The Framework of Virtue Critique

Abstract

This chapter continues building on the virtue framework by supplying five analytical principles for virtue critique. They concern rhetorical situationality, motives, effects, audiences, transparency, and prudence, and they provide not only conceptual scaffolding but also key perspectives for performing in-depth studies of green marketing.

8.1 Introduction

In the three final chapters, we will further elaborate on the virtue framework. First, in Chap. 8, we present analytical principles for doing virtue criticism that are anchored in contemporary rhetorical theory. Then, in Chap. 9, we illustrate how the framework can be operationalized by engaging in substantive discussions within three areas of green marketing. The tenth and final chapter re-emphasizes that green marketing can be viewed, and judged, as the manifest performance of ethical judgment, and discusses interdisciplinary avenues for future research.

8.2 Analytical Principles for Virtue Critique

In some ways, the idea that green marketing should be seen as the public performance of ethical judgment, and primarily appraised as such, is revolutionary. It constitutes an ethical turn in relation to a scientific descriptive-oriented understanding of communication, as well as to a critical tradition focusing on revealing hidden manipulation. At the same time, all the fundamental components to perform such rhetorical criticism are already in place. Since rhetorical scholarship has been persistently haunted by the curse of dealing with an “immoral” art, many have grappled with ways to anchor an understanding of human communication ethically, without relapsing into some form of ethical universalism or mathematical utilitarianism. Interestingly, a significant amount of the perspectives active in a rhetorical understanding of ethics is also present in the practice of law. This is of little surprise, however, as the different fields are historically related and have shared roots in the Greco-Roman tradition. Now, we will introduce five guiding principles, building on rhetorical theory and developing our understanding of green marketing practices, facilitating the analytical assessment of its virtues.

8.2.1 Principle 1—The Principle of Situationality

First, a key principle for the virtue framework is that green marketing is situationally framed. While the virtue list constitutes a list of norms that goes beyond any particular situation, the interpretation of each virtue, and norm, must be done in relation to a particular situation. Of course, it is possible to reflect—in the abstract—on how one could deem or judge the ethics of certain types of communicative choices in certain types of situations, but such reasoning must always be a stand-in for actual judgment in specific cases.¹

To discern the key aspects of the rhetorical situation that prompted an instance of green marketing, we can go to the standard theory introduced by Lloyd Bitzer (1968), stating that the rhetorical situation consists of:

• A. an exigence, which is understood as an imperfection in the world that calls for action,

• B. a rhetorical audience, which is both the target of the discourse and a mediator of change with the capacity to respond to the exigence, and finally

• C. the constraints of the situation, i.e. the conditions that determine the rhetorical choices available and shape how the chosen rhetoric will perform its communicative function.

Bitzer’s conceptualization provides a way of locating rhetorical texts in situations and of viewing them as pragmatic. In other words, they are seen as discursive acts, emerging in real, historical circumstances, but including agency as the rhetors are understood as arguing for change within the situations identified.

8.2.2 Principle 2—The Principle of Multiple Motives

While the conceptualization of rhetoric as situational includes a sort of intention, it is not analytically located in the mind of individuals but rather manifested in the relation between the exigence, the rhetorical text, and the rhetorical audience. As analysts, we ascertain intention by considering the dynamic interrelation between text form and our understanding of society. In fact, following Kenneth Burke (1969), intention is better conceptualized as a motive that manifests itself in the text. (Note the implicit rhetorical ontology.)

When studying marketing, we can normally take for granted that there is a commercial motive behind the marketing act corresponding to a commercial exigence (such as the aim to establish legitimacy in a certain market or to sell certain products). Indeed, marketing can pertain to other exigencies, such as the need to tackle climate change. However, these other motives, related to an ambition of “making the world a better place”, are not as deeply rooted in the tradition of marketing. Marketing is primarily a phenomenon of commercial enterprise, subject to the internal logic of market economy. Hence, it is crucial for green marketing to become legitimate as a societal practice to establish these other non-commercial motives as real and not mere shadow play. In other words, the marketing performances must respond to exigencies related to sustainability and not just to crass commercial interests. Otherwise, the standard objection would be that addressing climate change within commercial rhetoric should be understood as a purely symbolic gesture: just another form of “corporate bullshit”, functioning as an argument in the service of commercial goals.

