• RHETORICAL CITIZENSHIP AS A CONCEPTUAL FRAME IN ACADEME

• or: • WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK

ABOUT RHETORICAL CITIZENSHIP

CHRISTIAN KOCK AND LISA VILLADSEN

Definition• Rhetorical Citizenship: “a way of conceptualizing the discursive,

processual, participatory aspects of civic life”. • “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”

• - 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”.

• From Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation

Purpose

• focus is less how effective the particular utterance is, more how suited it is to contribute to constructive civic interaction

• an impetus to forge more explicit links between particular utterances and their role in the maintenance and development of civic life

• Thomas Farrell: “important civic qualities – such as civic friendship, a sense of social justice – are actively cultivated through excellence in rhetorical practice”

Scope

• Rhetorical Citizenship as a ’compass rose’:

• Rights vs. duties:• Will Kymlicka and Wayne Norman (2000): “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”.

• Active vs. Receptive:• Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson: “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).

Scope, cont’d.

• John Dryzek on a “systemic” test to distinguish between “desirable and undesirable uses of rhetoric”: 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: “the mass public can never be deliberative.”

• Believes that the public rhetoric we hear, mainly through the media, can provide deliberation, i.e., engage citizens’ “capacity for practical judgment.”

• We need deliberative rather than ‘plebiscitary’ public rhetoric: “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).

• Robert Goodin on ‘deliberation within’: “very much of the work of deliberation, even in external-collective settings, must inevitably be done within each individual's head” (2000, 83).

• We may “ease the burdens of deliberative democracy in mass society by altering our focus from the ‘external-collective’ to the ‘internal-reflective’ mode, shifting much of the work of democratic deliberation back inside the head of each individual ... internal-reflective deliberations might hope to secure better representation of the communicatively inept or the communicatively inert than external-collective deliberations ever could.”

• Cf. Wayne Booth’s concept of ’listening-rhetoric’ (2009).

• Education for citizenship and the teaching of democracy in schools on “skills and aptitudes” that schools should teach:

• “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,” • “to recognise forms of manipulation and persuasion”

(1998, 44).

• Thomas Farrell: Rhetoric is “practical reasoning in the presence of collaborative others” (1991, 189). It is “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• 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.