ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 provides the theoretical foundation for understanding small people making big arguments. The chapter begins theorizing rhetorical children with a discourse of innocence – a shared discursive understanding of children and childhood based on adult’s responsibility to protect the young. From a discourse of innocence, the chapter develops three theoretical constructs lending insights into the potentiality of rhetorical children. First, moral obligation helps children persuade adults based on the justice of helping the helpless. Rhetorical children activate this appeal through the warrant of the dead child and through embodied appeals emphasizing the threats they face. Second, natality enables children to dishonor adults for letting the safe space of childhood be corrupted by politics. Third, incongruous illumination highlights moments of rhetorical invention disrupting existing definitions and social understandings, and thus, opening up space for meditation, contemplation, and political action. Incongruous illumination is an oblique interaction between speaker and audience inviting perspective shifting and contemplation. Taken together, these three constructs function as useful tools to better understand the power of rhetorical children. Ultimately, the reader is now ready to notice in the case study chapters how rhetorical children spark political action by highlighting the incongruous clash between adult values and adult actions.