In Chap. 3, Sect. 3.2, we mentioned that there is a need to better understand how the institutional logics of capitalism and market economy intersect with the societal institution of sustainability, and how this is manifested in rhetorical practice. Indeed, any commercial text from an organization that strives for societal legitimacy (which, arguably, all organizations do) could be construed as situated within a sort of magma of various motives (cf. Rosengren 2014). Burke (1969) illustrates the complex nature of rhetorical motives, by acknowledging that the actions of a shepherd may imply the motive of caring for the welfare of his sheep, and the motive of commercial profit that follows from his position within the meat production industry.

To summarize the reflections thus far, an important principle of virtue criticism, following the principle of situationality, is that motives can be multiple, and they are constituted through the interplay between the situational characteristics and the manifest rhetoric.

8.2.3 Principle 3—The Principle of Multiple Effects

Having treated the exigence and the question of intention—or motive—as situational, let us now turn to the rhetorical concept of the audience. In fact, the centrality of this concept, to the classical as well as the contemporary understanding of rhetoric, can hardly be exaggerated. The audience is the frame of reference that differentiates a rhetorical understanding of argumentation from other paradigms, such as logic, or dialectics (e.g. van Eemeren et al. 2014). Further drawing on Bitzer’s conceptualization, the rhetorical audience can be understood as the target audience with the capacity to affect change in relation to the exigence. This aspect is relevant to how the virtue framework can be used to analyze green marketing as it can affect the process of delimiting the relevant audience(s) to be used as a frame of reference when appraising the ethical qualities of marketing.

A similar strategy is used within marketing law where a construction of the relevant audience is used when judging whether a certain commercial practice (i.e. an instance of marketing) should be deemed prohibited or not. This construct is taken to be the consumers who are addressed by marketing efforts. Importantly, however, when broadening our understanding of marketing to include the institution of sustainability, we can see that the notion of rhetorical audience becomes more complex as there is a correspondence between a multiplicity of exigencies, a multiplicity of motives, and a multiplicity of rhetorical audiences. The link between commercial exigence, commercial motive, and commercial audience is crucial when assessing the ethical dimensions of green promises. However, in terms of discussing the constructive potential of green marketing, one can consider the link between sustainability exigence, sustainability motive, and the related rhetorical audience to be of equal importance. In evaluating the virtues manifested in rhetoric, it is not only, and perhaps not even primarily, a question of not misleading the commercial target group. To be virtuous, the rhetoric should also contribute to the good of society beyond the commercial transaction of two parties. Hence, the pragmatic way of conceptualizing the audience, as a group that can contribute to affecting desirable change, remains relevant as it provides a dynamic, context sensitive frame of reference for ethical judgment.

Indeed, the dynamic nature of the audience as a frame of reference for appraising marketing lies in its connection to various exigencies. However, it also lies—and here we add another nuance—in the fact that an audience can be deemed as rhetorically related to an exigence on two primary levels. First, the speaker can aim to directly affect the actions of the audience (urging it to act in specific ways, e.g. to buy a particular product). Second, the actions of the audience can be influenced more indirectly, as rhetoric can be constitutive of a particular kind of citizen, which can be molded through a rhetoric conditioning certain values and promoting certain identities (e.g. Charland 1987). Such indirect influences do not directly affect change by guiding the immediate action of the audience. Instead, it is preparatory, preliminary, and prejudicial: it paves the way for future action in accordance with the values and identities promoted.

With the concept of second persona, American scholar of rhetoric Edwin Black (1970) has conceptualized this complex dimension of rhetoric, explicitly addressing the question of how to make ethical judgments concerning rhetoric. Black’s core argument is that, just as a text produces a persona of the author, it also produces a second persona—that of an ideal audience. Black argues that a rhetorical analyst can reconstruct this second persona by analyzing stylistic tokens, such as metaphors. Importantly, this second persona is not to be read as a reconstruction of the intended audience or the rhetorical audience in a Bitzerian sense, but as a construct of discourse that functions rhetorically. The gist of the idea is that, when a text signals that the ideal reader has certain qualities, it has the potential to affect the real recipients of the text. If car commercials repeatedly describe their cars and their characteristics in terms of wild animals, it could for example imply a second persona characterized by a will to roam free, or a need to feel the thrill of the hunt. Consequently, over time, a real audience could be driven toward accepting such ideals as their own.

