(NEO) REVOLUTIONARY MESSAGES: AN ANALYSIS OF THE IMPACT OF COUNTER-NARRATIVES VERSUS STATE NARRATIVES DURING THE 1991 COUP D’ETAT IN THE FORMER SOVIET UNION
Published by Duane Gundrum at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Duane Gundrum
(Cover Art Picture by Evgeni Dinev through Free Digital Photos.net)
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM
On August 19, 1991, and for a period lasting approximately seventy-two hours, the government of the Soviet Union was overthrown. The Soviet Union, at the time one of the world’s two superpowers, experienced a coup d’etat by hard-line leaders of that nation. The Soviet Union had survived coups d’etat in the past, often resulting in a change of leadership from one communist regime to yet another. However, to the people on the streets, all that really changed was that the names of the leaders; the government remained much the same as before the putsch. On this date, however, not only did the coup d’etat fail, but its failure brought to international recognition a previously unknown Russian leader, Boris Yeltsin, who then inherited the mantle of power as the Soviet Union collapsed upon itself soon after the coup d’etat was overcome.
The process of communication during this event involves two competing narratives: One from the state promising a return to better times, and one from a counter-public, arguing the past did not consist of better times and that the present was leading to a more promising future. The putschists controlled the newly-installed government and had complete control over the established media channels for disseminating messages. Conversely, those who protested the takeover of the Soviet Union were forced to rely on alternative methods, such as facsimile and personal copy machines, and a new process of dissemination that involved sharing information as an act of communication itself. This process created a “counterpublic—an indefinitely accessible world conscious of its subordinate relation” (Warner, 2005, p. 199) to the mainstream public, that acted in direct confrontation with the putschists who controlled the state.
This counterpublic was represented by Boris Yeltsin and his followers, who were forced to respond to the state-sponsored narrative that promised a return to a past of good times. Yeltsin’s counterpublic, unfortunately, did not have the easy access to state sponsored media. Instead, Yeltsin and his followers were forced to challenge a state with a history of federalism that reigned over all lower echelons of government; up until this incident, there had been no precedent for successful challenge to the state. As Trouillot (1995) indicated in his study on the Haitian slave revolt of 1791, if the current paradigm has no basis in precedent that suggests a potential challenge to the status quo, the possibility of any such future event happening is not even considered a possibility to the actors involved. Just as the Europeans and Americans in the 18th century belief that a slave rebellion was unfathomable led to both Europeans and Americans being taken completely by surprise when it did happen, the hardliners involved in the coup d’etat in the Soviet Union faced unexpected resistance as well. In this circumstance, however, this counterpublic led by Yeltsin and his followers responded to the putschists not by direct military confrontation, but through rhetoric. The putschists established a manufactured vision of the past that they perceived to be a positive time for citizens of the Soviet Union to return to: A time when nationalism was strong, stores stocked a variety of items, and individual citizens felt they were living in an age of prosperity. The counter-narrative created by Yeltsin and his followers was a direct challenge to that message: It argued that not only was the past not as positive as claimed, but also that the only hope of prosperity was to dissolve ties to such a negative Soviet past.
In this current age, as more and more media sources have been taken over and become international conglomerates and mass media hegemonies of their own, there exists a McLuhan-like tendency to believe that not only is the medium actually the message, but that control of the medium equals control of the message. This creates an innate justification for a rhetorical study of this nature. In 1991, not only did the counter-narrative square off against the hegemonic, monolithic Soviet state, but the power of Yeltsin’s message provided strong enough narrative fidelity and rationality to overcome that of the state’s narrative. The results were absolute and immediate: The coup d’etat failed.
Statement of Purpose
The major purpose of this study is to discover how political rhetors use elements of narratives in their rhetoric to create a story that serves as a mechanism to represent an official stance of a specific grouping of people. The secondary purpose of this study is to examine how such rhetors also challenge the state narrative message by producing and disseminating counter-narratives in a way that produces a direct challenge to the state hierarchy, effectively producing what can be considered a counter-public, a group of people gathered with a common purpose to challenge the state’s status quo. In order to accomplish this process, the following four artifacts that emerged from the aftermath of the Soviet August 1991 coup d’etat will be studied: “Decree of the Vice President of the USSR,” “Appeal to the Soviet People,” “To the Citizens of Russia (issued at 9:00 A.M. on August 19, 1991),” and “Appeal by Boris Yeltsin, President of the RSFSR, to the Soldiers and Officers of the USSR Armed Forces, the USSR Committee for State Security [KGB], and the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs [MVD].”
