A Lesson on Influence: The Rhetorician's Corner

The term “influencer” makes my skin crawl. It merely attempts to commercialize something profound in human connection, in natural connection: the way the sun influences a tree to grow toward it; the way electromagnetism pulls atoms into alignment, the way a newborn’s mouth reaches to suckle milk from their mother’s breast.

Influence, so understood, aligns, grows, nourishes. Rather than some degraded commodity, true influence escapes monetization.

Sadly, too many people embrace this troped, commodified understanding of an influencer and fail to recognize and honor the influences that undergird their own lives and the influence, or power, they wield within their own circles.

Let’s reclaim influence.

The ancient teachers who first studied persuasion understood influence in this older, living sense. For them, influence meant moving people, and the finest persuasion moved people toward the common good.

Three Roots, One Ground

Aristotle described three ways a speaker persuades. Ethos draws on the speaker's character and credibility. Pathos reaches the emotions an audience carries. Logos appeals through reasoning and evidence. Each root grows best in ground where people know one another.

Ethos needs a history. Rhetoric scholars such as Michael Halloran and Nedra Reynolds remind us that ethos traces back to a Greek sense tied to "haunts," the gathering places where people dwell together. Credibility, in that older sense, belongs to a location. The deacon who visited every hospital room during a hard winter carries ethos earned over decades. A follower count measures attention; a neighborhood measures trust.

Pathos needs presence. An algorithm learns quickly that outrage keeps thumbs scrolling, so emotion on the feed often travels as fuel for division. Emotion at a kitchen table travels differently. When an auntie weeps with you over a loss, or laughs with you after a small victory, feeling becomes a bridge rather than a weapon.

Logos needs accountability. Reasoning offered face to face must answer the person across the table, the one who will still live next door tomorrow. Community influencers argue with care because they remain answerable to the people their arguments touch.

Influence That Builds a "We"

Rhetorician Maurice Charland offers another tool. In his study on Québécois nationalism, Charland described constitutive rhetoric: speech that does more than persuade an existing audience. It calls an audience into being, inviting listeners to see themselves as one people with a shared story.

This idea changes how we might judge influence. Every persuader shapes an identity along with a choice. The question becomes: what kind of "we" does this voice create?

Much platform influence constitutes a "we" defined against a "them." Buy this and join the insiders. Believe this and stand apart from those people. Engagement metrics reward that sorting, and our racial and cultural divides deepen as a result.

A grandmother, a coach, a corner store owner, and a teacher in her classroom working to unite diverse students into a learning community often constitute a different "we." A church mothers' board gathers women across generations. A youth league coach fields a team where kids from three language communities learn one set of plays. These everyday rhetors call people into a shared belonging that holds room for difference.

Persuasion Toward the Common Good

The classical tradition carried an ethical expectation. Quintilian, borrowing from Cato, described the ideal orator as a good person skilled in speaking. Isocrates, earlier still, tied rhetorical training to civic life and the city's health. By that measure, influence earns its name only when it moves a community toward shared flourishing.

So here stands the lesson I offer my students and now offer you: look for influence where people live, where they dwell. Ask who builds trust over time, who feels alongside others, who reasons in the open, and who calls a larger, more generous "we" into being. Those questions will lead you away from trending pages and toward porches, pews, practice fields, and classrooms.

Then, lastly, ask one more question, the hardest one. Whose "we" will your own voice help create?