Taking Advantage of Authorized Speech to Build Legitimacy: An Analysis of David M. Raup’s Presidential Address to the Paleontological Society, 1977

Dale L. Sullivan

Traditionally, epideictic rhetoric has been viewed as a genre of rhetoric distinct from and co-equal with forensic and deliberative rhetoric. [1] More recently, epideictic rhetoric has been characterized as a dimension or element of all rhetoric.  This move was made possible by preliminary work done by C. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, who explain that an epideictic orator establishes communion between speaker and audience based on values held in common and then reinforces adherence to those values (53).  The epideictic speaker, they claim, is not defending (or representing) “his own cause or viewpoint . . . but that of his entire audience” (52).  Michael Halloran explores the concept of representation in several articles.  In “On the End of Rhetoric,” he claims that traditional rhetorical theory culminates in the concept of the complete orator, who is an embodiment of his or her heritage.  The word spoken by such orators is “the word of communal wisdom, a word to be trusted for the man who [speaks] it and the tradition he [speaks] for” (621).  In “Doing Public Business in Public,” he explains that the speaker “presents an image of the community to the community,” and achieves credibility to the “degree that the audience identifies with the image” (122). [2]   Regardless of the primary rhetorical purpose of the speech, the issue of the speaker’s legitimacy as a representative of the community is an epideictic issue (121).  What Halloran calls the epideictic issue, I refer to as the epideictic dimension of rhetoric.  As such, the epideictic dimension of rhetoric is closely related to the speaker’s ethos, but it is not identical.  Whereas the speaker’s ethos is an image composed of many traits, [3] the epideictic dimension of rhetoric is traceable through the speaker’s attempts to establish her legitimacy.

In the present study of the epideictic dimension, I draw distinctions among three concepts: authority, authorization, and legitimacy.  Although these terms are often treated as synonyms, I believe they are discrete concepts, which, nevertheless, are so entangled that it is impossible to fully separate them.  I define authority as the speaker’s power or credibility derived from the audience’s recognition of his or her status. [4]   There is a difference between authority and authorization.  To be authorized, the speaker must have the imprimatur of the group for whom she speaks.  So, for instance, a forensic scientist may give authorized evidence in court if she is recognized by the profession of forensic scientists as a legitimate spokesperson on behalf of the profession. 

Legitimacy, the third term in the trilogy, is best defined by its absence.  When someone’s speech is not accepted as credible or binding, the speaker is said to be experiencing a “legitimacy crisis.”  A legitimacy crisis can be forced for one of several reasons, but two are directly related to being authorized: the audience may suspect that the speaker does not truly represent the group she claims to represent, or the audience may not recognize the authority of the group’s knowledge field. [5] Hence, it is possible for authorized speech to be considered illegitimate, as is the case when someone speaks on behalf of a group that is not respected by members of the audience.  In the above example, it would be possible, theoretically, for a jury to reject the knowledge field of forensic medicine even though the witness holds credentials in that field.  It is, therefore, important to distinguish between a legitimacy crisis spawned by the speaker’s  questionable status as a representative and one spawned by the knowledge field’s questionable status in the forum.

Given these distinctions among the concepts of authority, authorization, and legitimacy, it seems likely that, although rhetors may display signs of authorization even though there is no legitimacy crisis, speakers who are trying to establish legitimacy are much more likely to buttress their authority strategically.  A speaker who presumes to be speaking authoritatively does not need to rely on coercion or overt persuasion, but a speaker who senses resistance will probably resort to one or the other or both. [6]   As Bruce Lincoln says, coercion and persuasion “are actualized only when those who claim authority sense that they have begun to lose the trust of those over whom they seek to exercise it” (6).

In order to characterize the rhetoric of an authorized speaker attempting to establish legitimacy, I analyze David M. Raup’s “Approaches to the Extinction Problem,” the presidential address he gave to the Paleontological Society on November 8, 1977, reprinted in the Journal of Paleontology, May 1978. [7]   Most of my comments focus on the introductory sections of the speech where a speaker either succeeds or fails to establish legitimacy. 

One would think that on this occasion Professor Raup would have the presumption of authority as an authorized speaker derived from his status as president of the society.  The situation was not quite so straightforward.  According to his own interpretation of the occasion, he did not think of himself as speaking on behalf of the organization: “I don’t think I or anyone in the Paleontological Society thinks of the Presidential Address as speaking for the group.  The Address is merely whatever the president wants to say—usually about his or her own research” (Personal correspondence).  A second factor complicating the issue of authorization was his being identified with a progressive faction, which was regarded with some suspicion by the larger membership.  However, in the speech he does not characterize the factions in terms of conservative and progressive; instead, he refers to those who do “traditional systematics” and to those who do “theoretical analysis” (517).  The first group is also roughly synonymous with the more conservative “paleontologists” and the second with the more progressive “paleobiologists.”

