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Addressing a gap in political thought, this book examines the interplay between ethos and practical reason in everyday life. It suggests that the burgeoning literature on the 'ethotic' dimension of democracy leaves untreated the issue of practical reason and how it infuses political judgment and action.

Celebrity politician Sarah Palin diffused climate denialism, while advocating a version of social and political conservatism. This article scrutinises her rhetoric and argues that she crafted and performed a brand or ethos that resonated with common-sense conservatism, while at the same time reinforcing and popularising this doctrine. The article discerns the epistemological and ontological premises of Palin's ideological position and probes how she used her image as an anti-intellectual, frontier individual to speak common sense and to advocate free-market ideology and climate denialism. The article, then, contributes to our understanding of how celebrity politicians craft and use ethos to promote anti-environmental agendas and ideological positions. It also highlights the embeddedness of climate denialism in the political conviction that Palin espoused.

This article argues that rhetorical analysis is a method particularly well-suited for the study of political disputes and introduces commonplaces as a tool to conduct such analysis. Commonplaces function as key reference points that produce and organise social meaning; they can thus help to clarify the terms of the dispute and illuminate how these are linked to broader debates within the political community. Commonplaces call into attention sedimented views and point to alternative norms of action pursued by agents of change and therefore to entry points for recontestation. The article substantiates this claim through a case study that maps arguments for climate action in party manifestos in the 2019 General Election in the United Kingdom. A rhetorical analysis of the material highlights the emergence of a number of insurgent commonplaces that seek to disturb the dominance of 'economic growth' as principle that informs climate action. Commonplaces can provide a more nuanced understanding of public debates, help to identify sedimented ideological views, and illuminate openings for recontestation and the pursuit of alternative socio-ecological arrangements.

The neoliberal nature of the environmental state prevents a transformation to long-term sustainability. Taking the case of Britain, I scrutinise the rhetorical invention of the environmental state by identifying and analysing the commonplaces that informed political arguments for environmental policymaking between 1997–2015. The analysis shows that the rhetoric of the British environmental state is grounded on neoliberal commonplaces, which entails an understanding of environmental problems and solutions that precludes actual transformation. Ultimately, neoliberalism functions as a glass ceiling to radical environmental transformation; a transformative rhetoric informed by commonplaces different to those of neoliberalism is paramount to the institution of a counter-hegemonic ecological paradigm.

Rhetorical scholarship has significantly contributed to our understanding of the role of confrontation in engendering social and political change, but it traditionally over-emphasises its moral aspect, which results in the simplification of public issues and the radicalisation of identities. This article introduces a distinct form of political rhetoric and analyses the rhetorical conventions that constitute it. Drawing material from the anti-mining movement formed in the region of Halkidiki, Greece, the article proposes that disputatious rhetoric, through employing the techniques of parrēsia, melodrama and antithesis, proves pertinent to the articulation of dissent, the formation of collective subjects, and the projection of a counter-hegemonic discourse which challenges dominant neoliberal practices and discourses. Disputatious rhetoric, the article concludes, encodes the possibility of social and political change, not least because it impacts on the meaning attributed to actions and prevents the solidification of a single narrative or discourse as commonsensical.

This article offers an analysis of Obama's response to the publication of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) torture report. Using rhetoric as its mode of inquiry, the article demonstrates how Obama employed epideictic discourse to define and redefine national ethos, to reconstruct and restore acts and actors and to avoid deliberation about further investigation and prosecution. The article discusses the political implications of epideictic rhetoric, the genre of speech considered the least pertinent to political life, and proposes that epideictic rhetoric can be an effective tool for political actors. Obama, the article argues, by using epideictic rhetoric shifted topic from a political issue, the accountability of members of the executive branch and the CIA, to an ethical issue, 'who Americans are'. Despite avoiding political rhetoric, Obama's epideictic affirmed torture as policy choice and left the possibility open for the use of similar practices in the future.

'Keeping silent' can be a meaningful political event, a form of political activism that generates new political subjectivities and alters existing realities by reconfiguring power relations. To flesh out this argument, this paper attends to a particular silent protest and affirms it as a tactic employed by an emergent political collectivity to make itself perceptible, declare an injustice and challenge institutional power. As such, the silent event under scrutiny does not merely invite a turning of our attention to a practice that breaks the association of the political subject with the speaking subject; it also invites a reconsideration of what we are accustomed to accept as political activism. 'Keeping silent' is a critical practice, indeed, because it manifests an alternative possibility of being and acting; in so doing, it disrupts established patterns of thought and practice, and more specifically the rigid distinction between speech and silence.

This article offers an analysis of Obama's response to the publication of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) torture report. Using rhetoric as its mode of inquiry, the article demonstrates how Obama employed epideictic discourse to define and redefine national ethos, to reconstruct and restore acts and actors and to avoid deliberation about further investigation and prosecution. The article discusses the political implications of epideictic rhetoric, the genre of speech considered the least pertinent to political life, and proposes that epideictic rhetoric can be an effective tool for political actors. Obama, the article argues, by using epideictic rhetoric shifted topic from a political issue, the accountability of members of the executive branch and the CIA, to an ethical issue, 'who Americans are'. Despite avoiding political rhetoric, Obama's epideictic affirmed torture as policy choice and left the possibility open for the use of similar practices in the future.

This article introduces the special issue on Rhetorical Approaches to Contemporary Political Studies. It underscores the importance of innovations in political speech as a key to the continuing attraction of scholars to rhetorical methods. This is particularly relevant at a moment of crisis and disruption in established democracies when the parameters of acceptable discourse have been brought into question by forms of 'post-truth' politics. Although controversial, such efforts affirm the value of rhetorical analysis as a mode of political enquiry. The article then sketches the arguments of the contributions to the issue.

This article introduces the special issue on Rhetorical Approaches to Contemporary Political Studies. It underscores the importance of innovations in political speech as a key to the continuing attraction of scholars to rhetorical methods. This is particularly relevant at a moment of crisis and disruption in established democracies when the parameters of acceptable discourse have been brought into question by forms of 'post-truth' politics. Although controversial, such efforts affirm the value of rhetorical analysis as a mode of political enquiry. The article then sketches the arguments of the contributions to the issue.