Nikkie Claims Hugh Blair!

Nikkie is having trouble with her Onid, so she asked me post her six-word final. Nikkie wrote:

Here's my six words on Blair: Invention Smention...Praise Style and Retention

Ramus

Hmmm, Our friend Ramus...

"Aristotle sucks; rhetoric is utterly useless"

"Audience's suck, now one's killing me!" - drawn and quartered by a mob

"Dialectic rocks! Who's burning my books?!"

Weaver's "Language is Sermonic"

QUESTIONS:

1) In what way is an argument from definition more virtuous, according to Weaver, than one from circumstance?

2) Do you agree that rhetors should use arguments from DEFINITION or ANALOGY more than they use arguments from CAUSE AND EFFECT or CIRCUMSTANCE? Why?

Gates

Gates:

Signifyin' ain't fo dummies - Harvard represent!

Quinticero:

A good man who speaks plainly?

Cicilian:
Might be a type of pizza.

Enlighten this, jerks

You disappoint me, Enlightenment period. How can a time of intellectual resurgence be so boring? Bizzell and Herzberg say the Enlightenment was “marked by revolutions in science, philosophy, and politics” (791). Okay, that’s fine. I’m no wannabe scientist, and certainly not a real one, but with philosophy—with its tendency toward the abstract—thrown in the mix, I thought there might be something for me here. This is only barely the case.

So, rhetorical theory notably moved back to focusing on all five classical canons (792). Couldn’t you take a hint from that, Enlightenment? The classical rhetoricians, however exhausting in some cases, spoke and wrote in ways that combined ornament and function. Cicero was perhaps the simplest, and even he could manage often to conjure up a combination of words that was pleasing to the ear. However, you just seem to dislike aesthetically pleasing things, and it seems undeniable that effective communication can still be eloquent.

I take offense, then, as a card-carrying ethosician, to the fact that you called for plainness in rhetoric and that rhetoric “seemed to be an art of obfuscation” to you (795). Surely, matters of rhetoric are relevant to your beloved science, philosophy, and politics. This goes so far as a want for a “world without rhetoric” as called for by the British Royal Society (795) and is supported by Thomas Sprat who concluded in 1667 that, “eloquence ought to be banish’d out of all civil Societies, as a thing fatal to Peace and good Manners” (796).

Well, Mr. Sprat, I happen to think that poor manners would be a refusal to offer your audience something they should actually like to hear, or not giving those on the behalf of whom you speak the courtesy of a well-articulated cause that inspires people, or not even respecting the content of your speech enough to elevate it above any other mundane topic. You see, not only are you arguing against what’s creative and interesting, you assume that because something is creative and interesting that truth must be obscured in some way.

Thankfully, not all of your Enlightenment chums were so in love with the boring as to denounce eloquence entirely. The stigma around ornamental speaking may have even led to Gilbert Austin’s evolution of elocution in his Chironomia (804), and reasonably so—after all, while it is quite possible to obfuscate truth through language, it’s hard to do so by standing a certain way and waving your hands around, unless it’s so obnoxious as to distract from what’s being said.

Anyhow, Austin’s and Thomas Sheridan’s focus on elocution provide for me a shining light in what sounds like an otherwise sleep-inducing time. And here’s a question: Does anyone agree with the criticisms of eloquence at all? Did the critics of rhetoric ignore its artistic and functional value or disbelieve it had them? Did this period really offer anything new to the theories of classical rhetoricians or did it just move rhetoric back to where it was (with the five canons)?

And finally, and most importantly, if you had a baby and it was a two-headed Cicero-Quintilian monster, what would you name it? Quinticero, or Cicilian?

Gilbert Austin

Irish rhetorician: intoxicated flailing is elocution.

Out of Class Rhetoricians

Strunk and White: Use fewer words.

I claim Erasmus

"Only Six Words?? Rhetoric will starve!!"

As an alumna of WR 593, I couldn't resist. I hope that the punctuation doesn't count extra!

Anzaldua is mine y'all

Gloria Anzaldua:  At the borderlands, embrace your ambiguities.

