A Theory of Contemporary Rhetoric (34 page)

Digitization is seen to be social in its implications. It has enabled a reinforcement of existing social and rhetorical patterns, running along lines (technically, “ties,” “links,” or “connections”) as defined in social network theory in which nodes—both organizations but also, as has been noted in the previous discussion, individuals—act as points at which transfer of communication takes place. The mapping of social network theory on to rhetoric, and vice-versa, is crucial to this analysis. Nodes are individual agents within networks, and ties are the relationships between these agents. Every act of communication along these ties is a rhetorical act, taking into account the power relations between the agents, the nature of the information to be communicated, aspects of intention, framing, and the modes and media via which such communication takes place.

As has been suggested about rhetoric in the course of the present book, it works at many levels: from the personal and familial to the local-political, the institutional and work-based, to the national and international. So, too, social networks work on these levels,
making things happen
, resolving or at least understanding disputes and problems, conveying information, enabling trade, and encouraging intercultural exchange. Each act, from the most (seemingly) minor and personal, to grand international treaties, is politically as well as socially informed. Rhetoric would see no major difference in shaping communication between the political and social, given its democratic/neo-Marxist nature.

In relation to social network theory, rhetoric is particularly interested in whole or complete networks that attempt to specify all the ties in a denned population (say, for example, a school or a business company) on the one hand, and personal networks on the other. In the discussion so far in this chapter, emphasis has been on individualization and the affordances of the digital to enhance the possibilities for individual and personal central-ity in communication and information/network management. But institutional nodes also play a significant part in everyday life, communication, and networking. The relative strength of large corporate organizations at the international level, governments at the national level, and regional and subregional entities such as local authorities, states (e.g., California, New South Wales), and other mediating agencies is crucial to the balancing of rhetorical power and consequent direction and speed of flow along the social network ties or lines of communication. Hybrid networks, where relatively large corporations interact with personal nodes and ties, are further manifestations of how rhetoric operates—often with the individual or subcontractor exercising less and less power, sometimes manifested in contractual arrangements but almost always in (largely) one-way communica-tional dynamics. However, individuals can exercise political and rhetorical power by bridging social networks that hitherto had operated separately. It thus benefits the individual to be a member of a number of social networks so that the possibilities of connection can be perceived and realized.

At the core of the argument in this chapter has been the notion that digitization not only oils the grooves of existing social networks—and by implication, the rhetorical connections that are made between individuals, institutions, and larger corporations—but that it also creates new possibilities that are grafted on to existing practice. Among these are increased mobility in communication; the affordance of anytime-anywhere communication; brevity of messaging; a fusing of the personal, work-based, and political; possibilities in information management and access; personalization of one's communicational preferences; and, as is noted in relation to the field of research and knowledge creation, new forms of relationship between the actors in the process of undergraduate,
Masters, and doctoral study. Key concepts in social network theory include “betweenness” (the positioning of a node between other nodes), cohesion (the strength of communicational bonds between participants in a node), flow (the degree and fluidity of communicational movement between actors in a social network), prestige (the status accorded to a node), and reach (not only the extent to which actors in a node can reach others in that node, but the extent to which collectively they can reach out to other nodes of influence). All these analogies between rhetorical positioning and flow can be made, and strengthen the socio-political nature of rhetoric as a means of accounting for communication in the contemporary world.

13

Discussion about learning to communicate on the one hand, and education on the other, is often constrained by existing curricula, national interests assessment regimes, and vested interests. Mid-level theories and models ar, used to justify the design of such curricula, interest, and regimes. These arl based on predilections for particular aspects of communication studies, sucl as literature, media, language, and/or literacy, or on sets of values and ide ologies, such as “personal growth,” “life skills,” “cultural development,” or “heritage.” The relationship between rhetoric and English studies in gen eral is explored in
chapter 3
. “English” has a strong hold on the curricula imagination, at least in the UK and English-speaking world. In many ways its presence as a school subject, a university discipline, a national language an international language, and a particular country's culture has not onl. blurred the debate about what counts in communication, but also prevented such discussion from taking place at all. In the present chapter, we revisi the question of rhetoric and education, but we do so with a broader therm in mind and from a fresh perspective: communication.

Communication is a
sine qua non
of life in the everyday world and in almost every dimension of it. Even a Trappist or Buddhist monk, dedicated to a life of silent and asocial meditation, is engaged in communication; communication is also essential for those who have lost the means or power of communication (e.g., Judt 2010). Most communication fulfils a social need; much of its is functional, efferent, expressive, aesthetic, and/or necessary for the maintenance of consciousness and identity. Communication is conveyed by many different kinds of media—cell phone, computer, face to face, in print, via film and social media, and so on—and in combinations of modes— speech, physical engagement, writing, gesture, still and moving images. It is also subject to differences between languages—English, Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic—and differences within languages—dialects, registers, and accents.

Given the ubiquity, needs, and varieties of communication, how is education to position itself to help people to induct themselves into the world? What forms and aspects of communication do people need to know about as well as to practice? Are the needs of children and young adults different
from those of mature adults? Is the apparent de politicization of schools in fact a way of politicizing what is taught and learnt, for national ends?

Every country has to work out for its education system the selection of knowledge that it wishes to “promote.” This selection, usually tiered from preschool stages through schooling to employment and further or higher education, is the curriculum—the course to be followed.

