Third persona

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The third persona is the implied audience which is not present in, or is excluded from, rhetorical communication. This conception of the Third Persona relates to the First Persona, the "I" in discourse (a speaker and their intent), and the second persona, the "you" in discourse. Third Persona is "the 'it' that is not present, that is objectified in a way that 'you' and 'I' are not." [1] Third Persona, as a theory, seeks to define and critique the rules of rhetoric, to further consider how we talk about what we talk about—the discourse of discourse—and who is affected by that discourse. [2] The concept of the third persona encourages examination of who (what category of implied audience) is implicitly excluded from a discourse, why they are excluded, and what this can tell us about how that discourse participates in larger networks of social or political power.

Contents

Third persona is the way in which a text alienates or excludes one portion of its audience ('they') in the process of addressing and engaging with another portion, a "second persona" ('you'). For example, the song "Stand by your man" (by Tammy Wynette and Billy Sherrill) begins: "Sometimes it's hard to be a woman/ Giving all your love to just one man." While the first line seems to address (all) women, the second asserts that a (any) woman will have love for a man, implicitly excluding women who do not have, want, or love a man, including lesbians (for whom it will presumably not be "hard to be a woman"). The categories of implicit exclusion made within the text is called the "third persona." The term thus refers to patterns of address within the text itself, that portion of an imagined audience excluded and silenced by the text. The concept was coined by Philip Wander in his article "The Third Persona: An Ideological Turn in Rhetorical Theory," first published in 1984 after a prolonged debate in the Central States Speech Journal. The debate opens with Wander’s article, “The Ideological Turn in Modern Criticism,” which advocates the practice of ideological critique. The essay was met with a series of critical responses. Allan Megill, for example, criticized Wander’s “cursory reading of several of Heidegger’s essays.” Wander wrote “The Third Persona” as his rejoinder. [3]

Rooted in ideological criticism

Wander, in his 1984 article, explores and critiques many facets of rhetorical method. His goals are writ large, that, for example, "To be progressive, change must progress toward something. That something, oriented around traditional humanist notions of human potential, is grounded in the emancipation of human potential." [4] These altruistic goals are requisite to understanding the notion of Third Persona, which seeks to acknowledge the unacknowledged social voice.

Public space, Wander states, is necessary for the perpetuation of healthy ideological criticism, without which "criticism lapses into eulogy or falls silent." [5] At the heart of Wander's study is his consideration of the meaning of meaning in terms of semiotics: "If a critic denies that an action, event, or text meant something to those who produced it . . . [then it] threatens to become meaningless." [6] At the root of this problem of meaning is the intention of meaning and the intended audience to receive the intended meaning; Wander writes, "The 'meaning' of a speech will vary with the audience." Thus, interpretation varies significantly from the intended meaning of communication. Regarding audiences that are "not present, audiences rejected or negated through the speech and/or the speaking situation. This audience I shall call the Third Persona." [7]

Definitions

The third persona, according to Wander, is the audience negated or rejected by the speaker, speech, or situation. In each situation there is a speaker reaching an intended, "primary" audience, while also reaching an inadvertent, "secondary" audience. [8] Wander's summation of his theory is succinct:

The Third Persona, therefore, refers to being negated. But "being negated" includes not only being alienated through language . . . . The objectification of certain individuals and groups discloses itself through what is and is not said about them and through actual conditions affecting their ability to speak for themselves . . . negation extends beyond the "text" to include the ability to produce texts, to engage in discourse, to be heard in the public space. [9]

The third persona is "the 'it' that is the summation of all that you and I are told to avoid becoming, but also being negated in history, a being whose presence, though relevant through what is said, is negated through silence" and "measured against an ideal." It is the audience that cannot assemble nor protest. [10]

There is an ethical concern in the concept of third persona since it applies to groups who have been historically denied human rights, those prejudiced against due to their status as "non-subjects" based on age, citizenship, gender, sexual preference, race, or religion, for example. It applies to those individuals who have suffered from objectification by what is said against them, the level to which they are ignored, and those conditions which deny them an ability to speak for themselves within the rhetorical dialogue. [11]

In Wander's example involving Heidegger and art in society, the primary audience are those within a society where questions elicit official answers, the secondary audience are ideologues and censors already accounted for, and the tertiary audience (i.e., third persona) "may or may not have been part of the speaker's awareness, existing in the silences of the text, the reality of oppression, and the unutterable experience of human suffering, an audience for whom what was said was relevant in ways that traditional approaches to interpretation may overlook." [12]

