Constitutive rhetoric is a theory of
discourse devised by
James Boyd White
James Boyd White (born 1938) is an American law professor, literary critic, scholar and philosopher who is generally credited with founding the "law and Literature" movement. He is a proponent of the analysis of constitutive rhetoric in the anal ...
about the capacity of
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
or
symbols to create a collective
identity
Identity may refer to:
* Identity document
* Identity (philosophy)
* Identity (social science)
* Identity (mathematics)
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film
* ''Identity'' (2003 film), ...
for an
audience, especially by means of
condensation symbols,
literature
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...
, and
narratives. Such discourse often demands that action be taken to reinforce the identity and the beliefs of that identity. White explains that it denotes "the art of constituting character, community and culture in language."
Development of constitutive rhetorical theory
The constitutive model of
rhetoric dates back to the ancient Greek
Sophists, with theories that speech moved audiences to action based on a contingent, shared knowledge.
Kenneth Burke
Kenneth Duva Burke (May 5, 1897 – November 19, 1993) was an American literary theorist, as well as poet, essayist, and novelist, who wrote on 20th-century philosophy, aesthetics, criticism, and rhetorical theory. As a literary theorist, Burk ...
contributed to the theory of constitutive rhetoric by highlighting identification, rather than persuasion, as the major means by which language functioned. Burke contended that social identity is founded "spontaneously, intuitively, even unconsciously."
Edwin Black's theory of the
second persona also aided scholars in rhetoric to analyze the imagined shared values and beliefs between speaker and audience through
textual analysis
Content analysis is the study of documents and communication artifacts, which might be texts of various formats, pictures, audio or video. Social scientists use content analysis to examine patterns in communication in a replicable and systematic ...
. Audience must adopt a particular
ethos
Ethos ( or ) is a Greek word meaning "character" that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology; and the balance between caution, and passion. The Greeks also used this word to refer to ...
prior to being persuaded by constitutive rhetoric, thus the ethos of the subject of discourse can be critically studied and interpreted through a text.
While these theorists all contributed to the theory of constitutive rhetoric,
James Boyd White
James Boyd White (born 1938) is an American law professor, literary critic, scholar and philosopher who is generally credited with founding the "law and Literature" movement. He is a proponent of the analysis of constitutive rhetoric in the anal ...
was the first to coin the term. In 1985, he explained that the term "constitutive rhetoric" described
rhetoric that called a common, collective identity into existence. White wrote that persuasion and identification occur only when audiences already understand and relate to method and content. Thus, speech happens within
culture
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...
, and speakers adapt messages to reflect the ideas and views of a community. When speeches address a diverse crowd as though they are of one community, White describes this as "calling
dentityinto being" through
material
Material is a substance or mixture of substances that constitutes an object. Materials can be pure or impure, living or non-living matter. Materials can be classified on the basis of their physical and chemical properties, or on their geolo ...
identification.
According to White, there are two methods of convincing an audience that they belong to an identity. The first is ''peithõ'', persuasion, and the second is deceitful manipulation, or ''dolos''. Using ''peithõ'', speakers convince audiences of shared identity openly and honestly. ''Dolos'' creates belonging through deceit.
In 1987, Maurice Charland further emphasized the importance of the
narrative
A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travelogue, etc.) or fictional ( fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller, novel, etc. ...
and
Marxist theory He observed, "While classical narratives have an ending, constitutive rhetorics leave the task of narrative closure to their constituted subjects". Charland's theory draws from Burke and the philosopher
Louis Althusser. Althusser explained
interpellation, or "hailing", as the social phenomenon of a mass audience having already been "recruited" by an
ideology. Ideologies create subjects of discourse for persuasion by further discourse.
In other words, "the very existence of social subjects (who would become audience members) is already a rhetorical effect."
Political speeches, manifestos, and resistance movements participate in this type of discourse, to establish an identity and a call to action within that identity. A leader's speech calling a "nation" to war establishes a national identity within the discourse or text. A feminist speaking on women's right establishes the identity of the "woman". An African-American protesting during the
Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
established an "African-American" identity. Every audience member may take part in shared identity because of common symbolic resources, even as the text may especially
interpellate a smaller sub-group of the
audience. An identity must be established in contrast to another identity. This creates divisions between "us" and "them," sometimes creating extreme divisions between different identifications.
In 2015, Halstrøm and Galle picked up on constitutive rhetoric within the field of design studies. They explained how it may provide useful concepts for analysing designed artefacts. Design may be said to aim at providing an audience with a subject position, which it is to confirm. Thus, it aims at persuading by seeking to constitute its audience.
Critical reception
Constitutive rhetoric and theories of logical persuasion (such as
New Criticism or
Neo-Aristotelianism) can be used together, but constitutive rhetoric presumes that belief and identity always precedes logical persuasion. Thus, constitutive rhetoric must address the previous identity and must either coincide with it, or change it.
Jacques Derrida criticized the paradox of constitutive rhetoric when he analyzed the
United States Declaration of Independence
The United States Declaration of Independence, formally The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen States of America, is the pronouncement and founding document adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at Pennsylvania State House ( ...
. He explained that the men signing the Declaration claimed to be representatives of "the people", but the people were not yet defined as a nation until that Declaration was signed. His criticism explains that an identity must be established before that identity exists in order for the speaker to represent the ideals of that identity, thus creating a paradoxical relationship in which only a third perspective can truly analyze the identity of the audience.
[Sloane, "Constitutive Rhetoric", 618.]
See also
*''
Heracles' Bow
''Heracles' Bow: Essays on the Rhetoric and Poetics of the Law'' is a collection of ten essays, written by James Boyd White in 1985, that examine forensic rhetoric as it creates community, as an example of what White calls constitutive rhetoric. ...
''
References
{{Reflist
Rhetoric
Rhetorical techniques