"PragerU as Genre: How Ideologies Typify Speech"

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About the Author

Christopher Luis Shosted  is a student at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA. He will graduate in May of 2020 with a B.A. in English and a certification in writing arts. Since enrolling at Moravian College in 2018, Christopher has focused on understanding the drives behind rhetorics that harm marginalized groups. He plans to continue his education through a Master’s and Ph.D program where he wishes to put rhetorical theory in conversation with literary studies.

Contents

Introduction

Theories on Genre

PragerU’s Videos

Comparing PragerU to Academic Discourse

PragerU and Post-Truth

Conclusion

References

PragerU’s Videos

The speakers analyzed here, Jordan Peterson, Heather Mac Donald, and George Will, may be speaking at different times and do not reference each other by name, but they are acting in concert. These videos respond to a common exigence of perceived problems within academia but vary in their situations. For Peterson, speaking in 2018, the situation he responds to is the liberality of college professors and the indoctrination of students by neo-Marxists. Mac Donald instead chooses to discuss college curricula, which she perceives to be abandoning a scholarly tradition dating back to Classical Greece and Rome. Likewise, George Will derides modern college graduates, whom he determines to have been suckered into unmarketable degrees that came with colossal investments of time and money. In all three cases, the speakers choose to discuss a flaw with American academia but do not posit a solution. These videos do not advocate for policy change, rather they ridicule colleges over subjective or outright false grievances. The shared rhetorical goal of Peterson, Mac Donald, and Will is to undermine colleges in the mind of their audience to bolster their brand.

The process of interpretation that Miller presents (163-164) and the influence of social facts that Bazerman describes (312-313) are seen as these speakers present their arguments. A common strategy of PragerU is to claim that Western society is being degenerated in some way. This claim is most apparent in Mac Donald’s video where she states: “the modern professoriate has repudiated the great humanist tradition on which much of Western Civilization -- and the Western university -- has been built.” This statement posits two social facts: that Western civilization is being denied in some fashion by a group, and that the Western tradition she refers to is the superior method. These same facts can be seen in Peterson’s video where he echoes Mac Donald by saying: “[professors] have made it their life's mission to undermine Western civilization itself, which they regard as corrupt, oppressive and ‘patriarchal.’” And though Will does not mention changes in society, he does dismiss several fields of study as “academic fads” that produce degrees that hold little to no value in the world outside of college. Within each of these claims, an exigence is defined through the interpretation of social facts. Each speaker interprets his/herself as protector of traditional values that have been deemed as sacrosanct and that they perceive as being threatened.

The next interpretation that the speakers present in these videos is the identities of the attacker whom they are defending against. Within each of these arguments, the opposing side is dehumanized using language that is openly hostile. Peterson, for example, refers to professors as a “gang of nihilists.” The term "nihilist" is not defined within Peterson’s video but implied to be an individual who is both amoral and malicious. And describing them as a "gang" implies some level of organization; they have an assumed hierarchy, goals, as well as methodology to achieve those goals. Mac Donald labels UCLA faculty as “academic narcissists” who ignore “the loving duty we owe those writers, artists and thinkers whose works made our world possible,” and Will victimizes college graduates by writing that they “have been cheated, bilked, propagandized and badly educated.” The purpose behind these statements is to damage the relationship between professor and student. By alleging that the greater academic community is acting out of some combination of their collective greed, ego, and malice, these speakers damage the foundation of trust that is necessary for education.

The speakers continue their attempt to discredit the academic community by demonstrating their perception of professors advocating change in the name of diversity and inclusion as an excuse to constrict personal freedoms and growth. Will and Peterson make mention of free speech being quarantined into zones (Will) or being limited by metaphoric police (Peterson). Mac Donald does not reference free speech, but her citation of a Columbia University student who complains about the demography of the school’s curricula fulfils a similar goal: demonstrating changes made to accommodate fads. In this case, other students are forced to be deprived of the superior works of Shakespeare and Mozart, because one student believes that she doesn’t need to learn about “dead, white men.”

The deeper logic behind these claims is that universities and colleges exist within their own world that is divorced from reality. Each of the strategies endemic to this genre are based around how academia either actively harms society or wastes the time of its students. Will belittles college graduates with a sardonic “good luck, you’re going to need it,” Mac Donald claims that UCLA commits “a tragedy equal to Hamlet or King Lear,” by not mandating the teaching of Shakespeare to English students, and Peterson accuses college professors of being obsessed with the application of post-modernist doctrine to every facet of life.