Sophists Rule!

For some reason, I'm having trouble following directions this summer. But here's my short version of the last two prompts.

First, my favorite canon is arrangement. Really. It's amazing to me the effect organization has on meaning and effectiveness. A poorly organized document or video or sentence, and it's incomprehensible to the audience. Good organization and the document makes perfect sense. People in general and students in particular tend to over look arrangement as important, but it will really make or break an artifact.

Secondly, three important things I've learned.

First, I learned how to covert powerpoint slides to video with voice over cool--and a corollary to that is I should probably let my husband do the voice work--he's got a voice made for radio.

Secondly, I learned that Plato really does think that rhetoric has value if not primary value. And also that he was a looney toon--ok I already knew that--but seriously. Plato must have thought at some point that he had come to know the truth otherwise why would he postulate that one can know truth but not tell it. And what was that moment like when Plato thought he had come to understand the true thing about...what? trees or beauty? probably math, but still what was he thinking to believe he had seen the true form of anything? Clearly he was in some sort of altered state when he had that brain wave.

Thirdly, I've really come to understand the various definitions of rhetoric i.e. it's style; it's persuasion; it's a good man speaking well and understand that how you define rhetoric really matters when it comes to the value that language has. Are you more of a sticks and stones person or a pen is mightier than the sword person?

Kendall

Sophists Rule!

Outline
Thesis: The historical rhetorical and philosophical tradition concerning truth makes embracing postmodern communication theory difficult for both applied rhetoricians i.e. those who create useful texts like technical communicators as well as the culture at large. Embracing this new view of communication is critical for rhetoricians and audiences to produce and use texts that work in the information age.

I. Tragic ramifications of miscommunication
a. Challenger, Three-Mile Island Mining Accidents
b. Texts create organizations.
c. How miscommunication happens.
d. Professional communicators necessary to create safer, consumer-friendly environments and products
II. Why technical communicators aren’t more empowered.
a. Culture at large doesn’t value their work.
b. Technical communicators don’t value their work.
III. Historical relationship of truth and knowledge to language.
a. Sophists and empowered view of language
i. Language has incredible power to persuade
ii. No absolute Truth only conditional truth.
b. Plato, Truth and rhetoric
i. Rhetoric not based in Truth unethical for Plato
ii. Truth was a felt-sense that philosophers could feel but not communicate.
c. For 2000+ years Western culture defines truth as something outside language, although language can define truth.
i. Aristotle on Truth
ii. St. Augustine on Truth
iii. Bacon on Truth
iv. Locke on Truth
v. Nietzsche on Language
IV. The string that ties language to truth snaps: in the Twentieth Century philosophers grapple with relationship of language to truth; Foucault and others begin to understand that Truth is irrelevant—there’s only language.
a. Wittgenstein tries to create a view of language that ties language to truth but he can’t do it and abandons the effort.
b. Foucault finally declares an end to “the tyranny of the signifier.”
V. Modern communication theory and applied rhetoric (technical communication): the more practically minded apply the end of Truth to texts and language.
a. Brief history of technical communication and communication theory
b. How such theories empower both technical communicators and their audiences.
VI. Strategies for adopting 21st Century communication theory despite 2000 years of history.
a. Research that demonstrates relationship between knowledge and language.
b. Education
1. Curriculum must emphasize 21st Century articulated theory of communication.
2. Teach foundational knowledge not transient skills like software programs.
3. Management training.
c. Professionalization
1. Develop professional standards.
2. Supply workforce with enough professionals so that employers will never hire non-professionals.

Sophists Rule!

Outline

Thesis: The historical rhetorical and philosophical tradition concerning truth makes embracing postmodern communication theory difficult for both applied rhetoricians i.e. those who create useful texts like technical communicators as well as the cultural at large. Embracing this new view of communication is critical for rhetoricians and audiences to produce and use texts that work in the information age.

I. Beginning of Rhetoric and Philosophy
a. Sophists and empowered view of language
i. Language has incredible power to persuade
ii. No absolute Truth only conditional truth.
b. Plato, Truth and rhetoric
i. Rhetoric not based in Truth amoral for Plato
ii. Truth was a felt-sense that philosophers could feel but not communicate.
c. Plato wins the Truth debate plunging Western culture into a 2500 year search for Truth while simultaneously stretching the string that tethers language to truth tighter and tighter.
i. Aristotle on Truth
ii. St. Augustine on Truth
iii. Bacon on Truth
iv. Locke on Truth
v. Nietzsche on Language
II. The string snaps: in the Twentieth Century philosophers like Wittgenstein and Foucault begin to understand that Truth is irrelevant—there’s only language.
a. Wittgenstein tries to create a view of language that ties language to truth but he can’t do it and abandons the effort.
b. Foucault finally declares an end to “the tyranny of the signifier.”
III. Modern communication theory and applied rhetoric (technical communication): the more practically minded apply the end of Truth to texts and language.
a. Brief history of technical communication and communication theory
b. How such theories empower both technical communicators and their audiences.
c. What happens when communicators and audiences don’t understand how the discursive reality created by texts work.
d. What rhetoric and technical communication departments can do to banish Plato and truth in their contemporary texts. (We can never really banish Plato, but we can place him in his historical context.)

