Rhetoric, Jargon, Semantics, and the Brundtland Report
When you hear the word rhetoric you probably think of persuasive speech. Although this wouldn’t be wrong according to rhetoric’s place among the three ancient arts of discourse (grammar and logic being the other two), rhetoric does much more than persuade an audience. As a student of rhetoric, I spend a lot of time analyzing the rhetorical modes (techniques and literary devices) that writers/speakers employ to convey their message to an audience. I’m concerned with how – by what means or methods – a writer/speaker informs, motivates, or persuades their audience, and beyond that, I want to know how those methods can be applied to create positive change.
A quick aside: If you’re new to The Maple Sett, then I would recommend you start with this post to get acquainted with my vision for this blog.
Alright, you’ve got a very basic definition of rhetoric, so let’s look at another word. This time, I want to clarify the term jargon. Jargon is the collection of words and phrases used by a group – usually a professional group like doctors or lawyers – that convey specific, specialized meanings and are thus difficult for outsiders to understand. Jargon is not inherently bad, in fact it serves a very important role in communication within an in-group. Doctors use jargon to communicate effectively and efficiently among one another, as do military personnel and people in any given trade/craft. Jargon is wonderful to use among people in the know, but can be very exclusionary when used against people who lack the prerequisite knowledge. Just like rhetoric, it’s the application of jargon that determines its ‘goodness’ or its ‘badness’.
Here’s the next one: semantics. I’m sure you’ve been told by someone to “just drop it, it’s just semantics” in an argument before. It’s one thing to be told to stop being pedantic, but another entirely to stop seeking clarity of meaning and understanding through semantics. So what is semantics? At its core, semantics is a branch of linguistics most concerned with meaning. Semantics – the meaning of a word, phrase, text, etc – goes beyond dictionary definitions, however, and includes the individual experiences, ideas, beliefs, and more held by an individual. My definition of the word sustainability, for example, is informed by everything I’ve learned and experienced thus far in life which is entirely different to what you’ve learned and experienced in your own life to bring you to your definition of the word. Furthermore, we are always evolving the meanings and understandings we hold, which means our personal semantics are always changing. This is precisely why it’s important to come to terms with one’s semantics before proceeding with a debate, argument, or regular discussion.
Great, so now we have rhetoric, jargon, and semantics to contend with, but to what end? Why do any of these concepts matter?
I mentioned that I study rhetoric and then brought up the example of the word sustainability; in order to start a discussion around the rhetorics of sustainability, we need to come to an agreement on what exactly I mean when I say that something is sustainable. To do that, I want to introduce you to the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Report delivered to the UN General Assembly in 1987. If you’ve read my previous post on fast fashion and the EU PEF, then you’ll be vaguely familiar with this report, but I want to take the time to break down the goals and outcomes of that report here so we can come to an agreement on semantics. With that out of the way, we’ll be able to proceed onto the analytical work I’m engaging in with the goal of creating positive social change.
So, the Brundtland Report. You can read the full report here as a pdf, but I’ll go ahead and simplify it for the sake of our conversation regarding sustainable textiles. To begin, the report states that “[t]he challenge of finding sustainable development paths ought to provide the impetus - indeed the imperative - for a renewed search for multilateral solutions and a restructured international economic system of co-operation.” In this quote alone, a few key terms appear: sustainable development; multilateral solutions; and international cooperation. These terms define the goals of the report and serve as a basic outline for how the report lays out its findings, arguments, and proscriptions for the future. Knowing that, and having just learned the importance of semantics, let’s take the time to come to terms with what the Brundtland Report means by each of these phrases.
Sustainable Development:
If you read through the report, you’ll find that there are a few defining features of sustainable development, namely that it can’t happen without social considerations in addition to environmental and economic ones. This focus on social factors is key, since a lot of policy today regarding the textile chain does not take social factors into account, which as I argue, means that we are not currently pursuing sustainable development. As I talked about in my previous post linked above, the Higg Index and the EU PEF Method – which ranks textiles (among other things, for the latter) in sustainability – blatantly ignores the social aspect. The Brundtland Report makes it clear that there can be no sustainable development done this way; world poverty, international inequality, and global crises, all of which define the current ‘state of things’, are antithetical to sustainable development and are intrinsically tied to the social sphere. There is nothing sustainable about the overexploitation of natural resources in the developing world due to pressures from other nations who have already consumed their own store of natural resources.
Throughout the report comes the refrain that there is no separating humans from the environment, or the environment from the economy. We are a part of our environment, and we have made a business out of our environment; if we hope to develop, then we have no choice but to address the human element that continues to degrade the means by which we conduct said business. What that means, in short, is that if we hope to amend the environmental degradation we continue to cause, then we need to address the human rights issues behind many of those degradations.
Multilateral Solutions:
What the report is calling for here is for multi-sided solutions, ones that involve as many nations as possible and as many voices as possible. If we hope to find ways to address current issues and to prevent future ones, then we ought to consult the nations and peoples most affected by the effects of environmental breakdown. Keep this idea of seeking out the most affected voices in mind for later.
International Cooperation:
Similar to the previous term, the report emphasizes the fact that everyone needs to be involved in creating solutions. If the problems are global, then so should the groups involved in discussion be.
We have some basic definitions now, so what do we do with them? How does this connect to Fibershed and the rhetorical work I’m doing?
In the next post, I’ll introduce Fibershed and make some of those connections.