Cynthia Miecznikowski Sheard, Ther Public Value of Epideictic Rhetoric

The Public Value of Epideictic Rhetoric
Author(s): Cynthia Miecznikowski Sheard

Source: College English , Nov., 1996, Vol. 58, No. 7 (Nov., 1996), pp. 765-794
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/378414
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765
THE PUBLIC VALUE
OF EPIDEICTIC RHETORIC
Cynthia Miecznikowski Sheard
To compose our character is our duty, ... and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and
tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately...
Montaigne
very day we witness the ways in which words fail us. News reports show us,
repeatedly, how all kinds of people, from all walks of life, resort to violence to
end, if not resolve, their problems. Scenes from the war-ridden former
Yugoslavia, news of terrorist acts and political assassinations, the unnecessary
deaths of angry, aimless teenagers and innocent by-standers on our city streets-
these and other all-too-common images of violence must make us wonder, indeed,
whether words can make any difference in our lives; whether sermons, speeches,
negotiations, or conversations can begin to solve problems, resolve tensions, or
bring peace to those in the world who are suffering. No doubt some of us have
grown numb to the political and ceremonial speeches of world and civic leaders
urging harmony, unity, and solidarity as if our personal and collective fates were
truly ours to master. Many of us have grown suspicious, perhaps even cynical,
toward public figures who, from lofty and influential positions, advocate standards
of private and public conduct they themselves have violated. Indeed, everywhere we
look we see ways in which words and deeds contradict each other.
Most of us, however, regularly participate in situations where appropriate con-
duct is assigned to and followed by us through ritualized uses of words whose
authority we take largely for granted. Acts of worship, protest, celebration, and
education are some of those in which we find word and deed difficult to separate
and generally accept their connection without question. As participants in acts like
these, we are reminded of the shared values and needs, interests and goals, that hold
Cynthia Miecznikowski Sheard is an assistant professor of Rhetoric and Composition at the Univer-
sity of Kentucky. Her research interests include rhetorical theory, practice, and pedagogy in antiquity
and in the contemporary discipline of English studies; their connections are the subject of her manu-
script, A New Sophistic: Rhetorical Theory and Academic Practice in the Late Twentieth Century. Her article
"Kairos and Kenneth Burke's Psychology of Political and Social Communication" appeared in College
English in March 1993; she has also written on rhetorical aspects of American and British nineteenth-
century fiction for Early American Literature, Studies in the Novel, and Studies in Short Fiction.
COLLEGE ENGLISH, VOLUME 58, NUMBER 7, NOVEMBER 1996

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766 COLLEGE ENGLISH
us together as members of groups or "communities" (civic, socia

fessional, and so on), and we see our publicly voiced words as timely
ful in such contexts.
Rhetorician Chaim Perelman's pronouncement that argument beg
ment helps explain how it is that what is compelling rhetoric for so
rhetoric for others. His observation has become a commonplace with
disciplines of composition and rhetoric, for it testifies to the impor
lishing a common ground as a basis for persuading a reader (or a list
or to do whatever a writer (or speaker) deems necessary, urgent, pr
erwise significant. Perelman's assumption is that good reasonin
nale-is not enough to persuade others to our visions; we must
common humanity. Kenneth Burke would call this "speaking in
other" whom we wish to persuade, bridging our "divisions" thro
tion." We should note that neither Burke's nor Perelman's concep
of common ground in argumentation is confined to a specific genre
value rather than reason has long been seen as the special provi
rhetoric. From antiquity to the twentieth century, epideictic ha
rhetoric of identification and conformity whose function is to confir
adherence to the commonly held values of a community with the go
ing that community; unlike deliberative or forensic rhetoric, epidei
be seen as both beginning and ending in agreement.
In an article on the personal essay, G. Douglas Atkins (invok
Ozick) maintains that the form requires a writer to "envision the st
(632). According to Atkins, the personal essay can be "a positive resp
needs" and a reminder that human beings are "creatures of flesh an
as reason" (634). I want to claim for epideictic rhetoric some of wha
to claim for the personal essay, that it "open[s] a path to alternative
it is "at once revolutionary and conservative" (639), and that we nee
it better and to teach others to appreciate it better, too. Although ep
(the rhetoric we usually associate with ceremony and ritual) can seem
"contrived," and "irrelevant" (Atkins 629)-in short, "empty rh
viewed from afar, like the personal essay, it can be an instrument fo
vate and public "dis-ease," discomfort with the status quo. Our stude
els of literacy development need to be taught to appreciate epideicti
understand the ways in which it invokes shared values as a basis
vision of what could be. Today's students do not respect the pow
did the ancients, our forefathers and foremothers, and those for w
instruments of personal, social, and political problem-solving. If we
dents to conduct themselves, both privately and publically, as et
responsible citizens, and conscientious members of their many c
ought to be teaching them to appreciate the relationships between w

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THE PUBLIC VALUE OF EPIDEICTIC RHETORIC 767
One place we might begin is with the ways in which such relationships ex
deictic rhetoric.
EPIDEICTIC AS "MERE" RHETORIC
Early in Rhetoric (1989), Renato Barilli attributes the invention of ep

to the early Sophists and describes it as "less functional and immediat
erative and forensic, "almost superfluous" (3). According to Barilli, ep
oped after the other two because it was not as vital to the polis as wa
deliberative (3). Prejudices against epideictic discourses as mere "
meant solely to reflect upon the speaker and his oratorical talent
since the time of the First Sophists. Like the term "sophist," which b
orific term denoting a wise teacher but became a term of disdain
word "intellectual"-see Guthrie 27-34), the word "epideixis" initial
ply "lecture" and denoted discourse appropriate within pedagogica
texts. Hence, it took such forms as encomia, eulogies, and other
addresses on a wide variety of topics, not all of them civic or poli
discourse fell into disfavor in antiquity as it evolved into a highly fig
fictive, mode of discourse that seemed primarily to advertise its spea
suspect was the use of poetic in the realm of public discourse that we
defending the figurative quality of his own rhetoric:
Those who aim to write anything in verse or prose which will make a
should seek out, not the most profitable discourses, but those which
tions; for the ear delights in these just as the eye delights in games an
To Nicocles 67)
Aware of the extent to which the success of public discourse depends

intellectual and emotional engagement of its audience, Isocrates m
"those who desire to command the attention of their hearers must abstain from
admonition and advice, and must say the kinds of things which they see are most
pleasing to the crowd" (I, To Nicocles 67-69). But he also acknowledged the extent
to which this practice was abused, referring to "those who deliver encomiums on
the most trivial things or on the most lawless men to have ever lived" (II, Pana-
thenaicus 457) and orations on such topics as "bumble-bees and salt" (III, Helen 67;
see also Duffy 82-83).
Among the fifth-century BCE Sophists, Gorgias (Isocrates's mentor) is the
best known for ornately figurative and imaginative oratory. His Encomium of Helen,
for example, ends with an ironic subversion of the ostensible motive for the speech
itself: "I have wished to write a speech which would be a praise of Helen and a
diversion to myself" (Sprague 54). Associated with sophism and sophistry from its
very beginnings, epideictic discourse was burdened from the start by suspicions of