Sophists Rule!

St. Augustine and Quintilian

Trace 3 elements of St. Augustine's rhetoric back to earlier rhetors. Also, relate how your 3 to 10 minute "video" project for next week is coming along. You might list key definitions here of the concepts you're relating, as well as the context in which you see yourself using this "video." That is, it's useful for our class, but can it help you in your final paper, in your teaching, in your workplace?


The underlying value in St. Augustine's writing is that both good and bad, or true and false, content can be equally persuasive, so it's important for good men to study rhetoric to spread the truth (about God is the implication). Not using rhetoric to spread truth leaves the truth "unarmed" and vulnerable to an attack by false rhetoric. This belief was why Plato attacked rhetoricians and/sophists so vehemently, because it allowed the spread of falsehoods. Aristotle was a little more practical and acknowledged that this could happen, but good rhetoricians could oppose them. Cicero also believed this. In fact, Quintilian is notable because he appears to be the only person we've read that didn't believe this. Yet, he wrote an entire essay "proving" how this couldn't happen. I personally wasn't convinced, but it's a charming idea to think that bad men can't speak well.

Likewise everyone discussed the proper way to educate young men in the practice of rhetoric, although with Plato and Aristotle it was more implied. Quintilian and St. Augustine both discuss how to teach rhetoric, although Quintilian spells out an elaborate curriculum and stresses both learning the rules (in part so one knows when to break them), studying and emulating experts, but in the proper way, and finally practicing. That's contrasted with St. Augustine who believed that learning rules wasn't bad as long as one had the time, but really just studying good examples and practicing was enough for him. I guess St. Augustine would love the "great book" curriculums. And he and Dr. Kemp would be great friends.

Finally, one minor issue that really struck me only because it seems so contemporary, is that both Quintilian and St. Augustine make a plea for a plain language movement. St. Augustine says, "And so when teaching, one should avoid all words which do not teach...." (465). He claims writers should do so even if they are incorrect. Later, he insists upon it. Likewise Quintilian wishes that "we were less afraid of words in daily use...." (380). Along the same lines they both criticize texts and speeches that are too long. St. Augustine says that one shouldn't say anything more than is required to gain the understanding of the audience. The only criticism Quintilian has for Cicero is that he was a little long-winded. In this regard, both St. Augustine and Quintilian advocated a relatively simple and pared-down style, relatively speaking. They were early TCers.

I think reading St. Augustine and Quintilian in the same week is interesting in that they both take this completely different tactic regarding the ethics question. St. Augustine is on one extreme saying that lots of evil men that will persuade audiences of bad and incorrect things are very good rhetoricians, therefore good men must be better rhetoricians--it's their sacred duty. On the other hand, Quintilian is saying basically that it's not a problem, because rhetoric is a good man speaking well and therefore bad men don't have the ability to do it. Their vices, foolishness, etc. keep them from doing it. Of course, he sort of skirts around the issue of using rhetoric to persuade people by claiming that's a ridiculous yardstick to judge rhetoric by. Basically good rhetoric is judged by how well one does it, not how many people it convinces. So he really doesn't respond at all to the charge that rhetoric used by a bad man is like a sword in the hands of a madman (Sor Juana's analogy not mine.) Although I find Quintilian's reasoning incredibly charming and enticing, ultimately I agree with St. Augustine. We good people need to get good at rhetoric so we can defend the truth. Even though my idea of truth and St. Augustine's are completely different, we agree that rhetoric can be used to spread it.

