Differences in Rhetorical Energy

In his article “A Hoot in the Dark: The Evolution of General Rhetoric” George Kennedy argues that, “Rhetoric in the most general sense may perhaps be identified with the energy inherent in communication: the emotional energy that impels the speaker to speak, the physical energy expended in the utterance, the energy level coded in the message, and the energy experienced by the recipient in decoding the message.”  As an example of varying levels of energy, Kennedy talks about the difference between someone saying, “Shut the window.” as opposed to a person saying, “Shut the window. It’s cold in here.”  In the first instance, the speaker gives no reason for his request and in the second, he gives a reason, opening up the question for deliberation.  The second utterance has less rhetorical energy, Kennedy claims because, “authority is less obvious, appeal to the judgment of the recipient is implied. There is recognition of the possibility for deliberation.”   

This reminded me of a speech that I have been looking this semester by former Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell.  In a comparison between this speech and a speech given by fellow Tea Party candidate Rand Paul, I found that O’Donnell’s speech had much more of an emotional impact.  This can largely be explained by the difference in the amount of reasoning given by the candidates.  O’Donnell gives very little reasoning for her claims.  For instance, she says, “Will they attack us? Yes. Will they smear our backgrounds and distort our records? Undoubtedly. Will they lie about us, harass our families, name call and try to intimidate us? They will.”  This quote illustrates the rhetorical energy that Kennedy talks about.  The claims are not open to deliberation and O’Donnell’s authority must be taken at face value.  Contrast this with a quote from Rand Paul’s speech: “But there is one thing-- people complain and they say, “Oh the Tea Party is so divisive.” But there are things that we can say that I think can bring people together. For example, during George Bush’s administration...”  Paul then goes on to explain ways in which the Tea Party is not divisive, opening up the claim for deliberation and thus giving it less rhetorical energy.  O’Donnell’s verbal energy is supplemented by a physical and vocal energy.  Her voice is much stronger than Paul’s, and on her face, one can see her emotions written on her face.  Paul’s voice, in contrast, is much more measured and his face much more still.  The difference in energy was reflected in the public, as O’Donnell seemed to inspire much more of an emotional reaction-- good or bad-- than Paul did.

Affective Ecology Case Study: "Don't Tread on Me"

Reading through Jenny Edbaur's article. “Unframing” I was reminded of the famous Tea Party flag, “Don’t Tread on Me.”  I’ve done quite a bit of research on the Tea Party this semester.   I knew the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag was originally used during the American Revolution, but I didn’t know the exact context for its use.  Upon researching it, I found that the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag was used in three separate situations during the American Revolution.  First, it was the flag of the Culpeper Minutemen, an independent militia that fought on the side of the Patriots.  The “Don’t Tread on Me” flag was also called the Gadsden flag because it was designed by Christopher Gadsdsen one of the principle leaders of the Partriot movement in South Carolina.  Lastly, it was the first flag of the United States Navy, referred to as the US Navy Jack.  The symbolism of the rattle snake goes back to the French and Indian War when Benjamin Franklin drew a depiction of a snake severed eight ways with the phrase “Join, or Die” beneath it.  This cartoon was publish in an American newspaper to rally the colonies to unite.  The flag has since be re-purposed for the Tea Party movement.  Often waved by senior citizens dressed as the founding fathers at Tea Party rallies, the flag has come to represent the movements cause.  

To me, the history of the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag provides a perfect example of an affective ecology at work.  The flag transcends its original rhetorical situation.  Just like the “Keep Austin Weird” motto that Edbaur talks about, the visual and verbal rhetoric of the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag has been used as a response to multiple historical contexts. This is an example of how rhetoric acts outside of its initial audience, context and constraints.  The sentiment of “not being tread on” is one that has rung true throughout American history, making it a rhetorical response of not only those early Patriots, but the Tea Party “Patriots” of the present. 

Ahmed and Obama

    In her article “Affective Economies” Sarah Ahmed argues that emotions have the effect of creating and maintaining boundaries between people and groups.  She gives the example of an exert that appeared on the Aryan Nation website.  In the exert, it is not hate for the non-white subject, but love for the white subject that binds them together and creates the boundary between them and “others.”  Ahmed also notes the inability of hate to be located in one object.  Instead, it circulates from object to object-- from the rapist to the interracial couple, to the illegal alien to the foreigner receiving aid.  I agree with her observation that this is not a fantastic phenomenon that only exists in extremist rhetoric, but something very commonplace.  

Another thing I found interesting was the attachment of certain signs to others or “sticky signs.”  The example she gives is “Islamic” getting attached to “terrorist,” so that when the audience thinks of a terrorist they also think of a Muslim.  I think something similar has happened with President Obama.  Take the birther business, for instance.  People became so skeptical of where Obama was born because he had not released his long-form birth certificate.  The primary theory was that he had been born in Kenya and was thus, not a natural born citizen and not qualified to be president.  He has a strange name.  He’s black.   His father was Kenyan.  He lived in Indonesia when he was a child. All of these factors caused the President to become thought of as a “foreigner.”  Thus, the birther issue became less about the law, and more about proving Obama’s “foreignness.”  It was matter of fear-- that a foreigner had invaded the office of the White House.  Because his father came from a Muslim background and his Indonesian stepfather was Muslim, many people questioned his Obama’s religion.  His thus became associated with Islam, despite his continuous contentions that he was Christian.  Blackness, muslimness, foreigness-- all of these signifiers became attached and contained within Obama’s body.   That’s why the birther issue gained so much traction; it had the element of fear on its side.