At one of rhetoric's previous high points, in the European Renaissance, rhetoric had a central place in the university curriculum as one of the three strands of the
trivium
, along with grammar and logic. In effect, this trio of disciplines is comparable to a first-year induction program in higher level thinking. Rhetoric, within this curriculum, signified the art of communicating from one mind to another and the adaptation of language to circumstance. It contributed to a core higher education curriculum that emphasized the “languages” of discourse and thinking (logico-mathematical, linguistic, and textual) at a time when the burgeoning availability and attractions of print required scholars to focus on
text
and
textuality
to an extent not experienced previously. This early interest in the relationship of speech to written text, of printed multiple copies in relation to original and copied manuscripts, and of image to text in illuminated manuscripts provided the ground for rhetoric to flourish. Troyan (2004) notes that the history of medieval rhetoric has hardly been investigated, nor the relationship between grammar and rhetoric. He points out, also, that the scholarly practice of glossing and commentary on canonical texts is central to the practice of rhetoric at the time. This meta-textual practice prefigures contemporary hyper-textual practices via the computer screen (e.g., Milsom 2012). Clearly, what medieval rhetoric and contemporary rhetoric have in common is an interest in textual practices. Troyan (2004) suggests that “Rhetoricians were concerned not only with saying something, but also with re-positioning it. By re-positioning itself, rhetoric came to say something new. It also came to suggest different ways of interpreting” (223). In other words, the transformation of speech into writing and vice-versa, the ways in which interpretation could be effected, and, implicitly, early considerations of multimodality were all matters of concern during the Renaissance. Rhetoric itself expanded its reach as the communication landscape widened.

What, in addition to what Vygotsky and Habermas have already suggested (see
chapter 6
), has the foregoing discussion of argument and rhetoric's place in social discourse and cognitive development got to do with education? First, in classic Toulminian rebuttal (or counterpoint) terms—and based on
fact, not just rhetorical positioning—is argument fostered in educational settings? The answer, in too many cases, is no. The English educational system has moved, over a period of 20 years or so, to one in which an increasingly prescriptive and narrow curriculum has been increasingly assessed. To put it another way, the commodification of learning into assessable packages, in a model that derives from the failed 1980s American business discourse of targets, products, and learning outcomes, has led to a situation where rarely in the 5–16 curriculum are pupils and students asked to articulate at length, either in speech or writing; where the regurgitation of information takes up more time than thinking about that information; where the celebration of a single voice through narration, again, in the 1980s-informed, late-Romantic tradition, is still prevalent.

There are systemic changes for the good, like the broadening of the range of types of writing that are required in the 2000 version of the National Curriculum in England. There are “green shoots” of good theory and practice, such as Alexander's notion of dialogic teaching (2008); philosophy in primary schools (Lipman 1976); and the work of the critical thinking movement (though critical thinking is not the same as argumentation).

Three examples, from different stages in the education process in England, will suffice to demonstrate the importance of argument and rhetoric in education. The first is a discussion between four children from a Year 1 class of 5–6 year olds, recorded in the 1990s. This extract was first analyzed in
Teaching and Learning Argument
(Andrews 1995) but is here reviewed in the light of a rhetorical perspective. The pupils' brief was to record a discussion on a topic that was important to them, and to do so independently of the class teacher, in a corner of the school, and equipped with a recorder:

RICHARD: What do you think about playtimes, Carly?

CARLY: I think they are quite good because you can play and my best friend is Anna …

RICHARD: James? Emma?

EMMA: Well I think playtimes are good because sometimes people want to play with you and they are kind to you when you fall over.

RICHARD: James?

JAMES: Sometimes you can meet people, play with people.

RICHARD: What I think is playtimes are pretty bad but I like them. They are pretty nice things.

CARLY: Look outside now. It's quite sunny. That's part of the good things.

RICHARD: And sometimes when it's sunny we're allowed to have our coats off.

CARLY: Yes. That's the best thing really.

JAMES: We can go on the grass.

RICHARD: Yes, that's a good part.

EMMA: I think the bad thing is when a bully pushes you over. I don't think it's fair when nobody helps you.

RICHARD: It's awful when you fall over and people laugh.

JAMES: It's really awful. You've got to go and tell Miss, don't you?

CARLY: Emma, I thought you said a minute ago that you like playtimes.

EMMA: Well it doesn't mean actually playtimes are nice. It's bad and good.

CARLY: Yes. I think it's a mix, isn't it?

EMMA: Yes, it's a mix, a mix, a mix.

Putting aside Richard's chairing skills, what can be identified as argument here? Carly and Emma each start with a statement and proof informed by logical or quasi-logical connection (“I think playtimes are good because…”) though you could say that Carly's proof (“because you can play”) is quickly followed by what my teachers used to write all over my essays: a
non-sequitur
(“and my best friend is Anna”). It could be the case, however, that this is no
non-sequitur
for Carly; and that the “and” in her utterance signifies a causal or relational connection of a kind. The first third of the extract establishes some propositions and some supporting “evidence,” simply to give the propositions some ballast. Richard's position is typical of that of a chair: (“I think playtimes are pretty bad but I like them. They are pretty nice things”). The important thing is that he introduces the notion that playtimes can be bad as well as good.

The second third moves to finding more evidence, more proof for the two propositions that are now established. The discussion is largely consensual, moving the argument along together with supporting points and a desire to ensure the coherence of the group itself: a pattern that can be seen in many school small group conversations. In such discussions, the idea of argumentation can be threatening; it can disrupt or destabilize the cohesion of the group; it can be “taken personally.” This is why many such groups prefer the term
discussion
to the term
argument
. Argument looks like “discussion with
too much
edge.”