In the exordium of the speech, Raup acknowledges the existence of these two groups in his audience, but he does so in such a way as to downplay their differences.  The first few sentences not only acknowledge these factions but also signal his awareness that he is associated with the minority party:

I feel in a somewhat strange position today as the first president of The Society who has never described a species.  Perhaps some comment is in order. The work that I, and other so-called paleobiologists, have been doing for several years differs only in emphasis from what most paleontologists have been doing for the past couple centuries. (517)

Let us look at these words with the concepts of authority, authorization, and legitimacy in mind.  Quintilian tells us, “The sole purpose of the exordium [introduction] is to prepare our audience in such a way that they will be disposed to lend a ready ear to the rest of the speech” (IV 1.5).  Considering Raup’s affiliation with a minority faction and yet his status as president of the society, it seems most likely that the major hindrance to his audience being disposed to “lend a ready ear” was their suspicion that Raup would represent only the interests of his own faction and would practice exclusionary rhetoric by ignoring the interests of the larger society.  A second hindrance would be the audience’s perception of hierarchy: gaining high office does not necessarily mean that the speaker has achieved full recognition or status within the larger body politic, and so any signs of the speaker having an inflated opinion of himself could trigger resistance.  A third hindrance would be the speaker’s intentional or even unintentional invocation of tribal warfare between the factions represented in the audience. If any of these impressions were given, the speaker’s authorization would become merely institutional rather than charismatic; that is, the audience may have respected the office but resisted the one who held it. [8]

The opening sentence--“I feel in a somewhat strange position today as the first president of The Society who has never described a species”--performs several crucial rhetorical functions that lend Raup legitimacy. He uses synecdoche here to diminish his own status in the larger group while establishing independence from traditional ranking criteria.  One of the marks of a successful paleontologist is his or her ability to point to the discovery of a new species.  The presence of that achievement on a person’s vita is a status marker for a successful paleontologist: its absence is either a marker of not yet having achieved status or of belonging to a different tribe which does not require its presence for status. [9]   Since Raup refers to his being president of the society in the same sentence, he is using an enthymatic argument (an argument that allows the audience to supply those things that are not said but clearly implied) that presences the minority tribe of paleobiologists without invoking tribal disagreements overtly.  The humor and humility of the statement immediately disarm two of the potential hindrances (suspicion of exclusion and presumption of status).

In subsequent sentences, downplaying tribal rivalries by establishing consubstantiality [10] between his own faction and the larger audience, he depicts the society as a unified and collegial group. His first move toward this end is to identify the work of paleobiologists with the work of paleontologists, saying that the work of the first “differs only in emphasis” from the work of the second.  He then magnifies the image of the larger, more conservative group, acknowledging that many of the “boldest innovations” in the field are found in “systematics papers,” and suggesting that “a lot of theoreticians would be out of business if traditional systematics were to stop” (517).  There is a hint that the paleontologists were on the defensive because of recent gains made by paleobiologists, but he defuses any defensive resistance with the following observation:

To be sure, there has been a change in emphasis in recent years but at the same time, there has been an enormous increase in the total number of paleontologists—so that there are now far more systematic paleontologists than there have ever been. (517)

In his third move to build consubstantiality, he asserts that the two factions exist in a symbiotic relationship, because the descriptions provided by traditional systematics papers test theory, and theory, conversely, suggests new things to look for.  Having described an image of the society as a cooperative venture, Raup gives a brief and somewhat vague preview of his speech, declaring that it will be about his own area of research.  He admits that his research “is not traditional in its approach,” but he assures the audience that it “is completely dependent upon traditional approaches for its implementation” (517).  With these words he signals his indebtedness to the labors of paleontologists who compose the larger faction of the audience.

            The introduction, thus far, has consisted of only one paragraph.  In the published version of the speech, a heading (Extinction of Higher Taxa) follows this first paragraph, but the two paragraphs that follow this heading may be considered part of the introduction. In these two paragraphs he claims to have worked over the literature on extinction thoroughly and to have discovered two important assumptions which seem to be widely accepted: (1) that extinction of a family or order is an unusual event, and (2) that extinction of such a group “stems from a common failure or deficiency shared by all the species in the group” (581).  He finishes this section by declaring his thesis, which challenges these common assumptions:  “I will try to show that, given species extinction, extinction is the expected fate of a higher category, and that the extinction of a taxonomic group of species does not require a common cause” (518).