Finally, I've done virtually nothing on my video. I'm trapped in in-law purgatory on the high plains. It was all I could do to read St. Augustine. I already know something about enthymemes, but I do want to diverge from Aristotle's use of enthymemes. He believed, as I understand it, that enthymemes are effective because people recognized or at least agreed with the left-out premise of the truncated syllogism. In fact, the efficacy of the enthymeme depended on the audience's belief in the truncated part. I think, similar to Althusser's interpellation, that people hear enthymemes and agree with them because they don't understand the truncated part of the syllogism. It calls to them and sucks them in before they realize they've acquiesed. In fact, it's a way that modern day orators get audiences to subscribe to certain ideas, because they've left out the part that they might object to or they've left out the part that the rhetor doesn't want to say out loud. For example, when an interviewer asked Condoleezza Rice "Is Iraq involved in 911?" She replied, repeatedly, "the U.S. will seek out and destroy the perpetrators of 9/11" That's a truncated syllogism, an enthymeme, and the truncated part is that Iraq was involved in 9/11. Essentially she's saying: we will attack 9/11 perpetrators; Iraq is a 9/11 perpetrator; we will attack Iraq--only she never really said that, she implied it. In fact, she insists that she never claimed Iraq was involved in 9/11 yet she's on tape, repeatedly, saying just that using an enthymeme. Enthymemes allow politicians to convince audiences to go for policies that they otherwise wouldn't agree to, because it allows them to leave out language that would otherwise act as a red flag for audiences. Had Condoleezza Rice ever said that Iraq was not involved in 9/11, Americans never would have acquiesed to the invasion. Just before we invaded Iraq, several polls including the Gallup Poll indicated that 70% of Americans believed that Iraq was involved in 9/11.

I think the idea of the modern uses of enthymemes is incredibly useful for both our class and our students. We need to understand this idea to be critical consumers of information, but I'm not really going to discuss this in my paper.

Kendall

Sophists Rule!

Week 7If you had to provide a brief account of the impact of Cicero on technical communication today, how would you do it? What would that impact be? Also, what messages have you learned from the Rhetorica ad Herennium?
Cicero foresaw SME's and the problem they would create for technical communicators everywhere. Cicero points out that knowing something doesn't necessarily help one communicate it. People with knowledge frequently need assistance communicating that knowledge to others. The company that Alison worked for obviously realized that when they hired her to write for engineers. They knew the engineers were ineffective at communicating and that their ineffectiveness could cost the company money or even lives--Alison to the rescue.

The other interesting thing that Cicero does is make the arguement that effective communication is more valuable than knowledge or information. That being an effective communicator requires natural talent, but also education and practice to perfect the skill. He implies that those with knowledge or information are a dime a dozen so to speak. In the 21st century new economy, theoretically it seems like that would be the case. The medium is the message. Remix is art. The selecting, framing, phrasing, and contextualizing of information is what makes knowledge, so technical communicators should be the ones with the most value. Unfortunately that's frequently not the case. Tiffany Craft-Portewig's dissertation pointed out that TCers either insert graphics as their told or just clean up the engineers graphics even though the TCers have the ability to produce far more effective graphics. On the ATTW listserv Karen Schriver just asked for help on developing a workshop for TCers and SME's who have lost the ability to work together effectively because the SME's have been bullying them. Two thousand years ago Cicero wrote an essay outlining both the problems and the solution to the work-a-day dilemma of TCers. We all need to listen.

As for Rhetorica Ad Herennium we still use the basic technique of defining techniques and explaining how to use or not use them even if we don't always use the vocabulary or techniques described in the Rhetorica. A big part of teaching style is teaching vocabulary--now it's more likely to be nominalization, telegraphic style, parallelism etc.--and teaching students how these things and correct or imitate them as necessary. We're still using the basic pedagogical techniques as demonstrated in the Rhetorica Ad Herennium.

Kendall

Sophists Rule!

Aristotle and Jesse Jackson

In what ways do you think Jesse Jackson's speech makes use of topoi and concepts from Aristotle's Rhetoric? What are the key differences between Aris and Plastico? Which are you--Aristotelian or Platonic--in your teaching and/or work?

I suspect if I were really motivated, I could probably demonstrate how every technique in his speech is discussed in the Rhetoric, but I'm not that motivated.

First, Jackson relies heavily on both ethos and pathos. He really works hard on ethos. He establishes it in very traditional, old-fashioned ways such as introducing his family and also linking himself with previous people like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. He also tells his family history as well as some of his accomplishments. In fact, he focuses on himself so much, he also becomes an example--another Aristotelian tact. He shows how he's an example of what can happen in the U.S. when people become politically active.

He also evokes pathos by telling not just his personal story, but also mentioning murdered and disenfranchised Americans in the civil rights struggle. Even his metaphor of his grandmother's quilt being the various factions of the Democratic party evoked pathos.

He also relies extensively on topoi. For example, in B&H 231, one line of argument is demonstrate when cause happens then effect happens and when absent, absent. In Jackson's speech he points out how, when factions put aside their differences Democrates win, when they don't they don't win--classic Aristotle. Also on page 231, pointing out when the incredible happens, such as when Jackson says that he wasn't supposed to be successful as the child of teenage mother who also had a teenage mother. I could go on, but you get the point. Virtually every rhetorical strategy in Jackson's speech is Aristotelian.

