Following Underwood and Kneupper, it is also often the case that preexisting attitudes about the speaker and the flag issue create audience dynamics in which few individuals are open to persuasion. Since audience opinions may be fixed prior to a given communicative instance, an orator should adjust their communicative actions accordingly. If the immediate audience is largely closed-positive toward the orator and their position, they can afford to be more provocative and exaggerated in their depiction of the out-group to more aggressively stimulate feelings of solidarity among those present. If there are closed-negative members of the audience, an orator may simply ignore them, or may follow the opposite tactic and directly attack them for more provocative effect and to push uncommitted members into the in-group.300 When faced with a predominantly closed-negative audience, an orator may be best served to tone down provocative and confrontational elements and seek instead to emphasize simplified depictions of the issue and affirmative statements of shared positive in-group values.
As discussed in Chapter 1, orators must also consider both their immediate situative context and potential secondary, dimissive audiences when calibrating their rhetorical strategies.301 In the case of electoral politics and persuasive campaigns in particular, a speaker must keep in mind that their message is intended for multiple audiences across the broader society. While a chosen flag issue might be relevant to an immediate situative audience, for instance, it may not be relevant to the larger number of potential secondary recipients of the orator’s message. Due to the nature of political speeches, it is also often the case that the immediate audience holds a more coherent set of views and has a more coherent social identity than those not in attendance. Provocation, exaggeration, or simplification that may be clearly acceptable to closed-positive members in the situative audience may be rejected by a wider dimissive audience that is majority neutral or closed-negative to the speaker’s position.302 Accordingly, it is important for orators to carefully consider both primary and secondary audiences in selecting and depicting a polarizing flag issue: what kind of support might they need from a wider (and more diverse) dimissive audience? Can they craft their polarizing text such that it provides a maximum of positive functional effects from both those present as well as those watching or listening from home?
An important distinction must be made at this point between the successful implementation of polarizing strategies and the audience’s perception of polarization. Although the extent to which a given text incorporates the component elements can vary, communication is or is not polarizing in a given context. At some level, sociological grouping and division around the chosen topic will occur, or the strategy has failed. At the same time, however, the point at which a text is perceived by audience members as polarizing may differ from the point at which the strategy is successful. This means that a speaker may be able to effectively polarize their audience without them noticing it, but also that a given act of communication may be perceived as polarizing even though a speaker has not attempted to incorporate the process into their text.
A final (and related) contextual consideration is the role of mass media and journalism as an amplifier of a speaker’s polarizing message. Because a primary functional effect of polarizing rhetoric is generating attention for the speaker and their chosen flag issue, journalistic media can play a critical role in spreading their message (and their polarizing framework) to wider audiences. In order to tap into this amplifying effect, however, a speaker must first gain the attention of journalists and other media members and convince them to report on the orator’s portrayal of a given flag issue. As research has illustrated, polarizing texts (that is, texts that incorporate a combination of simplification, provocation, and exaggeration) are particularly suited to gaining the necessary attention of journalistic media.303
2.4.4 Oratorical Calculations
As in any rhetorical situation, the successful use of polarizing strategies requires significant preparation and calculation on the part of an orator. From a practical standpoint, not only must a speaker find relevant issues, they must also formulate a text that appropriately incorporates all three constituent textual elements in order to set the process of polarization in motion. At the strategic level, an orator must clearly estimate how the functional effects of polarizing strategies can help them reach their ultimate, real-world goals. Do they need a majority of their audience to agree with them, or will a smaller subset be enough? Should they emphasize the solidarity-forming, affirmative aspects of polarizing rhetoric, or should they focus on delegitimizing and undermining their perceived opponents with marginalization tactics?
Depending on these calculations, an orator should seek to identify preexisting divisions in their audiences that can be exploited to shape their audience and their in-group coalition. In all of the case studies discussed here, researchers have emphasized the need to generate a large enough in-group to win political elections or gain enough public support to influence elected officials. Other real-world goals outside of electoral politics may change this calculation. Indeed, in many other contexts, using polarization to generate a small but highly cohesive and motivated minority in-group can be extremely effective in helping an orator meet their ultimate goals. This was clearly the case in the examples provided by McGowan and research on the environmental movement. By carefully selecting the flag issue to match the contextual constraints posed by the various audiences, an orator can hope to steer social division and sociological group formation to best meet their needs.
One of the most important calculations that a speaker must make when utilizing polarizing strategies is the potential effect on their ethos, both in front of their immediate audience and wider audiences that may receive their polarizing messages.304 Overall, the more a speaker is perceived to polarize (or to want to polarize), the more their name will become associated with the strategy and the process itself. Eventually, the speaker may cease to be seen as an objective observer or a reliable authority but rather as a partisan: someone who holds a strong and specific position on a given issue and who continually advocates for their side of the dichotomous divide. Indeed, the orator’s ethos may become so entwined with the strategy of polarization that they are seen as a polarizing figure. At that stage, the speaker’s reputation becomes so closely intertwined with the strategy of polarization that every statement the speaker makes, regardless of topic, context, or desire, may be seen as polarizing by audiences merely because it is being uttered by that particular speaker. All the same, it is important to note that becoming a polarizing figure is not necessarily a negative thing for certain orators: a speaker might choose to overtly identify themselves with the in-group at the expense of their image with members of the out-group.305 Other orators may seek the attention that being a polarizing figure brings with it. In the case of the tea party in particular, some politicians associated with the oratorical network parlayed their polarizing reputations into prominent media careers or higher political profiles.