Justification for the Application of the Narrative Paradigm
The series of documents to be analyzed for this study are designed to tell a particular set of stories, each one representing the viewpoint inherent in the rhetor’s (or rhetors’) perspective concerning the understanding of Russian and Soviet history and a particular perspective of what actions will improve future conditions. Because of this story-telling aspect evident in both series of documents, the two perspectives that were argued during the crisis fit the narrative versus counter-narrative perspective that is inherent in Fisher’s analysis. This method is critical for identification of the artifacts being studied, analyzing their impact on each other and on their audiences being targeted, and then to evaluate their persuasive success in producing a shared identity for those who used such narratives to recruit other participants, and to eventually emerge with one surviving narrative that defeated its competition.
What makes this approach both unique and important is that what happened during this crisis in the former Soviet Union may be reproducible in other circumstances. As long as future rhetors understand what happened during that communication event and can successfully use these techniques themselves, it may be possible to reproduce the creation of a counter-public that can both challenge the status quo and replace the state’s message with a competing counter-narrative. In the process of doing so, this paper argues that the counter-public may then become the public itself, supplanting the state with members of the competing establishment.
The two competing narratives present between the opposing adversarial forces in the Soviet Union in August 1991 were separately constructed stories based on shared experiences, histories and memories. Fisher (1984) argues that humans are essentially storytellers. Studying the four artifacts indicated above, all four rely on storytelling as their method to persuade an audience. They do so by focusing on narratives as its persuasive mechanism. Narratives “organize the stimuli of our experience so that we can make sense of the people, places, events, and actions of our lives” (Foss, 2004, p. 333). These narratives allow us to interpret reality by causing us to create a common experience that connects us into accepting a particular frame of reference.
A narrative is constructed in a way that causes separate actors to be able to key into similar events so that there is a common understanding and acceptance of past experiences and, as a result, common goals and motivations. The idea of a common national mythology feeds into this paradigm, in which people who may have different perspectives on many other specific issues can share an acceptable understanding of basic traditions and norms that are fed from the same narrative. This propels ideas of socialization, religious values, and political ideologies, for a small list of examples. Continuous repetition of similarly constructed narratives build upon the original premise, making the initial story that much stronger for subsequent audiences and generations.
Narratives, however, run the risk of having to overcome both the experiences of others and the potential for counter-narratives. Counter-narratives tell a different version of a story, forcing either a change in perspective using the counter-narrative, rejection of the counter-narrative, or an integration of different narratives into one cohesive understanding, a narrative that emerges as one that contains elements of both competing narratives.
The story of the seventy-two hour coup d’etat that took place in the Soviet Union involves two separate narratives based on different desires for the future of the Soviet Union in 1991. First, the narrative of the coup d’etat participants involved reaching into the past to a time they believed many people benefited, in comparison to the present, while the counter-narrative put forth by Boris Yeltsin argued that the past was negative, and that, by accepting his narrative, the road forward was much stronger and contained far greater benefits than the past from which the Soviet Union had emerged.
Faced with obstacles put forth by the party members who conducted the coup d’etat, Yeltsin’s message not only competed against the state narrative, but his message also required alternative means of dissemination, which may have helped to construct the very message itself. The state narrative came from actors who had control of the national news media. In response, a grassroots organizational style of dissemination served Yeltsin’s needs by not only getting the counter-narrative out to the people, but also to rally those same people to participate in the events of the day. Without the counter-public’s efforts in the dissemination of Yeltsin’s message, the mobilization of the masses may never have happened during what resulted in almost the first revolution in Russia since the original communist overthrow of the government in 1917.
By conducting this criticism, this study will provide a better understanding of the conflict between competing narratives and counter-narratives, and how publics and counter-publics influence such juxtapositions. This analysis should also serve to enhance the understanding of identification in conjunction with political forces, gaining insight into how such message construction may influence future conflicts between established and marginalized rhetors.
