In rhetorical action, language matters: through language, strategic narratives become instruments of rhetorical action and persuasion. Rhetorical action underpins a form of persuasion that combines both the logic of consequences and appropriateness (Petrova, 2016;
Magnette and Nicolaidis, 2004; Risse and Kleine, 2010). From the definition, persuasion captures the critical elements of the two paradigms. Finnemore and Sikkink (1998: 914) define persuasion as “the mission of norm entrepreneurs: they [actors] seek to change the utility functions of other players to reflect some new normative commitments. Persuasion is the process by which agent action becomes social structure, ideas become norms, and the subjective becomes intersubjective”. In this regard, the objective is to reach a reasoned consensus with the right process of reasoning (Risse and Kleine, 2010).
Within a social engagement, actors use language to express diverse perceptions and ideologies in rhetoric. Instead of being just a medium of information transformation from an autonomous
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reality, language enables social relations through discourse claims to form reality. A conceptualization is made possible by language as a network of words or signs juxtaposed to derive the desired meaning whose significance is constructed relative to other objects. These collocations establish links with either positive or negative meaning when put together through contestation. The understanding of rhetorical action aids the investigation of how actors socially construct or express beliefs, ideas, and meanings to influence other actors (Finnemore and Sikkink, 2001). Besides, rhetorical action takes intersubjectiveness normative positions as prominent features in the real world. For instance, the concept of refugees is a framed social fact and is reliant on the agreement among actors about asylum. Thus, refugees will always exist as long as the agreement remains (Betts and Loescher, 2011:89; Haddad, 2008:7). As long as a state is a party to asylum law, the international community will always compel it to comply with asylum norms and standards.
Rhetorical action is dependent on how an actor frames a social phenomenon in relation to the other. For instance, irregular migration control inhibits asylum rights in the sense that states are perceived to deter human movement to safe-havens. It is, however, essential to note that these systems of juxtapositions are unfixed and are in a continuous struggle of developing certain understandings in which they should be fulfilled since there will always be diverse potential meanings (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002:28-36). The constructs of rhetoric must resonate with the norms of social engagements. Rhetors do so with an intention to create a purposeful meaning to the political past, present or future (Miskimmon et al., 2014: 12-14).
Rhetorical action acknowledges this struggle by placing social norms and actors' interests together to strategically conceptualize a specific phenomenon and create influence within those social norms to maximize interests.
There has been an attempt to distinguish “being a narrative” from “possessing narrativity” in the persuasion process (Ryan, 2005). The nature of engagement between actors is defined by
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different narrativity, which cannot be put into one perspective since each narrative is determined by the speaker and the audience's interpretation. Some events of international socialization may not be narratives by themselves but can later be recognized to possess a narrative. For instance, there was no formal end to the Cold War. Yet, the interpretation of events using the narrative’s semantic features by activists and political leaders led to the development of an understanding of a transition from the historical period to an unknown new beginning (Miskimmon et al., 2014:12-14). The main purpose of differentiating ‘being a narrative’ and ‘possessing narrativity’ in rhetorical action is to comprehend the nature of rhetoric and how actors intend to maximize gains, legitimize an action or defend themselves against other actors' persuasion.
Depending on the context, rhetorical action involves actors with persuasive strategies for a particular problem and use speech to convince other actors. By analyzing communication dynamics between socialized settings, researchers deduce that actors use language to get others into their envisioned position by strategically maneuvering and rhetorically sharing their perspectives. This is why Rumelt (2011) explained that rhetorical action is an application of strength against weakness in social interaction.
Rhetorical action and entrapment involve the language performing a critical role. The process places rhetorical practices at the core of persuasion. For example, for this study, the rhetorical analysis starts from a normative power perspective - inconsistency within the EU foreign actions. It then perceives the African partner countries as restraints of the EU actors. A relational concept of power can both be productive and repressive. Through power and relations, activities are made to happen or not: or the extent of their achievement (Carta and Morin, 2016:5-7). By placing an entity with respect to other entities, a subject position is constructed through the rhetorical process. As a form of persuasion, rhetorical action uses conceptualization of the structures as what we believe to be the reality of convergence and
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divergence of various fragments that constitute the whole. In other words, the identity narratives, system narratives and issue narratives are joined together to generate mega rhetoric as a persuasion tool. This articulation generates the influence to reconstruct social engagement among actors.