For me, the big difference between Plato and Aristotle is an idealistic belief in a higher truth for Plato and Aristotle's more practical view to work with what we know and since we know things through language, work through language in the form of rhetoric and dialectice. Of course, I'm far more Aristotelian than Platonic; I'm more concerned with results not ideals. I liked Jimmy Johnson and thought Tom Landry was a little extreme. I get excited about Christmas and not Easter. A pyrrhic victory is no victory at all. I like baroque architecture and not...well I like Palladian architecture too, but I'm not much for modernist architecture. Fragments can, sometimes, complete a thought. I think learning to sight read is as good as phonetics and the right answer is still right even if you don't show your work. I like the reproduction furniture in my house as much as the few antiques I have. When CD players came out, I got one as soon as I could afford it, and I thought my roommate was a complete idiot when she bought a betamax player. I've never liked Macs and can still just barely get them to work. I readily admit that chianti is my favorite wine. I saw REM open for the Producers in 1982 at the Club Foot; the other opening band, Erector Set, was better. I could go on with lists of why Emmitt Smith is better than Tony Dorsett, but Roger Staubach is better than Troy Aiken, but the non-football people won't get it. The point is, I'm more interested in practical results than purist ideals, so I identify more with Aristotle than Plato.

Kendall

Sophists Rule!

Aristotle



Blog Post Prompt
Week 5
What are the topoi, basically, and why are they important in what you teach or where you work?
What key idea are you thinking about tackling for your 10-minute video? (Send Dr. Rice confirmation sometime soon).
See if you can work out your topic for your final paper/presentation. You might share a thesis, and perhaps an introduction. What you write is subject to change, of course.

First, I see the topoi as ways to expand a topic. They are basically lists of ways to develop a topic. Currently I'm using the Markel book to teach my course and he uses essentially topoi to discuss how to create an expanded definition. Consider graphics, comparison/contrast, how it works, entymology, definiton by negation etc. I'm sure I've left a few out, but you get the drift. Topoi are easy invention techniques to get students developing topics and they can even be helpful for experienced writers to get them going and to make sure they haven't left anything out.

I'd like to do my ten minute video on enthymeme. I'd particularly like to talk about how enthymemes can work in political speech. For example, a speech might say that we're wiring tapping telephones, because that's the best way to fight terrorism. The left-out part of that particular enthymeme, or truncated syllogism, is that catching terrorists is the most important thing for government to do. The expanded the syllogism might read. Catching terrorism is the most important thing for government to do. Wire tapping is the most effective way to catch terrorists, therefore the government should wire-tap telephones. However, as an enthymeme the underlying value, the commonplace, is left out. While such enthymemes are very effective for those who aren't careful listeners, those that are sensitive to the topic realize that the implied commonplace is that the government should keep us safe at all costs. Once the audience realizes that's the commonplace at work, they may or may not agree. However, as long as the commonplace is implied, it becomes more difficult to argue with it, because the audience may or may not be able to articulate the common place. Enthymemes are still very effective rhetorical strategies. Of course, Aristotle didn't really see them this way exactly. He thought they worked so well because people just agreed with the common place. I think they work so well because people don't realize exactly what they are agreeing with.

I'm not quite up to a lot of work on my final project. Here goes though. Sophists believed that by framing and speaking rhetoricians created truth--truth contingent on kairos, audience, etc. Of course, Plato generally believed in absolute Truth and originality. Implied in this belief in truth was that the originality, the skill, of a speech or text comes with the content. The Sophists and to a much lesser extent Aristotle and other rhetoricians believed that the skill in a speech or a text resided in its arrangement, selection, introduction, and even kairos--it's fitness for the occasion. After 2500 years, we've begun to embrace the idea that the skill and/or originality of an information artifact is not the information per se, but the arrangement, selection, framing, and appropriateness for its audience. However, Plato's ghost still haunts modern thought and many students, professors, practicioners, and lay people have trouble accepting that what makes content acceptable and palatable for audiences isn't the content itself, but rather the rhetorical aspects of a text. Technical communicators don't create content, they make content work for audiences. Consequently, as long as Plato's ghost dominates thought, technical communicators will be marginalized. More importantly, audiences will be disenfranchised, because if the focus is on the content and not the audience, kairos, etc. the audience won't receive content in a form they can receive. In other words, on a purely practical level, an emphasis on rhetoric and not content allows audiences to receive information, regardless of the information; an emphasis on content diminishes the importance of the rhetorical aspects of a text and results in information artifacts that don't communicate. So technical communicators must excorcize the ghost of Plato from modern thought not only to improve their status, but to perform their jobs ethically and to the highest standards.