When we look at these two paragraphs with authorization and legitimacy in mind, we see that Raup continues to support the image of a unified research society by invoking the common fund of knowledge, implying answers to the following questions: What is it that we believe in common?  What is it that we take for granted?  What is our overarching mythos?  What is our goal as knowledge makers?  Even though he lists two assumptions in order to take issue with them, the assumptions themselves are possible only within a larger consensus that Raup evidently shares with the larger disciplinary community.  He words the first assumption this way:  “it is assumed that the extinction of a family or an order is a special or unusual event, something that needs to be explained” (517-518).  Implied, but not stated, is the overarching narrative, or mythos, of modern paleontology and biology, the story of evolution as an explanation of origins, development, and diversity.  Within this narrative world, words like extinction, order, and family carry specialized nuances that are not shared by people outside the field.  A belief is also implied, namely that systematic study can lead to a scientific explanation of how the present diversity came into being.  Finally, it is taken for granted that the descriptions provided by systematic study have produced a reliable geological record that can be explored in order to discover trends and correlations.  Later he elaborates on the second assumption: “We [the community of paleontologists and paleobiologists] are saying that the critical element in the extinction is to be found among the set of morphologic and ecologic characteristics common to the whole group” (518).  In this sentence we see Raup continuing to invoke the common ground shared by the entire audience, starting with his use of the first person plural “we” to establish unity among the factions and continuing with his reference to the belief that morphological characteristics of species correlate, in some way, with the species’ environment.

By invoking common ground in these ways, Raup gains leverage that enables him to draw the two assumptions he has highlighted into question.  What was it about the status of these assumptions that made them vulnerable to attack? Raup gave this speech shortly after Stephen Gould’s and Niles Eldredge’s “Punctuated Equilibria” article (Spring 1977) appeared and prior to Louis Alvarez’s “Extraterrestrial Cause” article (1980) which announced his discovery of a layer of iridium, a clue that perhaps the earth had been struck by a large meteorite, causing a mass extinction.  Although Gould and Eldrege had recently argued that evolution moves rapidly during times of change and then falls into states of equilibrium between the periods of rapid change, conservative evolutionary theory still relied on Charles Lyell’s view that geologic and evolutionary change happens gradually (Raup, Nemisis, 32). Gradual change was to be expected rather than cataclysmic change. It is beyond the scope of this paper to trace the development of theories about extinction during the 1970s and 80s.  Suffice it to say that Raup’s thesis in this speech, while it challenged the two assumptions mentioned above, was, nevertheless, still compatible with the overarching orthodoxy of gradualism.  Gould and Eldrege are not cited in the speech, but had anyone been listening to Raup against the backdrop of their recent article, he would have heard someone speaking clearly from within the conservative, orthodox position, making adjustments to orthodox doctrine but not threatening its foundational assumptions.  Indeed, the speech could be interpreted as an argument for gradualism for Raup attempts to prove that extinction of taxonomic groups is to be expected as a natural process; therefore, one could draw the conclusion that extinction does not require any reference to environmental, or cataclysmic, factors whatsoever.

In the body of the speech, which is about five times as long as the introduction, Raup explains how studies of surnames in human families can serve as a model for studying extinction.  “Surname evolution and supraspecific evolution have much in common,” he says, “and the methodology can be transferred from one to the other with ease and rigor” (518).  It is obvious that Raup is about to describe a methodology developed by those who study surname extinction, that is, by a tribe of demographers who were not members of either the paleontology or paleobiology tribes present in the audience.  In personal correspondence, Dr. Raup told me, “vanishingly few in the audience would have encountered the methodology before.”  He says that he did not import the methodology to build his own authority; rather, “the method was imported from outside because that’s where it was” (Personal correspondence).

The importation of an alien method is a risky venture rhetorically.  On the one hand, doing so diminishes the stature of the insiders because it implies that their methods do not provide sufficient explanatory power.  It also elevates the status of the speaker because he has esoteric knowledge and is therefore in a position to teach the audience.  Such a position sets up the traditional teacher-student relationship, in which the teacher is presumed to have authority (Arendt 92). 

For Raup to reap the benefits of the implied teacher-student relationship, he must first argue that his importation of an alien method is legitimate; in other words, he must convince the audience that the field of demography is a legitimate knowledge field and that he, because of his study of their methodology, is a legitimate representative of that knowledge field. [11]   He does this in two ways.  He shows that what he is about to do falls within the sphere of orthodoxy and he demonstrates a thorough understanding of the method and its history.  To demonstrate the orthodoxy of his move, he references one of the revered patriarchs:  “One of the first references to the extinction of family names is found (of all places) in Malthus’ famous Essay on Population (1826)” (518).  He summarizes what Malthus says in that article and then goes on to discuss the development of mathematical model, developed by geneticists as early as 1875, for studying surname extinction.  Although Raup does not give us a thorough literature review of this alien research field, he nevertheless shows a level of familiarity with it that is sufficient to win the audience’s trust.  Besides giving us the brief history of the field’s development, he also refers to four authors who provide “useful background information” on the phylogeny of surnames (518).  Thus he has shown that he is staying within the orthodoxy of paleontology and that he has enough expertise in the alien knowledge to be considered a legitimate representative of it.