A similar rhetorical logic has been developed by Canadian rhetoric scholar Maurice Charland (1987) in his discussions of constitutive rhetoric. He argues that rhetoric should not only, or even necessarily primarily, be understood as a medium for producing specific changes in terms of desired actions. Instead, it should be seen as constituting the audience in certain ways. There lies a potential in this often-neglected function of rhetoric, as the constitution of the citizens is central to the formation of a good society.

Thus, we come to the third principle within the virtue framework: the (constructive) effects of green marketing lie both in its direct effects, guiding consumption, and in the way that it constitutes the identity and characteristics of the audience.

8.2.4 Principle 4—The Principle of Multiple Audiences

The constitutive effects of marketing are generally considered difficult to regulate or prohibit (though there are attempts to ban e.g. the commercial use of certain demeaning stereotypes). In terms of a qualitative rhetorical critique that discusses the best examples and the virtues of good marketing, however, it is very much reasonable to include this aspect. Returning to Black, we find that one of his key arguments is that we—as humans—do not have a natural capacity to judge texts on an ethical scale, as our ethical norm systems are centered on humans. Our value systems are based on notions of ethical actors, and, as objects lack agency, ethical assessments of objects must stumble. Black’s notion of the second persona is tailored to address this problem. Following this line of thought and returning to marketing, the notion of the second persona makes it possible to better judge the ethical qualities of green marketing. The idea is that you assess the ethical qualities of the text by assessing the audience that the rhetoric is implicitly directed at and therefore—at least potentially—contributes to the construction of.

For example, one of our students applied the framework of constitutive rhetoric to the (rather energetic) green marketing of Oatly, a company selling various oat-based food products. She could thus show how the audience was constituted as not only environmentally aware, but also as socially conscious, culturally avant-garde, self-ironic, and urban, in contrast to a rural, conservative, and anti-social identity construction. In fact, Oatly explicitly states that they aim to change societal norms toward more sustainable lifestyles, focusing particularly on plant-based food consumption. Such rhetoric could, on the one hand, be considered as constructive and virtuous in the sense of supporting climate transition. On the other hand, the social polarization apparent in Oatly’s praise-and-blame rhetoric, particularly regarding the critical characterization of the groups not part of their customer base (the Others), could just as well be considered as potentially destructive rhetoric, as it could have a negative impact on cultivating broad support for climate transition.

Regardless of the interpretation of any specific companies’ efforts as regards constitutive rhetoric, it is clear that the audience-constitutive dimension deserves attention in a qualitative assessment of the ethics of green marketing.

Thus far, we have focused on the pragmatic value of the audience and demonstrated how an ethical appraisal of green marketing requires a nuanced understanding of the motives of marketing, as well as of the potential effects of marketing on an audience. Within the rhetorical tradition, there are, however, also other normative logics available, which do not focus on the pragmatics of rhetoric (what rhetoric does). For instance, there is a lively discussion on the inherent qualities (or lack of qualities) of rhetorical texts in their various forms (which focuses on what and how they are). Interestingly, the conceptualization of the audience has been central to this discussion as well, and we can draw from that discussion to further develop the fourth analytical principle.

The Platonic dialogues contain some of the original archetypes for the derision of rhetoric. Therefore, it is interesting to note how Plato’s scorn is based on emphasizing the simple (“dumb”) nature of the demos addressed, as well as the banality that necessarily follows from the temporal constraints of a public speech. To him, rhetoric is inferior partly due to the inferiority of the audience. As a contrast, Plato tends to acclaim the merits of dialectics, by highlighting the value of dialogue with the very brightest of minds. Like diamonds, these minds can help sharpen the quality of the argumentation. (This not very subtle way of stroking the egos of his interlocutors is but one example of how Plato’s Socrates tended to use rhetorical means, in positioning himself against teachers of public speaking.)

