1 RHETORIC Rhetoric (from Greek rhêtôr, orator, teacher, which is derived in turn from the Greek eiro, I say) is the field of study concerned with the production of discourse, whether oral, written or in some other form. It pays particular attention to the specific situations (e.g. in a court or in parliament) within which discourse is produced with the goal of persuading a particular audience to adopt a point of view or perform a particular action. It is, in short, concerned with how meaning is produced and to what end. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg provide, in The Rhetorical Tradition, a useful overview of the various meanings attributed to the term rhetoric, including: the practice of oratory; the study of the strategies of effective oratory; the use of language, written or spoken, to inform or persuade; the study of the persuasive effects of language; the study of the relation between language and knowledge; the classification and use of tropes and figures; and, of course, the use of empty promises and half-truths as a form of propaganda. (1) Though they do not mention it, rhetoric is also the term applied by some, such as Stanley Fish, to an alternative philosophical tradition, or perhaps an alternative to philosophy or perhaps even an anti-philosophical tradition, which questions some of the most cherished assumptions thereof, not least that reasoning can be universal, timeless, impersonal, formal and objective. A rhetor is someone who presents a discourse, either written or oral, while a rhetorician is someone who studies the rhetoric of a given discourse, written or oral. Rhetoric is normally divided, at least since Aristotle, into three branches: the deliberative (legislative or political), the judicial (legal) and the epideictic (panegyric). Each of these, according to Aristotle, has a particular relationship to time (the first is concerned with the future, the second with the past and the third present) and purpose (establishing the expediency of a course of action, the justice or not of some course action, and proving someone worthy or not of honour, respectively). The goal of rhetoric is persuasion, that is, to convince one s audience of the veracity of the rhetor s point of view on a particular matter. Aristotle lists three means by which this is accomplished: ethos the demonstration of the speaker s good character; pathos the appeal to the audience s feelings; and logos the proof advanced via rational argument or logic. Any rhetorical discourse has traditionally been thought to consist, since Classical times at least, of at least five elements or parts: Invention (inventio; heurisis), Arrangement (dispositio; taxis), Style (elocutio; lexis); Memory (memoria; mneme), and Delivery (pronuntiato/actio; hypocrisis). Later, during the Renaissance, the Ramists (thinkers who followed in the footsteps of the French philosopher Pierre de la Ramée [whose name was Latinised as Petrus Ramus]) placed Invention and Arrangement under the umbrella of philosophy, allowing rhetoric to retain only Style and Delivery as its areas of concern; Memory came to be almost totally excised from consideration. Invention is concerned with the finding and elaboration of arguments or proof (logos). Argumentation or reasoning takes, at least in ancient Greece, two main forms: Analytic (or what might be called today Logic or [scientific] Demonstration ): for Aristotle (see his works entitled Prior Analytics and
2 Posterior Analytics), there were two forms of logical proof, deduction and induction; the former is centred around the use of the syllogism in which iron-clad conclusions of a specific nature (e.g. Socrates is a man) are inferred (deduced) from premisses of a more general nature assumed to be indisputable (e.g. all men are born with two legs; Socrates has two legs); Aristotle (and his heirs) believed that deduction in particular led to the discovery of absolute truths about the natural world especially; Aristotle s works on logic, in conjunction with his works of a more practical nature devoted to biology, etc., laid the foundation for the subsequent development of the natural sciences. Dialectic: in Plato s dialogues, dialectic is synonymous with the use of the Socratic method of question and answer and the comparison of successively stricter definitions in order to refine opinion and, in the final analysis, reach a public consensus on a subject such as what is justice? ; for Aristotle (see his work entitled Topics in particular), dialectic centres around the memorisation and use on appropriate occasions of certain tried and tested topics (topoi), that is, arguments found over many generations to have been persuasive; Aristotle identified two kinds of topics, those applicable only to a specific area of knowledge (e.g. in the field of Physics) and those that are universally applicable regardless of the subject-matter in question (the socalled common places [loci communes; koinoi topoi]); Aristotle lists 28 valid commonplaces (e.g. to argue from authority) and 10 invalid ones (such as the use of indignant language); Aristotle (and his heirs) believed that reasoning based on inherited opinions in this way rather than irrefutable facts was, as such, necessarily open to dispute and could lead to the establishment of only probable concerning the realm of human affairs, that is, the public or social rather than the natural world. Rhetoric, according to Aristotle, employs elements of both Analytic, in