He is now in a position to assume the role of the teacher and to appropriate the mantle of authority that goes with the role.  In the next couple pages, he discusses the method used by demographers; he uses technical language, presents charts, and draws  occasional parallels with paleontology.  He talks about the topic with authority and yet summarizes much of the detail in the same way that a teacher presents a new topic to students, as in the following passage:

Some elegant mathematical techniques have been worked out for treating the surname problem, and countless studies have shown that actual genealogical data match the predictions very well.  It is for this reason, of course, that geneticists picked up this study of surnames as a natural area for study of evolution of neutral traits. (520)

After introducing the audience to the method, he shows that the scenario for describing the evolution of surnames he has just described “is one which may be very useful in dealing with the paleontological world” (521).  In this section, he cites studies of extinction done by members of his own tribe and goes into technical detail, even providing formulas.  He is still in the teacher’s mode, but now he is explicating the nuances of the procedure with statements like “This question [is it reasonable that some families survived when other groups that had more genera did not?] can be approached by taking each major group in the Carboniferous and calculating its probability of not being represented in the 18 surviving Triassic genera” (522).  Now he is speaking the local dialect and presuming that his auditors are thoroughly familiar with the vocabulary and the extremely complex clusters of meaning that go with technical terms. 

When we remember that this is a presidential address and not a classroom lecture, the level of technical detail seems excessive for the occasion.  When I asked Dr. Raup whether or not he thought the audience followed his discussion, he answered, “I suspect that few people in the audience followed my argument in detail.  I hoped, however, that the basic logic would strike home” (Personal correspondence).  So it is doubtful that anyone in the audience actually learned a new technique, but the rhetorical purpose of the speech was not to teach a method.  Instead, it seems to me that the real purpose was to demonstrate that paleobiologists with a theoretical bent could provide useful knowledge for the larger community. 

In studying this occasional speech, we have the opportunity to see something of the relationship between the cognitive and social-political aspects of scientific discourse. My use of the tribal metaphor in the foregoing discussion invites us to extend the metaphor by incorporating the concepts of honor and shame. As Bruce Malina and Jerome Neyrey, explain in their discussion of complex societies in aniquity,  “ . . . what might be deviant and shameful for one group in one locality may be worthy and honorable for another.  Yet all groups are concerned about their honor” (26). Similarly, Julian Pitt-Rivers claims, “[C]omplex societies, in which there is no consensus about values, complicate the situation, for a person’s honor is not viewed the same in one group as in another” (22).

Questions of authority, authorization, and legitimacy are issues associated with honor and shame within the scientific society we are studying. We have seen the president of a scientific society attempting to build consubstantiality among factions of the society by bringing a marginal group to a position of honor through his own example. By making light of his own inadequate credentials as a traditional paleontologist, honoring and magnifying the work of traditionalists, showing the symbiotic relationship between paleontologists and paleobiologists, siding with conservatives on a current issue, and importing alien knowledge in such a way as to fully integrate it with existing orthodoxy, Raup used his position as President of the Society to show that he was a man of goodwill, fully committed to the views held in common by both factions, and that he was a man of good sense who could provide scientific knowledge that would add to the conceptual domain of the society. 

As an authorized speaker, one accorded honor for the occasion, he thus became a synecdocal argument himself. Because the audience knew him to be a member of the minority and marginalized faction of the society, he stood before the larger assembly as a representative of the faction he belonged to.  If he could gain full acceptance from the larger society for his conceptual work, even though he was a member of the minority faction, then the progressive faction will have made gains in being accepted by the paleontologists.  In the language of this essay, Raup’s authorized position as president of the society allowed him to build his own authority by bringing new knowledge to the discipline. His contribution to the cognitive domain of the discipline lent legitimacy to his faction. The occasion afforded the opportunity to make the case, for, as Pitt-Rivers explains, “Honor is dependent upon the presence of witnesses . . . . [who form] a tribunal before which the claims of hour are brought, ‘the court of reputation’ as it has been called, and against its judgements there is no redress” (27). In David Raup’s own words, “There was lots of suspicion . My mission (aside from displaying research results I was rather pleased with) was to mend fences and encourage the two camps to work together.  I have no idea whether this was successful” (Personal correspondence).

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