
experience and perspective of others,” “to tolerate other view points,” and “to recognise
forms of manipulation and persuasion” (44). So, without even mentioning rhetoric, the
report shows that citizenship is in large part a rhetorical concept, and that citizenship
education should in large part be rhetorical too.
Inviting citizenship thinking and rhetoric studies to meet at the crossroad of rhetorical
citizenship happens to resonate well with tendencies in Scandinavian educational
thinking. There might, however, be more emphasis on the fact that ordinary citizens (not
just the politicians or other leaders we see in the news) have important civic work to do in
their everyday lives, whether as critical voters, grass root activists, or just conversation
partners. At the university level, we would like to see rhetorical citizenship develop more
in the direction of critical analysis of and reflection on the workings of civic life.
5. Closing remarks
We believe rhetoric has a place in the study of civic life in virtue of the discipline’s dual
nature as an everyday practice and a field of academic inquiry. Lots of rhetoric takes
place every day. Sometimes it inspires us, sometimes it irks us, sometimes we are part of
it, and sometimes we don’t even notice it. Rhetoric makes society hang together. We as
academics can assist in showing how praxis is both inventional and reflects civic norms.
By paying close attention to what people say and do in various civic settings, we stand to
learn about how people understand their society and their own role in it. The way they
speak and what they say are keys to this understanding, which through rhetorical analysis
and criticism might promote. Studying the kind of argumentative “work” certain
viewpoints or topoi are being used to accomplish or how they travel from vernacular
settings to government discourse (or not) may be a way of understanding the workings of
society better. Sometimes expectations might be confirmed, but other times new
arguments or new angles might emerge.
As a practice, rhetoric holds a built-in impetus of improvement. This is where the
normative aspect rests, both on the practical and the theoretical level. With its keen eye
for contingency and indeterminacy, rhetoric is equipped to deal with the imperfect nature
of civic discourse, at once serving as a resource for improvement and a sober
acknowledgement of the constraints of the situation.
Rhetoric, in the words of Thomas Farrell, is “practical reasoning in the presence of
collaborative others” (1991, 189). It is, he believed, “more than the practice; it is the
entire process of forming, expressing, and judging public thought in real life. …this
enhanced understanding needs to include the condition of being a rhetorical audience.
This is a condition in which we are called to exert our own critical capacities to a
maximum extent. We have to decide – quite literally – what sort of public persons we
wish to be”. (96)
References
Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Rhetoric: The Quest for Effective Communication.
Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004.
Simone Chambers, “Rhetoric and the Public Sphere: Has Deliberative Democracy
Abandoned Mass Democracy?” Political Theory 37 (2009): 323-350.
Robert Danish, “Stanley Fish is not a Sophist: The Difference between Skeptical and
Prudential Versions of Rhetorical Pragmatism” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 42 (2012):
405-423.
John S. Dryzek, “Rhetoric in Democracy: A Systemic Appreciation”. Political Theory 38
(2010): 319-339.
Education for citizenship and the teaching of democracy in schools: Final report of the
Advisory Group on Citizenship 22 September 1998. London: Qualifications and
Curriculum Authority, 1998.
Thomas Farrell, “Practicing the Arts of Rhetoric. Tradition and Invention” Philosophy
and Rhetoric 24 (1991): 183-212. Reprinted in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory. A
Reader. John Louis Lucaites, Celeste Michelle Condit, Sally Caudill. Guildford Press,
1999: 79-100.
Thomas Goodnight, A "New Rhetoric" for a "New Dialectic": Prolegomena to a
Responsible Public Argument Argumentation 7 (1993): 329-342.
Robert E. Goodin, “Democratic Deliberation within” Philosophy & Public Affairs 29
(2000): 81-109.
Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1996.
Gerard A. Hauser, Vernacular Voices. The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres.
Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1999.
Robert L. Ivie “Rhetorical Deliberation and Democratic Politics in the Here and Now”
Rhetoric and Public Affairs 5 (2002): 277-285.
Christian Kock and Lisa Villadsen, “Introduction: Citizenship as a Rhetorical Practice”
Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation. Christian Kock and Lisa Villadsen (eds.)
Penn State Press, 2012: 1-10.
W. Kymlicka and W. Norman, Citizenship in Diverse Societies. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000.
Karen Tracy, James P. McDaniel, and Brice E. Gronbeck, The Prettier Doll. Rhetoric,
Discourse and Ordinary Democracy. University of Alabama Press, 2007.