the form of the enthymeme an abridged syllogism in which one of the terms is omitted as implied and in which probable conclusions are inferred from probable rather than indisputable premisses, and Dialectic (specifically described by Aristotle as the counterpart [antistrophe] of Rhetoric), in the form of the topics. Arrangement concerns the precise order in which the discourse in question is developed from beginning to end. Although there have been numerous variations, the following is a standard way of conceiving the precise parts into which a discourse is divided: Exordium (exordium; prooimion): here the goal is to catch the audience s attention; Narration (prosthesis; narratio): here the facts are set forth, the issue stated; Division (divisio or partitio): here the points both agreed on and disputed by both sides are set forth; Proof (conformatio; pistis): here the precise argument, in the form of enthymemes and topics, that one advances in support of one s thesis is elaborated; Refutation (confutatio): here one refutes the arguments of one s opponent; Peroration (peroratio; epilogus): here one sums up the argument. Style concerns both diction (the choice of particular words) and composition (their combination in a specific sequence). In the case of diction, during the Classical period, it was thought that there were three main types of style: the low or plain style (genus humile), the middle style (genus medium or mediocre or temperatum), and the grand style (genus grande). The consensus was, especially on the part of thinkers like Aristotle and
3 Cicero, was that one should aim for the first of these, the plain style. Moreover, through the use of figurative language, one could supplement the explicit, literal, ostensible or obvious meaning with another concealed meaning. Some classical thinkers such as Quintilian distinguished in this regard between figures of thought and figures of speech. Moreover, Quintilian himself posited a difference between figures of speech and tropes (e.g. metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony), though he also admitted that the boundary between them was blurred. In the case of composition, much attention was paid to schemas, that is, the process by which the ordinary meaning of particular words is altered by their placement in a particular sequence of words to accomplish a particular effect). Memory (memoria; mneme) concerns the ability to learn, remember and regurgitate speeches. Discussion revolved around two aspects to memory: one s natural memory (i.e. the innate capacity to memorise with which one is born) and those artificial means or processes designed to cultivate and expand one s innate capacity to memorise (e.g. mnemonic devices such as those associating particular topics with particular visual scenes). Delivery (pronuntiato/actio; hypocrisis) concerns the realm of nonverbal communication and was historically divided into two categories: voice (including things like appropriate intonation, sound level, pitch, etc.) and gesture (the appropriate postures and gesticulations). Epistemic Rhetoric: the relationship between rhetoric and knowledge is one of its oldest and most interesting problems confronting rhetoricians. The stereotype that equates the term 'rhetoric' with the empty or even deceitful use of words is a long-standing one traceable back to Peter Ramus in the Renaissance and, before him, to at least Plato in the course of his conflict with the Sophists and his attempt to differentiate the emerging discipline of 'philosophy' per se from that of Sophism. It is an attempt to distance the aims of rhetoric from the acquisition of true knowledge. Many contemporary rhetoricians, however, envisage an intimate relationship between rhetoric and the production of knowledge, positing an inherently literary and social dimension to the latter. Emphasizing this close relationship between discourse and knowledge, contemporary rhetoricians have tended to see language and discourse as integral to, rather than in conflict with, knowledge-making. All in all, while classical rhetoric sought to train speakers to be effective orators in public forums and institutions like the courtroom and political assemblies, contemporary rhetoric seeks to investigate human discourse writ large and, to this end, train their attention on the discourses produced within a wide variety of disciplines, including politics, the law, the natural and social sciences, the fine arts, religious study, journalism, history, cartography, architecture, public relations, lobbying, marketing, professional and technical writing, and advertising, among others. In short, rhetoric is partly a method for training effective communicators (rhetors) and partly a method for understanding how humans use language ('discourse') to alter or shape our understanding of reality. I use the term 'rhetoric' here to refer to approaches that emphasise the socio-historical context and literary dimension of human discourse in its attempt to persuade us that a particular truth-claim is correct. Rhetoric focuses, to these ends, on the "texts, discourses, and cultural practices by which public beliefs and identities are constituted, empowered, and enacted," as the Quarterly Journal of Speech puts it, by exploring the "theory and criticism of situated discourse in its various forms and venues, including the oral, the written, and the visual; official and vernacular; direct and mediated; historical and contemporary."