Outline of Subsequent Chapters
Chapter Two of this study provides a review of the literature that is appropriate for an examination of the artifacts selected for this thesis. The chapter reviews literature concerning the concepts of identity from both Soviet and Russian perspectives. The chapter also reviews literature dealing with publics and counter-publics and the process of self-identification as part of an inclusive mechanism for understanding how such rhetoric affects one and influences one from within and from without such groupings. In addition, the chapter discusses Fisher’s narrative paradigm as well as other theories affiliated with the usage of this paradigm.
Chapter Three provides a general history of the events that led to the August 1991 coup d’etat. Sections of the chapter include significant events in the history of the Soviet Union, as to how it dealt with similar violent governmental changes in the past, often phrasing them as continuous, revolutionary movements. Further historical information covered in this chapter deal with the changes in Soviet hierarchy during the period of President Mikhail Gorbachev, which led directly to the overthrow of the Soviet government and the events that provided for the coup d’etat.
Chapter Four presents the biographies of the key rhetors and players in the study: Boris Yeltsin and the leaders of the putsch (coup d’etat).
Chapter Five outlines the method employed in this study to undertake narrative criticism. This chapter includes the concepts put forth by Fisher’s (1989) narrative paradigm.
Chapter Six is a complete description of the four artifacts selected for this thesis. This chapter analyzes the narrative, competing elements contained in: “Decree of the Vice President of the USSR,” “Appeal to the Soviet People,” “To the Citizens of Russia (issued at 9:00 A.M. on August 19, 1991),” and “Appeal by Boris Yeltsin, President of the RSFSR, to the Soldiers and Officers of the USSR Armed Forces, the USSR Committee for State Security [KGB], and the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs [MVD].”
Finally, Chapter Seven examines the research questions and hypotheses posed for this investigation. In addition, the chapter examines the limitations of the study, suggestions for future research in this area, and the major conclusions of the study.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
This chapter summarizes the current state of affairs with respect to research being done on the following concepts which are relevant to this study: The narrative paradigm, publics and counter-publics, persuasion, and identification. It is important to note that the event itself, the August 1991 coup d’etat has had little attention paid to it by the field of communication, studying the rhetorical effects of the players involved in the event itself. Aside from Hughest (1991), who studies Yeltsin’s resistance specifically, and historical studies, many of which are spotlighted in this study, there has been very little rhetorical study of the event. This work attempts to rectify that deficiency.
Narrative Paradigm
Although Aristotle argued in Politics that man is by nature a political animal, Alasdair MacIntyre (1984) furthers the description by calling the human being “essentially a story-telling animal.” Walter Fisher repeated this supposition by adding that “humans are essentially storytellers” (1984, p. 7). Fisher indicated that because Bormann and others have previously demonstrated that “rhetorical visions” exist (Bormann, 1973), this provides “partial evidence for the validity of the narrative paradigm” (Fisher, 1984, p. 7). Fisher defined narration as
A theory of symbolic action—words and deeds—that have sequence and meaning for those who live, create and interpret them. The narrative perspective, therefore has relevance to real as well as fictive worlds, to stories of living and to stories of the imagination (Fisher, 1984, p. 2).
Not only must the story meet the theory of symbolic action, but also the narrative must pass several substantive tests for acceptance. Previously, Fisher (1978) introduced the five basic tenets of good reasons:
First, one considers whether the statements in a message that purport to be “facts” are indeed “facts; that is, confirmed by consensus or reliable, competent witnesses. Second, one tries to determine whether relevant “facts” have been omitted and whether those that have been offered are in some way distorted or taken out of context. Third, one recognizes and assesses the various patterns of reasoning, using mainly standards from informal logic. Fourth, one assesses the relevance of individual arguments in a message to the decision it concerns, whether these arguments are not only sound, but are also all the arguments that should be considered in the case, and whether the arguments have been distorted or misrepresented in some way. Fifth, armed with the knowledge that forensic issues are those of “fact,” definition, justification, and procedure, and that deliberative decision-making centers on questions of policy and problem-solving—that is, reasons for and against change and the wisdom of particular proposals—one makes a judgment as to whether the message directly addresses the “real” issues in the case; whether, in other words, it deals with the questions on which the whole matter turns or should turn (Fisher, 1978, p. 379).
