At the age of fifteen, Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg grew very concerned about climate change. Many kids her age shared this concern, but Thunberg acted on it. In August 2018, she began skipping school each Friday to protest outside the Swedish Parliament building and elsewhere. She advocated for politicians to take action and stop the environment’s degradation. She became, in these actions, a democratic participant.

School strike week 28. In Hamburg with @Luisamneubauer #climatestrike #fridaysforfuture #schoolstrike4climate pic.twitter.com/XhE3WtVS5D

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) March 1, 2019

Does it seem strange to call a fifteen-year-old a democratic participant? You may think the label only applies to people who can vote and to elected leaders or government officials. However, democratic participants include all those who participate in public conversations about issues in a democratic society. Opportunities to speak in such conversations occur in local, regional, national, and even international organizations and networks where people work together for positive change. Perhaps you are already involved in such a group on your campus or in your community: a service organization like Habitat for Humanity, an affinity group such as a Latino cultural association, or a team of debaters or deliberation facilitators who help people think or talk through tough public issues.

You do not need to be a legal citizen to be a democratic participant. While you must be a US citizen to vote in elections, citizenship is not required to engage in public communication and community building. For this reason, unless we are talking specifically about voting in political elections, in this book we use “democratic participants” and “community members” when we refer to democratic participation.

This chapter explores democratic participation more fully by considering rhetoric and its relationship to democracy. It begins with a definition of rhetoric as a civic art with seven important characteristics. We then turn to an explanation of the historical relationship between rhetoric and democracy with a particular emphasis on the beginnings of democracy in ancient Greece. The chapter next describes how rhetoric and democracy are mutually reinforcing and ends by returning to Thunberg as an example of civic engagement and democratic participation.

Rhetoric as a Civic Art

Teachers and scholars have often associated rhetoric with persuasion, but with mixed characterizations. While some have positively associated the term with rich thought and expression, others have negatively equated rhetoric with hollow talk. Both versions can be considered rhetoric.

Box 1.1 Rhetoric’s Rich Heritage

During the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Western higher education, rhetoric was one of the seven traditional liberal arts, which included the trivium (i.e., grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (i.e., arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy).

 

 

 

In this book, we offer a definition of rhetoric that sets a high standard for public communication in society. We define rhetoric as a civic art devoted to the ethical study and use of symbols (verbal and nonverbal) to address public issues. Because rhetoric is such a rich concept, our definition deserves an extended explanation.

First, rhetoric is a civic art that is produced and studied for the good of society. We use civic in a manner reminiscent of its Latin origin (civicus): matters that relate to the city or citizens. Since we recognize that democratic participants need not be citizens, we use “civic” in this book to emphasize matters that relate to public life. Civic engagement refers to participation in community organizations, institutions, and groups with the goal of contributing to the public good. Rhetoric, then, is our chief tool to participate in public life and improve our communities. We characterize rhetoric as a civic art because it encourages and requires individual expression, interpretation, and style. Such artistry requires speakers to study and practice rhetoric, which is the next characteristic.

Second, rhetoric entails both the study and use of symbols, which we refer to as rhetorical theory and practice. That is, rhetoric includes training (practice) in the use of symbols, such as speechmaking. It also involves studying the symbols produced by others. These studies draw on and help create theories about how rhetoric functions.

Third, both the study and use of rhetoric are ethical practices because they are grounded in moral principles, based on reason, and attached to rigorous standards of evaluation. This suggests that rhetoric is actively (or consciously) produced and that the ethical (or unethical) nature of the motives, choices, and effects of a speaker or analyst is important.

Fourth, rhetoric includes verbal and nonverbal symbols. Verbal symbols are the words we write, speak, and study. Nonverbal symbols include visual images and audio sounds. All symbols can be powerful in democratic discourse. For example, consider how images of war and destruction, sounds of gunfire and chaotic yelling, and words calling for public support can move audiences.