Final Project

Comparative Analysis of Affective Rhetoric in Tea Party Discourse

In February of 2009, CNBC commentator, Rick Santelli, called for a new Tea Tea Party to protest the Obama Administration’s plan to refinance mortgages.  “How many of you want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgages?” he angrily asked his colleagues on the floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange.  The event inspired a series of grassroots protests in response to a number of the Obama administration’s fiscal policies.  Those in the Tea Party argue for limited government, reduced taxes, and free market capitalism based on the vision of the Founding Fathers and a strict interpretation of the Constitution.  As seen by Rick Santelli’s above quote, their arguments have often contained a strong emotional element.  In this project, I will take a closer look at the emotional appeals that appear in Tea Party rhetoric.  Specifically, I will conduct a comparative analysis of three sample discourses coming out of the Tea Party movement in the days and months leading up to the 2010 midterm election. The first is a speech given by former Senate candidate, Christine O’Donnell at the Values Voters Summit on September 17, 2010; the second, a blog post that appeared on the Tea Party Patriots website on October 26, six days before the 2010 election; and the third, the iconic “Don’t Tread on Me” flag often seen at Tea Party rallies.  I found that all three rhetorical acts seek to provoke fear, disdain and anger in their audience by portraying specific values as either threatened or already violated by an ill-defined offender.  This ambiguous offender has a rhetorical effect on the audience; because the object of fear, anger, and disdain cannot be located within one body, negative emotions are allowed to circulate and amplify.  Furthermore, these rhetorical acts placed pathemata within resonant historical moments, or around a network of events that exist in an audience’s shared consciousness as emotionally moving.  

On September 17, 2010 Christine O’Donnell spoke at the Values Voters (VVS) Summit in Washington D.C.  VVS is an annual conference in which conservative politicians and media figures are invited to speak about conservative values.  O’Donnell’s speech is advantageously placed within a kairotic moment.  At the time, O’Donnell was running for a Senate seat in her home state of Delaware and was receiving a lot of media attention for her association with the Tea Party movement.  She had just defeated incumbent, Mike Castle for the Republican nomination, validating the movement’s influence among Delaware’s conservative constituency.  In her speech, she addresses the nature and relevance of the Tea Party, and how Tea Party values could be the key to restoring the United States to its former glory.  Emotions fly freely in O’Donnell’s rhetoric, but the primary ones she attempts to evoke are fear, anger, and disdain.  O’Donnell’s purpose for speaking is to persuade constituents to vote for candidates such as herself.  The interpretation that leads to this emotion is-- Democrats and current leaders threaten American values.  

O’Donnell begins the speech by recreating the fear that she and her audience felt when the Obama administration and the Democratic majority first took office in 2008; she accomplishes this by creating enargeia, or placing the audience in a situation through descriptive language.  “Think about how you felt then. Remember the despondency, the anxiety...” she says.  She then lists a number of policies “crossed off the list” of our “emboldened new leaders,” upon their first year in office, some of which include forcing the American people to pay for overseas abortions, Obamacare, and the stimulus bill.  Listing these policies places her audience back in this time, causing them to re-experience the fear they felt in connection to the initial policies enacted by Democrats and the Obama administration.  In “Aristotle on Emotions and Rational Persuasion,” Martha Nussbaum touches on Aristotle’s argument that rational beliefs precede emotions:  “In order to have emotions such as fear and grief, one must first have beliefs of a certain kind” (304).  Nussbaum claims that it is “the way things are seen by the agent, not the fact of the matter, that is instrumental in getting emotions going.... What makes a person fearful is now given in a complex series of reflections, representing the sorts of judgments that might be involved in different cases of becoming afraid” (308).  Likewise, the fear that O’Donnell and her audience felt in 2008 was motivated by a particular belief-- that was that Democratic leaders threatened certain values.  

What are these values?  Based on O’Donnell’s speech, they are liberty and freedom.  She claims that, as Democrats began pushing their agenda, conservative Americans “rediscovered the most fundamental value of all-- liberty.”  But liberty and freedom are more than just important values in Tea Party culture; they are pathemata.  In the chapter seven of their book, Rhetorical Analysis: A Brief Guide for Writers, Longaker and Walker claim that pathemata are "things that provoke pathos."  They can further be subdivided into, “vivid presentation and symbols with strong emotional resonance” (214).  Furthermore, Longaker and Walker contend that single terms can also act as pathemata, especially when tied to emotionally resonant concepts, events, and beliefs.  In the same way, liberty and freedom are terms that have a built-in emotional resonance with the audience due to their long history of use in American rhetorical discourse.  Nevertheless, O’Donnell does some leg work to surround the terms with meaningful historical events.  She connects them with two eras in American history: 1) the founding years and 2) America in the 1980s and 90s.  The two values are the basis for the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as well as the fuel behind the American Revolution.  “When our country’s on the wrong track we search back to the first covenant, our founding documents, and the bold and inspired values on which they were based.”  In addition, America during the 1980s and 1990s was a time when freedom and liberty created peace and prosperity at home and abroad.  She describes this America as a refuge from communism that “only freedom can build.” It was a time when the economy prospered, the Berlin Wall fell down, and the family businesses such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot became national chains.

