The familial image in rhetoric

The purpose of this essay is to extend Michael Osborn's concept of the archetypal metaphor to include what may be called “familial images.” It argues that relational imagery is conjured by rhetors in order to entangle their listeners in familial unity. Relational images appear to provide powerful bases of motivation that act to bond audiences together by arousing in them a familial orientation. The familial orientation toward speakers and issues is rooted in the norms and mores associated with the modes of relationship constituting the cultural construct “family” and may evoke lines of action, attitudes, and emotions that are consistent with them. Essentially, relational images are oriented toward decreasing the affectual distance among members of an audience by widening the scope of the terms of family to fit the public context. However, it is the changing cultural presuppositions concerning what is right to do in familial relationships that determine the quality of our conjoinment and the meaning of political actions motivated by these terms.