The Effects of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of Effects ed. by Amos Kiewe and Davis W. Houck (review)

The book The Effects of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of Effects is a response to charges by political scientist George C. Edwards that many rhetoric scholars discuss “presidential speeches as if they were doing literary criticism” (3). Davis Houck portrays Edwards as having dropped “a rather concussive bomb on his rhetoric colleagues” (283), and most authors in this volume appear similarly haunted by the accusation that public address scholarship lacks evidence for claims about effects. Responding to Edwards, while defending Herbert Wichelns’s position that rhetorical criticism is “concerned with effects” (7), Kiewe and Houck argue that critics should still “engage a text’s interlocutors in order to understand how a message has resonated (or failed to resonate) with them, especially when such evidence is available” (6).

The book’s 14 essays address common questions, including: Why has studying the effects of rhetoric become passé? What does it mean to make claims about effects in contemporary criticism? Moreover, how should critics demonstrate the influence of rhetorical acts? In answering these questions, the book is structured in three parts, starting with a consideration of theoretical issues of rhetoric’s effects, moving to case studies of how to illustrate effects, and ending with examples extending the boundaries of this kind of research. Ultimately, Kiewe and Houck have compiled essays that should prove useful for any critic-in-training, especially scholars who need to learn how to argue with pesky reviewers who think concerns about effects are either unimportant or impossible to document.

Part 1 begins with chapter 2, an essay by Carol Blair that surveys the discipline’s struggle with the study of effects. Blair identifıes two shifts in the 1960s and 1970s that moved the fıeld’s interest away from audience. First, there was a concerted shift “from a focal interest in persuasion or influence to symbolism” (37). Second, starting in this period “the focal goal of the rhetorical study in Speech Communication became ‘contributing to theory’” (40). Blair contends these shifts were valuable but “assigned rhetorical practice and its effectivity…to disciplinary oblivion” (40). The chapter is the most exciting essay in the volume and should be read in any graduate-level survey of rhetorical criticism.

Part 1 rounds out with three more chapters. Chapter 3, by Robert Rowland, argues that evidence of rhetoric’s effects should be provided whenever the critical purpose is to discuss the resonance of messages. Describing three kinds of evidence available to critics, Rowland also fleshes out four primary functions of rhetorical criticism and insists all somewhat implicitly relate to audience. Although Rowland criticizes cultural criticism for sometimes neglecting how messages influence real audiences, he ultimately calls for critics to clearly identify and justify the importance of their critical purposes and also to justify “the proper form of evidence for fulfılling those purposes” (77). In chapter 4, Pat Gehrke proposes that critics interested in effects should familiarize themselves with the typology of causes and conditions, understand the nature of rhetoric as event, study archives as relevant to the event, and relate the event to “the history of ideas or the history of thought” (83). Chapter 5, by David Frank, advocates studying effect to get to the moralistic essence of rhetoric. Frank explores the history of Chaim Perelman’s new rhetoric project, explaining how the philosopher’s experience in World War II led to his mission to ground rhetoric in the vita activa rather than the vita contemplativa.

Part 2 features fıve essays providing examples of how to make claims about effects. Chapter 6, by Stephen Browne, uses three case studies to introduce the notion of temporality and effects, particularly the way rhetorical acts influence other texts. Browne examines Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” to illustrate immediate influence, George Washington’s Farewell Address to illustrate influence across generations, and Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence to demonstrate...