Theories of power

The concept of third persona is considered within the larger discussion of "rhetorical criticism" regarding speech communication, and also within the literature of the "ideological turn." Within rhetorical practice, critical rhetoric, ideological turn, and third persona are related to theories of power within social discourse and politics. [13] In terms of power, the third persona is the audience ignored through discourse, or, as Wander writes, it is an implied rhetorical denouncement of an "unacceptable, undesirable, insignificant" audience. [14]

Using rhetoric the critic wields power in a role as "the interpreter, the teacher, the social actor," the critiques of whom direct moral order within society. The third persona would be those whom these critiques disempower and silence through latent dismissal. [15]

Distinguished from marginalization

Marginalization is the being or being made socially marginal through a denial of power. [16] Third persona can be distinguished from marginalization because the Third Persona is not only denied power and public voice, but is, at a basic level, denied consideration or recognition by those in power. While marginalization is an overt removal of power, the third persona suffers from an innate or unrecognized removal from power. Those persons who make up the body of the third persona may not be even considered to exist. Whereas the marginalized have a suppressed voice—a "marginal" voice—those of the third persona have no voice.

Conversely, others argue that third persona can be placed under the definition of marginalization—marginalized by those "hegemonic social and discursive structures" that accord them the status of "nonsubjects." [17]

Regarding the public sphere

The public sphere, as defined by Jürgen Habermas, consists of a social public that disregards status, holds a domain of common concern, and is publicly inclusive. [18] Recent critiques, primarily by feminists such as Nancy Fraser, argue that Habermas' theory consisted of "significant exclusions," that his bourgeois public sphere excluded women and other unseen classes of persons. [19]

Such criticisms, which seek to acknowledge forgotten populations, are sympathetic with Wander's conception of third persona. Where Fraser, et al., deviate from Wander is their assessment that these marginalized groups then form their own sub-spheres, termed counterpublics. [20] The theory of third persona recognizes that despite the forming of sub-spheres or counterpublics, there are still groups that will fall outside even these marginalized groups, what might be thought of, in Fraserian terms, as nonpublics.

Resolution versus acknowledgment

Some argue that it is not until those of the third persona enter into the sphere of the second persona that they will be heard and their interests attended to. [21] For example, those who are seventeen years old will soon be old enough to vote and their unheard and unconsidered voice as part of the political Third Persona will automatically enter into the Second Persona once they are old enough to vote. Others, however, might argue that simply becoming part of the Second Persona does not solve the problem nor make the perpetual ranks of Third Persona disappear. A Third Persona will always be present in organized society and thus the problem cannot be solved; perhaps it needs to be foremost acknowledged.

Philip Wander suggests an emancipation from third persona through an ideological turn, or via criticism. [22] As a theory the third persona "is a challenge, a rebel yell, of sorts, for critics and audiences to change criticism, to lay new groundwork for a system whose structure only serves to isolate itself from the social realm. Although derived from the social – the world of schoolchildren and politicians, most criticism is removed from its context through language and text and pondered irrespective of the people it affects or is affected by." [23] Wander hopes to incite scholarly examination of the "rules for producing discourse (criticism) about discourse (rhetoric). [24] Ideally, it should go beyond "claims of morality and the bonds of compassion;" "properly understood, it involves the unity of humanity and the wholeness of the human problem." [25] In this light it shares similar interests within some social science fields for "radical change" scholarship.

See also

Related Research Articles

Rhetoric Art of discourse

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. Aristotle defines rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion" and since mastery of the art was necessary for victory in a case at law, for passage of proposals in the assembly, or for fame as a speaker in civic ceremonies, he calls it "a combination of the science of logic and of the ethical branch of politics". Rhetoric typically provides heuristics for understanding, discovering, and developing arguments for particular situations, such as Aristotle's three persuasive audience appeals: logos, pathos, and ethos. The five canons of rhetoric or phases of developing a persuasive speech were first codified in classical Rome: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.

An ideograph or virtue word is a word frequently used in political discourse that uses an abstract concept to develop support for political positions. Such words are usually terms that do not have a clear definition but are used to give the impression of a clear meaning. An ideograph in rhetoric often exists as a building block or simply one term or short phrase that summarizes the orientation or attitude of an ideology. Such examples notably include <liberty>, <freedom>, <democracy> and <rights>. Rhetorical critics use chevrons or angle brackets (<>) to mark off ideographs.