Dibs on Astell!

this is my kind of final! Astell:

Vanity is SO last season! Learn!

or Hey, Ladies! Put down the mirror!

or We aren't slaves, we're women dammit!

or Put mirror down, pick quill up!

or For the love of God, learn!

I claim Aristotle!

How about:

In every situation, know to persuade.

I claim Gorgias!

I may have to edit this later, but here's my Gorgias statement for now: "Everything is better with fancy words."

Plato's rhetoric in six words

Okay, here's mine.

Plato's rhetoric in six words:
Ignore the fleeting; speak of divinity.

World's Shortest Final Exam

( cited recently in The New Yorker)


Subject: Six-word memoir


In the brevity-is-the-soul-of-wit camp sits a new book, Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure.



A few samples:


After Harvard, had baby with crackhead.- Robin Templeton


70 years, few tears, hairy ears.- Bill Querengesser


Watching quietly from every door frame.- Nicole Resseguie


Savior complex makes for many disappointments.- Alanna Schubach



Boiling down one's life is an interesting exercise: Would you focus on a plot twist that shaped you, on a theme that's surfaced again and again across diverse circumstances, or on the defining aspects of your character? Getting yourself "right" in six words is probably much harder than penning a 61-pound memoir like Anonymous (Had many lovers. Wrote about them.)


How about getting a rhetorician right in six words? Here is your challenge: Choose one of the rhetoricians we have studied and write a six word version of her or his rhetoric. No duplications of rhetoricians, so post yours on the blog to claim it. I claim Quintilian:


Teach men: be good, speak well. -Quintilian


What's yours? You may claim your rhetorician on the blog before you are ready to post your six words.
Vicki TB

The Signifying Monkey

Bizzell and Herzberg point out that “language and culture are inseparable, and though it is common practice to forget the cultural forces at work in descriptions of Standard English—that is, white English—it is impossible to forget, when examining the development of Black English, the often agonized relationship between white people and black people in the United States” (1544).

Question: What kind of list can we come up with to help identify some of the "cultural forces at work in...Standard English?" Let's critique ourselves a bit more.

“A distinct feature between black rhetoric and what we might call white rhetoric is the typical relationship between speaker and audience. In most white speech interactions, as in traditional classical rhetoric, the speaker speaks and the audience listens; in black speech interactions, the audience responds almost constantly, with set responses, encouragement, suggestions, and nonverbal signals. … Black discourse is…highly ‘dialogic.’” (1546)

Questions: How have the previous rhetoricians (particularly, British) played roles in creating a passive white audience? Yes, I'm making a generalization here, but it (generally) fits. Can we foresee a time when being proper and correct in speaking and writing is less important than reaching wider, more diverse audiences? I'm trying to force my mind beyond its limitations here, perhaps, but I think of theory written in more dialogic forms, for example.

By studying community behaviors, Gates studies not only linguistics but rhetoric, and “his analysis is located at a critical juncture of culture, linguistic operation, social interaction, and political marginality. Gates is forced to be inclusive, to see rhetoric as the connective force and to see tropes as cognitive and epistemic forms of language. Here, rhetoric means daily speech as a form of action” (1549).

Question: What are some community behaviors we've witnessed in other forms of speech (white, Mexican-American, etc.), and how does community impact our speech? (If this is the same as my first question, well, roll them into one nice response!)

Here Comes Burke!! Watch your language!

In lecture tomorrow, I’m primarily going to cover content from A Grammar of Motives, but the last question I am going to pose involves an idea from a later work of his, Language of Symbolic Action.

Why does Burke believe that the ratios “scene-act” and “scene-agent” are the most important? What significance do they hold over the other elements in the pentad? (What is the general importance of the other elements?)

Burke’s concept of language was that it did not simply describe truths, experiences, or ideas. It directs us toward seeing some things, and ignoring others. How does this compare with classical rhetoric? Was “framing” such a blatant concept?

Burke spends a deal of time discussing the distinction between action and motion. In nearly all cases, human motivation drives action. Could we have suggested that Burke take a page from Freud? Is Burke leaving enough room with his concept of motion to accommodate the possibility that “A pickle’s sometimes just a pickle?”

What is the importance of Burke’s terministic screens? Is Burke’s metaphor involving various photos of the same object helpful to understanding the screens? How often do we find ourselves adapting our perceptions retroactively?

