Introduction

Conflicting positions on societal issues are often grounded in broader notions of identity and otherness (Ratcliffe, 2005; Volf, 2010) and increasingly come with much emotion and related emotional arguments (Ahmed, 2004; Smyth, 2002). According to Ratcliffe (2005, 2019), when confronted with competing claims about a topic, a natural tendency is to withdraw into an unproductive position such as denial, defensiveness, guilt or blame. Moving away from common practices of attempting to define who is right or wrong, Ratcliffe proposes rhetorical listening as a way of transferring someone from these unproductive stances to a place with more functional positions (Glenn & Ratcliffe, 2011; Ratcliffe, 2005, 2019). Defined as an attitude of “openness that a person may choose to assume in relation to any person, text, or culture” (Ratcliffe, 2005, p. xiii), rhetorical listening aims to develop a broader cultural literacy that allows us to negotiate our daily actions and attitudes, as well as our politics and ethics (Ratcliffe, 1999). Rhetorical listening might offer valuable contributions to the classroom for it can help students (and teacher, for that matter) in developing a literacy that enables them to turn to more productive stances (Ratcliffe, 1999, 2005).

Hence, the aim of this paper is to explore if and how rhetorical listening helps students to move away from unproductive stances when discussing societal issues about racism and racialization. We also explain how we conceptualized and operationalized rhetorical listening as a pedagogical tactic in an educational project where students engaged with such a debate. Based on a qualitative analysis of group discussions with the students, we examine the (un)productive stances students display when they are taught to be ‘rhetorical listeners’.

Rhetorical Listening as a pedagogical tactic

As a way of discovering productive ways to deal with conflicting positions and the complexities at hand, Ratcliffe (2005) proposes supporting students in analyzing the tropological function of language so that they may see its constructed and performative nature (Ratcliffe, 2005, 2019). As such, we developed rhetorical listening as a pedagogical tactic to help students in a Cultural Studies course that is part of Ghent University’s master program in Educational Sciences and Social Work unpack textual claims and understand how these operate within larger culturally and historically based symbolic systems or cultural logics (Ratcliffe, 2005). More specifically, we put forward a three-step rhetorical listening analysis: (1) determining the textual claims, (2) examining the dominant tropes, and (3) unpacking the cultural logics inherent in these claims. Students were asked to write a reflection on the contested Black Pete debate[1] before being introduced to the rhetorical listening framework to unpack commonly used claims in the debate. Next, during group discussions, students needed to employ the framework to analyze the cultural logics in their own and others’ claims and, furthermore, reflected on the framework. Rhetorical listening with its claims, tropes, and cultural logics is not a step-by-step model. Instead, these are recursively intertwined and emerge from as well as (re)construct a rhetoric of listening that offers opportunities to develop more productive stances within societal issues (Ratcliffe, 2005).

[1] In Flanders and the Netherlands, a controversy arises each year over ‘Black Pete’, a blackface character that is one of the traditional figures of the children’s festival of Saint Nicholas, celebrated on December 6th. Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas), a holy man who travels the country on horseback to deliver gifts to all well-behaved children during the night of December 5th, is accompanied by Black Petes (Zwarte Pieten), who carry bags of gifts and go down chimneys to deliver the presents. It is the sooth of the chimney that allegedly causes Black Pete to be ‘black’.

During the academic years 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, respectively n=157 and n=110 enrolled in the Cultural Studies course. The majority of the course’s participants are educational sciences students and social work students, but the course is also open for international students with a background in other social and behavioral disciplines (e.g. psychology, sociology …). Within the context of the course, we organized group discussions in both academic years. All students had to participate in one group discussions which consisted of ten to fourteen students. More specifically, using a video platform, we held twelve synchronous online group discussions over the academic year 2020-2021. We asked the students’ permission to audio record the synchronous online group discussions and obtained an informed consent from 143 of the 157 students to use anonymized versions of their contributions to the group discussion as research data. During the academic year 2021-2022, we organized ten asynchronous group discussions utilizing the learning platform’s forum and obtained an informed consent from 57 of the 110 students to use anonymized versions of their contributions on the forum as research data. Given that participation in the group discussions were part of the students’ permanent evaluation for the course, the informed consent form also explicitly stated that granting or declining permission would not have an impact on their evaluation. We received approval for the study from our faculty’s Ethical Commission. The data set of the empirical study consists of the verbatim transcriptions (see Howitt, 2010) of the twelve synchronous online group discussions and the written responses on the forum of the ten asynchronous online group discussions. As an approach to data analysis, we conducted a qualitative content analysis, which Hsieh and Shannon (2005, p. 1278) define as ‘a research method for the subjective interpretation of the content of text data through the systemic classification process of coding and identifying themes or patterns’. We specifically used a directed approach to content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005), which combines inductive and deductive approaches by iteratively moving back and forth between data and theory to validate or extend conceptually existing theoretical frameworks. Drawing on the framework of rhetorical listening and listening pedagogically from Krista Ratcliffe where she identifies several unproductive and productive stances, we engaged in a process of retroductive coding and analysis (Seale et al., 2007) to analyze patterns in the reflective moves students made in the group discussions.

When talking about conflicted societal issues (e.g. Black Pete debate), students often find it easy to resist such conversations via different unproductive stances such as denial (e.g. “the problem is already solved by changing Black Pete to Sooty Pete”) or defensiveness (e.g. “It is a bit of a stretch to call ‘Black Pete’ racist”). Indeed, those with power often deny or downplay power differentials that haunt all interactions among people, regardless of the issue, and those with less power often feel these differentials acutely (Ratcliffe, 2005). Overall, our findings reveal that rhetorical listening as a pedagogical tactic offers opportunities to develop more productive stances within societal issues for it helped students to move to a place with more productive positions, such as recognition, critique, and accountability. Moreover, by introducing the idea of cultural logics and its corresponding scripts of thinking and acting, students gained insight into the constructive and performative nature of these logics and the need to individually and structurally reflect on them, for indeed, cultural logics with its (cultural) scripts become embodied in all of us (though differently) via our cultural socialization and, once embodied, (un)consciously inform our attitudes and actions (Ratcliffe, 2005, 2019). Rhetorical listening provided students, thus, not only a technique of being critical or reflexive towards their own and others' claims and cultural logics, but also a stance of accountability (i.e. “I may not be responsible, but I am part of it and, therefore, accountable”) by expressly focusing on the choices implied by these logics. However, students do question the limitations of the framework: “How then should we act productively or ethically in our own lives?”. Making this question invitational and engaging with students about such questions would be our advice for additional research on the pedagogical value of rhetorical listening when discussing societal issues.

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