Fear transitions to anger as O’Donnell reveals that the values of liberty and freedom already have been and continue to be violated.  The belief in a potential threat has turned into a belief in an actualized threat, rhetorically transitioning the audience from feelings of fear to feelings of anger.  Nussbaum describes the rational beliefs that precede feelings of anger: “It requires, on the one hand, the belief that one (or someone dear to one) has been slighted or wronged or insulted in some serious way, through someone else’s voluntary action” (311).  This anger quickly morphs into disdain; Democratic leaders do more than act in opposition to Tea Party values, they embody an opposition to Tea Party values.  Thus, the emotional reaction becomes connected with what these agents are as well as what they do.  Pejorative language assists in furthering this disdain.  For instance, the policies of the “ruling class elites” aren’t just a product of different political positions; they are an “assault” on liberty and freedom.  Politicians in Washington D.C. are “cocktail-sippers,” and the first year of the Obama administration are “dark days.”  Such emotionally charged language heightens the audience’s response to what would otherwise be straightforward and dull description.

  Fear, anger, and disdain-- these are the three negative emotions that O’Donnell provokes.  But what’s interesting about her speech is that she doesn't direct these emotions towards a single person or group.  This has the effect of allowing the emotions to circulate and amplify in an economic sense.  Sara Ahmed calls this process an affective economy, providing an example of its occurrence in a passage from the Aryan Nation website.  In the passage, hate circulates between a variety of non-white bodies, sliding from the rapist to the illegal alien to the foreigner receiving aid.  Ahmed contends that, “The impossibility of reducing hate to a particular body allows hate to circulate in an economic sense, working to differentiate some others from others, a differentiation that is never “over,” as it awaits for others who have not yet arrived” (123).  Furthermore, Ahmed describes a process by which signs become attached to other signs, when used in conjunction repeatedly.  A similar pattern of economic disdain and sticky symbols occurs in O’Donnell’s speech.  Disdain moves from agent to agent, creating a divide between an “in” group and an “out” group.  Democrats-- or “bold new leaders” as O’Donnell calls them-- are the first objects of fear and anger.  Then comes “ruling class elites” and next, “D.C. cocktail crowd,” “government workers,” “bureaucrats and politicians in Washington,” and lastly, the “green police.”  Negative emotions slide from agent to agent, creating a distinct boundary between an “us” and a “them.”  O’Donnell binds the “us” together, not only as an imagined group of Tea Partiers, but also as Americans.  “We’re not trying to take back our country.  We are our country!” she vigorously proclaims.  In the speech, the Tea Partiers possess and populate American soil, while the “other”-- a much smaller group-- is relegated to and contained within Washington D.C.  O’Donnell’s tendency to use pronouns with ambiguous antecedents furthers this emotional economy.  Fifteen out of 34 times that she uses “they” or “some” as the subject of a sentence, the pronoun’s antecedent is ambiguous.  This furthers the idea of an indeterminate object of disdain that allows the emotion to circulate freely and fluidly throughout O’Donnell’s speech.  Even still, the pattern facilitates the proliferation of “sticky terms.”  As O’Donnell slides from pronoun to pronoun, terms like “elites,” “cocktail crowd,” “ruling class,” and “police” get stuck to agents and figures.  As Ahmed describes, there is nothing inherently disdainful about those who work in Washington D.C.  It’s the stickiness of signs in O’Donnell’s speech that causes them to become disdainful.

Ahmed contends that the emotions of love and hate are closely tied. Negative emotions felt towards an “other” are often driven by positive emotions that are directed towards another group or person.  Because those in the Tea Party represent and believe in the loved-values, they too become objects of love.  Thus, the disdain that O’Donnell conveys towards the “other” is just as much motivated by love for what the Tea Party represents.  In the same way that O’Donnell uses pejorative language to convey disdain, she employs honorific language to express love for the Tea Party.  The Constitution is a “holy covenant,” the Tea Party, a “love affair with liberty,” and Tea Partiers, “common sense patriotic Americans.”  Such glowing descriptions heighten the emotional value of these groups, events, and objects and elicit reverence and patriotism from the audience.

The Tea Party Patriots website allows its members to post blog entries on its website for free.  Many members saw this as an opportunity to voice their opinions in the days leading up to the election, including a member by the name of Mike Callahan who posted his entry on October 26, 2010.  Callahan writes to encourage fellow Tea Partiers to vote on November 2nd.  Despite his many spelling and grammar mistakes, Callahan’s argument is clear: vote for Tea Party-backed candidates in the election to prevent “socialists” (Democrats) from remaining in office.

Just like O’Donnell, Callahan uses the terms liberty and freedom to inspire patriotism in his audience.  However, Callahan characterizes those seeking to harm these values in a slightly different way than O'Donnell.  They are something more insidious than the oligarchic elitist rulers in O'Donnell's speech; they are socialists-- a description that is intended to inspire strong feelings of disdain in Callahan's audience.  Socialist and socialism thus get added to the list of words that inspire pathos, or pathemata.  In fact, liberty, freedom, and socialism are pathemata that hold so much weight in Callahan’s rhetoric that he chooses to capitalize them. He writes, “No where else in the world do I see people doing this same amount of work and giving freely of their time. Unless they are the Dark Destructive forces of Socialism, trying to destroy every Liberty and Freedom given to mankind by God, so their Puppet Masters can gain even more power and control over the masses of citizens they enslave to do the work for them.”  In the quote, Callahan portrays socialism and socialists as acting in direct opposition to liberty and freedom, making them inherently disdainful to a Tea Party audience.  
Just as in O’Donnell’s speech, Callahan does not direct this emotion towards specific bodies.  Instead, it resides within a larger, ill-defined group of “socialists” whose composition is unclear.  This dynamic creates a distinct boundary between the Tea Party and Democrats holding office, shaping the Tea Party as the opposite of Democrats and therefore an object of love.  Lastly, Callahan’s portrayal of Democrats as invaders works to evoke fear.  He writes, “We must rise up in force this November and do our sworn duty to support and defend the Constitution by removing all the socialist Posers from Congress.”  Callahan describes Democrats as “Puppet masters” “enslavers” and “posers.”  They are a threatening force that has breached the political system and who must be removed.

