Muddling through the Moment with “Rowdy” Rhetoric

TY - ABST

T1 - Muddling through the Moment with “Rowdy” Rhetoric

AU - Villadsen, Lisa Storm

PY - 2014/11/21

Y1 - 2014/11/21

N2 - This panel explores Robert Ivie’s notion of rowdy rhetoric. The panel understands rhetoric as a public discourse for engaging and contesting different viewpoints and explores the importance of controversy, dissent and disagreement to the health of a democratic society. In his 2002 Rhetoric & Public Affairs article Robert Ivie introduced the notion of a “rowdy” rhetorical conception of deliberation (277). Drawing on the mythological trickster-figure of Old Man Coyote, who represents what is uncontainable and suppressed, Ivie argues that American norms of public debate stand to gain from cultivating a greater tolerance of dissent and disagreement, even when this is presented in a less than urbane manner. This more robust attitude towards public debate would be a benefit to the political life of the nation by being more inclusive and therefore eventually more democratic because it would allow for a greater range of viewpoints to be heard. Whereas modern rhetoric has often been concerned with issues of responsible argumentation practices – whether under the aegis of pragma-dialectics or informal logic – Ivie wants to rejuvenate rhetoric’s ancient tradition of controversia as a way of dealing with disagreement and the impossibility of consensus in a pluralistic society as facts of life to be valued and used for constructive purposes, not suppressed. Rather than an exclusive valorization of modernist ideals of dispassionate and disembodied argumentation, a rhetoric-centered conception would seek to examine boisterousness, partisan advocacy, dissent, and disagreement as to some extent necessary and legitimate expressions of agonistic democracy (278). Ivie goes on to explain how this conception of rhetoric, due to it robust tolerance of difference and its acceptance of a tension between competition and cooperation as natural, would hold the potential to render public deliberation more meaningful. Ivie’s point strikes a chord in US rhetoric scholarship that goes back to the 1960s and 70s and scholars’ attempts then at coming to terms with public discourse that in various ways broke with traditional norms of sound public argument and proper debate behavior. From theoretical explanations such the “diatribe”, and the “ego-function” of protest rhetoric over Campbell’s finding the rhetoric of women’s movement “oxymoronic” to more recent studies of subcultural and marginalized individuals’ and groups’ strategies to gain access to and a hearing in public debate, US rhetoricians have labored to explain and appreciate unorthodox forms of civic discourse. Whereas earlier, the emphasis was on embracing overtly angry and deliberately provocative forms of expression, recent years have seen a growing interest in modes of expression that are more playful, equivocal, humorous, or even silly in order to appreciate how they might be seen as somehow constructive even in a larger civic context. At the same time, the general public in the US, as in Europe, turn away from especially political debate in the media, tired of witnessing what’s often characterized as an increasingly harsh “tone” and general partisanship at the cost of reasoning and sound argumentation (even if they don’t quite know how to escape the “sports match” logic so characteristic of presidential debates, for example, with the medias’ talk of “winners” and “losers”). It seems that while scholars may long ago have acknowledged the democratic potential of including rowdy rhetoric in theoretical and critical notions of civic discourse, the public (and some scholars, too) still hold less boisterous and more reasoned argumentation in higher esteem. Another¬ – related ¬¬– challenge to the notion of rowdy rhetoric has to do with its delimitation. Whereas Ivie, inspired by Kenneth Burke, clearly calls for rowdy rhetoric as a way to handle dissent in ways that avert disagreement to turn into hostility and make opponents seem like evil enemies rather than simply people with other views, it is not easy to say where to draw the line between e.g. playful irony and hurtful sarcasm or between when an attack on the moral standards of the opposition counts as legitimate criticism and when it represents a descent into vilification. Finally, while few would challenge that diversity of forms of expression is better than lack of diversity, what do we know of the actual benefits claimed to come with rowdy rhetoric? While playful public rhetoric might be entertaining, and boisterous public disagreement might be engaging – even if just for the gamesmanship it involves –, how do such manifestations lead to better public deliberation? Is their function perhaps primarily as an “appetizer”, something to draw people into a debate that eventually is characterized by more traditional forms of argumentation, or does rowdy rhetoric represent a, perhaps less lineal, less orderly, but nevertheless, more tenable and democratic mode – a “civic discourse.2”? With this panel we explore and push the concept of rowdy rhetoric as we look at ways in which rhetoric can function as a vehicle for healthy debate in participatory democracy. With examples from fora such as electronic media, public meetings, countercultural activities, and elite political debate the panelists illuminate and interrogate what rowdy rhetoric means to democratic participation and productive deliberation and inquire into its implications for rhetorical citizenship, social and political movements, protest, dissent, and public dialogue and deliberation in general.

