By Dr. Jamie Thornton

Many supporters initially feel that the rhetoric of inclusion is a way of communicating that avoids bias and discrimination against people and groups of people. Additionally, they believe this form of rhetoric can be made evident through altering (among other things) established patterns of speech, avoiding segregation of individuals into only one group or another, and overlooking the fact that the individual should be considered as singular (that is, not merely part of a group).

These people are correct.

However, there is an often-overlooked aspect to the rhetoric of inclusion which embraces more pejorative aspects, such as: considering conflicting issues, ignoring social consequences, and further entrenching class division (through privileging specific groups). For these reasons, and others, considerations beyond what words, phrases, and entire ideas are used are incredibly imperative to consider in order to understand “the rhetoric of inclusion” more fully.  That is, aspects expressed under the defining words of “rhetoric of inclusion” are worth interrogating within the cultural, social, and moral structures in which they are used. 

For the difficulties related to determining whether to use (or not) the term “the rhetoric or inclusion,” it is first important to realize one of the major reasons the term first became important. In 1995, the idea of what term to use regarding aspects of the word ‘inclusive’ was discussed by various academicians (Roy). Having arrived at a non-determination of a definition, the “assembly” members (Roy, 1995, p. 182) moved on to discuss words to use within the category of rhetoric of inclusion. Their determination?  It was the following non-definition (again) which stated that “[t]he underlying grammatical relations of words, although they may be invisible in our everyday use, influence our understanding of and reaction to words” (Roy, 1995, p. 183). 

Therefore, this aspect of invisibility that was noted (as early as 1995) offers an opaque understanding that exists to this day. That is, in order to understand inclusion, characteristics (I would go so far as to offer, even includes the words related to the “rhetoric of exclusion”) must be considered. Because, notes Roy, “rhetorical goals, though they may well be tacit and unrelated, interact with grammar to limit vocabulary options and determine interaction” (1995, p. 183). This fraught purpose of the words “rhetoric of inclusion” is brought forward in a more up-to-date rendering through Sally Tomlinson’s The politics of race, class, and special education (2014). She works through a sociological lens that particularly examines immigrants and their relation to special education: she even extends the lens to zoom into specific issues such as race. 

For her part, Karma Chavez (2015) looks at rhetoric as one way we can “become more inclusive”; however, she expands the thinking about rhetoric to include other perspectives when she writes, “Rhetoric may be something entirely different, something constituted through non-normative, noncitizen, non-Western perspectives and ways of knowing and being” (p. 162). She concludes by noting three key essays that are, in her view, “often missing completely from or mentioned only in passing in definitive historical accounts [and] together offer a different engagement with Rhetoric’s intellectual history and pose an alternative to the citizenship narrative that underwrites it” (Chavez, 2015, p. 170). She continues to expound that essays such as these may not be included because the “challenge they pose to the inclusionary narrative exposes the problems with the narrative as it is typically construed, revealing a rhetorical world that sees agency, power, and the political in different terms altogether” (Chavez, 2015, p. 170).

Suddenly, the lens is expanded to encompass more than “including”: she infers that the “rhetoric of inclusion” can embrace ideas such as “exclusion.”  This definition – one that looks at a seemingly opposite way of examining something in order to better understand it – is truly using the tool of rhetoric to interrogate not only what is overtly presented as an idea as being “included” in the ideas relating to the “rhetoric of inclusion,” but also is covertly presenting the idea of exclusion that exists within it (and must, therefore, be considered).

This may seem an extreme way of understanding the rhetoric of inclusion; however, it is an idea that pervades all aspects of inclusion (because without exclusion, how does inclusion exist?). The result of this examination of the rhetoric of inclusion is non-conclusive. I realize this might seem circular in its presentation of ideas, but understanding the “whole” often means circling back to the beginning and starting anew: that is what I am suggesting.

That is, I suggest that we must not make black-or-white assumptions, choices (of words to use), and force ourselves into an “either/or” scenario of thinking: instead, I offer the idea to consider the words used, the context in which the words are couched, and the overall resulting delivery that occurs: not what is wanted, but what truly “is.”

References

Chávez, K. R. (2015). Beyond Inclusion: Rethinking Rhetoric’s Historical Narrative. The Quarterly Journal of Speech, 101(1), 162–172. https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2015.994908

Roy, A. (1995). The Grammar and Rhetoric of Inclusion. College English, 57(2), 182–195. https://doi.org/10.2307/378809

Tomlinson, S. (2014). The Politics of Race, Class, and Special Education: The Selected Works of Sally Tomlinson. Routledge.