4 Persuasion is a form of influence that achieves its goal by guiding people toward the adoption of an idea, attitude, or action through rational and symbolic (though not only logical) means and relying on 'appeals' to reason or the emotions, rather than force. Rhetorical Analysis / Criticism, in turn, studies the use of language in oral and written texts by a given speaker or writer, focusing not only on the logical development of its argument but also the literary dimensions of a given utterance (not least its use of figurative language and its narrative structure). Rhetorical Theory is devoted to the study of the principles informing the production of meaning in discourse (the identity of the author, the signifying processes of language, and so on) and the nature of its impact on audiences. Some Definitions The "faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion." (Aristotle, Rhetoric) "Speech designed to persuade." (Cicero, ) The "art of speaking well." (Quintilian, ) Rhetoric is the udder of eloquence; tropes and figures are the teats. (1690 Harvard senior thesis, qtd. in Perry Miller) The "most characteristic concern of rhetoric [is] the manipulation of men's beliefs for political ends.... The basic function of rhetoric [is] the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents.... Rhetoric is rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic and continually born anew: the use of language as symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols." (Kenneth Burke, Rhetoric of Motives 41-43) A "mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action." (Lloyd Bitzer, ) The "discipline which studies all of the ways in which men may influence each other's thinking and behaviour through the strategic use of symbols." (Douglas Ehninger, ) Rhetoric is an "organized, consistent, coherent way of talking about practical discourse in any of its forms or modes." (Douglas Ehninger, On Systems of Rhetoric) The "functional organization of discourse, within its social and cultural context, in all its aspects, exception made for its realization as a strictly formal metalanguage - in formal logic, mathematics, and in the sciences whose metalanguages share the same features. In other words: rhetoric is all of language, in its realization as discourse." (Paolo Valesio, Novantiqua: Rhetorics as a Contemporary Theory 7) [The problem is bringing] rhetoric, the orator, the struggle of discourse within the field of analysis; not to do, as linguists do, a systematic analysis of rhetorical procedures, but to study discourse, even the discourse of truth, as rhetorical procedures, as ways of conquering, of producing events, of producing decisions, of producing battles, of producing victories. In order to rhetoricize philosophy. (Michel Foucault, ) What happens, then, if we choose to begin with our knowledge that we are essentially creatures made in symbolic exchange, created in the process of sharing
5 intentions, values, meanings, in fact more like each other than different, more valuable in our commonality than in our idiosyncrasies: not, in fact, anything at all when considered separately from our relations? What happens if we think of ourselves as essentially participants in a field or process or mode of being persons together? If man is essentially a rhetorical animal, in the sense that his nature is discovered and lived only in symbolic process, then the whole world shifts: even the usage of words like I, my, mine, self, must be reconsidered, because the borderlines between the self and the other have either disappeared or shifted sharply... All we need do is honour what we know about who we are and how we come to be, in language. Once we give up the limiting notions of language and knowledge willed to us by scientism, we can no longer consider adequate any notion of 'language as a means of communication.'... It is, in recent models, the medium in which selves grow, the social invention through which we make each other and the structures that are our world, the shared product of our efforts to cope with experience. (Wayne C. Booth ) Rhetoric, which was the received form of critical analysis all the way from ancient society to the 18th century, examined the way discourses are constructed in order to achieve certain effects. It was not worried about whether its objects of inquiry were speaking or writing, poetry or philosophy, fiction or historiography: its horizon was nothing less than the field of discursive practices in society as a whole, and its particular interest lay in grasping such practices as forms of power and performance. This is not to say that it ignored the truth-value of the discourses in question, since this could often be crucially relevant to the kinds of effect they produced in their readers and listeners. Rhetoric in its major phase was neither a language, nor a formalism, preoccupied simply