On Epideictic Rhetoric

From Kathryn M. Olson, "An Epideictic Dimension of Symbolic Violence in Disney's Beauty and the Beast: Inter-Generational Lessons in Romanticizing and Tolerating Intimate Partner Violence" QJS, Volume 99, Issue 4, 2013  

By its ubiquity, repetitive themes, and positioning as “entertainment,” popular culture can serve an epideictic function, though that is not its only function. Epideictic “has significance and importance … because it strengthens the disposition toward action by increasing adherence to the values it lauds.” Epideictic's power is not in calling for some immediate decision or response but in laying the groundwork for and intensity of a disposition to act one way over another in a range of unspecified future encounters. According to Celeste Michelle Condit, epideictic serves three social functions: display/entertainment, shaping/sharing of community, and definition/understanding...