As in O’Donnell’s speech, Callahan situates pathemata within the founding period.  He writes, “I believe the modern day patriots stand shoulder to shoulder with every generation of defenders from the Citizen Soldiers of Revolutionary War to the present day Citizen Soldiers of our modern Military.”  “Citizen soldiers” refers to independent militias that formed during the American Revolution.  This comparison likens the cause of the Tea Party to that of the American Revolution, heightening the movement’s emotional value and inspiring patriotism. 
 

In fact, the Revolutionary militias seem to be a touch point for much of the emotional rhetoric emerging from the Tea Party.  The Culpeper Minutemen were one of the primary militia groups during the Revolutionary War and the inspiration behind the Tea Party’s iconic “Don’t Tread on Me” flag.  Like O’Donnell’s speech and Callahan’s post, the flag is a rhetorical act that situates its pathemata within the founding period.  That Callahan’s blog and the flag both connect the Tea Party cause to that of Revolutionary militias, indicates that these historical groups are important to how those in the Tea Party see themselves and their cause.  The comparison frames the Tea Party as scrappy upstarts, underdogs, fighting against oppressive rulers.  Combined with the motto “Don’t Tread on Me,” this characterization inspires emotions of defiance and patriotism.  

Much of the rhetorical effectiveness of the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag stems from its ability to convey a sentiment that transcends its original rhetorical situation.  In Jenny Edbaur's article “Unframing,” she argues that discourse is not dictated by a single rhetorical situation, but instead exists in an affective ecology.  She gives the example of the popular Austin motto, “Keep Austin Weird,” which, from its creation in 2002, has been re-purposed for a variety of rhetorical situations.  In the same way, the “Don’t Tread of Me” flag is a rhetorical act that exists beyond its original exigence, audience, and constraints.  The rhetoric of “not being tread on” is a structure of feeling in American culture that has effectively been transmitted to the Tea Party’s situation.  The flag is no longer just a response to the exigences of the American Revolution, but now-- over 200 years later-- also a response to the political and economic conditions of 2010.

This project has only looked at three sample discourses produced during the period leading up to the 2010 midterm elections.  As such, the above claims do not characterize all of Tea Party rhetoric.  In order to see if the emotional appeals I describe occurring in the three sample discourses generalize to all Tea Party rhetoric, one would need to include more sample discourses.  Nevertheless, this project presents a window into the specific affective appeals emerging from rhetors in the Tea Party movement  within the months and days leading up to the election.

    As we can see from O’Donnell’s speech and Callahan’s blog, fear and disdain are important emotional appeals in Tea Party rhetoric.  In both texts, these two emotions are directed towards an ambiguous other.  O’Donnell directs these emotions towards a variety of agents, some of which include “bold new leaders”, “green police”, and “DC cocktail crowd”.  With each of these transitions, the emotions increase in value.  Callahan does something similar in his blog post.  Fear and disdain are not located within one object, but rather a group of “socialists” whose composition is never defined.  This tendency reflects Sarah Ahmed’s theory of affective economies which states that, in some instances, fear and hate cannot be contained in one object, but instead slide from object to object.  This dynamic helps to create stronger emotional appeals by creating stark boundaries between “in” groups and “out” groups.  

However, the emotional appeals in the three artifacts are not irrational, but based on certain beliefs about the actions of those in political office.  In particular, the belief that those in office are either threatening or currently harming liberty and freedom, two values revered in all three texts.  Liberty and freedom also act as pathemata, or terms that immediately evoke an affective response from the audience.  They are able to do this because of their long history with American discourse.  Nevertheless, all three rhetors situate the values within particular historical situations that will resonate with the audience, the primary period being the founding of the United States.  This allows the terms to take on more emotional value as those in the audience can directly connect their cause with the cause of the early patriots.  Callahan and the flag make the connection to a very specific group of patriots, that is the independent militias comprised of ordinary citizens that fought against the British.  In the same way, those in the Tea Party identify as ordinary citizens doing their patriotic duty-- fighting for their liberty and freedom.  

Works Cited

O’Donnell, Christine. “There are more of us then there are of them.” Values Voter Summit. Washington D.C. 17 Sept. 2010. Youtube. Web. 6 Nov. 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/?v=3rLBwcajDN8&feature=related>.

Callahan, Mike. "We Are The Modern Day Patriots." Web log post. Tea Party Patriots. Tea Party Patriots, 26 Oct. 2010. Web. 11 Mar. 2011.

“Don’t Tread on Me.”