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768 COLLEGE ENGLISH
the speaker's self-indulgence and opportunism, his manipulation of a

ments, and his distance from the interests of the community.
In the newest translation of Aristotle's Rhetoric (1991), Geor
summarizes Aristotle's concept of epideictic oratory as "speeches
for any immediate action by the audience but that characteristically
some person or thing, often on a ceremonial occasion such as a p
holiday" (Kennedy, Aristotle 7). More recently, Kennedy has suggest
tle's definition "needs to be broadened" to include "any discourse tha
at a specific action but is intended to influence the values and belief
ence" (New 4). This emphasis on influencing values and beliefs ra
sions and actions has led epideictic's critics (usually "outsiders" p
community addressed) to regard what is often a very specialized dis
rhetoric." (See, for example, Michael Carter, "Scholarship as Rhetori
While epideictic's ceremonial functions are legitimate and important
a kind of discourse whose themes and exigencies might appear to
timeless and transcendent or "universal" rather than timely, kairoti
based. Hence, we have come to regard epideictic discourse as mo
private than civic and social and to see its audience's role as pass
active. But this image of epideictic that comes down to us throu
sophistic texts oversimplifies its motives and underestimates its sign
not, for instance, help us explain such rhetoric's legitimate role
social, political, cultural, or even personal change. Consequently, it i
course that we so often hear referred to pejoratively in the popular
"rhetoric," as if all rhetoric were equivalent to sophistry in its most
Although epideictic discourses were widely used in antiquity b
other practitioners, it was, of course, Aristotle, himself a teacher o
identified it as one of three primary discourse types and sought to
cisely. Aristotle limited epideictic to the praise or censure of a perso
gible or intangible) and described it primarily as ceremonia
audience serves as spectator rather than judge (as in deliberative and
tory) and whose temporal focus is the present. (Aristotle also
whereas enthymemes best serve deliberative oratory and exampl
deictic oratory is best executed through amplification, a point t
later return.) Brian Vickers's In Defense of Rhetoric proposes that A
blurred the lines between epideictic and the other genres when h
since "anyone is your judge whom you have to persuade," the aud
tic may be "treated as the judges of it" (Rhetoric 1391b; qtd. Vickers
ings of Isocrates, too, demonstrate this blurring of the lines betwee
and epideictic discourse, as we will see.) According to Vickers, t
means Aristotle himself expanded the definition of epideictic to inc
"affecting internal decisions-opinions and attitudes" (56). Vick

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Roman rhetoricians, not Aristotle, for the narrow conception of epideictic t

come down to us.
Epideictic rhetoric was transformed under the Romans from a public to a pri-
vate instrument of expression and thought. "It is for this reason that, in the Mid-
dle Ages and Renaissance," Vickers writes, "all literature became subsumed under
epideictic, and all writing was perceived as occupying the related spheres of praise
and blame" (54). The Roman Empire restricted epideictic discourse to the realm of
aesthetics and discounted its "political or social function" (Vickers 57). Vickers
points to Cicero as perhaps the only man of his time who envisioned an important
social and ethical role for rhetoric (57)-a position which made him politically sus-
pect, we should add. Whether Aristotle's references to epideictic have been mis-
read, ignored, or forgotten, however, his comments on epideictic have helped to
identify it with aesthetic modes of discourse and, throughout rhetorical history,
have confounded attempts to distinguish it from poetic forms.
The scope, purpose, and worth of epideictic oratory have long been contested
and have recently drawn much scholarly attention. In 1978, Walter H. Beale sought
to classify the many competing definitions of epideictic and to offer a "new theory."
From Quintilian onward, Beale observed, rhetoricians have pondered the limita-
tions of Aristotle's definition and the degree to which the distinguishing traits of
epideictic, deliberative, and forensic types of speech can be found in examples of
the other discourse types. Beale identified several sets of criteria which have been
used to distinguish epideictic rhetoric--"style or function," temporal quality, and
"rhetorical situation or social function" (222-23)-and concluded that "none of
them provides a defining principle of sufficient generality to cover the entire range
of epideictic or fully to exclude other classes of rhetoric" (222). He cites Quintilian
as the first to articulate (if not to observe) that "praise and blame" was an inade-
quate defining characteristic for epideictic, for "on what kind of oratory are we to
consider ourselves to be employed when we complain, console, pacify, excite, ter-
rify, encourage, instruct, explain obscurities, narrate, plead for mercy, thank, con-
gratulate, reproach, abuse, describe, command, retract, express our desires and
opinions, to mention no other of the many possibilities" (Institutes of Oratory
III.iv.3, qtd. Beale 222).
Indeed, Aristotle's paradigm would seem not to account for the variety of epi-
deictic discourses that have evolved since his time. In fairness, Beale notes that the
variability of such discourses and the complexity of the motives which inform them
"may be part of the reason why Aristotle abandoned prevailing distinctions between
[deliberative] and [epideictic] and concentrated instead upon the specific ends, sub-
ject matters, and author-audience relations of discourse" (223). (We might also
recall that Aristotle's Rhetoric is a compilation of lectures given throughout his
career, in effect, a work-in-progress.) And so, if we are to appreciate the richness,
complexity, even utility of epideictic rhetoric today, we need to go beyond Aristo-

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770 COLLEGE ENGLISH
tie's criteria in order to broaden (as Kennedy has suggested) our

tic's style, function, time, and place-in short, its kairos.
GETTING BEYOND PRAISE AND BLAME
The use of epideictic by the Sophists may in part be explained by the

status as itinerant teachers who were not necessarily citizens of most
which they taught. Epideictic oratory allowed these "outsiders" to pa
civic life of the places they toured as public speakers and lecturers an
(see Duffy; Jarratt). In addition to their more intimate public lectures
invitation, at the homes of various patrons, the Sophists made their li
delivering such discourses as funeral orations honoring military or c
encomia marking such cultural events as theater festivals and athleti
Civic ethics is an important recurrent theme in such oratory. Indeed,
Protagoras, who taught discourse facility as an instrument of statesc
ship, civic or political "virtue" or "excellence" (arete) was at the very c
ical training. (And we might recall here that Protagoras was not intere
arena exclusively but was also concerned that anyone he taught would
age "personal affairs" as well "so as to become a real power in the city,
and man of action" [Plato, Protagoras; Collected Dialogues 318e-19a].)
Through his published orations and letters on leadership, Iso
sought to instill a sense of civic responsibility that would guide both
vate conduct, decisions, and action (see, for example, Evagoras, To Dem
To Nicocles). Nicole Loraux points out in The Invention ofAthens that
lic funeral oration, through its appeal to civic ideals, served not only
dead but to guide the conduct of the living. This marriage of orat
and personal conduct is significant. Most obviously, perhaps, it places
sis on the ethos of the epideictic speaker, a topic to which we will retu
thermore, it suggests epideictic's tendency toward "idealization"
also Takis Poulokos on Isocrates's Evagoras and Sullivan, "Kairos
together images of both the real-what is or at least appears to be-
or imaginary-what might be-epideictic discourse allows speaker
envision possible, new, or at least different worlds. We should keep i
that such images of the real and the fictive need not be positive f
accomplish its visionary function. Often enough, negative image
could be provide powerful incentives for change.
Its close connection to the public sphere and its visionary qua
aspects of ancient epideictic that have been all but erased from our c
standing of such discourses. Reconceptualizing epideictic in order
these traits will in some sense require that we "reinvent" not only ep
its relationship to forensic and deliberative rhetorics as well. Recentl

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laid the groundwork for such revision. What follows is a synthesis and analy
the most recent scholarship on epideictic which seeks to define it both mor
cisely and more broadly, often by returning to its roots in antiquity (most
Gorgias, though his particular linguistic orientation jeopardizes arguments f
deictic's civic function). The scholarship summarized here contributes to
richer conception of epideictic rhetoric not simply as a medium for conveyi
munal beliefs and values, thus serving an identity function. Rather, taken t
these scholars point us toward a view of epideictic as a vehicle through whic
munities can imagine and bring about change.
Brian Vickers has described the epideictic discourse of both Plato and Iso
as, in different ways and to different ends, "reinforcing the norms of public
ity"(55). While Vickers concedes that Aristotle's view of epideictic is less pol
he writes, "Aristotle at least joins Plato and Isocrates in ascribing a pragmatic
suasive function to epideictic, which can arouse listeners to emulation: 'To p
man is in one respect akin to urging a course of action. .. . Consequently, wh
you want to praise any one, think what you would urge people to do' " (Vick
quoting Aristotle's Rhetoric). Although the teaching of civic ethics is perhap
dispersed today than it was in antiquity, civic responsibility is a theme of cur
deictic oratory as well. Like its ancient counterpart, contemporary epideicti
toric is ultimately about conduct and values within communities addr
invoked. It occurs in assemblies large and small, formal and informal, pu
private. Its efficacy depends today as much as it did in antiquity on kairos o
gency" in the broadest sense (not just the "occasion" of discourse, but what
the occasion what it is-the critical convergence of time, place, and circu
including audience needs, desires, expectations, attitudes, resources, and so o
Epideictic discourse today operates in contexts civic, professional or
tional, pedagogical, and so on that invite individuals to evaluate the com
or institutions to which they belong, their own roles within them, and the r
responsibilities of their fellow constituents, including their leaders. We see
ples of such discourse on the op-ed pages of our newspapers, on our televisio
our classrooms, at conferences, in professional journals as well as in places o
ship and other sites at which communal and institutional goals, practices, an
ues are reaffirmed, reevaluated, or revised and where specific kinds of beha
urged. The interdependence of "the One and the Many" (Miller, "Rhetor
the individual and the community-is thus another recurrent theme of conte
rary as well as classical epideictic.
TOWARD A RECONCEPTUALIZATION
As Beale's analysis shows, the style and function of epideictic rhetoric work
dem. Traditionally, however, its potential for powerful aesthetic effects ha

