Fantasy and rhetorical vision: The rhetorical criticism of social reality

Abstract

The process by which small groups fantasize to create a common culture can be extrapolated to the way dramatizations in public messages spread out across larger publics. The composite dramas which catch up large groups of people in a symbolic reality can be termed a rhetorical vision. Once we participate in a given rhetorical vision, even if we keep an esthetic distance, we have come to experience vicariously a way of life that would otherwise be less accessible to us. The discovery and appreciation of rhetorical visions are useful functions of criticism.