In many ways this negative positioning of rhetoric (though somewhat sidestepped by Aristotle) has endured in the Western tradition. In 1958, however, Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca published the Traité de l’argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique (translated to English in 1969, as The new rhetoric: A treatise on argumentation), presenting a new rhetoric that, despite building mainly on Aristotle, presents a new attempt at breaking the Platonic curse. Interestingly, their approach can be adapted for our purposes. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca adhere to Plato and accept that the quality of the rhetoric can be appraised by taking the quality of the audience into account. However, they have their own take on how to do it. Their defense against the platonic criticism is based on the notion that the qualities of rhetoric (as regards ethics, morality, and truth, as well as more technical aspects) can be protected through the simultaneous targeting of two audiences: the particular audience and a universal audience.

The idea of targeting the particular audience is easy enough to understand—it is very similar to what most laymen would likely think of in terms of audience adaptation. The basic idea is transmitted in an age-old Swedish proverb: “one should speak to farmers in farmers’ ways and to learned men in Latin”. Expressed in Bitzerian terms, the proverbial wisdom is simply that the characteristics of the audience should be considered as part of the situational constraints. The universal audience, on the other hand, is a more abstract, less commonsensical concept. The universal audience is generally described as consisting of all rational beings and as being oriented toward questions of facts and truth, while the particular audience, which is constituted by any specific segment of humanity, is concerned with values and what is preferable according to them (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1958; Perelman 1979; Gross 1999; cf. Mossberg 2020; Wintgens 1993).

Taking inspiration from this perspective, two things are particularly important for our present purposes: Firstly, both the universal and the particular audience must be understood as, in a sense, imaginary constructs. When evaluating the quality of rhetoric in relation to a particular audience or a universal audience, we do not empirically measure actual effects on real humans. Instead, we critically discuss the rhetoric in relation to an imagined audience with certain qualities. Secondly, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s conceptualization of the rhetorical audience(s) provides a way of adding another normative reference point beyond the particularity of the target audience.

One way to utilize such an audience theory would be to evaluate instances of green rhetoric in terms of both how they appeal to the particular target audience and how they appeal to the universal audience as described by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca. Some critics, however, have argued that, through the concept of the universal audience, a lightly disguised platonic conception of (divine) universal truths is slipped back into rhetoric (Cassin 1990). The critics claim that the neutralization of platonic criticism comes at the cost of buying into a problematic idealism.

There is no reason for us to take a stance in this particular debate here. Instead, our main problem, with Perelman and Olbrecht-Tyteca’s conceptualization of the audience, is that they clearly align with the Aristotelian paradigm—constructing and evaluating rhetoric in relation to specific situations without taking the social dynamic character of society into account (cf. Chap. 4, Sects. 4.2 and 4.3). When we adapt the idea of dual audiences to our project, however, we do so against the backdrop of a different rhetorical paradigm (cf. Chap. 5, Sect. 5.3).

Returning to the understanding of the ideal audience, our view is that it is not enough to tell marketers to also target and adapt to their own idea of what would be persuasive to all rational beings. Instead, we want to promote a more defined supervisory audience. We suggest that this audience should be understood in terms of a (constructed) knowledgeable audience of experts relevant to the subject area of the specific marketing campaign, as well as to the virtuous practice of green marketing.² Simply put, an advertiser of wind energy could ask questions such as: “Would an expert on wind energy, and an expert on the energy market, accept this way of formulating this ad?” or “Would a person knowledgeable in good green marketing practice accept this way of formulating this ad and deem it as transparent and constructive?”.

This approach is admittedly less general than the idea of the universal audience, but it is also a less abstract, idealized, and self-contained construct. The approach is however not incompatible with Perelman’s ideas. In his terminology, this would be dubbed an elite audience, a variant of the universal audience that he considered to be not only a realistic, but indeed an oftentimes fully legitimate substitute for the universal audience (cf. Perelman 1979). While we prefer speaking of a supervisory, or specialist, audience, as that terminology better signifies the function and relevant characteristics of the audience (know-how, rather than position), we embrace this realistic variant. A specialist supervisory audience can fill in for the universal audience and perform part of the same practical functions without, however, falling into the trap of reinstating a divine audience (cf. Cassin 1990). While still being a construct, the reference (or meaning) becomes clearer if one imagines this version of an ideal audience consisting of researchers and experts within a particular area, relevant to a certain area of green marketing. Now, one could of course interject and state that this would not be a universal audience, but a particular one, an admittedly specialist but still merely particular audience—and one would be right! In a sense. However, the key here is that we should strive to appraise marketing in relation to both a particular target audience—the persons targeted by advertisers, the consumers, and whatnot—and a constructed, qualitatively ideal audience, with specialist knowledge about the things at hand and a critical, supervisory function.