Final Project Rough Draft

Emotional boundaries in Tea Party Rhetoric

The Tea Party emerged as a national movement in February of 2009 when CNBC commentator, Rick Santelli, called for a new Tea Tea Party to protest the Obama Administration’s plan to refinance mortgages.  “How many of you want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgages?” he asked his colleagues on the floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange.  The event inspired a series of grassroots protests in response to a number of the Obama Administration’s fiscal policies.  Those in the Tea Party argue for limited government, reduced taxes, and free market capitalism based on the vision of the founding fathers and a strict interpretation of the Constitution.  As seen by Rick Santelli’s above quote, their arguments have often contained a strong emotional component.  In this project, I will take a closer look at the emotional appeals that appear in certain Tea Party discourses.  Specifically, I will conduct a comparative analysis of two sample discourses coming out of the Tea Party movement around the time of the 2010 midterm election: the first, a speech by former Senate candidate, Christine O’Donnell and the second, a blog post that appeared on the Tea Party Patriots website on October 26, six days before the 2010 election.  Both rhetors attempt to provoke anger and fear in their audience by portraying specific values as either threatened or already violated by an ill-defined offender.  The reason for this ill-defined offender is a rhetorical strategy used by the rhetors; in the discourses, fear and anger slide from object to object, amplifying and gaining emotional value with each move.

On September 17, 2010 Christine O’Donnell spoke at the Values Voters (VVS) Summit in Washington D.C.  VVS is an annual conference in which conservative politicians and media figures are invited to speak about conservative values.  O’Donnell’s speech is advantageously placed within a kairotic moment.  At the time, O’Donnell was running for a Senate seat in her home state of Delaware and was receiving a lot of media attention for her association with the Tea Party movement.  She had just defeated incumbent, Mike Castle for the Republican nomination, validating the movement’s influence among Delaware’s conservative constituency.  In her speech she addresses the nature and relevance of the Tea Party, and how Tea Party values could be the key to restoring the United States to its former glory.  Emotions fly freely in O’Donnell’s rhetoric, but the.  The desired behavior is to get voters to .  The interpretation that leads to this behavior is: Democrats and current leaders threaten American values.

O’Donnell begins the speech by recreating the fear that she and her audience felt when the Obama administration and the Democratic majority first took office in 2008; she accomplishes this by creating enargeia or placing the audience in a situation through descriptive language.  “Think about how you felt then. Remember the despondency, the anxiety...”  She then lists a number of policies “crossed off the list” of our “emboldened new leaders,” upon their first year in office, some of which include forcing the American people to pay for overseas abortions, and Obamacare.  Listing these policies places her audience back to this time, causing them to re-experience the fear they felt in connection to the initial policies enacted by Democrats and the Obama administration.  In “Aristotle on Emotions and Rational Persuasion” Nussbum explains that Aristotle argues that rational beliefs precede emotions in his work, Rhetoric:  “In order to have emotions such as fear and grief, one must first have beliefs of a certain kind.”  Nussbum also writes that it is “the way things are seen by the agent, not the fact of the matter, that is instrumental in getting emotions going.”  “What makes a person fearful is now given in a complex series of reflections, representing the sorts of judgments that might be involved in different cases of becoming afraid.”  The fear that O’Donnell and her audience felt in 2008 was motivated by a particular belief-- that was that Democratic leaders threatened certain values.  

What are these values?  Based on O’Donnell’s speech, they seem to be liberty and freedom. As Democrats began pushing their agenda, conservative Americans “rediscovered the most fundamental value of all-- liberty.”  But liberty and freedom are more than just important values in Tea Party culture.  They are pathematas.  Longmaker and Walker define pathematas as “vivid presentation and symbols with strong emotional resonance.”  Terms can also act as pathematas.  In O’Donnell’s speech, liberty and freedom or emotionally resonant terms situated in a particular associative network.  These two terms have a built-in emotional resonance with any American audience due to their long history of use in American rhetorical discourse.  O’Donnell does some extra leg work to make sure that these terms are associated with positive events in American history.  She connects them with two eras in American history: 1) the founding years and 2) America circa 1980s.  The two values are the basis for the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as well as the fuel behind the American Revolution.  “When our country’s on the wrong track we search back to the first covenant, our founding documents, and the bold and inspired values on which they were based.”  America during the 1980s was also a time when freedom and liberty thrived.  O’Donnell describes America during the 1980s as a refuge from communism, a refuge that “only freedom can build.”  O’Donnell marries these values with the founding documents (Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Federalist Papers).

Fear transitions to anger as O’Donnell reveals that these values already have been and continue to be violated.  The belief in a potential threat has turned into a belief in an actualized threat, rhetorically transitioning the audience from feelings of fear to feelings of anger.  Nussbaum describes the rational beliefs that precede feelings of anger: “It requires, on the one hand, the belief that one (or someone dear to one) has been slighted or wronged or insulted in some serious way, through someone elses voluntary action.”  The anger turns to disdain; Democratic leaders do more than act in opposition to Tea Party values, they embody an opposition to Tea Party values.  Thus, the emotional reaction becomes connected with what these agents are as well as what they do.  Pejorative language assists in furthering this disdain.  For instance, the policies of the “ruling class elites” aren’t just a product of different political positions; they are an “assault” on liberty and freedom.  Politicians in Washington D.C. are “cocktail-sippers,” and the time leading up to the emergence of the Tea Party were “dark days,” and the  Such emotionally charged language heightens the audience’s response to what would otherwise be straightforward and dull description.  Longmaker and Walker (quote about pejorative language).