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772 COLLEGE ENGLISH
shadowed its civic importance. Definitions of epideictic that emphas

elements identify its immediate aim as aesthetic pleasure or "del
which Gorgias alludes in his Encomium of Helen as the aim of orato
in general: "To tell the knowing what they know shows it is rig
delight" (Sprague 51). Such delight, these definitions imply, reflects
the speaker. Hence, such definitions present a view of epideictic as u
ing the interests of the speaker. Although Gorgias and his generatio
arose at a time of transition between orality and literacy, Athens in
BCE remained a primarily oral culture. Speech (Gorgias uses th
"logos") had tremendous power, and poetic uses of language, like
the Sophists and their patrons (Pericles, for example), continued to
cles for cultural history and instruments of social cohesion.
In Magic and Rhetoric in Ancient Greece, Jacqueline de Romilly ar
gianic rhetoric retained a great many traits of poetic and indeed cas
listeners, suspending them in time. (Carter makes a similar claim
general and the ritual function of epideictic rhetoric in partic
[220-23].) The ostensible purpose of Gorgias's encomium is to pr
the argument is as much a defense of her conduct. In his own encom
Isocrates takes issue with Gorgias for writing a defense which, by c
not draw upon the same topics as the encomium, nor indeed d
actions of the same kind, but quite the contrary" (III, Helen 67-69).
ical strategy allows Gorgias to portray Helen as a victim of the psyc
of logos, effectively shifting the blame for her behavior and the fo
to the power of logos itself. By claiming that speech acts on the psy
or witchcraft (Sprague 52-53), Gorgias implicates his own spee
usurping his listeners' reason and their will. He thus warns his liste
own ability to charm them while, at the same time, he ingratiat
them.
It is hard to resist reading Gorgias's Helen as being at least as much about

rhetoric as about Helen herself. In fact, Charles P. Segal has described it as "an
encomium on logos itself" (Segal 102), and John Poulakos as a "defense" of rhetoric
("Gorgias's Encomium"). Scott Consigny offers yet another explanation: "By draw-
ing attention to his own process of rhetorical adaptation and manipulation, Gor-
gias reveals the discourse he uses.. . to be a repertoire of deceptive instruments
rather than a transparent medium for revealing and transmitting truths" (293-94).
The broad term "logos," in addition to "speech" in particular and discourse in gen-
eral, can also mean "argument" or "reasoning." (See Kerferd 83ff.) Through his use
of this broad term, Gorgias's comments about the ambiguity of speech can be
understood to encompass all discourse, not just epideictic. Consigny suspects that,
from Plato and Isocrates onward, "the hostility shown toward Gorgias by dogmatic
philosophers, literary stylists, and forensic orators may derive from Gorgias's threat

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to the privileged status of their own discourse" (294). Deception was, for
an essential trait of logos. For him, there was no way to transmit Truth throu
guage because the relationship between language and things was, in his view,
thing other than a simple and immediate correspondence. As he explains in O
Nonexistent or On Nature, "For that by which we reveal is logos, but logos is n
stances and existing things" (Sprague 46). In this and other remarks on w
have come to call the "nonreferential" nature of language, Gorgias prefigure
turalist and poststructuralist language theorists. The view of epideictic orato
irrational, passional (that is, emotional, visceral, or aesthetic), and inaut
combined with the fact that, as it evolved, it was increasingly likely to be w
down (Duffy 87) diminished confidence in its capacity for truth and contrib
its conflation with poetic.
A brief survey of the scholarship on epideictic published over the la
decades in such journals as College English, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Quarterly
of Speech, Rhetoric Review, and Rhetoric Society Quarterly will suggest the ex
which these ancient prejudices still hold sway. As Beale noted, figurative lang
rhythmic sentence patterns, subjects of praise and blame, and ceremonial con
have long been seen as the defining characteristics of epideictic rhetori
recently, scholars have distinguished epideictic from deliberative and forens
course somewhat more precisely but in related ways. For some, the defining
is epideictic's apparent self-serving and self-indulgent nature, which is one w
describing its emphasis on ethos and its speaker's (or writer's) charismatic pow
an audience (Duffy; Sullivan). Some definitions emphasize epideictic's perform
aspect, its capacity for linguistic and syntactical play, aesthetic pleasure, or
tainment"-what amounts to an emphasis on pathos. (This view prevails i
uity, even among the Roman and early Christian rhetoricians.) Others
epideictic's apparent detachment from the immediate needs and concern
audience (Chase; Takis Poulakos; Rosenfield), dismissing its logos as inexpe
impractical and leaving it vulnerable to charges of being "mere rhetoric.
definitions focus on epideictic's enduring connection to ritual, through
appeals to a kind of culturally grounded morality and collapses temporal
tions so that past, present, and future needs and desires can be seen t
(Carter; Rosenfield). While these definitions do indeed differ, their distincti
often quite slippery. Some definitions conceptualize different aspects of epid
discourse; others look at a single aspect from different perspectives. The mo
cise a definition, however, the more it seems to shade into one or more of t
ers. This would seem to suggest that epideictic discourse is wider in scope an
complex in motive, aim, and function than any one of these definitions can
or encompass.
Rather than offer yet another definition to compete with the rest, I want to sug-
gest that the many existing conceptions of what epideictic is and does must be under-

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774 COLLEGE ENGLISH
stood to describe a composite but fluid whole which any particular d

describe only in part. But I wish also to suggest that epideictic's que
tionship to truth need not be seen to undermine or diminish its sig
contrary, its distance from truth or reality is perhaps the source of
visionary potency which the Sophists Protagoras and Gorgias and, la
acknowledged. Cast in such light, epideictic can be seen to play an in
in judgments, decisions, and actions civic and social as well as aesthet
"personal" within "social"; unless one lives as a hermit, even one'
choices will ultimately have some interpersonal, or social, repercussi
valent concept of epideictic combined with a more favorable reading
to truth leads to an understanding of epideictic less as a genre or fixe
ical elements and more as a persuasive gesture or mode we might loc
ber of discourses, including those we might regard as deliberative or
Among those who define epideictic rhetoric by its poetic tenden
K. Duffy writes that "the language of epideictic is prone to be least
most poetic because the facts themselves are not really at issue. Rath
mation of ethical standards of judgment and behavior serves as the
creative use of language .... While the forensic and deliberative o
tially bound to the facts at hand, the epideictic orator need be less c
material realities than with the abstract propositions he aims to
Along similar lines, J. Richard Chase remarks, "In short, in epideict
burning issue that demands a decision. Thus the listener, not caught
flict of ideas, can better appreciate the artistic efforts of the speaker
Chase stipulates that the speaker's efforts "display... content, no
rhetorical abilities" (296; emphasis added). Takis Poulakos also des
as the "most literary of the three types of oratory, . . . bear[ing] th
blance to empirical reality" ("Isocrates's" 320), and Vickers has ob
classical theory epideictic oscillated between a functional and a purel
concept" (54). (Poulakos comments here on Isocrates's Evagoras, a
ute which brings together elements of both encomium and fune
urges the son of a king to follow his father's leadership example
interesting Isocrates's stretching of historical truth to promote civi
gesture indicates an important role for epideictic within deliberativ
emphasis on ornament over function (like the emphasis on ethos) dr
the speaker's oratorical skill and away from the content of what is
livan explains, "whereas deliberative rhetoric is linked with logos and
sic with logos and pathos, epideictic is linked with ethos and pathos, t
emphasis on the rhetor's presentation and the second characterizing
response" ("Ethos" 118). That ethos plays a significant role in bot
deliberative helps explain why, at times, it can be difficult to decid
dominates a discourse.

