Rhetoric, Political

Political rhetoric is an art of articulating and promoting one's political interests through influence in the [Page 717]public sphere by symbolic manipulation of signs and symbols, including language, images, and the staging of events. The rhetorical theorist Lloyd Bitzer noted that political rhetoric was in action wherever there were groups of individuals with collective interests at stake in some public, decision-making situation. As such, its scope includes the individual campaign speech of a local politician as well as the broadcast advertisements for a senatorial candidate and the Web log discourse of an advocacy group for or against a president's public initiatives or governing policies at federal, state, or local levels. This discussion of political rhetoric includes a brief review of the main streams of thought ...