Rhetorical criticism analyzes the symbolic artifacts of discourse—the words, phrases, images, gestures, performances, texts, films, etc. that people use to communicate. Rhetorical analysis shows how the artifacts work, how well they work, and how the artifacts, as discourse, inform and instruct, entertain and arouse, and convince and persuade the audience; as such, discourse includes the possibility of morally improving the reader, the viewer, and the listener. Rhetorical criticism studies and analyzes the purpose of the words, sights, and sounds that are the symbolic artifacts used for communications among people.

Audience People who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature, theatre, music or academics

An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature, theatre, music, video games, or academics in any medium. Audience members participate in different ways in different kinds of art. Some events invite overt audience participation and others allow only modest clapping and criticism and reception.

Ethos Greek word meaning "character"

Ethos is a Greek word meaning "character" that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology. The Greeks also used this word to refer to the power of music to influence emotions, behaviors, and even morals. Early Greek stories of Orpheus exhibit this idea in a compelling way. The word's use in rhetoric is closely based on the Greek terminology used by Aristotle in his concept of the three artistic proofs or modes of persuasion. It gives credit to the speaker, or the speaker is taking credit.

Genre studies Branch of general critical theory

Genre studies is an academic subject which studies genre theory as a branch of general critical theory in several different fields, including art, literature, linguistics, rhetoric and composition studies.

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Ideological criticism is a method in rhetorical criticism concerned with critiquing texts for the dominant ideology they express while silencing opposing or contrary ideologies. It was started by a group of scholars roughly in the late-1970s through the mid-1980s at universities in the United States. Leading scholars of ideological criticism were Michael Calvin McGee at the University of Iowa and Phillip Wander at San Jose State University. Wander's 1983 article, "The Ideological Turn in Modern Criticism," and his 1984 article, "The Third Persona: An Ideological Turn in Rhetorical Theory," remain two of the most important articles in the field. According to Sonja Foss, “the primary goal of the ideological critic is to discover and make visible the dominant ideology or ideologies embedded in an artifact and the ideologies that are being muted in it.” Foss has also mentioned the contribution to ideological criticism of several theoretical schools, including Marxism, structuralism, cultural studies, and postmodernism.

Genre criticism, a method within rhetorical criticism, analyzes texts in terms of their genre: the set of generic expectations, conventions, and constraints that guide their production and interpretation. In rhetoric, the theory of genre provides a means to classify and compare artifacts in terms of their formal, substantive and contextual features. By grouping artifacts with others which have similar formal features or rhetorical exigencies, rhetorical critics can shed light on how authors use or flout conventions for their own purposes. Genre criticism has thus become one of the main methodologies within rhetorical criticism.

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Edwin Benjamin Black was one of the leading scholars of rhetorical criticism. He criticized "Neo-Aristotelianism" for its lacking a larger historical, social, political, and cultural understanding of the text and for its concentrating only on certain limited methods and aspects, such as the Aristotelian modes of rhetoric: ethos, pathos, and logos. He urged critics to analyze both the motives and goals within situated cultural norms and ideologies.

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Public rhetoric refers to discourse both within a group of people and between groups, often centering on the process by which individual or group discourse seeks membership in the larger public discourse. Public rhetoric can also involve rhetoric being used within the general populace to foster social change and encourage agency on behalf of the participants of public rhetoric. The collective discourse between rhetoricians and the general populace is one representation of public rhetoric. A new discussion within the field of public rhetoric is digital space because the growing digital realm complicates the idea of private and public, as well as previously concrete definitions of discourse. Furthermore, scholars of public rhetoric often employ the language of tourism to examine how identity is negotiated between individuals and groups and how this negotiation impacts individuals and groups on a variety of levels, ranging from the local to the global.

Sonja K. Foss is a rhetorical scholar and educator in the discipline of communication. Her research and teaching interests are in contemporary rhetorical theory and criticism, feminist perspectives on communication, the incorporation of marginalized voices into rhetorical theory and practice, and visual rhetoric.

Celeste Michelle Condit is an American professor and scholar of rhetorical criticism. Her work focuses on the rhetoric of racism, biology, the human genome, and feminism. In 2018, the Public Address Conference described Condit as "a pioneer in understanding and improving public communication about genetics." She currently holds the role of Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Georgia.