A fifth characteristic of rhetoric is that it is typically used to address public issues. The emphasis here is on the audiences who are addressed or spoken to about public issues. In other words, rhetoric is produced for public audiences. While the rhetor, or the one who speaks publicly, is important, the listener or reader—that is, the audience—also plays a crucial role. The audience interprets, evaluates, responds to, and acts on—or resists—a rhetor’s public discourse. Consequently, meaning is ultimately negotiated between a rhetor and an audience.

This relationship between the rhetor and an audience leads to a sixth characteristic of rhetoric: Rhetoric is a form of power. Rhetoric can be a means of control that encourages action or limits an audience’s options, sometimes without us even being aware of this effect. In a most basic example, consider how a parent gets their young child to do and not do many things simply with words. Then consider the power of the words in documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. As those documents suggest, rhetoric has the power to liberate from domination.

Rhetoric has the ability—the power—to put ideas before the eyes and in the minds of audiences and to move audiences through language, sound, and imagery. At the same time, audiences can accept, alter, or resist those efforts.

Seventh, and finally, rhetoric is situational and contingent. Rhetoric operates in specific contexts and situations to address problems that are of a probabilistic and contingent nature. Rather than dealing with truth claims that are verified through formal logic or scientific demonstration, rhetoric addresses contingent matters that are uncertain, open to multiple possibilities, and dependent on many variables. Reasonable people are likely to disagree on how to best address specific community issues. While it is generally used to persuade, rhetoric can also be utilized to inform an audience. Both goals are valuable when community members need to better understand the particular situation and contingent nature of a public issue and decide on a solution.

Our definition focuses attention on rhetoric’s use in public contexts among community members and policymakers. Thus, it specifically orients us to the practice of public speaking, which is the process of forming and delivering rhetorical content to an audience in the hopes of persuading or informing that audience. Public speech is a primary means of participation in a democratic society. We turn next to exploring the beginnings of democracy in ancient Greece and its reliance on rhetoric.

The Historical Relationship Between Rhetoric and Democracy

From its beginning, democracy was conducted in and through rhetoric. In the West, this relationship began in Athens, Greece, in the late sixth century BCE. Imagine an Athenian male during that time. Unlike their ancestors, who lived in a society structured by a noble class, they are an active participant in the governmental functioning of their city-state. They can speak about the important issues of the day with their fellow citizens not only informally but also formally in the Assembly meetings—regular gatherings of Athenian citizens who discussed and voted on the important public issues of the day. During their lifetime, they are likely to serve in one or more governmental positions as a magistrate and to serve regularly as a juror.

This expression of democracy was revolutionary. Indeed, it is hard to exaggerate the importance of these advances, as participation was shared much more widely than ever before in Western history.

Box 1.4 Democratic Participation in the Athenian Assembly

Let’s take a closer look at the Athenian Assembly to understand how the power to participate was shared. The Athenian Assembly met forty times each year on the Pnyx Hill in Athens, Greece. Attendance ranged from three thousand to six thousand citizens. The Pnyx represented the political center of the city-state, in contrast to the Agora marketplace (the social and legal center) and the Acropolis (the religious center with the Parthenon, Erechtheion, and other sacred and ceremonial buildings), which both sat adjacent to the Pnyx. These three—Pnyx, Agora, Acropolis—formed a physical and visual triangle.

Assembly meetings began from the speaker’s platform located on the Pnyx. The presiding officer sacrificed a pig and prayed to the gods. A proposal was then announced, and the presiding officer asked, “Who wishes to speak?” Any topic could be raised during the Assembly meetings, but the majority of topics were set in an agenda constructed by a smaller council. Anyone could speak two times on a single issue, and there was no formal time limit. There were means for keeping long-winded speakers in check, however, such as heckling and, in more extreme cases, shouting the person down. These meetings were often quite boisterous and emotionally expressive. When the moment seemed right, the presiding officer called for a vote. As such, the participants in this democracy had the opportunity to fully engage in listening, speaking, and voting.