What is more, we should aim to form actual audiences, within the market system, with real people who embody the judgment of the ideal audience. Sometimes, this function could be supplemented, or even replaced, by various practices and documents to help marketers and analysts fill the notion of a supervisory audience with substance and to put it to work. Doing so would enable marketers considering the judgment of this ideal audience to have a particular audience in mind. In one way, what we here argue for is the institutionalization of a supervisory audience for virtuous green marketing practice. In some jurisdictions, this could be accomplished by developing already present supervisory functions, such as the Swedish Advertising Ombudsman (Reklamombudsmannen, RO), a non-governmental organization which, as part of the industry self-regulation system, “receives complaints about advertising and reviews whether commercial advertising is compliant with the ICC Marketing Code”, thereby guiding marketing practice.

Integrating an appraisal by an institutionalized audience within the system of marketing could aid the move toward sustainable marketing and a sustainable society. More specifically, judgments that consider both the rhetorical audience and the supervisory audience could be built into, for example, the critical assessments of marketing efforts performed by marketing professionals, or by self-regulation institutions (such as the RO), and indeed by the courts. There are already promising instances of this kind of thinking out there, in different places and different forms, but to develop further they need nourishment and nurture. There is a need for analytical work and practical applications, as well as mediation between the fields of theory and practice.

Hence, we have our fourth principle: the ethics of green marketing should be appraised in relation to rhetorical audiences, as well as in relation to a qualitatively ideal audience taken to consist of relevant experts. We will return to how this dynamic between the layman audience of the (average) consumer, an expert audience, and the marketing at hand can be construed in the following Sect. 8.3.

8.2.5 Principle 5—The Principle of Prudence and Transparency

The question of what constitutes virtuous green marketing is not a merely factual matter, but on the contrary a matter of judgment. Of course, there are instances of green marketing that clearly constitute what one could call greenwashing and which therefore falls into the “bad” category. Most green marketing efforts, however, in all probability have both merits and demerits. As implied by the five (or six) “ethical problem types” and the 10 (or 11) virtues of green marketing (Chap. 6, Sect. 6.2), green marketing requires prudence. In this context, prudence means both an active awareness of and amenability to what is situationally appropriate, as the considerations required are complex, and a sound judgment, as trade-offs will inevitably be necessary. In terms of, for example, selection and deflection, it is impossible to provide “all” information, deflecting nothing. Green marketing will inevitably require choices, and determining what is virtuous will require reasoning.

In the following chapters, we explore various topics supporting the performance and analysis of the ethical judgments involved in green marketing. At this point, we will not dive deeper into the question of prudence or practical wisdom (phronesis). Instead, we simply make an addition, albeit an important one: Beyond choices relating to the presentation of the subject matter of a green marketing campaign (such as aspects related to the sustainability of the product or company), we should consider if there is transparency with regard to the rhetorical nature of the marketing. An ethical quality of green marketing could well be its rhetorical openness, in the sense of being transparent with its own rhetoricity—with what it does and does not do, in terms of rhetoric (cf. Bengtson 2019). In other words, the ideal of green marketing should not be to hide the traces of rhetorical maneuvering. Instead, the ideal should be to openly admit its rhetoricity, where this is possible and suitable—as, indeed, it is to a much larger extent than implied by present green marketing practice. In one way, this might seem like a recommendation counter to the very function of rhetoric as persuasion and therefore seem idealistic, unrealistic, or just plain naive.

There are, however, two reasons why this must not be so. First, when a marketer is transparent, in relation to a target audience, in terms of how the rhetoric is formed, this can build trust and establish a reliable ethos, as the company, by its parrhesia (the rhetorical figure of speaking candidly), shows arete (virtuous character), eunoia (goodwill), and trust in its audience, inviting a reciprocal trust. Secondly, during the last two decades it has become more and more clear that the persuasiveness of argumentation is not dependent on its rhetoricity being hidden. This has for example become clear in politics, where political parties and lobbying organizations have come to start commenting and discussing their strategies openly. That the invisibility of rhetoricity is not a condition for persuasiveness finds an especially salient example in the rise of certain forms of post-truth rhetoric. That is, rhetoric where the truth of an argument, or its logical validity, is of little importance, and where the evaluation of arguments will tend to be based on their dramaturgical effects and functions in a struggle over cultural dominance. Returning to the question of green marketing, our fifth analytical principle is that: the ethics of green marketing is a question of prudence in practical judgments as well as transparency in terms of the rhetorical choices made.