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With regard to its logos, epideictic has been deemed a "rhetoric of ass
livan, "Ethos" 117) which, because it draws on doxa (commonplaces), te
ence what they want to hear. (Plato calls such uses of rhetoric "flattery"
[501 c].) Sullivan views epideictic as a "rhetoric of orthodoxies" delivered t
ence of "the converted" (117). This "insider" view informs Carter's ch
tion of scholarship as epideictic because it appears to have "intrinsic"
"extrinsic" currency ("Scholarship" 306). Carter defines epideictic as
which scholarship may be seen as one manifestation) because, like other r
serves an identification function and promotes or strengthens social or in
cohesion by generating a kind of communal knowledge, a set of palatable
truths. He distinguishes between the easily recognized "public epideictic"
of July speeches, wedding toasts, eulogies, celebrations of national he
tance speeches at awards banquets, recitations at religious events") and
"private epideictic" whose purpose is "not to alter reality by modifying b
directing actions, as one expects of rhetoric, but to express who we are a
can be" ("Scholarship" 307). It is, finally, "a discourse that a commun
reveal itself to itself' (307).
Carter elsewhere asserts that "epideictic can be understood only w
considered as ritual" ("Ritual" 212), which creates a kind of "primordi
ogical knowledge, builds community, and guides its participants' public an
acts (213-14). Underlying his discussion of epideictic as ritual is the a
that both are fundamentally participatory in a spiritual or intellectual wa
characteristics of ritual-its "sacralization of time" (223) and its invol
"mystery" (224)-seem less applicable to all examples of epideictic
although Aristotle's restriction of epideictic to present interests and exis
edge is problematic. Although Carter's work contributes a great deal towa
ceptualizing and reviving interest in epideictic rhetoric, his association of
with ritual in general and scholarship in particular fails to account for th
shifts we know can and do occur within cultures and communities, suppla
ways of seeing with new ones.
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca have described epideictic discour
"practiced by those who, in a society, defend the traditional and accep
those which are the object of education, not the new and revolutionary v
stir up controversy and polemics" (51)-a view which, until relatively
might seem to exclude scholarship. Echoing their New Rhetoric, Duff
epideictic as "an instrument for reexamination and renewal of v
Lawrence Rosenfield sees it, from a rather Platonic perspective, as a d
"acknowledgment" or "disparagement" (133) whose aims do not seem r
all but closer to an experience of sublimity-a "radiant disclosure" (137
acts and thoughts" (134) beyond "the hollow fashions and opinions of
These depictions of epideictic emphasize its aesthetic (pathos) and dida

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qualities and reflect the widely held assumption that its audience co
spectators, not active participants. Hence, epideictic discourse is
transmitting aesthetic or moral values and is to be appreciated f
Kennedy once wrote that, even under the paradigm of the New Rhe
tic is "noncontroversial and aims at increased adherence to an acc
this view, like Aristotle's, fails to provide adequately for the mixtur
found in actual oratory" (Classical 74). Much contemporary epideictic
ciated with civic rituals, for instance, or even academic ones, takes a
problem to be solved, a condition to be changed, a cause to be tak
gencies would seem to make epideictic discourse preliminary to fore
erative discourses and therefore indispensable (rather than inf
(Walter Jost's rhetorical reading of Frost's "Death of the Hired M
epideictic's role as a "rhetorical mode of thought" which "prec
writes ..., even ... makes ... possible in the first place" the delibe
the poem itself enacts [406, 410].)
AUDIENCE RESPONSE TO EPIDEICTIC RHETORIC
Indeed, the prevailing view of epideictic discourse hinges on

receives it as the inspired discourse of ritual celebration, invoking
ues. Members of the epideictic audience are therefore typically vie
aesthetic judges of the speaker's talent and, at worst, as victims of
According to Sullivan, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, and others,
ences are given a view of reality with which they already agree. Th
of such discourse is limited and self-contained, for it can elicit littl
ding heads, applause, or, occasionally, a standing ovation. Such a vi
raises interesting questions for analyzing its role in antiquity whe
doxically, as a rhetoric taught by foreigners (see, for example,
Rereading the Sophists) and an instrument of political leadership (
Donald Kagan's Pericles ofAthens and Jacqueline de Romilly's The G
Periclean Athens).
As Beale and Carter both acknowledge, Christine Oravec's r
Rhetoric has advanced our understanding of the audience for epide
to Oravec, Aristotle's use of the term theoria implies that epideictic
ence in more than passive perception; it also elicits a kind of cr
the sort that leads to insight or "understanding" (166). Thus, Orav
the audience of an epideictic speech understands or theorizes as

learning and ultimately for practical action. The epideictic speaker
ciples derived from the common store of his audience, then applie
to well-known or typical objects or persons. From this act of appl
ence 'learns' or 'understands' the connection between the princip

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festation of the principle, an act of comprehension which illuminates their

riences [pathos] and increases their trust [ethos] in the speaker's judgment [lo
emphasis added)
Oravec's description of epideictic's educative function illuminates the

force of pedagogical discourse in general and alludes to the interplay of a
occurs in such discourse. Other scholars have acknowledged epideictic
function as well. Sullivan maintains that "Education is a form of epideicti
that relies on the rhetorical acts of praise and blame (1) to teach reasonin
priate to professional and public practices, and (2) to instill in the studen
ments or emotions considered appropriate within the orthodoxy which th
represents" ("Closer" 71). For Carter, epideictic's pedagogical value l
capacity "to exemplify and model the praiseworthy (or blameworthy) by
vivid (even if exaggerated) images with words" ("Ritual" 228). Duffy's
epideictic can be a vehicle for private, philosophical education seem
Carter's conception of scholarship as epideictic because it has intrinsi
identifies its speaker/writer before a community as a member of that co
No commentator has yet connected epideictic's pedagogical potential with
ical function, however. While Sullivan has identified five categories of "e
acts which support orthodoxies: education, legitimation, demonstratio
tion, and criticism" ("Epideictic Character" 340), his premise-that each
on and functions to preserve a particular orthodoxy-would seem, on
deny epideictic's potential for overthrowing orthodoxies by showing anot
beliefs to be "not in any way truer," but apparently "better" (Plato, Theaet
But epideictic discourse can be a vehicle for self-reflection and self-cr
an expression of critical and rhetorical self-consciousness, both public
vately. It can help us to scrutinize our own privately and publicly held be
prejudices, to evaluate them, and to decide whether to reaffirm or reform
am aware that this assertion comes dangerously close to proposing that w
epideictic rhetoric to get outside of our system of beliefs, a stance Stanle
described as "theory hope," the "anti-foundationalist's" dilemma (Do
Essentially, Fish maintains, our ideologies situate us historically and pred
toward seeing, thinking, believing, and acting as we do. They operate, in
Burke's words, as "terministic screens" and "trained incapacities," acq
learned through acculturation. Such a view of perception would seem
that nothing ever changes, or that when things do change, we are at a loss
how or why with any degree of objectivity (an assumption which bears s
on our notion of what constitutes "history" and even our concept of "
Fish, rhetorical self-consciousness is impossible. I would argue, howev
can and do use epideictic rhetoric-internally and with others-to refle
own beliefs and values, and that all rhetoric, including epideictic, can be
change. Patricia Bizzell, who engaged Fish on the issue of theory hope,

