ABSTRACT
The final case study chapter applies the book’s theoretical framework to the rhetorical potency of Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg. Greta was an instrumental force in starting the largest environmental movement in human history. As a result, Greta’s unconventional potency highlights an opportunity to better understand rhetorical efficacy in an attention ecology, offering valuable insights to anyone interested in public argument, climate change, and the capacity of rhetorical children to influence our most complicated and intractable social challenges. Greta’s unconventional potency also offers an opportunity to further theorize the conceptual incommensurability of rhetorical children. Greta moved her audience by urging adults to reconcile their civic conduct with the established standards separating the praiseworthy from the blameworthy. In so doing, Greta reached into the core of political life and transcends the declamation of epideictic rhetoric by casting audiences not merely as spectators to community values but also ethical actors expected to live up to a set of praiseworthy behaviors. The chapter concludes by linking Greta’s potency to larger conceptual lessons useful for anyone interested in understanding social movements, redressing climate change, and theorizing rhetorical children.