Anzaldua Questions

1. What is the effect of reading a piece that slides from one language to another?  Does this draw you in or pull you out?

2.  How does history impact this piece?

3.  What are the borderlands?  Do you have borderlands of your own?

4. How does Anzaldua construct and deconstruct identity throughout this piece?

Pat Bizzell Says Hi!

Today I got to meet Pat Bizzell, which was really exciting. She's quite a fascinating and complex lady: all at once serious yet witty, brilliant and yet down-to-earth. Like me, she's a big fan of Quintilian ("Doesn't he seem like someone you would have loved to have met?" she said), and apparently, she and David Bartholomae are brother and sister. Ha! She said that, and completely fooled me! "Naw," she said. "We've just known each other so long that it feels that way." Apparently, DB made fun of Pat Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg when they published the first edition of _The Rhetorical Tradition_. "No one will want to read that!" He said. Who knew? DB was wrong.

I learned a lot about Pat Bizzell today: for instance, did you know that she is a practicing Jew? She's also a Master's student (no, really!), getting her MA in Judaic Studies. I assume that she's the best student in the class. :)

Some memorable quotes from her time at UNH:

- "If I have any hope for the world to come, it's because of all my hours spent reading student papers."

- (Referring to Gerald Graff) "He's a madman!"

- (Referring to Stanley Fish) "If he were here right now, I'd say, 'Stanley, you are the Descartes of our time!'" and "Stanley brings out the worst in me."

Her presentation posed some interesting questions that I'd like to throw out here, just for fun (although, because it's not a part of our assigned readings, you obviously aren't obligated to respond):

- (In response to the idea that emotion/pathos is the most underresearched element in rhetorical study) "How can we use emotions to futher political/pedagogical goals?" "How can we best understand the emotions and needs of our students?"

- (In response to Peter Elbow's "Believing and Doubting Game") "When is believing no longer a game?"

- "Why do we, as teachers of writing, expect to produce 'magic teaching' (i.e., we teach it; they learn it) in every class session?"

Over the Hills and Far Away

First off, sorry for missing class this morning: a combination of a long day yesterday, a pseudo-emergency call at 1:15am this morning, and an alarm clock malfunction worked against me. That said, it’s good to still have a way to talk to you all. So:

Mr. Francis Bacon is who I am interested in talking a bit about. His theories in psychology that divide the mind into two separate spheres have a delightfully interesting influence on rhetoric. The two spheres, which emphasize productive and receptive operations individually, give a new and important facet of rhetoric, with special attention to the types of appeals, how they work, and new ways to use them to persuade an audience.

What I am interested in looking at is how these two spheres work, and what their idea does to change rhetoric for both the student and the teacher. I don’t want to get too in depth in theory, because sometimes that can be stifling to unadulterated conversation (which is the point of all of this—this blog and some of the ideas behind rhetoric itself, I mean—isn’t it?). Basically, we’ve got a part of the mind that is a receptor—a receiver that brings in data, however presented. Whatever being received is perceived through a lens (preference, desire, likes and dislikes, etc) and then processed by the mind. The other sphere is the producer, which is also affected by the same lens. What we get, then, is two spheres of the mind that are unique to the person and that influence the success of appeals to that particular individual. The two spheres work together, and in so supposedly represent all of the workings that occur in response to exterior stimulus.

When it comes to rhetoric, then, we can use this psychology to explore how appeals work, which is why it’s important at all. Use of appeals to persuade can then be, as a process, further explored by a rhetor so that s/he will be able to use his audience to his own advantage. This is a mix of old and new, classic and enlightenment. Think of it as if Aristotle got himself one of those psychologist’s couches for his oratory.

Okay, so, what does that even mean? Well, my first question is a typical one: does this still apply today? Do we think along these lines, using two spheres of interior thought to influence our use of appeals when creating an argument? Since both spheres can be used by the writer/orator/rhetor to improve his argument, is this kind of thinking still plausible, and does it have a place in the classroom?

Not working for you? Then how about this: The enlightenment saw a lot of smooshing together of psychology and rhetoric. Do you think this is the beginning of that combination, or is it just the first time people are really talking about it? Does the combination make sense? When you write an academic argument, do you think about the psychology of your audience when you write? Should you if you don’t?