Of course, ancient Athenian democracy was far from perfect. It excluded women, foreign-born males, and slaves. In addition, critics such as Plato, Isocrates, Thucydides, and Aristophanes critiqued the Athenian democratic experiment toward the end of its prominence, in the late fifth and early fourth centuries. They consistently characterized Assembly members as at times easy to manipulate, gullible, distracted, and lacking in motivation for the task of self-governance.

Two-and-a-half millennia later, many of these critiques persist. Some in the United States worry that the majority of democratic participants lack the ability to stay informed enough to engage productively in the political process. The enormous size of the United States, with over 340 million people, also poses tremendous difficulties for participation. It is rare to experience the personal nature of Athenian democracy’s face-to-face rhetorical exchanges.

Similarly, just as ancient Athenian democracy excluded women, non-Athenian males, and slaves, today critics express concern over whether all members of the public—all races, ethnicities, religions, socioeconomic statuses, and other groups—are fully able to participate and have their ideas heard.

Yet at the same time that Plato and others critiqued democracy, some teachers pointed to exciting ways that rhetorical education could improve democratic engagement.

Rhetorical Education

Because it occurred through public speaking, democratic participation created the need to educate individuals in the practice. Some teachers, such as Aristotle, taught the principles of rhetoric to noble Athenian students, including Alexander the Great. The early sophists, like Protagoras, Gorgias, and Isocrates, however, violated tradition by teaching a range of subjects, including rhetoric, to anyone for a fee. Their new educational model helped shift the city-state of Athens away from a nobility structure and toward broader democratic participation.

Box 1.5 Ancient Rhetorical Education and Civic Engagement

Both Isocrates and Aristotle pointed to exciting ways a rhetorical education could improve students’ democratic engagement.

Isocrates became famous for his school of rhetoric, which emphasized civic participation. It trained students to focus their rhetorical skills on addressing practical matters of the state.

Aristotle similarly taught rhetoric, alongside a wide variety of other subjects, at his school called the Lyceum. In fact, Aristotle’s Rhetoric is believed to be a collection of his students’ notes taken during, or in response to, his lectures.

Isocrates and Aristotle devoted much of their lives to teaching rhetoric to students, demonstrating the difficulty of the skills involved and their importance for democratic participation.

Much has changed since democracy and rhetoric began in ancient Greece. Yet when we turn to the United States, we see that rhetoric has played a similarly important role in the establishment of American democracy. Rhetoric was used among colonists in discussions and debates about the British Crown’s control and eventually over their possible independence, leading to the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.

Today, many US colleges and universities continue to teach public speaking skills to prepare students for effective democratic participation. In fact, as box 1.6 illustrates, many of the fundamental skills taught in public speaking courses today reflect the canons of rhetoric first described by Aristotle! The relationship between rhetoric and democracy in the US and elsewhere remains strong.

Rhetoric and Democracy Are Mutually Reinforcing

Democracy is a political system that locates control and power in the people. You may think such power resides in the ability to vote. However, rhetoric provides community members with many more ways to exercise power and control in a democracy. In fact, their voices—their rhetorics—are necessary to establish and maintain democracy.

Rhetoric Encourages Democracy

Rhetoric encourages democracy in several ways: It helps form communities, focuses members’ attention on shared concerns, and enables members to advocate and to think critically.

First, rhetoric encourages democracy by being the chief means by which a community of any size is formed. That is, until a group of people—whether it is an organization, a town, a city, a state, or a nation—communicates with one another, they do not exist as an entity in any significant way. Rhetoric is how laws and policies and governmental and nongovernmental institutions are created and revised.

Furthermore, rhetoric is the primary way a community perceives itself as such. It matters, for instance, that the Preamble to the US Constitution begins by labeling the American colonists as “We the People.” They became a people, in part, through that rhetorical expression. You might consider how your college or university uses rhetoric to name itself as a community. Students at the Pennsylvania State University, for instance, tend to yell “We are Penn State” during football games. Perhaps your college participates in similar rhetorical practices of self-naming and governance?

