Obama in Selma: Deixis, rhetorical vision, and the “true meaning of America”

Abstract

ABSTRACT I argue that Barack Obama’s immediate, imaginary, and discursive deictic references to the actions and character of ordinary citizens, specific geographical markers within the “landscape of American history,” and sacred moments in U.S. history extended and enlarged the relational, spatial, and temporal contours of the national narrative in his 2015 speech on the fiftieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday. In so doing, the president offered a compelling (re)definition of patriotism, civic responsibility, and “the true meaning of America.” More broadly, I argue for an expanded notion of deixis within rhetorical scholarship. Beyond a linguistic “pointing” to bodies, places, and objects within the audience’s immediate vicinity, I detail how indexicals bring various images before the eyes of the audience, link individual texts to their political, historical, social, and cultural contexts, and direct our attention to the most important parts of the national narrative even as they deflect our attention from other parts of the story. Ultimately, I suggest that deixis illuminates theories of rhetorical vision in ways that have gone unnoticed, and it is only when we recognize the psychological and cognitive effects of deictic speech that we can fully appreciate the central role phantasia plays in persuasion, deliberation, and moral judgment.