Beyond Traditional Conceptualizations of Rhetoric: Invitational Rhetoric and a Move Toward Civility

Abstract

Although not the first, the theory of invitational rhetoric offers a significant challenge to a strict definition of rhetoric as persuasion. Invitational rhetoric's link to feminism, paring of persuasion with violence, and the polysemic nature of theory, generated both interest and critique. This essay explores six common critiques of invitational rhetoric and illustrates the ways that invitational rhetoric is at work in the world in both historical and contemporary public deliberations. The essay concludes by articulating a link between invitational rhetoric and civility, suggesting that invitational rhetoric and civility are a means to create ethical exchanges in difficult situations.

Keywords:

• Civility
• Ethics
• Invitational Rhetoric
• Persuasion
• Public Dialogue

Notes

In this essay, we are addressing the challenges to the definition of rhetoric that come from a Western and European Tradition. We recognize that scholars trained in non-Western histories, cannons, cultures, and worldviews also have offered important reconceptualizations of rhetoric. However, given the goals of this essay and page limitations, we selected not to offer a cross-cultural comparison. Examples of these additional challenges would be Molefi Kete Asante's The Afrocentric Idea, and Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge; Mary Garrett's “Pathos Reconsidered from the Perspective of Classical Chinese Rhetorics” and “Wit, Power, and Oppositional Groups: A Case Study of ‘Pure Talk’”; Lu Xing and David Frank's “On the Study of Ancient Chinese Rhetoric/Bain”; Lu Xing, Wenshan Jia and D. Ray Heisey, Chinese Communication Studies, and Lu Xing, The Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution; and Randall A. Lake's “Between Myth and History: Enacting Time in Native American Protest Rhetoric.”

Although not focused explicitly on the definition of rhetoric, the 1980s and 1990s brought other challenges to the Western rhetorical tradition with such books as Molefi Kete Asante's The Afrocentric Idea, and Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge, and such essays as Mary Garrett's “Pathos Reconsidered from the Perspective of Classical Chinese Rhetorics” and “Wit, Power, and Oppositional Groups: A Case Study of ‘Pure Talk’”; and Lu Xing and David Frank's “On the Study of Ancient Chinese Rhetoric/Bain.”

Because “Beyond Persuasion” is a co-authored essay, and in the spirit of respect for both authors, we alternate the order of their last names as we cite the theory developed in the original essay.

In venues other than the original article, Griffin and Foss have explored additional ways that the mutual respect and equality necessary to invitational rhetoric can be enacted. Both authors see articulating a perspective as one legitimate avenue. When individuals articulate a perspectivethey invite others to “see the world as [they] do and to understand issues from [their] perspective,” (Griffin Invitation 340). When articulating a perspective, individuals share information or their “viewpoint on a subject so that all participants in the interaction have a better understanding of that subject” (Foss and Foss Inviting 25–26). A second way is the exploration of an issue (Griffin Invitation) or the discovery of knowledge and belief (Foss and Foss Inviting). Both are accomplished when rhetors attempt to engage an audience “in a discussion about an idea, concern, topic or plan of action” (Griffin 341) and when they attempt to discover what both the audience and the rhetor “know and believe [about a subject] and how best to respond on the basis of that information” (Foss and Foss 31). In both articulating a perspective and exploring an issue, rhetors will have positions of their own. However, their goal is to explore complex issues with their audiences in order to share their own views and to understand the views of others as fully as possible.

These definitions are taken from the 1934 edition of Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, edited by William A. Neilson. We selected this source rather than a contemporary dictionary because of its credibility, the detail with which each term is defined, and its historical groundings.

Fulkerson (7) echos Cloud's critique when he asks, “I wonder if Gearhart, Foss and Griffin really want to maintain that when Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ he was engaged in a patriarchal act of violence, or that the speeches of Susan B. Anthony were themselves immoral imposition.”

Shepherd might also be labeled an essentialist given his claims to masculine biases in communication, and his reference to the lack of acknowledging women's experiences in definitions of communication. We hope, as suggested in critique #4, that as Shepherd highlights biases in communication his insights are not labeled essentialist and thus rejected.

All citations are taken from Jimmy Carter, “Energy and the National Goals-A Crisis of Confidence,” speech delivered July 15, 1979, which can be found at www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jimmycartercrisisofconfidence.htm

We follow Carter's description of the individuals he interviewed here, recognizing that “young Chicano” the “Black woman” are marked by race while the other two individuals are left “unmarked.” Given his linguistic strategy, our assumption is that the other individuals likely were “white” but since we do not have that information specifically, we decided to paraphrase his words and to not add the other, equally important, racial markers.

All citations are taken from Anne Fowler, Nicki Nicholos Gambel, Frances X. Hogan, Melissa Kogut, Madeline McCommish, Barbara Thorp, “Talking with the Enemy,” The Boston Globe, January 28, 2001, which can be found at http://www.publicconversations.org/pep/resources/resource_detail.aspf?ref_id=102 (accessed January 22, 2003). See also Susan Podziba and Associates, “Abortion Dialogue Among Pro-Life and Pro-choice Leaders, in Conjunction with the Public Conversations Project,” at http://podziba.com/abortiondialoguecase.htm; and Marianne Rea-Luthin, “Pro-Life, Pro-Choice Leaders Call for Civil Discourse: Pro-Life, Pro-Choice Leaders Issue Joint Statement,” at http://www.rcab.org/pilotstories/pilot020201/DialogStory.htm

All authors contributed equally to this project.