Rhetorician in Residence
Originally published in Ei’s Experience Journal
You think it’s tough getting a job with a BA in English? Try getting one with a PhD in Rhetoric. After years of teaching and academic work, I spent the last six months on the global brand team of a big tech company. This series of posts is about my leap from ivory tower to Silicon Valley.
rhet·o·ri·cian
It’s ok if you don’t know what a rhetorician is, or why a big tech company would want one messing around with one of their most valuable assets. Search for “rhetoric” on LinkedIn, and you’ll find a bunch of college professors, some writers, and maybe a consultant or two. But it’s a real thing, I promise.
Rhetoricians go back at least 2,500 years. In Classical Greece, when western civilization first started dabbling in democracy, skills in argumentation, persuasion, and oratory suddenly became very important. Like, life or death important.
Democracy is all about using language (rather than, say, weapons) to get your way. So the Greeks started hiring special teachers to help them get better at wielding words. These teachers, called the sophists, had all kind of methods for training folks to be better rhetors. But rhetoric is not just about the skill of public speaking. The biggest philosophical thinkers of that era (Aristotle and friends) developed theories about how to effectively and ethically use words to move people.
Rhetoric has a lot to do with language, but it’s not linguistics. Traditionally, rhetoric is about persuasion and oratory, but it’s certainly not limited to that. Scholars study the rhetorical force of everything from fashion to reality TV to science textbooks. Anything that involves using symbols to produce an effect on an audience is fair game. Rhetoric often has to do with politics, either in the narrow sense of Republicans vs. Democrats, or in the broad sense of our shared common values, our shared identity as a “public” that rhetors like Nike and Disney and Donald Trump are all trying to send a message to.
Rhetoric is about organizing ideas and communicating effectively. It’s about understanding your audience. And it’s about being a responsible citizen, a clear thinker and ethical debater who can cut through the bullshit to act strategically and responsibly in a just society.
A sidebar about bullshit: Yes. I know. One of the most frequent uses of the word “rhetoric” is as a synonym for “bullshit.” Rhetoric can be a dirty word, used to distinguish flowery, empty, or manipulative language from plain ol’ facts and God’s honest truth. Rhetoricians have been dealing with that bad rap for 2,500 years, getting in fights with philosophers and scientists and religious authorities — from. the. beginning. See for example Plato’s beef with the sophists about who’s a real teacher of wisdom and who’s just an enterprising huckster.
Where are they now?
Self-identified rhetoricians mostly work in colleges and universities. We teach basic courses on writing and public speaking. We teach advanced courses analyzing the speeches of Lincoln, or the strategies of Black Lives Matter, or the music videos of Lady Gaga. Some of us coach debate teams. We write scholarly articles and books and present research at conferences. We develop informed and well-reasoned opinions about Trump’s uses and misuses of language, even though we almost never get called by CNN to serve as on-air pundits.
Rhetoricians sometimes have trouble functioning in what you might call the “real world.” Early rhetorical thinkers understood their field to be more like lofty philosophy — finding truth, sharing wisdom, training ethical citizens. They didn’t want to get mixed up with those flashy sophists, out to make a buck teaching the Classical equivalent of ‘10 secrets to win any argument.’ Similarly, today’s rhetoricians often steer clear of anything that sounds like marketing or PR, and most of us would choose to teach Intro to Foucault over Advanced PowerPoint Skills, even though both are, arguably, well within our wheelhouse.
From professor to practitioner
Until recently, all of my work was in academia. I’ve taught and researched and written and lectured. I’ve gotten in fights about footnotes. I’ve consoled crying undergrads. But I’ve very rarely had to sell or hustle or pay much attention to the bottom line.
I’ve analyzed zillions of ads and movies and political speeches — and taught hundreds of students to do the same — but I’ve never had to actually make any of those things myself.
But now, I’m getting my hands dirty. With support from my fellowship year with the Experience Institute, I’m exploring contexts where my background can be of use, helping innovative teams and organizations create better things with better words.
I always told my students that studying rhetoric would give them a valuable set of tools for making an impact in whatever work they chose to pursue. This year is, in part, about proving that.
I’m venturing out of academia in part out of curiosity, in part out of necessity. Professor jobs in the humanities are scarce; liberal arts education is under attack. My most recent teaching job ended when the program I worked for was cut to save the school money. Colleges can’t invest as much in the humanities when students are feeling pressure to focus on majors that seem more directly connected to getting a job.
But as I’ve taken my first steps out of the ivory tower, I’m seeing first hand how the skills that growing industries need are exactly the skills higher ed is having a hard time teaching. I’m very much enjoying my time as the resident word nerd in a tech company, and I definitely appreciate the break from grading term papers, but I’m still a believer in the humanities and liberal arts education — because it is crucially important in its own right and because it is profoundly useful out here in the ‘real world.’ It’s thrilling to get to work on high-impact projects supported by the resources of a huge company, but it’s also incredibly gratifying to prove every day the utility of my training and perspective, rooted in a centuries-old philosophical tradition.
—ML