8.3 Further Reflections on Audience Construction

As promised, we will now elaborate on a particular theme related to defining the rhetorical situation, namely the matter of audience construction, which, as mentioned, is of primary importance when assessing the ethics of communication, including marketing. This primacy is also a matter of methodology. Before you can assess, e.g., the transparency of green marketing, you need to determine the perspective from which this transparency is to be judged. In other words, the question of how to determine and define the target audience becomes primary.

As now must be clear, the virtue perspective presented in this book works with a complex, multi-layered concept of audience. We have already discussed the constitutive effects related to the ideals implied by second persona, and the concept of an expert audience (filling in for Perelman’s universal audience; cf. Sect. 8.2). At this point, we wish to expand on the notion of a target audience and consider how perspectives from rhetoric, law, and marketing can be useful tools for conceptualizing it. This constructive process of target audience mapping is of course relevant for an understanding of the expert audience, and for discussing the constitutive effects of marketing, but for the moment, those particular perspectives are left aside.

Our giving primacy to the audience does not mean that we proclaim a preference for any “subjective” interpretation of any particular person or group of persons. The relevant audience—and what we mean by the “target audience”—is the one that is constructed in and by the message. This audience is an “objective” construct in the very same way that the “content” of a message is, as the audience is, by implication, part of the intelligible meaning of a message. We thus work from the proposition that a message constructs its audience, and takes this as our point of departure for how to determine and define the target audience.

The proposition that a message constructs its audience could be further illustrated by using any of several established conceptual apparatuses. We could speak of an “implied” (Iser), “ideal” (e.g. White) or “model reader” (Eco), of an “anticipated audience” (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca) or “interpellated subject” (Charland), of “the average consumer (in the relevant market)” (EU marketing law), or indeed about “the second persona” (Black), as in the previous Sect. 8.2. The conceptual apparatuses that the quoted phrases allude to are of course not interchangeable; they are part of different fields and theories, and they highlight different points about how messages (texts, speech, images) construct their audiences. As tools, the apparatuses do different work for different enterprises. Still, they have the basic premise in common that messages imply to whom they are addressed, and thus, by way of indication, signify their target audiences. Hence, the theories have in common that they point out, not only that any communicative act constructs its audience, but also that this audience can be extricated through interpretative work that places the act in its context and looks closely at it.³

The implications of a communicative act can of course be more or less clear, and the contextual clues can be more or less illuminating. In some cases, both the message and context clues can be ambiguous (graffiti; wrong number calls; finding a letter someone dropped) while, in other cases, they can be more determinate (journal articles, for example, should normally target the journal’s readers, subscriptions holders, or at least a section of them, while school exams should normally address the grading teacher, whether known or anonymous). In some cases, the context clues can even be prescriptive in the sense that a certain audience is decreed to be the relevant one—the most obvious example being law, which often simply decrees that in a given case the relevant audience should be considered so and so.

As mentioned, it follows from the EU legal framework regarding marketing that the target audience should be constructed as the “average consumer” or, more precisely, the average consumer whom an instance of marketing “reaches” or “to whom it is addressed” or ”the average member of the group when a commercial practice is directed to a particular group of consumers”.⁴ That the relevant addressee is prescribed to be this fictional character—the average consumer—is simple enough. The complicated question however ensues, about how to construct this average character and what “average” qualities to assign. Who is this person? How can such a fictional figure be defined? Where does this person perform their economic activity? In what market or business sector? The latter, both as a matter of type of product (goods or services, as well as all the different sub-categorizations possible within these categories) and as a matter of geography? Further, how—in what mode of perception—does the relevant subject perceive an instance of marketing? And for how long? A quick glance passing by, or for a longer duration?

