that which is potentially ridiculous within a narrative that would appear to enact a resolution but would be only able to manage this stylistically rather than authentically.
Of course positing an interpretive framework that recognizes paradoxes and interpretive ambiguities offers precisely the kind of “opaque” approach to language that agitated impeachment proponents, who doubled down on issuing big pronouncements that would explain, justify, and clear a path for language’s sublime power to travel and propel meaning and significance to the forefront of deliberations. Congressional leaders explicitly and directly declared a commitment to exalted and immaculate standards of evaluation, as if making that point over and over would definitively prove that the cause of their actions was not, as put by Hyde, “the ravings of some vindictive political crusade but a reaffirmation of a set of values that are tarnished and dim these days.”20 Republican leaders delivered solemn testimonials that aimed to convince audiences of their somber devotion to a sacrosanct “rule of law,” as if such declarations would inspire citizens to take seriously the GOP’s stated concern about the nation’s welfare.
“We must remain blind to bias and other distractions when applying the law—no matter whether we are applying it to an average citizen or to the President of our country” stated U.S. Rep. Howard Coble (R-NC) at the October 5 judiciary committee meeting. Three days later, at the meeting of the House, U.S. Rep Asa Hutchinson (R-AZ) concurred: “People say this is not Watergate. That’s true. Every case is different. But the rule of law and our obligation to it does not change.” So did U.S. Rep. Charles Canady (R-FL): “It is our solemn responsibility under the Constitution to . . . set an example that strengthens the authority of the laws and preserves the liberty with which we have been blessed as Americans.” And so did U.S. Rep (R-TX) Tom Delay: “Let history judge us as having done our duty to uphold the sacred rule of law.”21
The articulation of a desire to be in accordance with the law would appear to make that desire present and in the process prove that one’s motives are not only politically innocent but also concerned with issues that are substantial, indeed, vital to the nation’s future. A testimonial to the rule of law, if genuine, would presumably act as a rallying point for anyone who agrees to uphold law’s sacred rule. And yet, like the Impeachment articles, it was precisely the endeavor to explicitly demonstrate the authenticity of “virtuous” aims that undermined the credibility of the proclamations and rendered them, at least for some citizens, as signifiers of the ridiculous. The form rendered formulaic through citational repetition, converted into a command to be literal, became ideologically suspect. The paradoxical element of “positive” negativity within those testimonials inspired not affiliations but suspicions about the motives of those pushing for this drastic political outcome, and the stylistic repetition contributed to solidifying that sense. In this case, the very phrase “rule of law” took on an incantatory quality that communicated neither true devotion to an ethics of representation nor transparency but an act of impersonation, a kind of engagement that might be called “aesthetic” in a pejorative sense—a formalized, indeed mechanized, mode of participation that veered into the ritualistic. In this context, the phrase “aesthetic engagement” recalls Terry Eagleton’s definition—a kind of participation processed in accordance with its own internal logic, rendering only an appearance of having truly engaged with the issue put before the public about how to judge errant speech acts.22 Mere style, we might say. Pure bombast.
Here is where conceptions of style become especially complex because those conceptions will be derived from cultural narratives that teach what to look for when assessing the legitimacy of representational forms. To push O’Gorman’s point a bit further, besides envisioning judgments as traveling between a spectrum charting the sublime and the ridiculous, we need also to attend to the question of how to determine where to land. When we decide whether styles let us soar beyond the worldly or trap us in the matter of the mundane, our judgments of style’s effects will be influenced by the cultural narratives that prioritize the substantial and actual over the speculative and the unrealized potential. Style straddles a spectrum as well. Styles are both textually material and merely textual—merely the representative of a prior conception about how symbolic forms inform ways of seeing what has merit. But because styles do affect our senses, they are also imbued with awesome potentiality. Styles can help instigate “new” perspectives, “shocking” us out of complacent worldviews, as Kant would suggest. Or, as Burke suggests, styles can act to console us when familiar. Or, in the case of the impeachment, styles can act to alert us that something feels “off” about the purported connections between the propositional content of a speech and the motives underwriting its expression. By overlooking how we apply a sense of substance or its lack to our evaluation of style, we overlook a subtle but critical element of an interpretive encounter that can influence how we come to believe or lose faith in the languages that would speak on our behalf.
Pragmatism and Positivism
Rhetorical study engages in speculations about how to use language strategically to achieve desired ends. It’s not that truth does not matter. But facts are not necessarily available and even when they appear to be, their presentation does not necessarily persuade. In rhetorical formulations of how to use language, the act of speculating about what makes an argument effective is treated as an act of substance, as part of one’s civic duty. Rather than denounce speculation and then consign style to the realm of the superficial, style’s importance is reframed through the lens of the pragmatic. Accordingly, style acts to serve an identifiable social purpose. Its value is located not in its aesthetic qualities but in its ability to be socially productive by acting on behalf of the formation of a majority view.
As a starting point for an interpretive framework, this insight offers both a promising and a problematic way of contending with the paradoxical positive negativity that animates style’s place in judgment. Rhetoricians often endeavor to demonstrate that rhetoric’s contribution to acts of communication matter and are about more than “mere” style. How this outlook is validated allows for a consideration of significant differences between postmodern and rhetorical delineations of ethics in relation to acts of representation. For example, James P. McDaniel and Bruce E. Gronbeck maintain that it should be possible to both allow for civic disputes and find a path toward reconciliation by advocating “the imperative of the doxastic”—those “species of communal thought and values that must fill up the abstracted self of the citizen if he or she is going to have rhetorical efficacy in localist political environments” (36). Gerard Hauser, meanwhile, clarifies what “species” might mean when he promotes a specific style—vernacular rhetoric—as a central agent within political judgment that generates “a common understanding about the reality of experience, including its intended and unintended consequences” (297). To make rhetorical inquiry relevant, Hauser proposes that rhetorical models be based on actual discursive practices. “To overcome the reification of publics found in the Rational Deliberation model, a discourse-based theory of public opinion must widen its scope to include vernacular exchanges in addition to those of institutional actors. . . . A rhetorical model locates public opinion—a civil judgment—in the manifestations of common understanding within a public sphere,” which he adds, is “fashioned through the dialogue of vernacular talk” (297—original emphasis. See also, Ivie 455).
In practice, rhetorical attention to style has promoted the idea that styles should bear recognizable forms, especially those that have come to be regarded as signifying reason or rational norms. Vanessa Beasley makes an explicit case of “a democratic style” that “must foreground reasons, recognition and imagined relationship(s) to promote the discursive environment necessary for the most fundamental democratic processes to flourish” (466). She argues that “the public articulation of reasons promotes education, legitimation, and accountability . . . Democratic style should offer recognition to audience members” and should “activate certain relational commitments to other people whom one does not know” (466). (Beasley eventually wonders if she should reject this schematized approach but does not fully do so.)
We will find echoes of this kind of thinking within countless textbooks that advise college writers about how to represent their ideas