What about our students? When teaching rhetoric, do we appeal to their own psychology to teach, and then show them how to appeal to psychology in their own writing?

Finally, since this is really interesting to me, do you see any danger (giggle) in a rhetoric that also plays with the psychology of the reader?

Mark this

Megan's presentation this morning on Margaret Fell reminded me of this icon: Mary Magdalene Announces the Resurrection.

"Mark this, ye despisers of the weakness of women, and look upon yourselves to be so wise: but Christ Jesus doth not so, for... when he met the women after he was risen, he said unto them, All hail... then said Jesus to them, Be not afraid, go tell my brethren.... Mark this, you that despise and oppose the message of the Lord God that he sends by women, what had become of the redemption of the whole body of mankind, if they had not believed the message that the Lord Jesus sent by these women, of and concerning his resurrection?"
-- Margaret Fell, Women's Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed by the Scriptures (from Bizzell and Herzberg 754)

What if there were no science?

Does anyone feel, after reading the introduction to Enlightenment rhetoric, like you are either on a roller coaster or watching a ping pong match? I mean, yes – there is a lot of movement in one direction: nationalism is driving language from the universal Latin to the particular [national] vernacular, more and more emphasis on the new science of psychology as a way to understand all other fields (including science as much as rhetoric), and of course the growing supremacy of empiricism and science (making, for example, literary examples the best source of “good taste”).

But the issues ornate versus plain style, absolute versus contingent knowledge, and, in general, the whole question of rhetoric’s place in the world (Is rhetoric in or out of society’s good graces? Is it good or bad?)… these questions just keep coming up. And the more I read the history of rhetoric, the more I feel like these questions are never going to resolve. Maybe that means we ought to resign ourselves to complexity in order to get on the business of life. But, then, heheh – that sounds like a very classical rhetorical view of things!

I liked Campbell’s insight that “the difference between moral and scientific knowledge is a question not of certainty versus probability but of the degree of probability; and the real differences therefore lie only in subject matter” (808). Campbell was partly responding to Hume’s rejection of knowledge based on revelation or even on discourse or community. But this is a great counter-statement to Descartes as well. Descartes wanted to take knowledge (and anything of intellectual value) and base it solely on those few thoughts that we as individuals can come up with that are beyond doubt (e.g., “I think, therefore I am”). Both Hume and Descartes made knowledge very individualistic, but also very presumably universal – because both saw the individual as able to come to universal knowledge through empirical evidence / experience (Hume) or pure and “certain” thoughts (Descartes). Anyway, I like how Campbell comes along and says, “Nope, boys. Can’t have it that way. It’s all on a continuum.”

Giambattista Vico was also a smart guy, too. I like how he came along and said, “Whoa! We can’t be assuming that Descartes’ certainty is the end-all and be-all of education: ‘If the merely probably is left out, what happens to law, ethics, politics, history, and even medicine?’” (800) But, then again – that protest brought up the question in my mind: Was Cartesian-style education ever very likely to take over as a pedagogical model? Did I miss B&H talking about that? Or ?

Oh, and did anyone feel as repulsed as I did by Swift’s characterization of what we might today call personal writing? B&H say that he “pictured modern writers – those who felt that experience along could reveal true knowledge – as spiders spinning filthy webs out of their own guts” (805). Swift sounds a little bit like the David Bartholomae of his time (at least, in Bartholomae’s frustration with personal writing).

Questions for discussion:
I know this may be hard to imagine, but I wonder what would have happened to rhetoric, how might it have worked differently, been viewed differently, by the 17th and 18th centuries, had empirical science never been invented/discovered. There probably wouldn’t be such a big issue with ornate versus plain style or Wilkins’ desire to find a one-to-one correspondence between words and things. But what else might have been different?

What would happen to the concept of literacy and/or the teaching of writing if suddenly we did have a language that was non-symbolic and which had a one-to-one correspondence with things?

My photo is prettier than your paragraph!

