Constitutive rhetoric

Constitutive rhetoric is a theory of discourse devised by James Boyd White about the capacity of language or symbols to create a collective identity for an audience, especially by means of condensation symbols, literature, and narratives. Such discourse often demands that action be taken to reinforce the identity and the beliefs of that identity. White explains that it denotes “the art of constituting character, community and culture in language.”

The constitutive model of rhetoric dates back to the ancient Greek Sophists, with theories that speech moved audiences to action based on a contingent, shared knowledge. Kenneth Burke contributed to the theory of constitutive rhetoric by highlighting identification, rather than persuasion, as the major means by which language functioned. Burke contended that social identity is founded “spontaneously, intuitively, even unconsciously.”Edwin Black's theory of the second persona also aided scholars in rhetoric to analyze the imagined shared values and beliefs between speaker and audience through textual analysis. Audience must adopt a particular ethos prior to being persuaded by constitutive rhetoric, thus the ethos of the subject of discourse can be critically studied and interpreted through a text.

While these theorists all contributed to the theory of constitutive rhetoric, James Boyd White was the first to coin the term. In 1985, he explained that the term “constitutive rhetoric” described rhetoric that called a common, collective identity into existence. White wrote that persuasion and identification occur only when audiences already understand and relate to method and content. Thus, speech happens within culture, and speakers adapt messages to reflect the ideas and views of a community. When speeches address a diverse crowd as though they are of one community, White describes this as “calling [identity] into being” through material identification.

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