  Another emotional element exists in O’Donnell’s speech.  Fear, anger, and disdain-- the three negative emotions that O’Donnell provokes, have more than one object.  In her paper “name,” Sara Ahmed discusses the concept of emotional economies .  She provides the example of this occurring in a passage from the website of the Aryan nation.  In the passage, hate circulates between a variety of non-white bodies, sliding from the blank to the blank to the blank.  Ahmed contends that “The impossibility of reducing hate to a particular body allows hate to circulate in an economic sense, working to differentiate some others from others, a differentiation that is never “over,” as it awaits for others who have not yet arrived.”  Furthermore, Ahmed describes a process by which   A similar pattern of economic disdain and sticky symbols occurs in O’Donnell’s speech.  The emotion moves from object to object, creating a divide between an “in” group and an “out” group.  Democrats-- or “bold new leaders” as O’Donnell calls them-- are the first objects of fear and anger.  Then comes “ruling class elites” and next, “D.C. cocktail crowd,” “government workers,” “bureaucrats and politicians in Washington,” and lastly, the “green police.”  Negative emotions slide from agent to agent, creating a distinct boundary between an “us” and a “them.”  O’Donnell binds the “us” together, not only as an imagined group of Tea Partiers, but also as Americans.  “We’re not trying to take back our country.  We are our country!” she vigorously proclaims.  In the speech, the Tea Partiers possess and populate American soil, while the “other,” which is described as a much much smaller group, is relegated to and contained within Washington D.C.  O’Donnell’s tendency to use pronouns with ambiguous antecedents furthers this emotional economy.  # out of # times that she uses the pronoun “they” or “some,” it’s unclear who she’s referring to.  This furthers the idea of an indeterminate object of disdain that allows the emotion to circulate freely and fluidly throughout O’Donnell’s speech.  This pattern also facilitates the proliferation of “sticky terms.”  As O’Donnell slides from pronoun to pronoun, terms like “elites,” “cocktail crowd,” “ruling class,” and “police” get stuck to agents and figures.  As Ahmed describes, there is nothing inherently disdainful about those who work in Washington D.C.  It’s through O’Donnell’s circulation of signs that they become disdainful.

Ahmed argues that the emotions of love and hate are closely tied. Negative emotions felt towards an “other” usually have corresponding positive emotions that are directed towards another group or person.  Tea Party values--liberty and freedom-- are those things that the Tea Party loves.  The Tea Party represents and believes in these values, making them a source of love.  Ahmed describes love and hate’s symbiotic relationship: (quote).  In the same way, O’Donnell’s disdain for the “other” is just as much motivated by love for what the Tea Party represents as it is motivated by disdain for what the “other” represents.  The emotional reading of O’Donnell’s speech binds imagined subjects together  Just as O’Donnell conveys disdain through pejorative language, so does she employ honorific language to describe the Tea Party.  The Constitution is a “holy covenant,” the Tea Party, a “love affair with liberty,” and Tea Partiers, “common sense patriotic Americans.”  Such glowing descriptions heighten the emotional value of these groups, events, and objects, eliciting reverence and love from the audience.

The following blog post appeared on the Tea Party Patriots website on October 26, 2010.  The poster goes by the name Mike Callahan.  He writes to encourage fellow Tea Partiers to vote. To be continued....

   

Pathos Final Project

    My final project will be a comparative analysis of two pieces of discourse by those involved in the Tea Party movement.  The goal of the project is to shed light on the emotional appeals used by those in the Tea Party.  In this project I will seek to explain 1) how those in the Tea Party . a speech by Christine O’Donnell and a blog post that appeared on the Tea Party Patriots website on October 26, 2010.  To complete this analysis, I will draw from theorists we have discussed in class, particularly Nussbuam and Ahmed.  Nussbaum’s explanation of Aristotle will help me explain how each rhetor seeks to generate certain emotions based on their audience’s values and beliefs.  I will draw from Ahmed to elaborate on how each rhetor constructs in groups that are a source of love and out groups that are a source of fear and hate.  Ahmed’s theory of affective economies will help me explain how the lack of an object of fear and hate in the two discourses creates a distinct boundary between the “haves” and the “have nots.”  The project will take the form of a 5-6 page paper plus a prezi presentation.  The prezi presentation will illustrate how emotion “slides” from object to object within the texts to be analyzed.  In this project I will need to:

1) Write a 5-6 page paper that compares the emotional appeals of a speech given by Christine O’Donnell at the Values Voters Summit in Washington D.C. on September 17 and a blog entry that appeared on the Tea Party Patriots website on October 26, 2010.

2) Effectively draw upon course material and theorists to explain how emotional appeals work in these two discourses.

3) Provide a detailed analysis that clearly illustrates the similarities and differences between the two discourses, answering the questions: What emotions do the rhetors seek to provoke?  What rhetorical techniques do they use in order to provoke these emotions?  What is the interpretation of the emotion that will lead to the desired behavior?

4) Design a prezi presentation that illustrates to the audience, how these rhetors create an economy of fear.  The presentation should focus on how fear and hate are not directed at one agent, but instead, “slide” from object to object.

Visual Argument

Visual Argument: Self Analysis

    My visual argument approaches the topic of domestic violence in Afghanistan. The claim for my visual argument is: domestic violence drives many Afghan women to commit suicide by self-immolation, or lighting themselves on fire.  However, women’s shelters, often run by non-governmental organizations, can offer an alternative for battered women.  My presentation is divided into segments that are meant to provoke a series of emotions in the audience.  When viewing these segments chronologically, the audience should progress from feeling pity and horror for what these women have endured to feeling hope that women’s shelters can help them better their situation.