We could go on. The point is that the answers to such questions will obviously need to vary. The anticipation of contextual relativity is the very reason for asking them. In fact, the point here—which elaborates on our first analytical principle on how green marketing is situationally framed (Sect. 8.2)—is twofold. One, the demands put on marketing efforts should differ with the answers to such questions. Two, it is pointless (and practically impossible) to try to answer such questions in the abstract. To determine, say, which market is addressed by an instance of consumer marketing, the interpreter needs to look at the specific message to figure out what consumers are targeted as prospective buyers of an advertised product. In other words, it is necessary to adopt a qualitative approach to target audience analysis.

While the principle of contextual relativity applies universally, the analytical rendering of that audience will need to vary. The rendering will vary with the text and context, as well as with the analytical perspective, and field within which the analysis is situated.⁵ As different fields will have their own ways of structuring the reasoning of interpretative justifications, they will ascribe importance to different topoi. For example, constructing something as specifically “legal” reasoning will directly affect which topics can legitimately be addressed in the interpretative reasoning, as the prescriptive nature of law puts restrictions upon certain places, while making attendance to others mandatory. In our view, this is merely an effect of the perhaps most basic premise of rhetoric: that a speaker (or critic) should be mindful of the situation and adapt her speech to the audience (or take account of the situational constraints in her critique), a requirement which includes adhering to the expectations of the genre.

Hence, while the audience construction must always be anchored in the situation, and situation analysis is a potentially eternal project, this does not mean that there is nothing general to say on the matter. It only means that the specifics, rather than the generalia, are the primary, conclusory, guides in interpretive practice. However, the specifics of a case will always be viewed in light of more general cognitive frames. Hence, it can still be a meaningful task to elaborate on, and indeed develop, these general analytical structures. It can be a way of articulating possibly helpful and relevant criteria of audience construction. From the perspective of rhetorical theory, it seems natural to construe the results of such elaboration as rhetorical topics, that is, as general topics of audience construction. The topics must not, however, be general in an absolute sense. Just as the Aristotelian topics related to the three classical genres of speech, different topics for audience construction can be created in correspondence with various discourses of society or the analytical interests of various fields.

As regards to the assessment of green marketing, such general topics of audience construction could well include the kind of topics which can be taken into account in market surveys, and in what marketing theory regularly refers to as segmentation. Marketers often think in terms of market segments when identifying prospective customers (the marks, for their marketing). Therefore, there ought to be correlations between the strategies used for market segmentation, and the factors which are relevant as topics for the construction of a target audience. These correlations speak to the translatability of the strategies. In other words, and taking inspiration from a standard textbook on marketing (Kotler et al. 2020), when trying to work out the characteristics of the target audience, variables, and typical breakdowns such as the following can be taken into account:

• (a) Geographic segmentation: What continent, nation, or region is addressed? What is the targeted sales area? Density of population? Climate? (“You don’t sell air conditioning units in Antarctica!”)

• (b) Demographic segmentation: What is the target demographic, in terms of e.g. age, generation, and life cycle; gender; family size; stage in life cycle; income; profession; level of academic achievement; and nationality? Are there relevant cultural, or indeed subcultural, consumption patterns?

• (c) Psychographic segmentation: Is the marketing targeting a particular social group, lifestyle, or personality? Do they have specific views of high relevance? (“I hate wind power!”)

• (d) Behavioral segmentation: Is it a special/normal/once-in-a-lifetime occasion? What benefits are sought concerning quality, service, convenience, etc.?; User status: Is the marketing targeting non-users, ex-users, new users, etc.? Frequency of use: Regular users, first-time users, etc.? Loyalty status: Non, medium, strong? Readiness state: Unaware, aware, informed, interested, desirous, intending to buy? Attitude toward the product: Enthusiastic, positive, indifferent, negative, hostile?

These segmentation variables are factors that, according to standard marketing theory, can be taken into account when delineating a market segment to address. They also seem to be utilizable as topics for audience construction, with only minor translation. Hence, when addressing the question of who the target audience is, one can take such factors into account as rhetorical topics, and just like topics, they are not to be applied mechanically (Kotler et al. 2020):

There is no single way to segment a market. A marketer has to try different variables, alone and in combination, to find the best way to view the market structure.

