1.1: The Roots of Persuasion

Do you ever stop and think about how amazing words are?  As your eyes or ears or fingertips take in the symbols on this page, what thoughts or images are bubbling up in your brain? Using words–communicating–provides structure for our thoughts, enables us to make human connections and share meaning, create culture, and provides a means to persuade–among so many other things. Language is likely the single greatest invention of humankind!

Many communication textbooks will tell you that language and culture cannot be separated; it's next to impossible to fully immerse in a culture if one does not speak the language, and it's hard to completely understand the nuanced meanings of a language if one is not a member of a culture. A simple analogy for this is cake batter: eggs and flour and butter are separate things, but once they're mixed together, you can no longer separate them. Trying to separate culture and language would be like trying to remove an egg from a bowl of cake batter. Our languages are very much a part of our cultures.

We see this with the concept of persuasion. Although there is debate about where, precisely, democracy was born, the democratic government of Athens, Greece was early and extremely influential. Imagine the enormous shift in Western culture when the ideals and language of Athenian democracy took root. The rule of the privileged and powerful was replaced when the merchant, trading and artisan classes took power (James 16). Regular citizens (this meant free, Athenian-born men, who comprised about 20% of the population) not only had the right to participate in government, it was their duty to participate. The Assembly, which met weekly to decide all public policy, included every citizen 18 or older. Imagine the change in power dynamics: regular citizens, not kings or dictators or aristocrats, were the driving force behind government, legal decisions, and jury verdicts (Davis). Common citizens were making powerful, sometimes life-or-death decisions. The Council, which set the agenda for the Assembly, "consisted of 500 Athenian males over 30, drawn by lot from those who put themselves forward. Each councillor served for one year only, and could never serve for more than two" (Jones 25). "After a number of years, practically every citizen had had an opportunity to be a member of the administration, so that the body of citizens who formed the public assembly consisted of men who were familiar with the business of government" (James 5).

Today, government leaders and elected officials would likely disagree with the idea that randomly-selected citizens could do their work, but that was precisely the guiding principle of Greek Democracy. One of the greatest civilizations the world has known flourished under this form of government:

Now if the ancient Greeks had done little beside invent and practice this unique form of human equality in government, they would have done enough to be remembered. The astonishing thing is that they laid the intellectual foundation of Western Europe. Today when we speak about philosophy, logic, dialect; when we speak of politics, democracy, oligarchy, constitution, law; when we speak of oratory, rhetoric, ethics; when we speak of drama, of tragedy and comedy; when we speak of history; when we speak of sculpture and architecture; in all these things we use the terms and build on the foundations that were discovered and developed by the Greeks (James 8-9).

New language and ideas accompanied the shift in governance, power and culture. With free will, a voice, and real power, a whole new way of communicating would emerge alongside the new form of governance. The despot was replaced with debate; edicts gave way to eloquence, and supreme rule was set aside for reason. It is absolutely no coincidence that the discipline of persuasion closely trailed the birth of democracy.