Chapter 3 of Pullman’s Persuasion: History, Theory, and Practice claims to cover the very broad, overarching “Five Canons of Rhetoric.” Nestled within this chapter, however, is a small segment on what Pullman calls “god and devil terms”.
This small section falls beneath his larger umbrella of diction. Under this umbrella, Pullman begins to discuss words with referents and words without referents. What he means here is that some words, like bucket, have a real, tangible thing that they correspond with — when someone talks about a bucket, they are referencing the physical form of a bucket. When someone talks about a word without a referent, they are referencing words like “love” — if someone describes love to you, they cannot point to something that physically exists in the same way that a bucket physically exists to achieve the same effect: they must use other words.
[Reading against the grain: can we really so concretely say that some things are physically “real,” like a bucket, and that other things like “love” are not? Is a bucket real? Is love real? Is love less real than a bucket? Think about a scenario in which someone maybe could describe “love” by pointing to something that exists like a bucket exists.]
This leads us into these “god” and “devil” terms. Pullman describes these words as symptoms of a human thought process in which we have a “commitment to a set of ideas that have not been personally demonstrated or even examined” (Pullman 189). He says “motherhood” and “fatherhood” and “nature” are all examples of God terms. He says “un-American” and “terrorist” and “fanatic” and “racist” (and even “socialist”!) are Devil terms. God and devil terms, Pullman says, are useful for quick connotative recognition but are usually an easy way out when it comes to argumentation.
[Reading against the grain: do you agree with Pullman’s assessment of God and Devil terms? Would you come up with different examples? Do you think different cultures would have different god and devil terms?]
Pullman then points us to check out an ad campaign created by the tire company, Michelin, and to look out for God terms and concepts while we’re at it.
Here is the video:
There is too much to analyze in this video for one reading response — someone could have done their Rhetorical Analysis Project on the video! There are many different components: pure video, voiceover, combination of video and voiceover, etc., etc. Just focusing on viewing this video through the lens of God terms, however, we can narrow it down a little.
The basic concept of the voiceover portion of the video is a conversation between a mother and a daughter about the daughter growing up and being able to drive. Michelin uses God terms and concepts like motherhood, childhood, and safety to sell the idea that their tires are good in that they are associated with the bond between a mother and a child. The actual visual component of the video doubles this association: a tire is covered with a baby blanket, a baby walks over and inspects the blanket-covered object, eventually uncovers the tire and smiles and laughs in its general direction. This further associates the tires with perhaps the most “godlike” of the God terms: innocence and childhood.
Michelin is counting on us to make these associations. Babies are “godlike.” The bond between mother and child is “godlike.” And if their tires can protect our babies, the tires are performing good acts, right? But in the end, they’re just like any other tires. Michelin is using these God terms and associations as an advertising angle in order to get us to believe that their tires embody the same values that “motherhood” and “childhood” embody.
[Read me against the grain! Do you agree with my assessment of the video? How would you assess it? Do you think the God terms can be applied in different ways here?]
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