The recorded topics are not the only available ones. On the contrary, this non-exhaustive list can be further developed and indeed should be adjusted as is called for in different situations. The categories can also tend to coincide; it might for example be hard to see if a certain characteristic is geographically or demographically contingent (“In Denmark, people like beer”/“Danes like beer”) or if it should be seen as psychographic or behavioral. (Is an attitudinal alignment a question of a personal psychology, or a matter of acting in a certain way?) If, however, the categories are seen as heuristic aids, rather than as a strictly formal analytic, this is of small consequence—they are meant to help identify relevant characteristics, to make them stand out from the background and thus be more visible. It does not necessarily matter much if it is then hard to “sort” the things one sees into discrete and stable categories. As regards their adjustment, one might, for example, in some situations of consumer marketing want to put more emphasis on factors such as prioritized economic needs, consumption patterns, or travel habits. As concerns business markets, one might focus on variables such as operating characteristics, purchasing approaches, situational factors, and personal and personnel characteristics. However, this would easily be reconcilable with the structure of segmentation categories, if nothing else than due to their elasticity. Such adjustment merely entails the tailoring of one’s abstract analytic to the concrete situation at hand. Many times, such adjustment will simply be required to be able to apply the variables as criteria.

Ascertaining a message’s target audience is however not only a question of delimiting a particular range of subjects in the sense of a particular market segment or group of persons. There can be other dimensions to the assessment of what is signified by an instance of marketing and thus to the evaluation of its ethical characteristics. It seems less pertinent to pose the question of, for example, linguistic transparency as, “Is this item of green marketing transparent?”, than instead asking: “Is it transparent, to these specific persons?” And adding “when they look at it like this?” makes it even more pertinent, as this last formulation highlights another relevant criterion of audience construction, namely the implied audience’s mode of perception.

Taking the audience’s perceptual mode into account obviously entails a more developed analytic, in the sense that it makes explicit mention of a higher number of topics, and there seems to be value in such conceptual elaboration—to a point. In theory, one could enumerate each and every characteristic which can be assigned to a person, but in practice this is neither reasonable nor desirable, as overly complicated analytics defeat their heuristic purposes. Further, if only imagination would set the limits, many imaginable distinctions would likely be irrelevant or overly fine. Further still, aspects of audience construction tend to intermingle in ways that can be completely legitimate. One might well use a more de-differentiated “who-framing” and construct the audience as, for example, “a stressed person browsing through the supermarket”, just as well as on a more differentiated “who-, where-, how- and why-framing”, instead constructing it as “a person, in the supermarket, giving mere cursory attention, due to shortness of time”. In general, both alternatives will seem just as intelligible.

Again, marketing law provides illustration. In decisions regarding whether a commercial practice is to be considered prohibited pursuant to EU legal regime, the “who”-question is normally answered⁶: “An average consumer in the relevant market”. Or, in the more elaborate wording of the European Commission (Notice 2021/C 526/01), the Directive on unfair commercial practices: “takes as a benchmark the average consumer, who is reasonably well informed and reasonably observant and circumspect, taking into account social, cultural and linguistic factors, as interpreted by the Court of Justice”. In its case law, the Court has constructed the average consumer as “a reasonably critical person, conscious and circumspect in his or her market behaviour”.⁷ This audience construction illustrates the possibility of integrating several characteristics (faculties of criticism, consciousness, circumspection,⁸ etc.) into the formation of the audience subject (the average consumer). It illustrates, not only how the who-question can entail a complicated intersection of several different aspects, but also of how the who-question can integrate elements that might otherwise be systematized as part of a “how”-question. (“Who looks at it?”—“The average consumer”—“And how does the average consumer look at it?”—“With reasonably critical faculties (etc.).”⁹)

The question about whether or not to separate the group of persons from their perceptual mode, or the who from the how, etcetera, is partly a question of mere semantics, and of how a discursive field, for example, an academic field, for field specific reasons, elects to structure its conceptual apparatuses. It is however obvious that as a matter of rhetorical analysis these different aspects, and more, can in fact be differentiated. By doing so, it is possible to point to different topics of audience construction, which can be used when constructing the audience relevant for the assessment of the ethics of green marketing.

It also seems clear that an elaboration of different relevant audience characteristics can provide helpful tools for the analysis of green marketing, and the ethical assessment according to different virtue criteria. As always, the question of which topoi should be considered relevant is best answered with regard to pragmatic criteria, but the topics we have listed so far seem to provide a reasonable point of departure.