Second, rhetoric encourages democracy by enabling participants to jointly focus their attention on particular issues. Every community encounters challenges and must find ways to address them. Rhetoric provides that way. Participants use rhetoric to draw attention to issues, share lived experiences, advocate for solutions, and choose pathways forward. That is, rhetoric enables the public to attend together to matters of shared concern. You might consider how groups you are part of at college or in the local community use rhetoric to talk through challenges and issues.

Finally, rhetoric supports democracy by supplying the fundamental skills necessary for effective participation. These skills include both the production and analysis of messages.

To function effectively in a democracy, democratic participants must be able to assess others’ communication and effectively voice their thoughts.

Developing the abilities to speak well and critically analyze communication will not only aid you as an individual, but these skills will also help you protect democracy. Democratic participants who are trained in rhetoric are better able to identify, call out, and avoid unethical communication practices that threaten and weaken democracy. We will explore these practices in greater detail in later chapters.

In sum, rhetoric and democracy cannot be separated. Rhetoric is both the means by which democratic participation takes place and the content that is produced through that participation. When we shift from thinking “democracy equals voting” to appreciating that “democracy is a system in which all the participants, the people, have the power,” we see how integral rhetoric is to this process.

Democracy Encourages Rhetoric

The relationship between rhetoric and democracy can also be seen when we consider how democracy encourages rhetoric. It does so in at least three ways: Democratic government bodies require ordinary people’s participation, democracy protects people’s right to publicly disagree with their government leaders, and election victories rely, in part, on rhetorical skill.

First, all three branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial) allow—and in many cases require—participation by the people. Presidential candidates for office must secure votes, and this requires them to speak to voters and, if they are wise, to listen to them. Once elected, they must likewise listen to the public and respond to them, if for no other reason than to seek reelection. The legislative process often requires a period for the public to provide comments on new laws and regulations, and the judicial process allows and even requires individuals to speak in court. Thus, all our foundational democratic institutions promote and facilitate the practice of rhetoric. You may experience this as a college student. Perhaps you have run for a student government position, offered public commentary on campus rules or regulations, or had to testify when a wrongdoing occurred. If so, you know the prominent role rhetoric plays in these democratic processes.

Second, democracy encourages rhetoric because a fundamental feature of all democratic societies is the right of the people to gather peacefully and to protest. In other words, democracy allows the public expression of dissent and dissatisfaction. Democracy even requires such open disagreement and debate to make the public aware of pressing issues, help them understand how problems may differently impact groups of people, and press for solutions. You might have witnessed or participated in a public protest on your own campus.

Box 1.8 Democracy Encourages Rhetoric

We saw the power of public dissent in the early twenty-first century as LGBTQIA+ activists around the globe advocated for marriage equality. They used demonstrations, public speeches, legal action, and political campaigns. Their advocacy and protests sparked conversations, drew supporters (and critics), and ultimately contributed to the legalization of same-sex marriage in many countries. It’s telling that nearly all these countries are democratic societies—places that allow peaceful social protest.

Attempts to stop open, lawful dissent are antidemocratic. The most egregious examples include threatening (or actually using) physical or military force against critics. During the 1960s, for example, some governmental leaders and angry Americans attempted to squelch peaceful civil rights protests through a variety of physical means, including arrests and jail time, attack dogs, water hoses, billy clubs and knives, and even—ultimately—assassinations of protest leaders.

Box 1.9 Antidemocratic Efforts to Stop Rhetoric

In 2020, President Donald Trump notoriously called on police and the National Guard to clear crowds who had peacefully gathered in front of the White House to protest the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis officers.^[2] While running again for office in 2024, Trump warned that if elected president, he would, according to a news report, “use the powers of the federal government to punish [his] critics and political opponents.”^[3]

Such abuses of power punish and silence people who openly and lawfully express disagreement. In this way, they weaken democracy and the power of the people. They concentrate power, instead, in the hands of a few political, military, or law enforcement leaders. Such actions are antidemocratic because democracy encourages and protects public expressions of dissent.