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Even if we do not believe that our theory grants access to standards of

are transcendent and absolute, we still must believe that our theory inf
for making judgments that confers something like objective mental p
act as if we believe that our theory enables us to organize and evalu
Indeed we could not act at all if we didn't believe this. (214-15; em
Bruce E. Gronbeck and Richard A. Engnell have both drawn

with regard to Gorgianic rhetoric and its relation to his epistem
heavily on Mario Untersteiner's readings of sophistic texts, bot
Engnell see a "tragic" view of knowledge in Gorgianic discourse
describes as "the hope and the taste without the vision and the m
these scholars, it is this "tragedy of knowledge" (Gronbeck 29) that
and mandates the deceptiveness of logos which Gorgias acknowle
even celebrated. But, given the ambiguity of the word logos itself,
must be seen as both rhetorical and linguistic. That is, decepti
rhetorical effect but a condition fundamental to language, exist
regardless of a speaker's (or writer's) motives. While this condition m
as tragic in cultures that hold transcendent truths in high esteem, it
as "comic" in a culture that regards such truths as beyond reach and
therefore contingent upon culturally relative values and experience.
Engnell, the deceptiveness of logos (apate) is necessary, for it permi
decisions and take actions based on incomplete and fallible human kn
inescapable deceptiveness of logos in general enables us to deceiv
each other that one course of action, for instance, is better tha
Without such deception, Engnell holds, we could not act at all. A
doesn't describe it as such, he has identified a reciprocal comic ca
tive logos which, when embraced, can resolve the epistemological cr
about. In Plato's Theaetetus, Socrates, speaking for Protagoras, offer
comic rationale for sophistic oratory:
wise and honest public speakers substitute in the community soun

views of what is right. For ... whatever practices seem right and laud
ticular state are so, for that state, so long as it holds by them. Only,
tices are, in any particular case, unsound for them, the wise man sub
that are and appear sound. (167b-c; emphasis added)
Seeing epideictic in traditional ways takes for granted the stabil

tence of a cultural or communal ideology and does not help us expla
discourse has long been used to call accepted values and prejudice
ies") into question, to challenge them in order to "modify a pree
affairs" (Perelman 54). But we need not look far for evidence th
occurs. Within academe, for example, arguments for canon revision
grams of study that have effected changes in what and how ou
resulted from other arguments that questioned the inherent "virtue

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Books." Both within and outside the academy, public images of our coun
assimilating differences have given way to images of cultural diversity t
inspired both controversy and celebration, competition and cooperation.
cally, the "founding fathers" of our nation criticized existing political and ec
conditions in the Declaration of Independence and argued for an alternat
could only envision. And during the last presidential campaign, epideictic rh
helped to change the leadership of the country. How can a discourse that is n
nected to immediate action in the world motivate social, political, or oth
logical change? How can it possibly promote the long-term stability of a cult
community? How-and why-do values and prejudices change?
As Duffy has suggested, even the "true encomiast aims not to flatter his
ence ... but to find words capable of conveying the philosophical ideas which
the basis offuturejudgment and action" (86; emphasis added). This excerpt fr
gias's Epitaphios fragment offers another illustration from antiquity of how e
tic rhetoric can be, simultaneously, philosophical and expedient:
For these men attained an excellence which is divine and a mortality which is
often preferring gentle fairness to inflexible justice, often straightness of sp
exactness of law, believing that the most godlike and universal law was this: i
of duty dutifully to speak and to leave unspoken, to act, and to leave undone
vating two needed qualities especially, judgment and strength, one for delibe
the other for accomplishing. (Sprague 48-49)
In these lines, Gorgias juxtaposes praiseworthy and blameworthy images

vate" the image of the warrior that is to be emulated but also to redefine va
conduct and hence what it means to be a warrior (Enos 78). In effect, Go
attempting here to reconstruct a cultural archetype. According to Takis Poul
Gorgias "is at once complicitous with and resistant to the constraints of an i
tionalized custom" ("Historical" 91); the discourse both divides and conne
sociates and identifies. Thus it "occupies a mid-point between conform
rebellion," evident in its portrayal of arete as "a hybrid concept, a category
of both received codes of excellence and contingent practices" (91). We m
that Gorgias is invoking values that are hierarchically related and is shifting
hierarchy for practical, expedient purposes. Moreover, the conduct lauded an
up for emulation is praised for its civic consequences. Similarly, examples of
ictic rhetoric in our own culture give significant attention to topoi of blame a
voke a shuffling of values. Accepted values may be under scrutiny, or they m
been forgotten, and so the disparity between existing and desired con
becomes the subject of critique in, for example, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "M
on Washington Address" (the "I Have a Dream" speech), and more recentl
ernor Mario Cuomo's speech nominating Bill Clinton for President, Pr
Clinton's inaugural address, and even Maya Angelou's inaugural poem,
Pulse of the Morning." But the critique is only part of the story. Ultimately,

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tique leads to a vision that the audience is not only invited to share
help actualize.
EPIDEICTIC RHETORIC IN CIVIC DISCOURSE
Each of these speeches draws upon blame topoi for its exigency,
blame (explicit or implicit) is not simply pinned on a scapegoat t
subject of the speech. Instead, the blame is laid upon the audience of
well. Each discourse creates an atmosphere of urgency to which the
respond. While the immediate audience of each speech may pe
sharing the speaker's orthodoxies, the larger audience for the
whom the actualization of its vision depends-must be won over.
of the speech to be perceived and accepted as real, the speaker m
change in perspective in this larger audience and make the vision ap
and worthy possibility for the entire audience. Such epideictic disco
ily fuses the empirical and doxastic with the fictional and imaginar
its rhetorical aims.
Angelou's poem illustrates this fusion of disparate elements.
"argument" that seeks to evoke civic responsibility and to elic
Through the use of figurative language, the poem puts forth a v
serve as the exigency for such responsible action as in these clim
"Here on the pulse of this new day / You may have the grace to loo
And into your sister's eyes, / And into your brother's face, / Your co
simply / Very simply / With hope-/ Good morning." More than
ment of or opportunity for reflection, the poem reinvents reality.
tic rhetoric of Protagoras, Gorgias, Isocrates, and others, Angelo
the past, evaluates the present, and envisions the future. Of course,
easily made with regard to poetry. But epideictic prose, too, blen
imaginary images and can be seen as "present[ing] not a pre-existing
possible world" (Takis Poulakos, "Isocrates's" 323). (On the conn
the sophistic epideictic and "the possible," see John Poulakos, "R
Like sophistic epideictic with its often political themes, th
Cuomo and Clinton can be seen to straddle Aristotle's epideictic
categories in style and function. Both speeches interweave subje
censure. Even Clinton's inaugural address sounds less like celebration
and solicitation. The first part of both speeches criticizes existin
who or what, in the speaker's view, is responsible for them (blame t
speaker appeals to the virtues of those who can change those condit
the audience of the discourse through their support of a new leader
his listeners-convention delegates and television viewers-to see t
elected. Clinton enjoins his intended audience-all Americans-to