Bizzell and Herzberg explain that Classical rhetoric does reemerge during the Enlightenment, evident primarily (and initially) in the "Ciceronian conception of rhetoric" (792). That is, the five canons were typically the foundation for the study of literature and criticism, writing and speaking, and a "respectable scientific theory of psychological persuasion" (792). I'll focus on the earlier years within this period, in spite of the significance of Smith, Campbell, Kames, Blair, and Sheridan in the eighteenth century--only because earlier work was more provocative, if less applicable to the modern study of rhetoric.

Rhetoric was attacked during this period by members of the British Royal Society, apparently through their spokesman, Thomas Sprat. However, B & H note that these new attacks did not lead to the removal of rhetoric from school instruction. Sprat and others went so far as to say that all tropes were ornamental, barriers to understanding and communication. Sprat says: “…all of the Studies of men, nothing may be sooner obtain’d, than this vicious abundance of Phrase, this trick of Metaphors, this volubility of Tongue, which makes so great a noise in the world” (796).

Bishop Wilkins, a founder of the Royal Society, seemed poised to erase the study of rhetoric, using Francis Bacon’s theories of replacing words with symbols. B & H explain that “The symbols were arbitrary and nonalphabetic but had phonetic value so that they could be pronounced” (797). This, of course, was a rather shortsighted endeavor. If reformists like Wilkins and Bacon truly believed more symbolic representations of Things and Ideas would lead to a more concise language, my guess is that they were rather naïve to the actual complex structures of Eastern languages like Chinese, which served as their model. (But, to be fair, I’ve never studied Chinese—a professor I worked closely with taught Mandarin, though, and I know it involved a great deal of time and effort. It is not so simple.)

However, perhaps we can take something from Wilkins and Sprat. We’ve all pushed through language that was difficult to interpret, and most of us would advocate for clear, concise prose.

That said, question #1: To counter the British Royal Society, how does the study of rhetoric lead to clear communication? What criticisms of dialectic forms might be valid, or invalid?

Question #2: Can we think of any examples where words (ideas) obscure actual objects? (See Locke, p. 798) To recycle a cliché, is a picture truly worth a thousand words, in some cases?

France and Enlightenment Rhetoric

(Even though I'm not in Group 2, I'm writing this in hope that it might spur other thoughts)

I want to respond to this chapter on Enlightenment Rhetoric based upon my experience as a French Literature major during my undergrad years. As I read through, I realized that I already knew a lot of this information, but most of it I learned passively through history and literature courses, and not specifically through rhetoric per se. Now I see how this relates to the Ciceronian belief of having a well-rounded education, since history, literature, and rhetoric all tie together here.

What France was known for during the 16th-18th centuries was its (obsessive) focus on linguistic aesthetics. Grammarians were constantly finessing the language so that it was more than a mere "vernacular" and instead turning it into a "pure" language (Italian, at this time, was considered to be pure, thanks to an organization much like the French Academy that was established in Rome in the mid-16th century). Rhetoricians/grammarians/literary critics (rather a mesh of all three) would gather at the Louvre to discuss how the language could be the best that it could be. Eventually, these meetings led to the creation of the French Academy in the late 17th century, and as BH notes, "was founded to promote and regulate the native language" (797) -- although, to be fair, that's a gross understatement.

The French at this time were really proud of their language, as it was finally "rid" of all foreign words (or so they thought). They then began to focus on literature and how French literature was the best in the world. Wa. Hoo. Somewhere BH mentions this, but (of course) I can't find it right now. Grrr. In any case, we see in the text that the academy of St. Cyr (where Napoleon went to school, I think) was founded by the infamous Mme. de Maintenon (who has quite the reputation in French history for being not only the headmistress of the academy, but also the "headmistress" of Louis XIV...wink wink).

I also want to point out (briefly) how education changed in lieu of the French Revolution of 1789 (because it's long and super-complex, etc.). The major change, although there were many, was that schools became secularized. All teaching was done primarily in French, as Greek and Latin were secondary languages. Due to the increase of French patriotism (nationalism?), students focused more on learning French history than Classical Rhetoric. The purpose of this was to make students more informed, loyal citizens to the Republic.

I've belabored this too long. In part, it comes from the fact that I wrote my undergrad thesis on the French Academy. So I could pretty much talk about this as long as I could talk about David Bartholomae. And you all know how long THAT would take...!