My husband had for some reason got stuck into a television politics discussion of whether Boris Johnson should be serious or joky at the Conservative party conference. The latter demeanour may have served him as Mayor of London, the argument went, but the former would be needed to become Prime Minister.
The dilemma matches the two-edged meaning of rhetoric these days. President Obama was said to have got to the White House thanks to his rhetoric, but now his rhetoric is being compared unfavourably with his achievement. Similarly, Iran’s suggestion that Israel should be obliterated is called rhetoric, while Haaretz says: ‘Netanyahu has escalated his rhetoric on Iran.’ It is part of the slide of rhetorical from the meaning ‘expressed in terms intended to persuade’ to being, as the OED puts it, ‘in later use sometimes mildly depreciative’.
No doubt Mr Johnson is familiar with Aristotle and Cicero on rhetoric.
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