with analyzing linguistic devices. It looked at such devices in terms of concrete performance-they were means of pleading, persuading, inciting and so on-and at people s responses to discourse in terms of linguistic structures and the material situations in which they functioned. It saw speaking and writing not merely as textual objects, to be aesthetically contemplated or endlessly deconstructed, but as forms of activity inseparable from the wider social relations between writers and readers, orators and audiences, and as largely unintelligible outside the social purposes and conditions in which they were embedded. (Terry Eagleton, ) The "process of using language to organize experience and communicate it to others. It is also the study of how people use language to organize and communicate experience. The word denotes, as I use it, both a distinctive human activity and the 'science' concerned with understanding that activity. All human beings are 'rhetors' because they naturally conceive as well as share their knowledge of the world by means of discourse. Certain individuals are also 'rhetoricians' because they study the nature, operations, and purposes of discourse. I suggest further that rhetoric, as a generic discipline, encompasses all forms of written as well as oral expression and includes the efforts of undeveloped speakers and writers as well as the achievements of literary artists." (C. H. Knoblauch, "Modern Rhetorical Theory and its Future Directions" 29) Rhetoric deals with "questions surrounding any study of language: the relation between language and the world, the relation between discourse and knowledge, the heuristic and communicative functions of verbal expression, the roles of situation and audience in shaping utterance, the social and ethical aspects of discourse...." (C. H. Knoblauch, ) The "political effectivity of trope and argument in culture. Such a working definition
6 includes the two traditional meanings of rhetoric: figurative language and persuasive action." (Stephen Mailloux, Rhetorical Power xii) The "primordial function of rhetoric is to 'make-known' meaning both to oneself and to others. Meaning is derived by a human being in and through the interpretive understanding of reality. Rhetoric is the process of making known that meaning. Is not rhetoric defined as pragmatic communication, more concerned with the contemporary audiences and specific questions than with universal audiences and general questions?" (Michael Hyde and Craig Smith, "Hermeneutics and Rhetoric") The "study of how people use language and other symbols to realize human goals and carry out human activities.... [It is] ultimately a practical study offering people great control over their symbolic activity. (Charles Bazerman, Shaping Written Knowledge 6) "Scholars have traditionally defined rhetoric either as the study of schemes and tropes (verbal artifice) or as the study of persuasion." (George L. Dillon, "Rhetoric") Rhetoric is the "study of how we organize and employ language effectively, and thus it becomes the study of how we organize our thinking on a wide range of subjects." (James Herrick, The History and Theory of Rhetoric) Rhetoric is the art of describing reality through language. Under this definition, the study of rhetoric becomes an effort to understand how humans, in various capacities and in a variety of situations, describe reality through language. To act rhetorically is to use language in asserting or seeming to assert claims about reality. At the heart of this definition is the assumption that what renders discourse potentially persuasive is that a rhetor (e.g. a speaker or writer) implicitly or explicitly sets forth claims that either differ from or cohere with views of reality held by audiences (e.g. a specific scholarly community, a reader of fiction, or an assembly of persons attending a political rally). (Cherwitz and Hikins, "Communication and Knowledge: An Investigation in Rhetorical Epistemology" 62) Rhetoric has a number of overlapping meanings: the practice of oratory; the study of the strategies of effective oratory; the use of language, written or spoken, to inform or persuade; the study of the persuasive effects of language; the study of the relation between language and knowledge; the classification and use of tropes and figures; and, of course, the use of empty promises and half-truths as a form of propaganda. Nor does this list exhaust the definitions that might be given. Rhetoric is a complex discipline with a long history: it is less helpful to try to define it once and for all than to look at the many definitions it has accumulated over the years and to attempt to understand how each arose and how each still inhabits and shapes the field. (Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg, "General Introduction." The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present 1)