Definition: Rhetoric that assumes symbolic sameness and puts everyone or everything in the same symbolic category, which can lead to equal rights or equal consideration of issues; rhetoric that generalizes an issue/topic and makes it more relatable to a larger audience.
Example: A speech regarding LGBT rights that uses phrases that say all people deserve to be loved and all humans should have the same basic rights and be able to choose who they want to love. This is universalizing because every person wants autonomy over their own life, especially their love life, and we should extend this same courtesy to others, even if they are different from us.
From the text: Schwarze describes how universalizing rhetoric employs "discourses that homogenize...the interests of a population" (248). This type of rhetoric, which he contrasts with melodramatic rhetoric, can cause "allegiances and shared substance that might... lead audiences to accept a certain set of social and political arrangements" (248).
Schwarze, Steven. "Environmental Melodrama." Quarterly Journal of Speech 92.3 (2006): 239-61. Web.
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