(no subject)

[sravakavarn]

Rhetoric is more than a tool or handmaiden of ideology--in fact, the moralizing force of words often creates the fractures in the very ideological frameworks it wishes to serve. Remember that when thinking banal sloganeering is just opportunism.

Comments

[matrixmann]

Rhetoric is what makes an appeal address an individual or a whole group. It suggests to them to understand their situation, it delivers identification, and to have a solution for what they perceive as ills that make their life bad.

For example... How many teens once were out there which could recite Eric Harris' tirade "You know what I hate?" like a prayer?
They did that because they could identify with those phrases.
And, beside the actual content, in a certain way it addressed those teens because it felt honest. It felt like an honest message.

People recognize slogans which have been generated in order to advertise something, but quality-wise it isn't really iconic, it doesn't come from heart. It isn't the kind of shit some freak gets upon in the middle of the night and which he adopts because it sounds cool or keeps being stuck in the back of your head.
This is the kind of stuff they don't stick with or remember.
They remember those slogans which seem (!) like wanting to say something or which just get easily stuck in your head. Or words that seem like they didn't come out of the labs of an advertising agency.

In fact, that is the horse which populism at all times tried to place its bets on.
Create something that people remember and like to recite; that's already half the battle.