It is possible to test a specific narrative for its ability to withstand scrutiny. Fisher explained the two elements necessary for a narrative persuasion are narrative probability and fidelity. Both elements must be present in order to give strength to a narrative’s foundation. Fisher defined narrative probability as:
The consistency of characters and actions, the accommodation of auditors, and so on. In epistemological terms, the question would be whether a narrative satisfied the demands of a coherence theory of truth. The most compelling, persuasive stories are mythic in form. (Fisher, 1984, p. 16)
Fisher further explained narrative probability as the “formal features of a story conceived as a discrete sequence of thought and/or action in life and literature” (Fisher, 1989b, p. 237). The formal features of narrative probability “concern coherence, consistency, and noncontradiction. It appears they also depend upon a comparison and contrast with prior, accepted stories” (Fisher, 1989b, p. 252).
When defining narrative fidelity, Fisher stated: “In epistemological terms, narrative fidelity is a matter of truth according to the doctrine of correspondence. Though the most engaging stories are mythic, the most helpful and uplifting stories are moral” (Fisher, 1984, p. 16).
Fisher also indicated that there are presuppositions that structure the narrative paradigm:
(1) humans are essentially storytellers; (2) the paradigmatic mode of human decision-making and communication is “good reasons” which vary in form among communication situations, genres, and media; (3) the production and practice of good reasons is ruled by matters of history, biography, culture, and character along with the kinds of forces identified in the Frentz and Farrell language action paradigm; (4) rationality is determined by the nature of persons as narrative beings, (5) the world is a set of stories which must be chosen among to live the good life in a process of continual recreation. In short, good reasons are the stuff of stories, the means by which humans realize their nature as reason-valuing animals (Fisher, 1984, pp. 7-8).
Fisher further defined narrative rationality as “its logic” (Fisher, 1989a). He stated that “human communication is tested against the principles of probability (coherence) and fidelity (truthfulness and reliability)” (Fisher, 1989a, p. 47). If a story “hangs together,” depends upon an analysis of its “argumentative or structural coherence,” “material coherence,” and by “characterological coherence.” Material coherence refers to “comparing and contrasting stories told in other discourses,” such as does the story conform to other similar stories and possibly with historical accuracy. Characterological character refers to whether or not “characters behave characteristically.” Fisher (1989b) further pointed out that “a significant feature of compelling stories is that they provide a rationale for decision and action. As such, they not only constrain behavior, they may also determine it” (p. 252). When conducting a rhetorical analysis of the texts being studied by the putschists representing the state and Boris Yeltsin who represents the emerging counter-public, the test of the story’s logic will be crucial to indicate which story manages to survive direct scrutiny by the audience members present during the conflict.
Elliott (2006) pointed out that one of the problems of relying on narrative analysis is that narratives are understood as social constructions rather than truth. As Fisher indicated with his five reasons, Elliott suggested that the use of narratives provides a user-friendly strategy to suggest relationships between studied variables in non-experimental research. Therefore, by careful study of the message being examined, it is possible to obtain a level of both fidelity and rationality. This becomes crucial when taking competing stories from opposing actors and searching for a story that not only resonates with the audience, but also provides the most commonly accepted shared knowledge of an events-disputed past.
Trouillot (1995), in discussing the disparate narratives involving the European occupation of Haiti, slave revolutions and the continued avoidance of such issues in western histories, pointed out that a narrative may often stand upon its perception of truth “by virtue of its form” (Trouillot, 1995, p. 6). He further stated:
Narratives are necessarily emplotted in a way that life is not. Thus they necessarily distort life whether or not the evidence upon which they are based could be proved correct. Within that viewpoint, history becomes one among many types of narratives with no particular distinction except for its pretense of truth (p. 6).
In the end, Trouillot suggested that it is up to humans themselves to decide which narrative is most rational. He states:
It is necessary in as much as, at some point, historically specific groups of humans must decide if a particular narrative belongs to history or to fiction. In other words, the epistemological break between history and fiction is always expressed concretely through the historically situated evaluation of specific narratives (p. 8).