That's basically my argument in a nutshell; obviously it needs more work.

Finally I'd like to talk about how much I like Aristotle. Reading Rhetoric reminds me how all the major ideas that we have in technical communication, considering the audience, ethos, pathos, logos, lines of argument, and invention all come from Aristotle. For me, as much as I like the Sophists, Aristotle really is the first, professional, technical communicator.

Kendall

True/False rhetoric

This week (as well as last week) we looked at True and False Rhetoric. What is it, according to Plato and Isocrates, and how have you seen it in your program? Do not disclose anything that might get you into trouble. But, what is the value of true and false rhetoric in our programs? Let’s find out…

For Isocrates true and false rhetoric demonstrated the going back and forth between the different sides of the issue. He wasn't a sophist like Gorgias who believed that every issue had two sides that were more or less equal, but he did believe in a dialectic. Plato, on the other hand, really believes in Truth and that many sophists use rhetoric to propogate the false beliefs. That's why he demonstrates in his dialogues the weaknesses of rhetoric. Plato, obviously, believes in dialectic, but it's a way to get to the Truth, not an attempt to uncover the two sides to an issue.

[Note: Reading these dialogues reminds me of why I find Plato so annoying. First, to our modern sensibilities, it's obvious he's just setting up straw men in his dialogues, so they don't really demonstrate much except that Plato has some pathological need to demonstrate that there's a right side and he's on it. Or that he only talked to idiots.]

I think the concept that every issue has several sides and that a dialectic helps to uncover those sides is valuable. Also the dialogues demonstrate effectively that framing an issue determines the outcome of the issue even as Plato uses this rhetorical framing technique to prove that rhetoric is ridiculous. Once again, it's a little odd that Plato apparently denigrates rhetoric even as he uses rhetoric to prove his point. If a modern text were structured in such a way, I would clearly recognize it as sarcasm. Because it's Plato, I guess he's just demonstrating his pathological need to hold onto his ideas about the forms and Truth even if he's got to use the techniques he despises to do it.

I know this will sound like blasphemy, but I think we read Plato for history exclusively. I don't think Plato has much valuable to tell us that we don't get elsewhere and better. Reading him helps us to understand where we've come from and why it's taken so long to get where we are, but not much that's very useful now. Gorgias, Isocrates, Aristotle on the other hand, those guys wrote/said some useful things.

And finally I just don't understand what you're driving at about the value of true and false rhetoric in our programs. Could you clarify a bit?

Kendall

Plato

Plato

I forgot to read the blog prompt, so here' s the response to the blog prompt.

Week 3List out as many things about Plato that you know. What does he suggest about finding the Truth, about oral persuasion, about writing, about the value of rhetoric? Also, as we agreed from Week-1, please point out the progress you're making on your final project in each blog post. Thanks.

Plato was a student of Socrates and got his start as a philosopher so to speak writing dialogues, probably based on discussions he heard as a student, between Socrates and other students. Naturally his early writing was probably what Socrates believed, but his later writings were about his ideas.

He thinks the Truth is contained in forms--perfect somethings--the forms get fuzzy here. Forms are permanent and unchangeable. We discover forms through thought alone, because we are born with an innate knowledge of the forms. We must rediscover it.

Unfortunately most people don't know anything about the forms, so they are easily persuaded about stupid things like going to war, electing officials, and putting certain slovenly philosophers with unpopular friends to death.

Honestly, Plato clearly wrote down his dialogues to pass down their wisdom, but since literacy was an emerging skill, he didn't trust the written word. Even his writing is often a speech, a dialogue. He thought the search for truth was a process and writing was too static and unchangeable to really help someone find the truth.

Plato didn't value rhetoric. He felt clever people used rhetoric to persuade others, but he was not above using rhetorical techniques to make his points.

I have done no further work on my paper. Still thinking about how classical rhetoric influenced communication theory and about how changing communication theory should influence our programs.

Kendall

Sophists Rule!

Isocrates and Plato

First Plato, I really liked the Plato "graphic novel." Even though I've read all that stuff, except the Laws, before, having everything pulled together like that served as a nice review. And while I'm still irritated that he sent us into the 2500 year walkabout intellectually speaking, it does put his work in perspective from his point of view. He was just trying to figure out a way to create a just world and he thought making a strong case for having wise people be rulers was the way to go. Honestly, I don't disagree with him on that; I'm just not keen on his methodology.