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vision and support his decisions. Both speeches seek to instill a sense o
responsibility for the larger community's welfare-if not for the way
then for the way they might be. Cuomo proceeds by listing the reasons "
needs Bill Clinton" (276). Clinton first invokes Thomas Jefferson as th
ment of political virtue both to identify his own interests and (it wou
gain audience favor. With this epideictic foundation, if you will, he then
listeners to "renew America" because "We can do no less" and "Americans deserve
better" (258-59). Toward the end of his speech, Clinton appeals directly to each
auditor's sense of civic responsibility when he urges, "you, too, must play your part
in our renewal" (259).
Cuomo, Clinton, and Angelou draw upon praise and blame topoi for their exi-
gencies. Their discourses urge change in the world by first urging on listeners a
particular way of seeing that can illuminate and justify change and then appealing
to a set of positive values assumed to be held in common that will guide such
change. That is, the opportunity and potential for change begin with a vision of
that change in the minds of those who can carry it out. In effect, then, epideictic
discourse alters the reality in which it participates by making its vision a reality for
its audience and instilling a belief that the power for realizing the vision lies with
them.
According to Sullivan, "Epideictic speakers make allusions to historical events

or works and thereby identify themselves with the tradition, but they are not likely
to ground their assertions with meticulous detail .... [They] are able.. . to make
broad generalizations because they express sentiments already held by the audience
and because they are perceived as having the experience needed to make such state-
ments" ("Ethos" 123). Analysis of the Clinton and Cuomo speeches reveals that Sul-
livan's assessment is only partially true. While both speakers make more use of
generalizations than specific, factual assertions throughout (although there are
some of these), this is not to say that no support for general claims is offered.
Rather, more often than not, supporting arguments are expressed in figurative lan-
guage: amplification, metaphor, metonymy. (Elsewhere, Sullivan asserts that "Epi-
deictic does argue and it does present evidence, though the structure of the argument
may be different from that of forensic or deliberative rhetoric" ["Epideictic" 341;
emphasis added].) For instance, Cuomo's speech refers to the "ship of state" which
is "headed for the rocks. The crew knows it. The passengers know it. Only the cap-
tain of the ship-President Bush-appears not to know it" (274). Having identified
the exigency in figures, Cuomo offers his solution to the problem in plain, literal
terms. Clinton's inaugural speech makes vivid use of amplification and antithesis,
the figures most often associated with sophistic epideictic, as in this passage:
But when most people are working harder for less, when others cannot work at all, when
the cost of health care devastates families and threatens to bankrupt our enterprises great
and small, when fear of crime robs law-abiding citizens of their freedom, and when mil-

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lions of poor children cannot even imagine the lives we are calling them
not made change our friend. (258)
Such figures dramatize and interpret the state of affairs under critic
these figures are not themselves sufficient to instill the kind of attit
that will dispose them to action. Jeffrey Walker's recent reco
enthymeme helps explain the complex "mix of intentions" and effec
temporary "political" epideictic speeches like these.
Before Aristotle, sophists like Isocrates and Anaximenes empl
enthymeme which they saw as "a strategic, kairotic, argumentat
exploits a cluster of emotively charged, value-laden oppositions ... in
erate in its audience a passional identification with or adherence
stance ... [that would] strike the audience as an 'abrupt' and decis
sight" (Walker, "Body" 53). Walker explains that most of the ent
and hear today "appear as pseudo-syllogistic inferences, announce
'therefore,' that invoke an insight (or what is meant to be seen as on
much build-up of inquiry or critique. In other words, enthymem
statements that incorporate all three Aristotelian proofs. Walke
enthymeme as "any figure" (63) that "serves not only to draw concl
and decisively, to foreground stance and motivate identification wit
(55). The employment of enthymemes in epideictic discourse thus m
course rhetorical, argumentative, by entailing judgment and action
not only to emotions but to reason and ethics.
To illustrate this more subtle enthymemic structure, Walker cit
ated form) the passage from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from
Jail" excerpted here:
But when you have seen the vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fa
drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-
curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see
ity of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight c
in the midst of an affluent society; ... when you are forever fighting
sense of "nobodiness"-then you will understand why we find it di
(83-84; I14)
This is the same structure we find in the passage from Clinton's speech just cited:
a build up of "emotively significant ideas (or images) that work to motivate a pas-
sional identification with the speaker's stance" (Walker 59). As Walker's analysis
shows, epideictic rhetoric integrates ethos, logos, and pathos-the "simultaneous
dimensions of the enthymeme" (60). This climactic "turning" of enthymemes may
in part explain Plato's objection to sophistic uses of epideictic, for the structure is
artfully misleading; the epiphanic insight to which it leads depends upon an ele-
ment of the unexpected, and so its effect may seem manipulative, exploitative. It is,

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however, a shrewd argumentative strategy for gaining the attention of an a

resistant, even hostile, to change.
Epideictic's capacities for altering realities and for inspiring change for
ter are two tendencies we might associate with the Sophist Protagoras's use
discourse. In his reading of Protagorean doctrines, particularly that of "
the weaker logos stronger" (109), Edward Schiappa explains that "what P
had in mind with the stronger/weaker fragment was the substitution of a pr
(but weaker) logos for a less preferable (but temporarily dominant) logos of
'experience' " (109). The point of this rhetorical strategy is expressed by
(speaking for Protagoras) in Plato's Theaetetus when he says, "What is wante
change to the opposite condition, because the other state is better" (167
dialogue, the strategy applies not only to civic conditions but to medical and
agogical ones as well:
And so too in education a change has to be effected from the worse condition
better; only, whereas the physician produces a change by means of drugs, the
does it by discourse. It is not that a man makes someone who previously t
what is false think what is true. .... Rather, ... one makes him, by reason of
condition, think other and sound thoughts, which some people ignorantly c
whereas I should say that one set of thoughts is better than the other, but not
way truer. (167a-b)
Here Protagoras, through Plato, alludes to the pedagogical function of a

tive discourse whose kairos (both "exigency and context") might classify it a
ictic. Protagoras here describes it as a discourse that draws on doxa (common
rather than episteme (knowledge) or aletheia (truth). But as A. T. Cole explai
orator's task... is to examine the institutions of a given city in light of a ut
ian calculus and to persuade his audience to accept new practices as right and
orable whenever he finds that existing ones do not serve the city's best inte
The sophist is evidently to be regarded as seeing to the best interests of his
in the same way" (110). James A. Mackin, Jr., makes a similar claim about P
funeral oration, "the earliest example we have of the epitaphioi, orations give
lective funerals for the war dead" (252).
Pericles was both a patron of the fifth-century Sophists and a powerful
in his own right whose success as a statesman coincided with Athens's "gold
Mackin shows that Pericles's funeral oration, much like Gorgias's cited earlie
conserves and subverts its tradition, but Pericles does so by building co
identity on a faulty foundation. According to Mackin, Pericles uses "enthym
antithesis" ("suggesting the opposition of ideas but not fully stating the con
premises") (254) to alter Athens's image of itself and its relationship to t
city-states, especially Sparta (252-55). Pericles had to make "the common
Athenian beliefs about Sparta" more important and immediate than that
edge and experience of the audience" which contradicted an image of A

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independent and self-sufficient (2 54-55). Mackin cites Rosenfield an

in the Handbook of Rhetorical and Communication Theory which ac
enthymeme's aesthetic quality and its compatibility with epideictic:
give pleasure because their maximlike injunctions come to the audien
revelations" (qtd. Mackin 255). He argues that Pericles's speech a
political identity so successfully and completely that it made Athen
thus contributed to its defeat in the Peloponnesian War.
THE DELIBERATIVE AND IMAGINATIVE

FUNCTIONS OF EPIDEICTIC
Mackin's analysis also shows that the identification and dissociat

in epideictic to increase communal solidarity can ultimately bac
negative consequences both within and outside the commu
think of Hitler's Nazi rhetoric to be convinced of this.) Mackin
of Athens in part to the fictionalizing potential of epideictic rh
of poetic and rhetoric that Plato found suspect. Indeed, epideict
sentation of history, or the present for that matter, is not easily
ethical impulses. Moreover, the suspect nature of Pericles's orat
plicated by the issue of authorship. In A New History of Classic
Kennedy reminds us that the oration we attribute to Peri
Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War. Moreover, Kenn
the historian was exiled for twenty years during the war and c
the speech, the extant text is more likely a reconstruction than
(Takis Poulakos similarly questions Isocrates's use of the pas
which the moral purpose of the speech seems to take prece
accuracy.) Plato, too, raises questions about the authorship of Pe
tion in the dialogue Menexenus, where he has Socrates attribute
icles's mistress and one of few Athenian women of the time wh
highly literate, and politically savvy. Plato has Socrates descr
ter... in rhetoric" (236a). (For insight into the relationship
Aspasia, and Socrates, see Glenn.)
The Athenian public funeral oration was an "institution" (
tor was carefully chosen, and to be chosen was an honor and
would not have been unusual for Pericles to have delivered a
logographer (or "speech-writer"), it would have been scandalous,
for that logographer to have been a woman, particularly since wo
cial "citizens" of Athens. Plato undermines Pericles's oration in other more subtle
ways too, as when he has Socrates claim to have been in a kind of stupor "for three
days" (235b-c) after hearing the speech. Because of these and other ironies, Con-
signy reads Plato's version of the speech as parody. Yet according to Linda

