Second Persona Reaction

Although the article The Second Persona beats the phrase ‘cancer of communism’ to death, Edwin Black’s extensive analysis produces several interesting points. The Second Persona first discusses the idea of human bias in all forms of rhetoric even the most seemingly arbitrary. He also discusses the extreme difference between idiom and ideology. Finally, the most interesting point that he alludes to is the power of words and the psychology that accompanies rhetoric.
Black puts the ethics of rhetoric into perspective by stating that no human work goes without some bias. “Moral judgments, however balanced, however elaborately qualified, are nonetheless categorical. Once rendered, they shape decisively one’s relationship to the object judged,” (Black). Black defines the ‘second persona’ as the auditor and focuses his essay more on the ethical responsibility of the auditor because they must acknowledge the constant biases in the speaker.
Addressing the issue of personal bias, Black brings up his definition of ideology. He addresses the fact that any human concept and moral position on a certain subject can become their ideology and exemplifies this through the rhetoric used for school integration. “…if the auditor himself begins using the pejorative term, it will be a fallible sign that he has adopted not just a position on school integration, but an ideology,” (Black). Identifying certain beliefs as an ideology becomes in itself an ideology and bias. In his discourse, he craftily displays his own personal biases by identifying the biases in even such simple terms as “cancer of communism”.
Black argues that this term is not just an idiom, a stylistic expression with non-literal meaning, but a rightwing ideology. Through an extensive analysis of each word and word origin Black conveys that this term, which can many times be absorbed peripherally, actually involves an extensive centralized though-processes. Black brings to light the power of words in his “word psychology”, if you will. “…if psychiatry had a “line” of any kind on this symptom—such clinical information could be applicable in some way to those people who are affected by the communism-as-cancer metaphor,” (Black).
Black states that all rhetoric contains a bias and this is reflected in the ideology of the rhetorician, but it is also the duty of the auditor to identify this. “…the association between an idiom and an ideology is much more than a matter of arbitrary convention or inexplicable accident,” (Black). He encourages us not to take seemingly simple idioms for granted if we want to be a responsible auditor and truly exhibit a perceptive ‘second persona’.