Unfortunately, a narrative may be dismissed completely because the story being told does not fit the common expectations of those involved in both the events and in the study of the circumstances behind the events themselves. This concern was introduced by Trouillot. It is the possibility of a narrative being dismissed due to the inability to fit it into the dogmatic paradigm already in place. For Trouillot, the issue was the trivialization of a slave revolt in the 18th century. At the time, it was unheard of for black slaves to overthrow European overseers. Nor was it believed that such an event was possible. The fact that the events did take place was irrelevant to what was reported both in the time of the events and even, according to Trouillot, the majority of historians today. Whenever the Europeans developed the narrative for what happened, the story was told as an anomaly, a movement that must have had a white influence, or the story was ignored completely. The idea that black slaves might rise up and overthrow their European masters was unheard of in the colonies, or in Europe, and therefore, there was no way of discussing such an event as a relevant narrative.
Burke (1965) previously examined this same phenomenon when he discussed the concept of terministic screens, which are “vocabularies that people typically use to allow them to think and do certain things, but prevent them from thinking and doing certain other things” (Brummett, 1994, p. 130). Burke referred to the concept as a “trained incapacity” (Burke, 1965, p. 7). In other words, our world view keeps us only capable of doing certain things within the paradigm that has been created around us.
Explaining one way this world view may actually develop involves a moral connection that is created by the journalist or storyteller. Ettema and Glasser (1972), when explaining how prize-winning journalists created narratives to tell the stories of prisoners raped in prisons and suspects attacked by police dogs, stated that the narrative focused specifically on the nature of victimization experienced by those who were the subjects of the story. Even when such victims may have been perceived guilty of the behavior that brought them under the auspices of the police involved in each case, the focus of each story was how the punishment did not fit the crime, and that in specific circumstances it was not always clear that the victim was, in fact, actually guilty of any crime in the first place.
William Lewis (2000) showed how President Ronald Reagan used the narrative form to involve the audience in the mythological connections Reagan attempted to fuse into his presidency, involving a shared vision of America as a place where each citizen can be proud of his or her citizenship. Lewis argued that Reagan did this by developing the audience member as a “central actor” in the mythology of America. He stated: “To accept Reagan’s story is not just to understand the course of an American history that is enacted in other places by other people, it is to know that the direction and outcome of the story depends upon you” (p. 316). He added: “Proper action makes the audience member into a hero; inaction or improper action makes the listener responsible for America’s decline.”
Finally, Brummett (1994) discussed the paradox that exists concerning the nature of texts. First, “people make texts so as to influence others,” and second, “people influence each other so as to make texts. The paradox is that a text is both a means to, and an outcome of, rhetorical struggle” (pp. 68-69). Brummett explained that because of such an explosion of knowledge that exists in our time, there is a need to reduce this information to something easier to understand and with which to work. He referred to “metonymy” as the “classical trope, or way of thinking, that means reduction” (p. 64). Brummett argued that by using metonymy, we can reduce the Middle East “to images, stories, or quick explanations that allow the public to ‘get a grasp’ on a complex situation.” Where this process becomes significant for the current study is that both the hardliners and Yeltsin’s counter-public relied on convincing their audiences that certain information was commonly accepted. Therefore, if one story was being told by one rhetor, there would be a certain expectation that the audience members absorbing the story would fill in certain other segments of information that were commonly shared. To do this requires a certain amount of expectation upon the part of the audience, and if that expectation is in error, then the side of the conflict that is observed to have provided the most linkage between rhetoric and the past also becomes the side that succeeds in convincing the audience of its legitimacy, mainly due to a more-shared understanding of the past.
Brummett also discussed the process of rhetorical criticism itself, explaining how to choose and work with a text for such an investigation. He referred to the steps as continuums that should be examined in order, while determining exactly what kind of criticism will take place. These continuums are: Finding a text, sources of meaning, choice of context, text-context relationship, and from surface to deep reading (pp. 82-100). It is by making these choices in the studying of a particular text that one is capable of understanding the nature of the rhetorical criticism that will and can be conducted.
Publics and Counter-publics
One of the omnipresent, omnipotent artifacts to continue to survive the battles of various ideologies is the continuous attention directed towards the state and its control over society. Jurgen Habermas, in his book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, argued that groups and classes emerge as political subjects, creating public spheres that enable power for some while obstructing it for others. Some of the criticisms of Habermas’s approach involve the idea that the public sphere becomes “a neutral site where contending political forces meet—concretely, it is hard to find examples of such a neutral site” (Davies, 2005, p. 137). For Habermas, the public created was a place of production, in which private individuals would create “intellectual newspapers” to challenge the state itself.