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Hutcheon, parody both conserves and subverts a text's or genre's tr

acknowledging its institutional force by changing it in some meaningful
is Plato's purpose, we might conclude that he did see some value in
rhetoric despite his rather hostile criticisms of it.
Interpretations of Protagorean doctrines are also complicated by the f
Plato, an ardent critic of the Sophists, not only preserved but, in som
rewrote them. Plato's criticisms of the Sophists are themselves complicate
own use of their rhetorical techniques, including epideixis. In contrast
Duffy reads Plato's Menexenus in a more straightforward manner and con
use of epideictic there with the three epideictic speeches in Phaedrus.
Plato's use of epideictic in the two dialogues illuminates the two comp
impulses of such discourse: one philosophical, the other educative. Ac
Duffy:
Two types of epideictic rhetoric are legitimate from a Platonic perspective: one pub-
lic, the other private. The philosophical purposes of both center on educating the
audience in the philosophical ideas which undergird human judgment and conduct.
In the Menexenus Plato presents epideictic as a means of publicly celebrating the val-
ues recognized to underlie the noble deeds of previous generations, values ... which
are at the core of future deliberation and action..... In the Phaedrus epideictic
rhetoric's focus remains upon values and human conduct, but Plato does not rely on
history as a source of invention; rather, he turns to imagination and the rich
resources of language. (90-91)
While Duffy's analysis makes clear that epideictic is, potentially, philosophical
rhetoric, this should not suggest that it is disconnected or remote from action in
the world, although there may be a time lag between the discourse itself and the
action it precipitates. Rather, it might suggest the close connection, even reciproc-
ity, that exists between epideictic and deliberative discourses.
According to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's New Rhetoric, "The purpose of
an epideictic speech is to increase the intensity of adherence to values held in com-
mon by the audience and the speaker ... with a view to possible later action" (52).
"Unlike deliberative and legal speeches, which aim at obtaining a decision to act,"
the authors contend, "the educational and epideictic speeches create a mere dispo-
sition toward action, which makes them comparable to philosophical thought" (54).
This supposed distance from immediate judgment or action perhaps renders epi-
deictic discourse more likely than deliberative or forensic to become "mere
rhetoric." But Kenneth Burke's description of rhetorical language as "inducement
to action (or attitude, attitude being an incipient act)" (Rhetoric 42) supports a view
of epideictic discourse as motivated toward action in the world. Burke's statement
that all speech is "appeal" for "cooperation" (Rhetoric 44) is especially apt with
regard to epideictic discourse because it appeals to the individual auditor's sense of
responsibility to the community. It is an especially hortatory use of language

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because it is always ultimately about how we conduct our "pub

affairs."
Writing on Aristotle's conception of the lyric, Walker observes that "epideic-

tic speaks to the recurring, or experientially 'permanent' or chronic issues in a soci-
ety's pattern of existence" ("Aristotle's" 8), a view which helps to cast epideictic as
both critical and educative. Walker goes on to say that "such patterns may be an
object of tacit knowledge, or may be given explicitly in various kinds of transmit-
ted lore, but in any case the kairos of epideictic is a moment or juncture within the
pattern, an occasion within a complex of occasions, about which something can or
must be said" (8). From this perspective, epideictic can be seen as capable not only
of responding to situations or "exigencies" in ways similar to deliberative and foren-
sic discourses but of identifying or creating them and, in this way, preceding, even
precipitating, deliberative or forensic rhetoric, by instilling a sense of responsibil-
ity for and possibility of change for the better. As Walker observes, "epideictic is
philosophically, rhetorically, and formally prior to pragmatic discourse, and espe-
cially so in oral cultures; literacy, once it is well established, will tend to confuse the
relationship" (9). What's more, the relationship between the three discourses may
be not strictly linear but recursive, like the relationship between the staseis. Walker
writes:
Clearly, epideictic argument in poetry or prose frequently will be concerned with

displays or critiques (praise or blame) of ethos and emotion, but not necessarily, and
not always; it could also be concerned with basic philosophical issues, such as nat-
ural philosophy (as in the poetry of Empedocles) or political philosophy (as in the
poems of Solon). Epideictic argument belongs, in sum, to the domain of theory, and
it invites its listener/'spectator' (or theoros, as Aristotle says) to an act of contempla-
tion, evaluation, and judgment. (8)
The process of critical thinking to which Walker's descriptions of epideictic (and

Oravec's rereading of Aristotle) allude serves a particular kind of educative func-
tion. To see the motives behind epideictic discourse in general and pedagogical dis-
course in particular as similar is to acknowledge the capacities in both not only for
induction and indoctrination into communities but also for critical reflection upon
the day-to-day operations of those communities and others, as well as the short-
and long-term consequences of those operations. It is also to break down the notion
of epideictic as "occasional" discourse and to define it less by its recurring forms
and forums and more by its imaginative functions within communities-its capac-
ity for "theorizing," for speculating, criticizing, and imagining.
It would seem that all of this leads us to a view of epideictic that would link it
closely with deliberative rhetoric. Beale's definition of epideictic as a "rhetorical
performative" closely associates epideictic with deliberative. He distinguishes them
more by their functions at particular moments in time than by their speaker's
agenda or intent: "one speech involves the framing of discourse to maintain or argue

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something about the world of action, whereas the other involves the framin
course in the performance of or participation in an action" (22 5-26; Beale's em
The difference is subtle, but, contrary to convention, Beale holds that "rein
ment of values is seldom an explicit function of epideictic" (223; Beale's emp
Rather, its "basic function... lies in the cultivation, preservation, streng
and the enlargement of constituencies" (243). He does not go as far as I do h
linking epideictic to a vision that inspires, even compels an audience to act,
is willing to grant that epideictic discourse has consequences, sometimes
ones. Beale becomes the first commentator to articulate the darker side of e
tic when he observes that "for better or worse, the epideictic or rhetorical
mative discourse is as much an instrument of social upheaval as of social con
(243).
CONCLUSION: EPIDEICTIC'S PUBLIC ROLE
Throughout the foregoing discussion, I have tried to reconceptuali

a discourse that serves more exigent social and civic functions tha
brating, reinforcing, or reexamining values. I have sought to recast ep
sum, a rhetorical gesture that moves its audience toward a process of
tion that goes beyond evaluation toward envisioning and actualizin
realities, possible worlds. Historically, the term "epideictic" has
courses that "acknowledge" or "disparage" the merit of, for inst
(democracy, racism, gender equality,...) or a practice (genetic rese
sia, affirmative action,... ). The reconception of epideictic suggest
broaden usage of the term to include, in addition to discourse that pr
sors, that which grapples with the competing values and value sys
speakers and writers appeal when they wish to laud or criticize a cultu
munity's ideas or behaviors. These two broad categories of rhetori
compatible with two distinct rhetorical contexts which might b
"closed" and "open"-"closed" describing those situations in which d
closure to a crisis, "open" describing situations that call for stirring thi
Neel draws a similar distinction between Platonic and sophistic dis
he describes as "weak" and "strong," respectively. Strong discourse is d
by "its tolerance for, even encouragement of, other discourses"; w
dency "to silence" other voices (Neel 209). Strong discourse operates
of "debate, discussion, dialogue, dispute" (Miller, "Polis" 239) tha
communities large and small, specialized and nonspecialized, and so
cannot exist without them. The conventional Aristotelian conceptio
as a discourse of "praise and blame" casts it as closed rather than open
than strong discourse that is, for the most part, a dogmatic rhetoric of
ing primarily to allow speaker and audience to feel good about them

