The Rhetoric of Economics- Prof D. McCloskey

Professor McClosky’s lecture on the rhetoric of science explores some history of rhetoric, and how rhetoric exists for all subjects. Further, she discusses how communication, persuasion in particular, is an integral part of economics. McCloskey challenges the current model of communication. In class, we learned that communication is split into two disciplines: humanities and social science. The humanities take an historical/critical approach to communication studies, and social science takes a qualitative/quantitative approach (Notes, Steele-Knight). McCloskey uses a similar model, but says that it is “nonsense”(Comm. 101, McCloskey). Basically, economic studies, therefore, communication doesn’t work in such a “black and white” way; even with the results of scientific data, a scientist must persuade her audience of the significance of that data, which would probably involve some storytelling.

            Functional communication could be defined in the same way that McCloskey defines rhetoric. Persuasion is an important part of rhetoric, and it is what she calls “sweet talk” (Comm. 101, McCloskey). So we use functional communication, or rhetoric to get things accomplished. And with both terms some persuasion is required. Three of the five outcomes of effective communication presented in the textbook that come to mind are pleasure, attitude influence and action. McCloskey mentions that persuasion, or “sweet talk,” can be thought of using the economic notion of exchange; that both parties benefit from the communication (Comm. 101, McCloskey). Also, attitude influence is a form of “gentle persuasion” (Tubbs 28). Attitude influence would involve use of rhetoric. Lastly, political rhetoric can make people feel good, but its main purpose it to drive people to action—to vote for a particular candidate.

In previous courses, I learned that rhetoric can be applied to any subject, but the material was presented in a more complicated manner. McCloskey succinctly defines rhetoric as “sweet talk,” and that gave me a clearer idea of what it means; that it is a basic part of communication that is used with others and on ourselves. I had never thought about how many times I’ve had to convince myself to do something, and that I use rhetoric on myself, or would that be coercion? At the same time, I see that rhetoric is used to create worlds, which makes me think of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Using this hypothesis, both linguistic determinism and linguistic relativism could be a factors. In other words, both components of the hypothesis could exist across cultures; some could allow language to determine how they think, and others could allow it to influence how they think. If people can use language to construct a worldview, can I invalidate that construct? Or is it a question of perception? It brings up many questions, and ultimately the study of communication, for me, is about the many ways that we attempt to get what we want, and that rhetoric is a primary component of that.

Kellee E. Warren

Comm 101

C. Steele