Third, and finally, democracy reinforces rhetoric because election victories are typically achieved by skilled advocacy. You might reflect on how rhetorical abilities may have played a role in students’ ability on your campus to assume leadership roles. Perhaps you are reading this book because you want to improve your advocacy skills. We are referring to the ability not to produce the loudest voice but rather to develop the most persuasive message. As we argue in later chapters, persuasive rhetoric should, ideally, be based on thorough and accurate research, organized in a clear and compelling manner, and adapted to the audience and situation.

In sum, rhetoric and democracy exist in a powerful, synergistic relationship. Each feeds and stimulates the other.

Rhetoric as Civic Engagement

Participants in a democratic society engage through rhetoric, and they do so in a variety of ways. In this last section, we return to Greta Thunberg as an example of how a young adult’s use of multiple types of rhetoric began as local civic engagement but grew into an international effort.

Civic Rhetoric at the Local Level

As we explained previously, Thunberg was just fifteen years old in 2018 when she began skipping school on Fridays to protest Sweden’s inaction against climate change. She learned about the devastations of climate change at an early age and reacted strongly. She is on the autism spectrum and has explained that it gives her a different vantage point to see our environment and the need for action.

From 2018 until she graduated from high school in June 2023, Thunberg peacefully sat outside the Swedish Parliament on Fridays with a protest sign. Her efforts quickly drew widespread attention from politicians who passed her on the street, sympathizers who joined what became known as Fridays for Future, and the news media who began reporting her efforts.

Thunberg’s initial actions reflect what you, too, can do when you are disappointed by representatives or worried about a community problem. Like Thunberg, you can use rhetoric to initiate action through a bottom-up grassroots movement. Grassroots movements are responsive to local needs and build coalitions using the resources and talents of private individuals. These movements often raise awareness of community issues through public forums or protests, rally the community through petitions and letter-writing campaigns, and/or form community organizations that raise funds and develop programs to address community problems.

Civic Rhetoric at the Global Level

Thunberg’s efforts quickly drew national and international attention. She became a sought-after interview subject and speaker partly due to her message but also because of her plain and forceful manner of speaking to world leaders. She was invited to meet the pope and was even asked to be a featured speaker at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2018 and 2019. She has been criticized for her way of speaking and accused of being naive to the realities and energy necessities of modern life. Nonetheless, she has persisted with great effectiveness.

Box 1.11 Thunberg’s Global Influence

Thunberg’s efforts have civically engaged people around the world. According to Time Magazine, Thunberg “inspired 4 million people to join the global climate strike on September 20, 2019, in what was the largest climate demonstration in human history.”^[4] It may not be surprising, then, that she has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times (so far), and in 2019, she became the youngest person ever to win Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.

Thunberg’s example demonstrates the powerful role of democratic participation. Avenues for change do exist—and where they do not already exist, community-minded individuals can create them with communication skills and an understanding of how civic engagement works. Such civic communication can take many different forms.

The Many Forms of Civic Rhetoric

Oral communication remains a popular form of civic advocacy—whether that means speaking orally at protests, political events, or during interviews. However, we can advocate through written and visual forms of rhetoric as well. You might write a letter to be printed in your campus or local newspaper or on a blog. Visually, you could tape your mouth closed to help protest against a leader’s unwillingness to listen to your group’s concerns, or members may all dress the same to convey solidarity.

Of course, public speaking is not restrained to being used in person. Many leaders and social influencers have made great use of oral, visual, and written rhetoric on social media, and you can too.

While we primarily emphasize public speaking as oral communication in this textbook, you can also adopt visual and written rhetoric to participate in your community. Thunberg’s activism is a good example of the many rhetorical means and media by which public advocacy and civic engagement can take place.

It is our hope that through this book, you will better understand the relationship between rhetoric and democracy and will realize your great potential to improve your communities as a democratic participant. To assist with this learning, we encourage you to treat your classroom as a kind of public space. That is, in your classroom speaking, envision yourself as a public actor, not just a student giving speeches to be graded. You are a democratic participant capable of improving your professor’s and fellow students’ understanding of community issues and moving them to action.