Rex Tillerson Upholds Values, Condemns Sexual Harassment in Epideictic Speech

Rex Tillerson giving an earlier speech

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke yesterday at the Dean Acheson Auditorium in the Department of State Building in Washington to condemn sexual harassment. The event was a belated New Year's ceremony.

Ceremonial speeches--which communication professionals call epideictic speeches--usually talk about values. Aristotle said, quite correctly, that these speeches offer praise. But what is the praise's purpose? In their important book The New Rhetoric, Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca explain that we praise people to remind the audience of their noble values. We give the audience a role model to emulate. 

After a Happy New Year greeting, Tillerson hit that point directly: 

"Values matter. That's what I want to talk about. Most particularly, our shared values matter. Our values as a nation bind us together and define who we are to the rest of the world, but most importantly, they define who we are to one another." 

Tillerson stressed that values unite people so they can work together: "shared values are the threads that knit the diverse groups of individuals with diverse talents and diverse responsibilities into the fabric of an effective and successful organization." He reminded the audience of an earlier speech in which he had talked about "crucial values."


After citing the first Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, Tillerson said that "the story of our nation is one of constant, often demanding journey to realize our shortcomings in order to live up to our founding principles. But we not only recognize our shortcomings; we do something about them." So, values move us to policy and action.

So, Tillerson's thesis opposed sexual harassment. "Harassment," he said, "in all its many forms, demeans individuals and always violates respect." He continued, to applause, that sexual harassment could have no place in the State Department. He quickly moved from values to policy: "I cannot and I will not tolerate it. It will not be tolerated." He encouraged victims of sexual harassment to come forward and to use the Department of State's resources.

Tillerson ended by reminding the audience to "take time to honor the memory of Dr. King and what he stood for."

Values, policies, actions. That's why people give speeches.

That is an important lesson. No one ever fully lives up to his or her values. The reason we have values is not so we can say that we are perfect, but so we can have a moral goal to look up to. So, Tillerson praised our nation as a way to encourage us to do better.




Here's my post about an earlier speech of Tillerson's. 

Image from Department of State