Ideograph (rhetoric) - Examples

Examples

For McGee, there is no absolute litmus test for what terms are or are not ideographs. Rather, this is a judgment that must be made through the study of specific examples of discourse.

However, McGee (and others who have followed him) have identified several examples of ideographs or virtue words in Western liberal political discourse, such as “liberty,” “property,” “freedom of speech,” “religion,” “equality,” and "star."

In each case, the term does not have a specific referent. Rather, each term refers to an abstraction which may have many different meanings depending on its context. It is in their mutability that ideographs have such rhetorical power. If the definition of a term such as “equality” can be stretched to include a particular act or condition, then public support for that act or condition is likely to be stronger than it was previously.

By encapsulating values which are perceived to be widely shared by the community, but which are in fact highly abstract and defined in very different ways by individuals, ideographs provide a potent persuasive tool for the political speaker.

McGee offers the example of Richard Nixon’s attempt to defend his decision not to turn over documents to Congress during the Watergate investigation by invoking “the principle of confidentiality.” Recognizing that his refusal to submit to Congress could be seen as a violation of the “rule of law,” Nixon pitted “the principle of confidentiality” against the “rule of law,” despite the fact that these two ideographs would, in the abstract, not likely be seen as in conflict with one another..

Nixon, in an attempt to expand the understanding of “the principle of confidentiality” to cover his own specific refusal to cooperate with Congress, used the abstractness of the term to his benefit. By suggesting that the “rule of law” and the “principle of confidentiality” were in conflict (and claiming that right to confidentiality was the more central term), Nixon defended his own actions by applying the ideograph of the “principle of confidentiality” to them..