Return of the Toggle Switch

So I presented Brian's legendary speech - and what was my point?

Well, I really like the speaker's blunt attempt to grant his audience rhetorical agency - which really, of course, he isn't, because he is not giving these people any directions or specific challenges to work with. He simply tells them that they need to think for themselves. Generally.

As a basic message listen to me, but think for yourselves is a fine principle to stick to for journalists and for rhetors in general. But there is no way to assert this freedom as a general principle. It must be done in specific relation to the given situation. Rhetorical agency must be granted from case to case by means of perhaps some more information, provocation, flattery, irony or fresh imagery.

Any rhetorical situation is heavily constrained by audience expectations that the rhetor must accept and then challenge. For "rhetorical agency is possible only within the communication practices of a given community of discourse", says a definition at Kairosnews which pops up in a google search for 'rhetorical agency'.

And now we're approaching the topic of the I's:

Somewhat surprisingly, the gesture of switching to the first person in a piece of news journalism still counts as a way of breaking the rules and thwart audience expectations (may I quote Nadja who expressed in a comment below how she "really - as in REALLY - never understood" why this is so). Saying "I" is a way of challenging the usual authoritative perspective of the press by reminding the reader that the reporter is a person with an individual sense of judgment.

But often the first person reporter not only draws attention to her own limited perspective, but also, by implication, to a false aura of authority and objectivity in the work of her colleagues. She distances herself from the rhetoric she herself is dealing in, as she decides to talk more plainly.

This is a very real dilemma - and readers may well join this brave and honest reporter in her adoption of the oppositional stance. Tell us! Tell us more!! And the first person narrative may become an appeal to free thinking and action which is really just as general and vague and paralysing as that of Brian. To distance yourself from the discourse you need to use is obviously paralysing. For it is not a question of either-or, honest or dishonest, subjective or objective, master or slave.

So what is it? What am I suggesting?

That we be specific in matter as we outline our situation.

And that we take manner seriously as part of the matter.

And, finally, that we try to change perspectives as we go along. Work the toggle switch and direct attention back and forth from manner to matter or from the fluff to the stuff (I've been told that this is Richard Lanham's latest popular rephrasing of this (his) concept of rhetorical toggling between depth and surface).

I.e. expose your rhetoric as rhetoric even as you are asserting what you consider to be an important truth. Because it is rhetoric, and most audiences need to be reminded of this, I believe, in order to be able to think for themselves.

I should exemplify and I will, but not tonight.