Rhetorical leadership and transferable lessons for successful social advocacy in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

• Author: Olson, Kathryn M.

Al Gore's 2006 film about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, met with great popular and critical success. The film weaves together the story of Gore's early conversion and lifelong commitment to environmental issues as the unifying theme of his long political career and a presentation of Gore's standard fact-filled, deliberative lecture on the veracity and dangers of climate change. This political documentary's lifetime gross earnings make it the third highest ranked film in its class to date ("Documentary--Political, 1982-Present," n.d.). The film was widely shown free of charge at churches and schools around the country and garnered high marks in critical reviews on Internet sites that rate and discuss popular films. An Inconvenient Truth's critical recognitions included a 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, a 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for Gore for the attention he drew to this global crisis, and being named one of Advertising Age's three winners for top marketing and advertising efforts in 2006 (Ryan, 2007). For argument scholars, however, the film's rhetorical success as an instance of social advocacy that successfully galvanized ordinary people to take action and become advocates themselves is its related, but more interesting achievement.

A personal conversion response is evident at the conclusion of Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert's (2006) review of An Inconvenient Truth. He wrote:

In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to. Am I acting as an advocate in this review? Yes, I am. I believe that to be "impartial" and "balanced" on global warming means one must take a position like Gore's. There is no other view that can be defended.... What can we do? Switch to and encourage the development of alternative energy sources: Solar, wind, tidal, and yes, nuclear. Move quickly toward hybrid and electric cars. Pour money into public transit, and subsidize fares. Save energy in our houses. I did a funny thing when I came home after seeing "An Inconvenient Truth." I went around the house turning off the lights. (para. 14-16)

Similarly, Australian writer Dave Hoskin (2007) said he initially expected An Inconvenient Truth to be in the same class as Fahrenheit 9/11 and Outfoxed, "essentially provincial left-wing stories for a provincial left-wing audience" (p. 46). Instead Hoskin came away converted:

Although international liberals may applaud the fact that Gore is trying to raise awareness of the issue, it's hard to escape the assumption that he will be telling us something we already know. Certainly I'll admit that when I bought my ticket for An Inconvenient Truth I was sceptical that Al Gore was really going to change how I thought about global warming. I was wrong. I now believe that An Inconvenient Truth is the most important film that anyone will see this year.... Faced with such a vivid wake-up call, it's infuriating to realize just how politicized the issue has been allowed to become, with the argument over belief having crowded far more important items off the agenda. (p. 46)

The fact that An Inconvenient Truth was criticized for some minor factual inaccuracies did not undermine its persuasive appeal. This unusual film ignited political discussion, social commitment, and personal conversion among the skeptical and usually apathetic, not just the true believers.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically analyze and evaluate the transferable rhetorical techniques that make the film a motivating, radiating act of social advocacy. I use familiar concepts from the public speaking and persuasion tradition as well as from Kenneth Burke to abstract and explain the successful operation of reproducible rhetorical applications to prompt individual change that does not rest on, but can contribute to demanding, top-down policy change. With the exception of some critical innovation regarding mortification, the lessons are not theoretical news. The contribution to rhetorical leadership lies in unpacking how those familiar concepts work together in practice to create a reproducible synergy that can benefit other grassroots social advocates.

Rhetorical Leadership for Ordinary People

In our complicated, shared-power world, no organization or institution is in a position or has the sole responsibility "to find and implement solutions to the problems that confront us as a society" or a planet (e.g., climate change); this fact can lead people to pessimism, hopelessness, and despair over seemingly insoluble problems rather than toward effective collective action (Bryson & Crosby, 1992, p. 4). Our situation is further complicated by leadership theories that assume leaders must be people who hold formal positions of power or moral authority and that leadership is reserved for the chosen few, not ordinary citizens (Morse, 1992). If we are to successfully confront the social challenges and confounding conditions of our times, we must embrace a more rhetorical understanding of leadership (see Olson, 2006). We need to recognize that the difference on many social issues must be made by "leaders who may or may not have positions of authority, but who inspire and motivate followers through persuasion, example, and empowerment, not through command and control" (Bryson & Crosby, p. 21). Rhetoric is pivotal to such leadership. "Effective leaders," argued Fairhurst and Sarr (1996), "present the world with images that grab our attention and interest. They use language in ways that allow us to see leadership not only as big decisions but as a series of moments in which images build upon each other to help us construct a reality to which we must then respond" (p. 1). In An Inconvenient Truth, Gore models just such an approach to rhetorical leadership on a social issue on which he holds no formal position of authority.

Fortunately the combination of techniques identifiable in this rhetorical act is not limited to well-known figures who formerly held positions of authority; they are available and reproducible by others willing to engage in social advocacy. Encouragingly, this perspective suggests that improving ordinary people's skills to symbolically inspire and motivate others is key to better meeting complex social problems. Leadership is everyone's responsibility, including on social issues that affect their lives but over which they do not have formal or sole authority. Teachable rhetorical skills are central to the exercise of such contemporary, often informal, leadership (see Olson, 2006). As Smircich and Morgan (1982) explained:

Leadership is realized in the process whereby one or more individuals succeeds [sic] in attempting to frame and define [with their cooperation] the reality of others.... Certain individuals, as a result of personal inclination or the emergent expectations of others, find themselves adopting or being obliged to take a leadership role by virtue of the part they play in the definition of the situation. They emerge as leaders because of their role in framing experience in a way that provides a viable basis for action, e.g., by mobilizing meaning, articulating and defining what has previously remained implicit or unsaid, by inventing images and meanings that provide a focus for new attention, and by consolidating, confronting, or changing prevailing wisdom (Peters, 1978; Pondy, 1976). Through these diverse means, individual actions can frame and change situations, and in so doing enact a system of shared meaning that provides a basis for organized action. (p. 258)

Significantly, and particularly when considering leaders without formal authority, the process is interactive and only succeeds when the definition of reality offered by the leader is also "sensible to the led" (Smircich & Morgan, p. 259). These situations require an advocate to take

the risk of managing meaning. We assume a leadership role, indeed we become leaders, through our ability to decipher and communicate meaning out of complex and confusing situations. Our communications actually do the work of leadership; our talk is the resource we use to get others to act (Gronn, 1983). (Fairhurst & Sarr, 1996, p. 2)

Viewed from this perspective on rhetorical leadership, An Inconvenient Truth has much to teach ordinary people about successful social advocacy.

An Unlikely Hit

An Inconvenient Truth has many features that seem to make it an unlikely success as either advocacy or entertainment--in spite of the studio's prodigious promotional strategy, which involved an MTV special, a slick trailer, personal appearances by the star, and a barrage of online outreach including some of the very first Google video ads (Klaassen 2006; Stanley 2006). The film's format is actually a blend of autobiography and documentary. It chronicles Gore's enduring personal commitment to the environment over his lifetime, but most screen time is devoted to watching him develop and present to various audiences his stock lecture on global warming, which he supplements with many computer-generated slides. A documentary/autobiographical film centered on a PowerPoint presentation (actually Gore uses Apple's Keynote presentation software; "Durante Design," 2006) on the complex, even tedious topic of environmental problems delivered by one of America's most notably pedantic orators? Consider the parts of this unpromising combination.

Conventional wisdom, Gore's detractors say, is that "as a public speaker Gore is only slightly more animated than a corpse" (Tapper, 1999, para. 5). Gore's supporters are only marginally more impressed. Tapper reported that even staunch Democrats "embraced the media caricature of [Gore] as a 'stiff and 'boring' animation from the Disneyland Hall of Vice Presidents" (para. 1). His campaign team also recognized "how pompous he could sound," though it...