And who knew that every Western thinker for the next 2500 years would feel the need to respond to Plato either directly or indirectly and discuss his stand on Truth and its knowableness. And even now, we've got to take a stand on truth. We've decided, pretty much, that unknowable truth is moot and that truth is pretty much what we, as a group, decide, but we're still discussing truth. Some people still can't let go of the idea of platonic forms. Those people call the forms reality--just like Plato. Perhaps they conceive of reality a little differently than Plato conceived of forms, but like Plato reality is the gold standard for discourse, the thing that gives meaning to language. I, of course, prefer to think of it as just discursive and non-discursive realities reflexively re-inventing one another.

And, it's also pretty cool that he founded a college that managed to survive 1000 years until religious intolerance caused it to be shut down. Is the oldest university currently in operation that old? It's quite an acheivement.

My other thought in this regard though is that perhaps Plato and Aristotle weren't great thinkers so much as popular. Really, perhaps they are essentially the Mike Markel and John Lannon of the classical era and we get so much of their texts because lots of people made copies, not because they were really good--good, but in a middle of the road kind of way. And the fact that Plato's Academy lasted so long and undoubtedly reproduced his texts during that time must have also resulted in promulgation of his ideas even after the Academy shut down just because there were so many copies in circulation.

Just something to think about.

Isocrates

Clearly he seems to be quite worried about the immorality charge leveled at rhetoric that we still haven't really solved. What happens when immoral people develop good rhetoric skills? What about those people that promise to teach good rhetoric skills to whoever can pay? It's a little like someone advertising to teach whoever to build a nuclear bomb as long as the price is right. Regardless, Isocrates definitely engaged in a debate that still rages today. How do we teach the youth so that they can participate productively in the world?

Kendall

Sophists Rule!

Week 2: Gorgias

What does Gorgias emphasize? Why is this significant to both classical rhetoric and contemporary teaching? And finally, what are you thinking about for your 20-page paper/project thus far?

Gorgias emphasizes two sides to every issue. And truth isn't knowable and speakable, but that we can get together and decide on "truth." For Gorgias speech, and he does mean oratory, is extremely powerful. It can control people like witchcraft or a trance. And speech doesn't need to be grounded in "truth" to have this kind of control on people. Interestingly he's more than willing to admit that rhetors can use their abilities for bad ends, as he speculates Paris has done; if rhetors do so, they are morally at fault, not the people entranced by their speech who actually perform the bad acts. In the Encomium of Helen, he claims that if Paris used speech to convince Helen to elope, Paris is at fault, not Helen. Obviously this two side to every issue idea not only puts the dialectic in the middle of classical rhetoric, but Gorgias did so while insisting that we can't define truth with speech. So he's married the dialectic and rhetoric not put them in opposition to one another. Of course, later Plato will subjugate rhetoric to the dialectic in his search for truth. I'm starting to think that Plato was just a poor student. I think it's pretty clear that Gorgias believed in a finite truth, but unlike Plato, he didn't see any point in pursuing it. Rather he believed in creating truth through the dialectic and not worrying if it matched the "real" truth. We've sort of abandoned truth today, but Gorgias ideas about creating knowledge are nicely in line with what most applied rhetoricians, i.e. communicators, believe today.

In contemporary thought, we assume there's always several sides to a story. And we frequently use a dialectic format to arrive at some kind of truth that we agree upon. Law courts are an example of this. Most importantly, I think the idea that what I'm going to call the functional truth--the truth we all operate under--is determined and not discovered is huge! When we think of truth in this manner, rhetoricians, i.e. writers, create the truth in the act of writing.

As for my project in this class, I think comparing and contrasting the sophist ideas of knowledge making as represented in texts like the Dissoi Logio and even the Econmium of Helen with Foucault's ideas in the Archaeology of Knowledge would be a great paper. However, it would require that I read the Archaeology of Knowledge again, and it certainly wasn't a cake walk when I read it 20 years ago, and even then such a paper would require some major mental work on my part, and it's the summer and all. I'm not sure I want to work this hard, so I'm still searching for something easier.

Kendall

Sophists Rule!

Sophists Rule!

Stasis theory does provide a nice way to analyze arguments to see where the conflict begins. And it's obvious that for arguments that seem unresolvable like the death penalty and abortion, the two sides are really talking about completely different things. Understanding the underlying theory in an argument allows one to understand the argument better and either create an appropriate dialectic. Until one understands the underlying theory of an argument or the true point of disagreement, it's difficult to create a meaningful discussion. That's clearly what's going on with many "discussions" today.