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788 COLLEGE ENGLISH
argued, however, that epideictic modes of discourse can also inv

continued thought and discussion as a prelude to decision and
because epideictic discourse, which appeals to a set of ethics cult
and hierarchically related, can predispose its audience to act in
under particular circumstances and can thus have real, significan
consequences.
In the late twentieth century, what many have called "identity politics" ha
made a stable concept of "community" almost a myth or perhaps, in Carolyn R
Miller's words, a "rhetorical projection," characterized by tensions between appar-
ently irreconcilable opposites: homogeneity and diversity, cooperation and compe-
tition, insiders and outsiders ("Polis" 240). Sullivan asks, "Given the present ord
of things, is it possible to modernize a concept like epideictic rhetoric? Does ep
deictic, which once functioned to uphold a monolithic culture, operate in the post-
modern world?" ("Epideictic" 339). What role is there for epideictic in a world
where partisanship reigns, where people identify themselves and each other by the
differences, and where language and truth are suspect, perhaps even seen as ou
enemies? "In such a space," Miller writes, "rhetoric is always necessary" ("Poli
240). Epideictic rhetoric is especially necessary, I would argue, for it has the capac-
ity to link thought with action, vision with reality, criticism with change.
More than the "mere rhetoric" of ceremonial speeches, then, epideictic can be
seen not only as an invitation and an opportunity for participation and engage
ment-"an occasion for continued speech," as Frank D. Walters describes Pro-
tagorean rhetoric (147)-but as a means of envisioning and urging change for t
better. Epideictic is the discursive gesture through which we make our thoughts,
needs, desires, and actions understood by others and ourselves. Hence, in epidei
tic, there is a reciprocal relationship between philosophy and rhetoric, thought and
action, "theory" and "practice." Epideictic is informed by a sense of ethi
grounded in kairos that compels an individual or group to say "exactly what needs
to be said" (Sullivan, "Ethos" 128) rather than what a community wants to hear. Su
livan writes of the ethos of epideictic that it resides neither in the speaker nor in th
audience but in the "timeless, consubstantial space that enfolds participants in epi-
deictic exchange" (127). If ethos arises through the discourse itself, then questions
of character lying outside the epideictic context become irrelevant to the success o
the discourse. Such a notion of ethos offers a perspective from which to view the
evolving concept of heroism in American society and the relationship between lead
ership and character in American politics as well as other arenas.
In There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It's a Good Thing, Too, Stanley Fish
writes of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech that while the osten-
sible purpose of that speech was to propose abolishing Jim Crow laws, it served to
launch "a moral/religious crusade" that transformed American life (99). What Fish
calls the "present moment of action," the exigency of the speech, was "just t

130.238.7.40 on Fri, 05 Nov 2021 13:20:41 UTC
beginning" (99). Imbued with a civic ethic (in antiquity, arete-a sense of just
respect) and equipped with a vision, such epideictic discourse is the necessary
lude, I have argued, to responsible critical judgment and action in the w
Fish implies here honorifically what he has stated elsewhere somewhat pejor
that "theory is ['always already'] a form of practice" and therefore that "th
no consequences" (Doing 337). For Fish, this is another way of stating t
foundationalist truism, the perceptual condition Kenneth Burke summed up
phrases "trained incapacity" and "occupational psychosis" (Permanence 48). I
to read the "equation" between theory and practice more positively as a
we need not "tragically" bemoan but might "comically" accept, even em
that rather than be immobilized by the recognition of our limits we might
with the business of living and doing as best we can within them.
Throughout this discussion, I have also tried to recast epideictic le
"genre" and more as a "gesture" or "mode" of discourse, avoiding the term "
intentionally. Rhetoricians Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall J
have defined "genre" in such a way that it seems not to apply particularly w
epideictic:
A genre is a group of acts unified by a constellation of forms that recurs in each of
its members. These forms, in isolation, appear in other discourses. What is distinc-
tive about the acts in a genre is the recurrence of the forms together in constella-
tion. .... Because a genre is a constellation of elements, the appearance of the same
forms in different genres poses no critical problem: a genre is given its characteris-
tics by a fusion of forms not by its individual elements. Thus the argument that Aris-
totle's genres are not useful because epideictic elements are found in deliberative and
forensic address, deliberative elements in epideictic and forensic works, etc., is irrel-
evant; Aristotle's schema is weak generically only if the constellation of elements
forming epideictic works does not permit the critic to distinguish the epideictic clus-
tering from the constellations which form other Aristotelian genres. (20-21)
The authors point to inaugural addresses as examples of a recognizable and pre-

dictable combination of elements "although there is general scholarly agreement
that the claim that inaugurals form a genre has yet to be established" (23-24). An
inaugural address "is not necessarily evoked in the situation created by the swear-
ing in of a President" (2 3), they write, but a speech that "establish[es] the philoso-
phy and tone of new administrations" (23). According to Campbell and Jamieson,
then, Aristotle's terms for the three discourse types would appear to be sufficient to
the extent that they allow us to tell discourses apart. At least since Quintilian, how-
ever, rhetoricians have pondered what to do with examples of discourse Aristotle's
taxonomy seems to have left out.
It is a general neglect of its motives and especially its consequences that has
led us to see epideictic strictly as a rhetoric of praise and blame that is called for at
specific and predictable times and places. Or perhaps it is, conversely, too strict an
employment of Aristotle's criteria that has closed our eyes to epideictic's wider util-

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790 COLLEGE ENGLISH
ity and significance. Aristotle himself cannot be faulted for this, f

have envisioned the uses of discourse that would develop over the la
The numerous, perhaps countless, manifestations of epideictic would
comprehensive definition, despite the overlapping traits of so many
is not to say, however, that Aristotle's terms epideictic, deliberative,
useless or irrelevant, but rather that to wrest epideictic from the w
artificial and reductive. We can say that epideictic is educative, that
ways ritualistic, that it elicits judgment, that it can initiate, suppor
lend closure to other modes of discourse, and we should add not onl
ticipates in reality at critical moments in time but that it interpret
one reality for the purpose of positing and inspiring a new one. We
epideictic's relation to the world is reciprocal because such discourse
to and creates "opportune" and "critical" moments in time (kairos) t
ical attention and corrective action.
Ultimately, the epideictic "moment" is one of dis-ease to which d
respond therapeutically (as in the eulogy, where the goal is to restab
als and community through healing rhetoric) or critically (as in poli
whose short-term goal may be to destabilize current conditions so t
stability is made possible). In both cases, discourse offers a vision. A
rightly holds that we need to resist turning "epideictic" into a "catc
nevertheless need to expand its reference if we are to appreciate ful
in our culture. Epideictic identifies and brings together the interest
and communities. It is a rhetoric of opportunity and possibility tha
thinking and participates in the kind of "rhetoric of pluralism" wh
sions as capable of building "community" in a postmodern era:
The community we need, after all, is not a geographic or demograp

entity; it is a rhetorical construction, one that is necessary both for
darity and political action. ("Rhetoric" 91)
Miller's concept of community as an abstraction perpetually in flux

dynamic concept of epideictic as generative, ongoing, and kairotic, n
last word. To accomplish its aims, then, epideictic will necessaril
only identification and association but division and dissociation
deliberative rhetoric as well-as it creates, to borrow from Miller, "o
over and over again" (91) through its invocation of possible worlds.
Today, communication in cyberspace (itself a "rhetorical con
necessitated a "technologizing of the word" (Ong) neither Aristotle n
cessors could have imagined. In both the private and public spaces of
virtual worlds, we make value judgments and incite actions of all ki
others. In as many contexts as there are stops along the information
and at more traditional sites of oral and literate exchange as wel
mode of discourse continually fosters rhetorical communities. Throu

130.238.7.40 on Fri, 05 Nov 2021 13:20:41 UTC
epideictic both "on-" and "off-line," we construct images of ourselves a

them present to others. We rehearse shared assumptions and beliefs; w
shared realities on their basis. But we also use epideictic to express the diffe
among our perceptions of what is and our visions of what could be, and to i
possible, alternative worlds that might accommodate us all.
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