As a strategy of influence, rhetorical action acknowledges the power imbalance between actors, thereby emerges to offer an alternative way out among the seemingly disadvantaged actors (Bednarek et al., 2017; Miskimmon et al., 2014:10). Mega rhetoric is an instrument of power that constitutes and redefines the norms and practices in shaping the actor’s identity and the meaning of a social system. Unlike other persuasion strategies, rhetorical action offers tactical means of power relations that create an opportunity to free the lesser influential actors from domination by major actors dominating power using dominant discourses.
The seemingly weaker actors, such as small states, aware of their less material power, act strategically to establish persuasiveness. When the actors adopt a strategic rather than truth-seeking orientation, the outcome will reflect a compromise instead of reasoned consensus (Morin and Gold, 2010; Petrova, 2016). Thus, rhetorical action involves no change in the actor’s preferences. Instead, it relates more closely to the rationalists’ conceptualization of
‘information updating’ but with the recognition that socialization leads to the change in the actor’s behavior. Morin and Gold argue that while an actor's primary objective in rhetorical action is gain-maximizing, in communicative action, the key intention is truth-seeking. In rhetorical action, the consensus is a procedural norm, and the outcome is a result of an unworking agreement (Morin and Gold, 2010). While communicative action occurs between actors in symmetrical social relations, rhetorical action arises in asymmetrical social settings where the subaltern has to be strategic in applying normative aspects to generate influence. In explaining the untapped potential of rhetorical actions, Huspek notes that “the idea of rhetorical
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action points beyond Habermas’ normatively grounded technics for advancing validity claims”
(Huspek, 2007:362).
The main requirement in examining persuasion in rhetorical action is identifying the critical norms shared through the actors’ socialization and the framing of those norms within the rhetorical situation. Subsequently, the concern is whether the objectives of the rhetorical action are achieved at the behavioral level without necessarily exploring the actor’s internal motives for the change. As a persuasion strategy, a key feature of rhetorical analysis is the interrogation of “whether the behavioral change was a consequence of changing preferences, or just a tactical reaction to a successful rhetorical attack” (Kratochvil et al., 2006: 499).
Actors develop persuasion by hiding the pursuit of self-interest and embark on norm-based arguments. The rhetorical action continues until the opponents cease arguing against the issue and act accordingly, irrespective of whether they have been convinced or not. In the case of non-compliance by the opponent, the interlocutor questions the validity claims on the truthfulness while pointing out inconsistencies between the opponent’s real stance and what ought to be the stance (Krebs and Jackson, 2007). Argumentation, thus, does not necessarily lead to trust. The breach of trust in the previous engagements could as well have an impact on the capability of the argumentation to build trust. Based on such knowledge, interlocutors construct a set of beliefs about the real impetuses and goals of the other. These beliefs may alter the interpretation of the speech act of others. Such peaceful but strategic rhetoric becomes a trap. It becomes easy for the accused to confirm the interlocutor’s rhetoric and quite challenging to disapprove it. This is best brought out by Morin and Gold, who define rhetorical entrapment as “the inability to pursue a preferred option that violates a prior rhetorical statement while refusing to comply with normative standards because it would undermine material interests” (Morin and Gold, 2010: 577).
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The construction of high power rhetoric mainly depends on domestic-international contexts, the goal of political leadership and communication environments. In the context of the research hypothesis, the rhetorical action by the African partner countries was presumed to have successfully entrapped the EU actors. The EU’s establishment of the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa to address the root causes of irregular migration signified both rhetorical entrapment and practical adaptation (‘talk the talk’ to ‘walk the walk’). The study does not distinguish ‘talk the talk’ and ‘walk the walk.’ The two steps of rhetorical entrapment form a continuous process of policy change.