2.4.5 Network Considerations
Some of the research discussed in this chapter also provides important insights into the dynamics that drive polarizing strategies in persuasive campaigns. In particular, it illustrates how the parallel use of rhetorical strategies by separate orators can spontaneously constitute oratorical networks, how strategies are used by networks to influence other social groups, and how the strategy of polarization in particular can create a spiraling dynamic that perpetuates its use by competing oratorical networks within society. All of these findings will be relevant when describing the use of polarization within the tea party network in the next chapter.
The first and perhaps most important lesson to take from the research reviewed here is that the common use of polarizing strategies can lead to the spontaneous formation of new sociological groupings that are best described within rhetorical theory as oratorical networks. Although these groups of individuals may or may not explicitly coordinate their communicative acts with one another, they share real-world goals and use parallel strategies, messages, and textual structures to attempt to reach these goals. McGowan’s analysis of female senators illustrates this phenomenon most explicitly: although the women did not initially coordinate their messages, their parallel use of polarizing strategies to effect change in the Senate joined them together as a network. As McGowan illustrates, the women became recognized by both the media and other senators as a unit, and they used this newly formed identity to attempt to influence other lawmakers to join their cause.306 From a theoretical perspective, the affirmative effects of the polarizing rhetoric used by individual senators created a new positive social identity with which the members identified.
For analytical purposes, it is critical that oratorical networks can be identified based on the shared use of rhetorical strategies, textual structures, and common real-world goals. As discussed in Chapter 1, collective orators can be more or less coordinated, and individuals can have overlapping affiliations. Additionally, if asked, certain individuals might not recognize or acknowledge their affiliation with a given oratorical network, and subgroups within a larger network might not recognize one another as legitimate members of the shared identity. Hendry and Short’s analyses of Earth First! and the ELF illustrate this phenomenon to a certain extent. Defining oratorical networks according to common textual patterns and rhetorical strategies allows researchers to isolate useful analytical units from the tumult of real-world communication.
In addition to demonstrating how oratorical networks can be identified, research has also provided insight into how different nodes in a network interact with and functionalize one another to influence public opinion. Studies from Smith and Smith, McGowan, and Moore in particular illustrate the networked interactions described by Jarol Manheim: in all three cases, members of an oratorical network used the media to broadcast and amplify their polarizing frameworks in order to build public pressure on policy makers. Such studies provide a blueprint of how researchers can trace the use of polarizing rhetoric in persuasive campaigns.
Finally, Lange’s work illustrates how the use of polarizing rhetoric by one network can lead to a spontaneous and reinforcing “spiral” of polarizing discourse. By consciously and subconsciously “mirroring and matching” polarizing frameworks and textual structures, diverse orator complexes perpetuate or seek to counteract the polarized depiction of flag issues by competing groups, and to spread their narrative using direct and indirect communication with others. This helps explain how such narratives spread between nodes in a network and across broader political and social discourse without the presence of explicit coordination between groups, and it illustrates that the network effects of a persuasive campaign can arise both intentionally and spontaneously.
2.5Summary
It is clear by now that the concept of polarization has a long and robust tradition within social scientific and rhetorical scholarship. Although the term is perhaps best known in the fields of political science and social psychology, there has been a significant body of explicitly rhetorical research on polarizing strategies and tactics since the late 1960s. Such studies shed light on the textual characteristics, oratorical calculations, audience considerations, and contextual conditions necessary for polarizing rhetorical strategies to be successful in dividing a social group (or wider society) along desired lines and around a chosen issue. To briefly summarize the results of such research: polarizing rhetorical strategies demand the selection of a salient flag issue and the identification of preexisting differences of opinion in the audience regarding that issue. Polarizing texts incorporate simplified, dichotomous frameworks around the chosen issue, exaggerated descriptions of both sides designed to marginalize the out-group and generate solidarity among those who identify with the in-group, and provocative statements that generate a psychological reaction in audience members.
Although the strategy explicitly seeks to create division, one of its primary functional effects is the generation of solidarity and increased group cohesion in listeners who identify with (or are sympathetic toward) the speaker or their depiction of the flag issue. This may be one reason that polarizing rhetoric is often utilized in contentious political debates: its solidarity-generating function strengthens in-group bonds, clearly identifies opponents, and creates an urgency for action that can be extremely beneficial in influencing political decision making. Polarizing strategies are also used by orators to gain attention for their causes and to shift the frames and narratives of broader political discourse. At the same time, there are serious risks for an orator associated with the use of polarizing strategies, including the potential for significant damage to an orator’s image and a disqualification of the orator’s position from “acceptable” public discourse due to the transgressive nature of their rhetoric.
Other studies have illustrated the ways in which polarizing rhetoric can generate new group identities (as opposed to merely intensifying existing identities), how oratorical networks use polarizing strategies within the context of broader persuasive campaigns, and how the use of polarizing strategies by one orator complex or oratorical network can affect the actions of others as they seek to react and respond. This interplay among competing networks can also generate spontaneous dynamics of interaction that perpetuate the polarized state without explicit coordination or even direct communication within and between groups.
All of this will be important in the chapter to come, which applies the insight gained here to the real-world communication within and by the tea party movement in the United States. More specifically, Chapter 3 will directly analyze concrete instances of polarizing communication from each constituent node in the tea party network, and will trace the flow of the polarizing makers vs. takers framework throughout the network and across broader political discourse.