I find it a little funny that 2500 years ago Gorgias was defending Helen and her love life and by extension women's lot in life. Now, Crowley and Hawhee point out how women aren't that successful at defending themselves and their right to a love life, because they've made the underlying value that they base their discussion on that people should have the right to privacy as opposed to women should have equality with men. When the discussion is that women should have equality with men, contraception including its least popular incarnation, abortion, become about giving women equality with men, or more specifically an equal right to a love life. If it's about about privacy, that implies that the state doesn't have any say over medical procedures etc. when clearly it does. Why do we have licensing boards etc.? 2500 years and rhetoric is still trying to bail women out.

I also find it more than a little ironic that pro-life groups don't appear to understand this dynamic either. Otherwise they wouldn't be trying so hard to ban all kinds of contraception. When the issue becomes should any form of contraception be legal (and huge sections of the pro-life lobby think it shouldn't) then it becomes obvious that it's not a question of murder, but rather of subjugating women. If women have significantly less control over when they become pregnant, then it becomes significantly more difficult for them to compete in the workplace than their peers who have more control over their reproductive capacity. Women have less opportunity and less equality.

Kendall

Contemporary vs. Classic Rhetoric

Per Lennie's request, this is sort of what I got, but now that I'm reading it, it doesn't seem like much help to me much less other people. Here's sort of how I'm understanding it. If St. Augustine replaced Truth with God--God is the thing that gives language meaning and what humans use language to uncover--then Nietzsche was set-up perfectly to disconnect language from the signifier--God in this case. Or rather according to Rich, Nietzsche replaced God with the new religion empirical truth, facts, whatever you want to call them. I'm reserving judgement on buying that but here's the argument. If you think back on the Nietzsche reading in B&H, or those of you who care about this minor point that the course doesn't really cover can read it in B&H, Nietzsche basically separates language from truth or any standard. Language really can't represent anything for Nietzsche. He really sets up Foucault and company. Based on our MOO discussion, this makes sense because God is backing up truth until Nietzsche in the 19th century. In fact, if you think of Bacon and Locke, they still pretty much seem to have this same conception of truth as God unknowable and ineffable but out there. Nietzsche comes along and says that God was just a fiction for an immature culture and we don't need God anymore--God is dead etc. etc. So no truth--knowable or otherwise--just language. So when he kills God, he simultaneously kills our ability to have language have some relationship with truth. God was the language/truth tether. So language is just floating out there--unthinkable. So Nietzsche, according to Rich I think, says that instead of knowing God and truth, we can know facts. Science replaces God and we get contemporary rhetoric. Historically it works really nicely except I sort of understand Nietzsche as throwing out God and replacing him with qualitative judgements, but I can see how those judgements could be facts. I can also see how those judgements could be interpreted as frames. Nietzsche's pretty metaphorical and really just a bridge, so this is a minor point and not worth arguing about.

So essentially, in Aristotelian terms, classical rhetoric relies on artistic truths: ethos, logos, pathos, but contemporary rhetoric relies on science and facts or inartistic proofs--those things that we can know for Artistotle or prove for us--to make its case. The only problem I have with this is that scientists will tell you that they don't rely on facts, but rather theories that work to explain the situation. If a better theory comes along that makes more sense given the situation, they'll adopt that theory. Sure scientists do rely on empirical evidence, but such evidence is meaningless unless they have theories to give them meaning or make them knowledge. And just like 21st century humanists, they understand that knowledge can change as we reframe it. So science as the new religion/pursuit of truth is really a popular conception of science, but rhetoric is really the study of persuading the general audience, so also I can see how that works too. I've got to say though, when I think of rhetoric in current practice in places like political speeches, I'm hearing mostly classical rhetoric. And definitely if you think of Foucault as a contemporary rhetorician as B&H does, he's not buying truth, God, or science. For Foucault it's language and culture and the interplay between the two. The only thing that gives language meaning is the frame we build around it. Perhaps Rich will weigh in on this post and clarify where I've undoubtedly misrepresented him and and/or this historical perspective on rhetoric.

Finally, I guess a little bit of the problem I'm having with replacing Truth with facts is that we haven't really moved forward, if such is the case. We aren't changing the nature of our understanding of language, we're only changing the basis. In other words, if it's just facts instead of Truth, we're just playing with aluminum bats, but we're still playing baseball. We aren't really moving forward. However, if there's just language and how we frame it, we've moved entirely off the diamond; the people who use language make the rules, the rules change all the time, and it's a much more empowering view of language or chaotic for some, but I think it works better until something else comes along. And perhaps I'm confusing rhetoric with communication theory in an unproductive way.

