Sticks and Stones: Is Rhetoric Dangerous Weaponry?

We’ve all heard the phrase: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words may never hurt me. When you’re growing up and beginning to navigate the world of interpersonal communication, your parents may have taught you this phrase to overcome the treacherous terrain of bullying. We are taught that words cannot be painful so long as we recognize and then abandon the pain those words cause. However – this phrase does not encompass the things words can do when used in a rhetorical scenario. Rhetoric is a unique, valuable, and dangerous aspect of communication. It is present in all aspects of our lives, even in our intrapersonal communication. Over the past four years, we have experienced a presidency where rhetoric was used in such a dangerous way that once the presidency was over, there was a legitimate insurrection taking place at our nation’s capital. While many of us saw Former President Donald Trump’s campaign in 2015 as essentially a joke, his words stopped being funny and devolved into the battle cries of white supremacists and anarchists throughout the entirety of his time in the White House. NPR’s Ali Shapiro had a conversation with Jennifer Mercieca, American political rhetoric scholar at Texas A&M University and author of “Demagogue For President: The Rhetorical Genius Of Donald Trump.” In How President Trump’s Rhetoric Has Affected U.S. Politics, the two discuss how Trump uses “actual physical threats,” utilizes “language like a cudgel,” and tries to “dehumanize his opponents.”

This is the dark side of rhetoric: my interest in communication rests on my desire to recognize these dangerous components of the speeches of bad actors and help inform my friends, family, and community to help them stay rooted in reality. The ability to analyze communication and point out the underlying purposes and methods of rhetoric can be applied not only to politics but to general everyday conversations as well. This will help me navigate my friendships to both understand the motives of others and articulate my own motives in a positive, effective way. While my media this week is an example of rhetoric being weaponized, there are plenty of situations where effective rhetoric can keep the peace or stimulate change – whichever is necessary at the time. I want to help contribute to these things and analyzing rhetoric will give me better tools to improve the world around me.

I began my time at Baylor studying rhetoric in the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core (BIC). We dove straight into the big-timers: reading Aristotle, Plato, and countless others made me realize that majoring in Economics wasn’t for me. Much to Socrates’ chagrin, however, I don’t think that understanding and practicing philosophical ideals is enough to create a morally just society (I mean c’mon… the guy himself was not the most pleasant debater!). I maintained my place in the BIC and took on both Philosophy and Communications (Rhetoric & Public Discourse track) in order to both engage with morality and understand how to effectively share that morality. Rhetorical Theory & Criticism is one of my favorite classes I’ve taken so far, followed closely by Existentialism. By studying (and arguing!) with both sophists and philosophers, I have and will continue to expand my understanding and analysis of reality, as well as the reality that others paint with their rhetorical devices.