The first picture should provide the audience with some context for the rest of the presentation.  Working within their shared context, the image gives the viewers a place, a culture, and a religion in which to orient themselves.  Also, the image--which should inspire happiness or glee-- sets the audience up for the impending loss of happiness that comes with domestic abuse.  In it we see a row of Afghan women covered in light blue burqas.  The last woman has removed her burqa and is smiling mischievously at the camera.  We get the impression that she is a bold, playful, and happy individual.  The audience is supposed to look past the Afghan woman’s religion and nationality, past her burqa, to see the joyful personality beneath.  

The next two images show Afghan women who have been abused.  The second image shows a woman with signs of abuse on her neck and shoulder.  Sad and broken, this woman’s emotions stand in stark contrast to the emotions of the woman in the first image.  This contrast is meant to provoke a sense of loss, or stolen happiness, as the audience realizes that the second girl could have been just as happy as the first at one time.  The third image also shows an abused woman and is meant to reinforce the emotions of the second.  This woman has more prominent bruises on her face, including a large and colorful black eye.  When viewing this image, the audience might imagine the cruelty of a man who would intentionally deform his wife’s young and beautiful face.  

The next three images show Afghan women suffering from severe third degree burns after attempting suicide by self-immolation.  Based on the initial claim of my presentation, the audience should be able to follow the argument that the domestic violence Afghan women suffer at home can lead them to burn themselves alive.  The fourth image, which shows a woman with severe burns on her chest, is intended to inspire shock and horror.  The next image shows a woman whose burns have deformed her neck. The woman holds what looks like a mirror in front of her face. An audience member will naturally put themselves in this woman’s shoes and imagine gazing at their deformed neck in a mirror.  The last image in this series shows two naked women with severe burns all over their bodies. The woman in the foreground has strips of gauze covering her wounds.  Her thin, gaunt face stares hauntingly into the camera, causing this image to be, at once, frightening, shocking, and saddening.  

The next series of images depict women’s shelters, and they are meant to transition the audience from feelings of shock and sadness to feelings of hope and safety.  The first in this series shows a woman in bed cradling her child.  The woman has an expression of content on her face.  The audience gets the impression that she feels safe.  The next image shows several women sitting around bunk beds.  There is a woman in the middle of the floor, kneeling to pray.  Light beams through the curtains, casting a hopeful glow around the room.  The last image in this series shows a classroom in a women’s shelter.  A woman at the board appears to be teaching math.  But the younger girl in the foreground is not paying attention.  She looks like she is trying to prevent herself from laughing.  The image shows that women’s shelters can provide an education for Afghan women, something that would otherwise be very difficult for them to attain.  Also, the laughing girl imbues the image with a sense of normalcy.  The image of a “child-not-paying-attention-in-class” is easily translatable to a Western audience.  It reminds the audience that, that sense of normalcy-- something we take for granted-- is a precious gift for these women.  The last image shows a woman turning to smile at the camera.  The audience is supposed to connect the previous series of images with this one, leading to the interpretation that Afghan women can find joy and fulfillment when removed from the oppressive grip of abusive husbands.

    My purpose is twofold: 1) I want to inform the audience of the destructive cycle caused by domestic violence against women in Afghanistan and 2) I want to convince the audience that women’s shelters currently provide one of the only safe, legal escapes from domestic violence.  This awareness could lead audience members to support women’s shelters vocally or financially.  I also want the audience to leave the presentation with questions about women’s rights in Afghanistan.  These questions should hopefully prompt them to research the issue, in which they would discover a number of other obstacles that women face, including a lack of education and forced marriages at a young age.  The interpretation that would lead to these actions would be: these women’s lives are so bad that the only escape they see is to kill themselves in one of the most gruesome ways possible.  The audience should imagine themselves in these women’s situations, with no escape from domestic violence.  They should see the logic behind their decisions to kill themselves, and experience a subsequent wave of relief when the presentation reveals that there is another option, and that is women’s shelters.

Photo credits:
First image
Second Image
Third Image
Fourth Image
Sixth image
Seventh image
Eighth image
Ninth image
Tenth image

Visual Argument

http://prezi.com/ktn3igpo2syu/visual-analysis/

Pathetic Appeal

In my pathetic appeal, I argue that domestic violence against women in Afghanistan is a problem and that women's shelters are an invaluable resource for women who seek to escape the abuse.  I use enargeia to put my audience in the shoes of an abused woman in the U.S. and then an abused woman in Afghanistan, contrasting their experiences to evoke pity and sadness for the Afghan woman.  The purpose of my argument is to get the audience to donate to NGOs that support shelters and women's rights in Afghanistan.  The interpretation that leads to this action is: "this could happen to me/a woman I care about if I had been born into that culture."


Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v7K7sVJrin6tFJGqVCeiF_DsjJRF7Vl-u48gguBsA-M/edit?hl=en#

Pathetic Appeal

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v7K7sVJrin6tFJGqVCeiF_DsjJRF7Vl-u48gguBsA-M/edit?hl=en&pli=1#

Distress over Damasio

Let me start by saying that these chapters were extremely interesting.  So Damasio has laid out some systems that, when damaged, severely affect a person’s ability to plan and decide in social and personal situations. The systems play an important role in the processing of emotions.  Somehow processing and understanding emotion is integral to our ability to make real life decisions.  Having said that, I found this information to be disturbing as well.  The evidence Damasio has presented is detrimental to our conception of personhood.  Brain damage can do more than affect certain cognitive capacities like speech or memory. It affects that subjective thing we call “personality”-- something we’ve assumed has a certain degree of permanency.  But the stories of Phineus Gage and Elliot indicate that brain damage can affect these subjective aspects more than we thought.

