One of the main components in the ideograph as a rhetorical device involves the notion of “groupthink.” In ideological rhetoric, when one appears to “think” and “behave” collectively one has been tricked, self-deluded, or manipulated into accepting the brute existence of such fantasies as “public mind” or “public opinion” or “public philosophy.”
Beck plays up on the core American values of independence and individualism. Beck presents his case against the common core by using these values to back him up. Beck is suggesting that if one is a true American they will maintain their right to a choice and an opinion. Only the “un-American” let’s important decisions like education be made for them.
Another one of the main components of “The Ideograph” in rhetorical devices is that “the exposure of falsity is a moral act.” In Beck’s discourse he explains how the government has been acting falsely because it goes against core American educational beliefs including personalized lesson plans and a focus on classical literature. Beck continues to in the video to point out that unless citizens are willing to take a stand against the common core they are immoral because they aren’t standing up for America’s values.
In McGee’s article he explains the ideological perspective in rhetoric saying, “Though we have never experienced a “true consciousness,” it is nonetheless theoretically accessible to us, and, because of such accessibility, we are morally remiss if we do not discard the false and approach the true.” Beck’s call for people to change school districts or transfer their children to private school fit into this notion of “discarding the false and approaching the true.”
While McGee suggests the symbol is an appropriate means of capturing the ideograph, I’m starting to wonder if it is possible to view his notion of the ideological rhetoric in a positive way. McGraw uses the term “trick-of-the-mind” to describe this rhetoric and says that the ideograph “deludes us into believing that we “think” with/through/for a “society” to which we “belong.” It seems as if the entire notion of an ideological rhetoric is contingent on manipulation and presenting information either in a bad light or through a rose-colored lens depending on what is beneficial for the rhetorician at the time.
After watching Beck’s video and reading through McGee’s concept of the ideograph I’m left feeling pretty depressed. It seems as if the public should always be on guard against the rhetoric style of the ideograph because it is so firmly based in manipulation and twisting the truth. McGee says that “Human beings are ‘conditioned,’ not directly to belief and behavior, but to a vocabulary of concepts that function as guides, warrants, reasons, or excuses for behavior and belief. When a claim is warranted by such terms as ‘law,’ ‘liberty,’ ‘tyranny,’ or ‘trial by jury,’ in other words it is presumed that human beings will react predictably and autonomically.” Beck very deliberately employs such terms in his discourse, using such words as “American,” “moral,” “freedom,” “big brother,” and “oppressive.” I think McGee would say we should read this list of terms as such “guides, warrants, reasons, or excuses” which Beck employs to sway his listeners thinking. So is the whole notion of ideological rhetoric essentially unearned manipulation? Or is there anything more to Beck’s argument?
Rather than feeling immediately manipulated and depressed over the use of the Ideograph in popular rhetoric, perhaps McGee means for his definition of ideological rhetoric to be more of a warning than a classification. I think McGee seeks to shed light on the manipulative aspects of ideological rhetoric, but instead of immediately rejecting all forms of ideological rhetoric, which I think McGee is leaning toward, I think McGee’s points are useful tools to measure instances of ideological rhetoric against. We can use his notions to test and see what is true.
Mcgee, Michael Calvin. “The “ideograph”: A Link between Rhetoric and Ideology.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 66.1 (1980): 1-16. Web.