Building upon Habermas, Michael Warner (2005) pointed out that people will often come together in a public, “an ongoing space of encounter for discourse” (Warner, p. 90). This is a grouping of people who do not identify with that state (p. 68), and exists “independently of state institutions, laws, formal frameworks of citizenship, or preexisting institutions such as the church” (p. 68). Publics subsist on repetition, in which “the language, styles and attitudes it finds are then packaged in ad campaigns that are broadcast so often they become a part of the public consciousness” (p. 101).
Habermas argued that the existence of a public forces the state to react to the citizens as consumers.
One may speak of a refeudalization of the public sphere in yet another, more exact sense. For the kind of integration of mass entertainment with advertising, which in the form of public relations already assumes a “political” character, subjects even the state itself to its code. Because private enterprises evoke in their customers the idea that in their consumption decisions they act in their capacity as citizens, the state has to “address” its citizens like consumers. As a result, public authority too competes for publicity. (Habermas, 1991, p. 195)
One of the problems with a public is that it is often difficult to determine what exactly constitutes membership. Warner stated: “Merely paying attention can be enough to make you a member” (Warner, p. 71). Therefore, it becomes difficult to quantify exactly what makes one a member of a particular public. People are also not limited to one public, as a person can be a member of a number of different publics at one time, as one can be a member of a gendered public, a reading public, or an ideological grouping. Thus, it becomes difficult to determine which public achieves a sense of control or power at any one time.
As there are publics, Warner pointed out that there are also counter-publics, “an indefinitely accessible world conscious of its subordinate relation” (Warner, p. 199). Warner used queer theory as his foundation for explaining counter-publics, arguing that because gays are aware of their subordinate status to a more generalized public, their identity is driven by belonging to a counter-public that essentially exists to challenge the “accepted” publics that exist. In queer theory, those who wish to sustain an identity are often required to conform to a “normal” pattern existent in society, where mainstream people constantly force actors to “alter their behavior” to societal norms. Warner stated: “Queers, incessantly told to alter their ‘behavior’ can be understood as protesting not just the normal behavior of the social but the idea of normal behavior” (Warner, p. 218).
In addition, as Davies (2005) indicated when discussing the public spheres of unprotected workers, alternative groups are resilient when it comes to articulating and maintaining the content of their messages. Even when advertising as public space becomes privatized, “then it should be no surprise if agents without access to this sphere find other ways of asserting their concerns,” through either “residual cultural forms,” or “emergent cultural forms,” (p. 139) like gatherings, protests, or riots.
Counter-publics exist in direct response to publics themselves, and they continue to exist because of an inability or a lack of desire to kowtow to the norms of publics to which they are counter. But while counter-publics have the need to traverse the norms of publics and the state itself, counter-publics have the same constraints put upon them in regards to maintaining membership and sponsorship. Often, the creation of the counter-public becomes the easier part; maintaining it can be much more difficult. Piven and Cloward (1979) pointed out, in their study of poor people’s movements, that creating the organization for action often does not survive beyond the first instance of mobilization. Citing Mancur Olson’s The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (1971), participants in a movement often use the success of their first venture to “sit out” the subsequent mobilization, convinced that because there were so many people participating the first time, their lack of participation will not be missed. This is referred to as the “free rider” problem, and it affects most large movements and mobilizations.
This does not mean that continuous membership in publics and counter-publics is not possible. Owens and Palmer (2003), when discussing anarchists and their counter-public relations over the World Wide Web, pointed out that what kept such groups in contact with each other was a propensity to link to each other from their main Web sites. “Almost 75% send at least one link to another anarchist site, most sending more than one.” This creates what the authors refer to as a “highly connected network,” with over 70 percent reachable through links.
Persuasion
From the early days of rhetoric in the Academy in Athens to the latest debates for public office, the concept of the importance of persuasion in public speaking has a rich, dynamic foundation. In Aristotle’s The Art of Rhetoric, rhetoric is defined as “the power to observe the persuasiveness of which any particular matter admits. For of no other art is this the function” (Aristotle, trans. 1991, p. 74). As Brummett (1994) pointed out, rhetoric has taken a number of different meanings over the centuries, but one factor still remains present: Texts, or “sets of signs related to each other insofar as their meanings all contribute to the same set of effects or functions” (p. 27), serve to influence our decisions and create a consciousness or ideology of which we absorb “after prolonged and repeated exposure to their meanings of a wide range of artifacts within a cultural system” (pp. 29-30).
