By Adam Ellwanger, Chronicles - Over the course of my nearly 20-year career as a professor of rhetoric, I’ve learned that—stripped to its essence—rhetoric is symbolic force. Not all language is forceful. A statement like “His new car is red,” is descriptive, but it exerts no force on the audience. Rhetoric is the type of communication that aims at producing a tangible effect on something real; something outside the self, beyond the symbolic realm of discourse... The left has now spent decades asserting that offensive speech is violence. They are half right: rhetoric, like a punch, is an application of force. But rhetorical force, under the right circumstances, serves as a useful alternative to physical violence. Thus, persuasive force cannot be the same as violence.