Feminist rhetoric Practice of rhetoric

Feminist rhetoric emphasizes the narratives of all demographics, including women and other marginalized groups, into the consideration or practice of rhetoric. Feminist rhetoric does not focus exclusively on the rhetoric of women or feminists, but instead prioritizes the feminist principles of inclusivity, community, and equality over the classic, patriarchal model of persuasion that ultimately separates people from their own experience. Seen as the act of producing or the study of feminist discourses, feminist rhetoric emphasizes and supports the lived experiences and histories of all living beings and in all manner of experiences, and it redefines traditional delivery sites to include the non-traditional locations such as demonstrations, letter writing, and digital processes. An important distinction is made between "feminist rhetoric" and "rhetorical feminism": rhetorical feminism is a strategy that counters traditional forms of rhetoric, favoring dialogue over monologue and seeking to redefine the way audiences define rhetorical appeals. Rhetorical feminism also values listening and silence as dynamic rhetorical practices.

References

  1. ↑ Philip Wander, "The Third Persona: An Ideological Turn in Rhetorical Theory,” Central States Speech Journal 35 (1984), 209
  2. ↑ John Louis Lucaites, Celeste Michelle Condit, and Sally Caudill, Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader (Guilford Press, 1999), 376.
  3. ↑ Allan Megill, Central States Speech Journal 34 (1983) 114.
  4. ↑ Philip Wander, "The Third Persona: An Ideological Turn in Rhetorical Theory,” Central States Speech Journal 35 (1984), 205.
  5. ↑ Philip Wander, "The Third Persona: An Ideological Turn in Rhetorical Theory,” Central States Speech Journal 35 (1984), 206.
  6. ↑ Philip Wander, "The Third Persona: An Ideological Turn in Rhetorical Theory,” Central States Speech Journal 35 (1984), 206.
  7. ↑ Philip Wander, "The Third Persona: An Ideological Turn in Rhetorical Theory,” Central States Speech Journal 35 (1984), 208–209.
  8. ↑ Philip Wander, "The Third Persona: An Ideological Turn in Rhetorical Theory,” Central States Speech Journal 35 (1984), 209.
  9. ↑ Philip Wander, "The Third Persona: An Ideological Turn in Rhetorical Theory,” Central States Speech Journal 35 (1984), 210.
  10. ↑ Philip Wander, "The Third Persona: An Ideological Turn in Rhetorical Theory,” Central States Speech Journal 35 (1984), 210–211; and, John Louis Lucaites, Celeste Michelle Condit, and Sally Caudill, Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader (Guilford Press, 1999), 370.
  11. ↑ John Louis Lucaites, Celeste Michelle Condit, and Sally Caudill, Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader (Guilford Press, 1999), 370.
  12. ↑ Philip Wander, "The Third Persona: An Ideological Turn in Rhetorical Theory,” Central States Speech Journal 35 (1984), 215.
  13. ↑ Carole Blair, Julie R. Brown, and Leslie A. Baxter, "Disciplining the Feminine" in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, by John Lucaites, Celeste Michelle Condit, and Sally Caudill, eds. (Guilford Press, 1999), 565.
  14. ↑ Philip Wander, "The Third Persona: An Ideological Turn in Rhetorical Theory,” Central States Speech Journal 35 (1984), 209.
  15. ↑ James F. Klumpp and Thomas A. Hollinan, "Rhetorical Criticism as Moral Action" Quarterly Journal of Speech 75 (1989), 94.
  16. ↑ Craig Murphy, Global Institutions, Marginalization, and Development. RIPE Series in Global Political Economy (Routledge, 2005)
  17. ↑ Mark Lawrence McPhail, "Ideological Criticism," in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition by Theresa Enos (Taylor & Francis, 1996), 341.
  18. ↑ Sangai Mohochi, "Invading the Public Sphere: Media, Private Discourse and the Public Space in Kenya."
  19. ↑ Nancy Fraser, "Transnationalizing the Public Sphere" lecture "Transnationalizing the Public Sphere".
  20. ↑ Nancy Fraser, "Transnationalizing the Public Sphere" lecture "Transnationalizing the Public Sphere".
  21. ↑ Brenden E. Kendall, "Personae and Natural Capitalism: Negotiating Politics and Constituencies in a Rhetoric of Sustainability." Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture 2, no. 1 (2008).
  22. ↑ Mark Lawrence McPhail, "Ideological Criticism," in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition by Theresa Enos (Taylor & Francis, 1996), 341.
  23. ↑ "The Third Persona,"
  24. ↑ Philip Wander, "The Third Persona: An Ideological Turn in Rhetorical Theory,” Central States Speech Journal 35 (1984), 216.
  25. ↑ Philip Wander, "The Third Persona: An Ideological Turn in Rhetorical Theory,” Central States Speech Journal 35 (1984), 216.

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