Much of the literature conducted on the concept of persuasive methods has focused upon compliance and attitude change. Some of this literature concerns the process of political socialization, especially concerning the very young. An initial concern with the early literature that involves political socialization with childhood learning (Stacey, 1977 and Langton, 1980) is that people rarely change their attitudes or their political affiliations unless something extremely significant happens that forces a change in belief system (Sigel and Hoskin, 1977). In other words, people maintain the same political beliefs and attitudes throughout life unless something abruptly causes them to change their thinking. Unfortunately, such changes are rarely planned, nor are they common. This makes it really difficult to change the mind of someone unless that person was already thinking in that way, or some incident of overwhelming impact occurred to change one’s natural opinion. Yet, it is noted that people still do change their political beliefs and attitudes, and in certain circumstances do make decisions that are contrary to what is expected. This perspective change is an important component to study to determine what mechanisms are present that can cause such an alteration in someone’s opinion and beliefs.
In a study by Cobb and Kuklinski (1997), it was discovered that when it came to persuading people concerning specific issues, in this study specifically NAFTA and health care, “some people, no matter how much they try, will not comprehend hard arguments,” (Cobb and Kuklinski, p. 96) but will understand easy arguments, meaning that persuasion is difficult to achieve if the issues are highly complex, requiring higher levels of argumentation. Cobb and Kuklinski also discovered that of all types of arguments and positions, the easiest type of arguments to cause changes in attitude were those that were “con,” or negative, arguments. It was also noted by the authors that in previous studies the mass public was treated as a “single, homogenous body” (p. 115). The problem this tends to create is that there is no way to cause an opinion change in a large group of people all at one time. Tracking such a change would be just as difficult. However, earlier studies claimed to have made such observations of opinion changes, tracking statistical changes in attitude, rather than individual changes. Therefore, Cobb and Kuklinski decided to focus on the individual rather than groups of people to determine what makes specific people change their political opinions and attitudes, arguing that persuasive change requires each person to change his or her mind, and that group mindsets did not exist. In other words, a large mindset might change through persuasion, but the action would require persuasion involving each actor present in the larger group.
Much of the earlier work in political persuasion focused on large numbers of people who agreed with the status quo. Outliers were considered abnormalities that were not worth studying. Kraus and Davis (1976) conducted an early study on the outliers and pointed out that “research indicates that because alienated persons are those who cannot understand social institutions, they will generally experience frustration and anxiety whenever they attempt to engage in political action. As a result, they will completely avoid political conflict” (Kraus and David, p. 181). In other words, according to Kraus and David, if someone was not part of the status quo social institutions, they did not understand the political process and only found themselves frustrated by the process. Dawson, Prewitt, and Dawson (1976) followed this up by pointing out that because individuals desire to be part of groups, their opinions can be swayed by their desire to be part of social groups with which they identify. In other words, people who want to be part of groups can be manipulated by those who are the decision-makers for those groups. In the Soviet Union in 1991, individuals chose the groups with which they identified, standing behind the government public or joining an alternative counter-public that challenged the proclamations and intentions of the government itself. This identification with a counter-public group would present the opportunity for opinions being swayed towards an in-group popular perspective.
Some of the ground-breaking work in persuasion and compliance came from asking questions about what type of timing might actually substantiate attitude change, questioning the process of causality to involve earlier factors rather than just the one change agent. William J. McGuire (1957), in an experiment on the timing of persuasive messages, determined “it was shown that the effect of the source’s earlier communications on the persuasiveness of his later messages depends in large measure on the extent to which agreement with those earlier communications was rewarding for the recipient” (McGuire, 1957, p. 112). In other words, to achieve compliance behavior for a later message, subsequent encounters depend upon the successes of earlier messages. To a leader in a crisis, this might mean being the first to make a speech that manages to achieve compliance, or it might mean having to overcome a previously successful message from another leader with whom one may end up in conflict.