Suasive speech: A stronger affective defense of rhetoric and the politics of cognitive poetics

• An overview of cognitive science research examining involuntary affective responses to linguistic utterances is offered.
• Demonstrates a need to revisit Jean-Jacques Rousseau's ‘Weak Defense of Rhetoric’.
• Evidences the importance of affect and emotions in democratic deliberation.
• Demonstrates a need to account for involuntary suasion in Rhetoric, i.e. a Stronger Defense of Rhetoric.

A review of empirical data on involuntary affective responses to ‘rhetorical’ speech establishes the need to reexamine Jean-Jacques Rousseau's so-called ‘Weak Defense of Rhetoric,’ which considers rhetorical tropes to be dangerous because they seduce the body. Evaluating empirical findings also challenges Richard Lanham's ‘Strong Defense,’ which dismisses Rousseau and rejects any condemnation of ‘rhetorical speech’ in asserting that all utterances are already rhetorical insofar as they are contextual and selective. Ultimately, experimental psychology and neuroscience studies give good reason to adopt a new, Stronger Affective Defense of Rhetoric, one that prioritises the body and its degrees of affectability, embracing Rousseau's idea that democratic deliberation must be concerned with how the body is intimately and often automatically moved by rhetorical speech.