Kurtis Ebeling
Dr. Crane
ENGL 573
18 March 2020
Truth and #Posttruth Rhetoric: Paradox, Discursive Knowledge, and Polarized Audiences
Introduction
The term “post-truth,” and the assertion that we are living in a “post-truth era,” are rhetorically nuanced uses of paradox that mirror the structure of post-truth rhetoric—a rhetoric that makes truth claims without concern for truth, but for utility—practiced by figures like president Donald Trump, that are designed to win through the deliberate avoidance of empirically verifiable truths/facts. The connecting of contraries happens in both cases, but the effect of each is significantly different. Paradoxes reveal truth through the connection of apparent contradictions (Moore 19), and consequently reveal the way in which language is an active agent in shaping how we come to understand the world. Meanwhile, post-truth rhetoric, or the rhetoric the term “post-truth” is intended to describe, conceals truth through the use of contradiction. Therefore, these two rhetorical uses of language, or rhetorical strategies, can be understood as antinomies, being contrary yet interwoven, to some extent, and sharing a similar form while achieving opposite ends: “the doctrines of contraries are the same, though the use be opposite” (743, Bacon). Twitter and news media, in particular, have become unique forums wherein both of these rhetorical strategies have been, and continue to be, employed. Consequently, both of these outlets offer interesting corpuses to pull from, and can prove useful for analyzing post-truth rhetoric in practice, rather than abstractly, which will help substantiate these claims.
A truth-statement claiming that we live in a post-truth world is inherently paradoxical because it proves otherwise: there is truth to be found in the post-truth world. While paradox, in its simplest sense, can be thought of as word play, using language’s capacity for a multitude of meanings, within certain contexts, to embellish, this also reveals the role that language, and the specific structures of a language, play in the construction and conveying of meaning. Expanding on this idea, paradoxes can demonstrate the way in which language can be used, in a new and seemingly illogical manner, to reveal meaning or truth, which further illustrates how the common use of language and logic, actively or inactively, conceals or distracts from unrealized meaning through the construction of apparent, but false, dichotomies. Furthermore, as with all language, paradoxes, and the post-truth paradox in particular, are deeply contingent on context, within and outside of the text itself (for example time and setting), and its audience’s ability to interpret the underlying meaning: “only by virtue of a linguistic consensus, rules connecting language and reality can be established and followed consistently; only thereby can meaningful communication occur” (Falzer 53). As the previous quote illustrates, borrowing from Falzer, who is interpreting Wittgenstein, the relationship between meaning, language, and audience is deeply intertwined, and the understanding of said language has to be shared and consistent. However, the reliance on audience to interpret intended meaning and to recognize the subtle way in which language perpetuates certain understandings, which ties paradox to notions of discursive knowledge making, makes paradox (and language in general) rhetorical, and, therefore, regardless of nuance, there is a distinction to be made between rhetorically effective and ineffective paradoxes. Because of the role interpretation plays in knowledge creation, the post-truth paradox, while being a nuanced use of language, is only rhetorically effective in its ability to solidify an already held belief. This paradox isn’t changing the minds of those susceptible to the rhetoric it describes, and is attempting to combat, because it must be interpreted as a paradox in order to be effective. If the irony is lost, then rhetorical effect of this paradox is rendered inert.
If we consider James Berlin’s “social-epistemic rhetoric,” which claims that knowledge, and consequently truth, are created through a discourse between the “observer, the discourse community (social group) in which the observer is functioning, and the material conditions of existence” (Berlin 488)—a discourse possible, at least partially, only through the framework of a shared language—then to claim that the creation of knowledge socially is contingent on both language and our ability to persuade is reasonable. Whether one side convinces the other, or two opposites reveal, through argument, the truth that lies somewhere in the middle, the creation of knowledge, within this framework, is democratic, and, like a democracy, requires participation. Knowledge, within this framework, cannot be isolated from the discourse that happens between the self, the world, and one’s community through language, which is an ever-shifting social construction we use, personally, to construct and reconstruct the world . The closest we get to objective truth, outside of fact, is the collective pursuit of truth through a discourse between subjective understandings of the real. Therefore, audience is deeply important, but audiences are also manipulatable. If the audience, for example, can be convinced of premises that are not grounded in fact/truth through the use of ethos and pathos, then to argue using logos, which is necessarily based in using premises in accordance with fact to come to conclusions—"Now, necessary signs, probabilities, and signs are the propositions of the rhetorician; for the syllogism universally consists of propositions, and the enthymeme is a syllogism" (37, Aristotle)—is rendered entirely ineffective.
Connecting these ideas, paradox can be considered a linguistic means of revealing unrealized truth, while social-epistemic rhetoric can be thought of as a framework for considering how knowledge is constructed socially. Both social-epistemic rhetoric and the post-truth paradox contend with the relationship between the speaker’s intended meaning, language use, and the audience’s received meaning. The post-truth paradox contends, more specifically, with revealing how language can be intentionally used to create false-consciousness, or, more simply put, to deceive. Social-epistemic rhetoric is, in contrast, more concerned with the creation of belief and knowledge socially, through rhetoric abstractly, and is therefore far broader in scope, and deals with the interdependent construction and origination of ideology, culture and consciousness. Furthermore, the post-truth paradox and social-epistemic rhetoric are useful tools for thinking about the way in which post-truth rhetoric can be effective and combated. The post-truth paradox is useful for deconstructing post-truth rhetoric structurally, using language to elucidate how contraries both conceal and reveal meaning, and the social-epistemic framework of rhetoric is useful for analyzing how post-truth rhetoric can be effective, contextually, within broader discourse.
Following this introduction, I will first briefly introduce how these notions of socially constructed truth, language's role and effect in the construction truth, and the intentional manipulation of truth relate to the conflict between Plato's notions of objective "T" truth, and the constructionist Sophists, which could help contextualize the current conflict between "truth" and "post-truth." Second, I will analyze the two primary mediums I have identified—Twitter and news media—for the use of post-truth rhetoric, with a focus on President Donald Trump's rhetoric. Third, I will consider what the post-truth paradox reveals about the nature of these mediums, and will use this to think more generally, and abstractly, about the nature of post-truth rhetoric. Lastly, using the social-epistemic model, I will attempt to analyze the rhetorical effectiveness of labeling this kind of rhetoric "post-truth," and whether or not the ironic and paradoxical nature of such a label is interpreted.