Kendall

Week 1 response to reading

What is the value of classical rhetoric in today's contemporary world? In your profession? And which of the pieces listed during Week-1 have you selected to present over?

Classical rhetoric forms the basis of discourse even today. In places as varied as President Bush's state of the union address to discussion about why you must have a new patio table with your spouse, you'll find the principles of classical rhetoric, because that's how the idea of an argument started. Asking if we should learn about classical rhetoric is a little like asking if we should learn arithmetic because, after all, that was invented in the Middle East 2000 years ago, how could it still be relevant today? Just like we still use Arabic numerals, we still use classical rhetoric.

Technical communication is essentially applied rhetoric. Although some people might like to insist that technical communication isn't persuasive--it's goal is to provide objective information--those people don't understand the goals of technical communication or communciation theory. First, technical communication has a perlocutionary effect, i.e. it tries to get the audience to do something such as follow the directions, use the equipment successfully, take the medication as indicated etc. Although it seems like it would be in the audience's best interest to follow the directions, we know from usability testing, ethnographies, and our own life (when was the last time you followed the directions on your prescription perfectly?) that most audiences don't. Consequently, technical communicators must exploit rhetorical strategies more fully to successfully perform their job. Secondly, the representational theory of communication (clear channel, window-pane theory whatever you call it) doesn't work very well. We know that language isn't representational. (Foucault said it best I think when he said we must end "the tyranny of the signifier.") Communication can't be representational if for no other reason than the sender and receiver have different signifiers in their head. So, representational communication theories only serve to inhibit an understanding of the ways in which audiences construct meaning. The articulated view of communication creates a more useful working-model of communication that allows TCers to serve their audience better. And it also makes TCers symbolic/analytic workers or knowledge workers--a much better place to be in the new economy.

Finally, I'll present on the Encomium of Helen.

Kendall

Getting started with blogs and classical rhetoric

Here's my blog on classical rhetoric. I've never actually written a blog before, because despite being ridiculously verbal, I'm not very confessional. I want an audience to bounce off of, so blogs don't really appeal to me personally. However, they aren't really much different than webboard, so I can probably handle it.

I haven't finished the reading yet, so I'll probably put up another post before class but here's what I'm thinking so far. On page 17, Crowley and Hawhee (C&H) claim that, "Modern rhetoricians tend to think that its [language's] role is limited to the communication of facts." Really?!!? Perhaps this statement is true for rhetoricians (I don't think so), but it's completely, 100% incorrect for technical communicators. Carolyn Miller wrote an essay in 1979 explaining how limiting and almost misanthropic such a view was. Creating our reality with language is an essential, human function. In 1996 Slack, Doak, and Miller (different Miller) explained how technical communicators were moving away from the "clear channel" view of communication towards a post-modern, articulated view of communication. This view of communication holds that the framing, selection, and articulation of content not only creates the communication, but informs the reality of its writers and readers. Such a view is extremely powerful for everyone in the information age, but particularly valuable for technical communicators who must adopt it to become credible actors in the new economy.

Which brings me to Plato, or more specifically, the bone I have to pick with him. The Sophists put forth a view of language that rested on the idea that language allowed one to create a reality that worked, that did things. It did things by persuading others, but also by defining reality advantageously for audiences and rhetors alike. However, Plato essentially rejected this view of language in favor of the idea that language should attempt to accurately portray "reality." The problem with this view is that it presupposed a finite, knowable (at least theoretically, no one was wise or good enough to really know it) reality that everyone strived to uncover or define. Like the gold standard for money, it provided a basis for language to both stand on and be measured by. And like the gold standard for money, it has some real drawbacks. The problem is obvious. There isn't a knowable, theoretically or otherwise, reality. Consequently, Western culture wasted a lot of time trying to discover ways to know the truth, when we should have been looking at ways to use language.

When we see language as a tool to manipulate our environment with, we can use it more powerfully to create a "place" to live in. This view doesn't mean that we can say it's hot outside and go swimming when the therometer reads 32 degrees farenheit. (Ok we can say and do that, but it doesn't stop our lips from turning blue.) That's not a language use that works for us. Rather when we understand that describing o-rings as safe when they erode half-way through is just language manipulating our perceptions of o-rings, we can begin to ask questions and use language to work towards goals like launching shuttles that don't blow-up.

Plato's idea of a meaningful reality outside our perception and language side-tracked this more useful view communication. Basically, western culture wandered around in the linguistic desert for 2000 years searching for truth. Now, we're finally getting back to where the Sophists put us even though the ghost of Plato still haunts our cultural memory. Now, maybe, we can get some work done.

Kendall