stallman's rhetorical strategy is distinctive and consistent across four decades: he treats language itself as a field of political contestation. His method has several identifiable components.
Terminological discipline
stallman insists on precise, politically loaded terminology. He says "free software," never "open source." He says "GNU/Linux," never "Linux." He says "digital restrictions management," never "digital rights management." He says "nonfree," never "proprietary" (when he wants to include all non-free software, not just commercial). The essay words-to-avoid is the canonical index of these distinctions — a maintained list of terms he considers misleading and the replacements he prefers.
This is not pedantry for its own sake. stallman's argument, developed in did-you-say-intellectual-property, is that language frames thought: if you accept the term "intellectual property," you have already conceded the analogy between ideas and physical property. If you call the system "Linux" rather than "GNU/Linux," you have already erased the free-software-definition from the system's identity. The libre-vs-gratis distinction exists because English conflates two meanings of "free" that other languages (Spanish, French) distinguish. stallman's terminological insistence is an attempt to force English speakers to make the distinction.
The thought experiment
Several of stallman's most effective pieces are speculative fiction or thought experiments. right-to-read-essay imagines a dystopian future where sharing books is a crime — an extension of DRM logic to its conclusion. can-you-trust-your-computer asks what happens when your computer's operating system serves someone else's interests. These pieces take a current trend and extrapolate it to make the stakes visible.
The enumerated definition
The four-freedoms are the paradigm case: a numbered, exhaustive list that can be applied mechanically to any piece of software. This is characteristic of stallman's approach — reduce a philosophical claim to a checklist. The free-software-definition is a binary test, not a spectrum. categories-free-nonfree provides a taxonomy. This precision makes the framework enforceable but also brittle: there is no room for "mostly free" or "free enough."
Refusal to compromise framing
The software-freedom-vs-open-source dispute is not primarily about licenses — both sides endorse similar licenses. It is about how to describe why those licenses exist. stallman's refusal to adopt the "open source" framing, even when it would make him more politically effective, reflects a core conviction: if you win the policy debate but lose the framing debate, you have not won. The note stallman-vs-open-source-philosophical-core explores this in depth.
Consistency as method
stallman has maintained essentially the same positions for forty years. He anticipated the smartphone surveillance economy in surveillance-vs-democracy, the SaaS problem in who-does-that-server-really-serve, and the hardware restriction problem in his analysis of tivoization — all before these became mainstream concerns. His method is to identify the principle early and apply it consistently, even when the specific technology changes. This consistency is both his greatest rhetorical asset (he was right early) and his greatest liability (he is often perceived as rigid and out of touch).