What bothers me is that the picture this paints of us is deterministic and reductionist.   We are a combination of our machinery and the physical stimuli that go into shaping that machinery.  If one part breaks, (like this decision making network) our entire personhood changes.  I suppose this reductionism would be ok if we could fix our machinery, and while sometimes this is possible, most of the time it is extremely difficult to fully regain lost functions.

This brings me to another point.  Neuroscientists have discovered that our brains are plastic. This means that, given the proper stimuli, brain maps can be rewired and the connections between neurons can either be strengthened or weakened.  For instance, stroke victims who have suffered damage to those areas involved with language have been known to regain many of their language skills during rehabilitation.  The victim's brain rewires itself; the speech center moves to a different area.  I wonder if that same plasticity could be achieved in patients like Phineus and Elliot. Could their brains have rewired themselves to make up for their deficits given the proper therapy?

Visual Analysis Revised

The image I will be analyzing is an anti-Obama poster currently being sold on Zazzle.com under the category of “Anti-Obama posters and prints.”  The poster reads, “We’ve got what it takes to take what you’ve got” and depicts a curled hand reaching towards the audience; just below, Obama’s face is etched in a star.  The target audience is conservatives who oppose Obama’s political ideology and policies.  While it includes both young and old, the ad’s emotional appeals resonate more with an audience old enough to remember the Cold War.  The artist goes by Maksim and, according to his personal website, sympathizes with the Tea Party, which is a recent conservative political movement that advocates for limited government and Constitutional principles.  Tea Party activists have a reputation of presenting extreme characterizations of Obama at rallies and protests (e.g. Obama as the Joker, Hitler).  Similarly, Maksim has painted an insidious portrait of Obama by connecting him to an ideology and form of government once greatly feared in the United States. The poster’s style and symbolism invite the audience to associate Obama with communism, with the intent of inspiring fear and motivating them to adopt more of a hard-line stance against his policies and presidency.
    The communist symbolism and imagery paint a threatening picture of Obama.  The star located at the bottom of the poster mirrors the star on the flag of the former Soviet Union.  An impression of Obama’s face appears in the middle of it, implying that Obama’s policies are centered in communist theory.  Just above, a hand reaches out, encroaching upon the viewer’s space, looking as if it wants to grab you or snatch your possessions.  While the hand is fearful in itself, it’s also a communist symbol. “The working class” or proletariat is the backbone of Marxist theory.  Farmers, factory workers, industrial laborers-- these professions were featured prominently in Soviet art, with the subjects’ hands accentuated.  Also a symbol in socialist theory-- the hand represented the five “classes” of a socialist utopia-- workers, farmers, intellectuals, soldiers, and youth.
    The poster’s style and coloring reflect that of Soviet propaganda posters.  Most of the poster is red, the primary color on the flags of both the Soviet Union and China. The bold lines-- also representative of Soviet art-- give the art an artificial quality, evoking conformity, and the loss of individuality.  The artist plays with another Soviet symbol-- the rising sun, which is depicted at the center of the Soviet crest. The rays beam upward, symbolizing hope and a new day.  Contrastingly, on the poster a black triangular band glares downward, bringing darkness instead of light. Lastly, the artist places a series of trigger words (“liberal,” “progressive,” “communist,” “statism.”) in the background to reinforce the fear seen in the visual elements.  The font of these words is very similar to that seen in soviet art such as this one; it also furthers the theme of conformity, as each letter is barely distinguishable from the next.

One of the subtlest visual elements of the poster is the depiction of Obama’s face within the star, which Maksim has drawn to resemble the famous “Obey Giant.”  In 1989 Stephen Fairey created an abstract picture of Andre the Giant with the phrase “obey” written under it as part of a viral art campaign.  Since then, the Giant has become a worldwide phenomenon, appearing as street art in cities around the world.  Despite the artist’s innocent-- even playful-- intentions, the Giant’s meaning becomes more sinister in this context.  The audience might imagine Obama commanding them to “obey,” causing them to conceptualize him as an authoritarian leader such as Joseph Stalin (in keeping with the communist theme).  Fairey also created the famous “Hope” poster for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. This piece of knowledge adds another layer of meaning to Maksim’s poster.  By using Fairey’s earlier image, the artist drives home the notion that Obama is not the hopeful inspirational leader seen in his campaign poster, but an intimidating authoritarian who wants you to “obey.”

The audience for this poster is already predisposed to have an unfavorable view of Obama.  What the artist seeks to do is elevate the audience’s pessimism to fear by associating him with communism-- more specifically, the Soviet Union-- with the hope that they will be motivated to oppose Obama more vocally or join the Tea Party cause. A viewer’s interpretation might be something like; “Obama will turn this nation into a communist one if I don’t do anything to stop him.”  Maksim’s older audience will remember the fear that infected the American public during the Cold War-- the fear of communism, of the Soviet Union, of state control. He not only revives these fears, but places their source within the U.S. Communism is here, the Soviet Union is here, state control is here--in the form of Barack Obama.