AB - This panel explores Robert Ivie’s notion of rowdy rhetoric. The panel understands rhetoric as a public discourse for engaging and contesting different viewpoints and explores the importance of controversy, dissent and disagreement to the health of a democratic society. In his 2002 Rhetoric & Public Affairs article Robert Ivie introduced the notion of a “rowdy” rhetorical conception of deliberation (277). Drawing on the mythological trickster-figure of Old Man Coyote, who represents what is uncontainable and suppressed, Ivie argues that American norms of public debate stand to gain from cultivating a greater tolerance of dissent and disagreement, even when this is presented in a less than urbane manner. This more robust attitude towards public debate would be a benefit to the political life of the nation by being more inclusive and therefore eventually more democratic because it would allow for a greater range of viewpoints to be heard. Whereas modern rhetoric has often been concerned with issues of responsible argumentation practices – whether under the aegis of pragma-dialectics or informal logic – Ivie wants to rejuvenate rhetoric’s ancient tradition of controversia as a way of dealing with disagreement and the impossibility of consensus in a pluralistic society as facts of life to be valued and used for constructive purposes, not suppressed. Rather than an exclusive valorization of modernist ideals of dispassionate and disembodied argumentation, a rhetoric-centered conception would seek to examine boisterousness, partisan advocacy, dissent, and disagreement as to some extent necessary and legitimate expressions of agonistic democracy (278). Ivie goes on to explain how this conception of rhetoric, due to it robust tolerance of difference and its acceptance of a tension between competition and cooperation as natural, would hold the potential to render public deliberation more meaningful. Ivie’s point strikes a chord in US rhetoric scholarship that goes back to the 1960s and 70s and scholars’ attempts then at coming to terms with public discourse that in various ways broke with traditional norms of sound public argument and proper debate behavior. From theoretical explanations such the “diatribe”, and the “ego-function” of protest rhetoric over Campbell’s finding the rhetoric of women’s movement “oxymoronic” to more recent studies of subcultural and marginalized individuals’ and groups’ strategies to gain access to and a hearing in public debate, US rhetoricians have labored to explain and appreciate unorthodox forms of civic discourse. Whereas earlier, the emphasis was on embracing overtly angry and deliberately provocative forms of expression, recent years have seen a growing interest in modes of expression that are more playful, equivocal, humorous, or even silly in order to appreciate how they might be seen as somehow constructive even in a larger civic context. At the same time, the general public in the US, as in Europe, turn away from especially political debate in the media, tired of witnessing what’s often characterized as an increasingly harsh “tone” and general partisanship at the cost of reasoning and sound argumentation (even if they don’t quite know how to escape the “sports match” logic so characteristic of presidential debates, for example, with the medias’ talk of “winners” and “losers”). It seems that while scholars may long ago have acknowledged the democratic potential of including rowdy rhetoric in theoretical and critical notions of civic discourse, the public (and some scholars, too) still hold less boisterous and more reasoned argumentation in higher esteem. Another¬ – related ¬¬– challenge to the notion of rowdy rhetoric has to do with its delimitation. Whereas Ivie, inspired by Kenneth Burke, clearly calls for rowdy rhetoric as a way to handle dissent in ways that avert disagreement to turn into hostility and make opponents seem like evil enemies rather than simply people with other views, it is not easy to say where to draw the line between e.g. playful irony and hurtful sarcasm or between when an attack on the moral standards of the opposition counts as legitimate criticism and when it represents a descent into vilification. Finally, while few would challenge that diversity of forms of expression is better than lack of diversity, what do we know of the actual benefits claimed to come with rowdy rhetoric? While playful public rhetoric might be entertaining, and boisterous public disagreement might be engaging – even if just for the gamesmanship it involves –, how do such manifestations lead to better public deliberation? Is their function perhaps primarily as an “appetizer”, something to draw people into a debate that eventually is characterized by more traditional forms of argumentation, or does rowdy rhetoric represent a, perhaps less lineal, less orderly, but nevertheless, more tenable and democratic mode – a “civic discourse.2”? With this panel we explore and push the concept of rowdy rhetoric as we look at ways in which rhetoric can function as a vehicle for healthy debate in participatory democracy. With examples from fora such as electronic media, public meetings, countercultural activities, and elite political debate the panelists illuminate and interrogate what rowdy rhetoric means to democratic participation and productive deliberation and inquire into its implications for rhetorical citizenship, social and political movements, protest, dissent, and public dialogue and deliberation in general.

M3 - Conference abstract for conference

T2 - National Communication Association Centennial Conference

Y2 - 20 November 2014 through 23 November 2014

ER -