A Theory of Contemporary Rhetoric (7 page)

One aspect of rhetoric mentioned by Prior et al., and developed further in the present book in
chapter 6
on argumentation, is the fact that classical rhetoric concerned itself largely with monologues. A contemporary theory of rhetoric, however, must—in the wake of Bakhtin (1982)—accept that monologic statements and utterances are, even in their apparent monologic state, part of a larger dialogue. They are responses to the existing body of dialogically produced utterances and statements, whether in everyday colloquial form, in the deliberations of politics, or in the literary world. So, we must bear in mind as the theory is developed, that not only must it address multimodal and digital dimensions of communication, but also the essentially dialogic nature of communication (even when cryptically couched as “when I talk, I listen”—a fridge magnet/post-it example). See also Prior et al.'s (2013) account of the complex scenes of semiotic interaction “which challenge the abstract, dyadic, production—oriented bias that lies at the heart of the rhetorical canons” (11).

Indeed, at the general level at which we are exploring new rhetorical theory in this chapter, a move to genuinely embrace the dialogic dimension might go some way to alleviate concerns that rhetoric is the domain of the speaker/composer/writer/rhetor and that it persuades—even
forces
its will upon—the listener or audience. Let us take the example of a rehearsal performance of two Greek plays—
Oedipus Rex
and
The Trojan Women—
that took place in a studio theatre of one of the London conservatoires in 2012. The student actors, working with an English translation of the plays, rehearsed for three weeks with their director (whose expertise was in voice training). Being actors, their emphasis was on the two elements of rhetoric that Prior et al. argue must be reconsidered in a contemporary theory of rhetoric: memory and delivery/presentation (or, as they couch it, “mediation/distribution”) (12).
¹
The audience of invited fellow-students and families of the actors were willing participants. Their own suspension of disbelief (characteristic of all public audiences in theatre, excepting those of a Brechtian inclination) was colored by their wish to see their fellow-students and sons/daughters/brothers/sisters in action, but also by their willingness to take part in a rehearsal performance and thus learn from the experience about the process of acting. Such involvement in the process was made more clearly evident by the director stopping the action on two occasions to ask the actors to rerun a section with more concentration, or more intensity. In short, the presence of the director and audience shapes the performance of the actors, just as in any performance with audience, the audience's reactions encourage or discourage the actors. Even the meeting of eyes between an actor and a member of the audience generates an interactive, dialogic moment of recognition or avoidance. The audience helps shape the overall experience, even though it is silent throughout the framed performance.

Prior et al. (2013) go on to sum up the canons of classical rhetorical theory as “a snapshot, a synchronic rhetoric, too situated in particular homogenous worlds and not situated enough in emergent, laminated histories, too centered on the producer rather than the system, too focused on language at the expense of a full semiotics” (17). Without elaborating each of the elements here in the present book, they argue for “remapping the territory of rhetorical activity” (17) in terms of literate activity, functional systems, and laminated chronotopes—with mediation as a fundamental unit of analysis across the three domains. The comprehensive nature of such a conception, taking into account functional
systems
as well as the cultural-historical lamination or
complex multiple framing
of actions (cf. Vygotsky [1991], Bakhtin 1982) is ambitious and beyond the scope of the present book, which concentrates, or rather embodies, these further dimensions in what we choose not to call “literate activity” but
acts of communication
and
textual practices
. But the spirit of the conception is acknowledged in the present book in the attempt to build a theory
of rhetoric that is light on apparatus but strong in structure, relevant to everyday and cultural interaction (production and reception), and fit for purpose. The aim of the present book, then, is to design a theory that does not construct its own edifice of theory through terminology and classification, but is grounded, useable, “elegant,” and ultimately disposable. The analogy is with the field of light structural engineering, which specializes in temporary structures.

Why are we eschewing the chance to build a more comprehensive model of rhetoric of the kind posited by Prior et al. (2013)? Part of the reason is that we would not wish to appropriate what is an innovative and brilliant conception. The other part is that the particular function of our enterprise is to construct a working theory and model of rhetoric that has parameters and limitations. Its limitations are defined by the edge of
communicative relevance
and its admittedly communication-focused nature. Communication, in the conception of rhetoric that informs the present book, is the heart of the matter. The social and political nature of rhetoric is embodied in acts of communication, and the book makes no attempt to draw a theory of ecology of resource, the economics of time or attention, the sociology of human interaction, or the dynamics of institutional politics, though all of these bear upon the field of rhetoric and the acts of communication within that field. In this way, the aim of the present book is to depict the operation of rhetoric in its full semiotic sense but not encroaching upon the fields of human feeling and experience, disciplinary and inter-disciplinary engagement, or ecologies of the natural and made worlds. Rhetoric has much to say about all of these, but it remains an art of communication as a means to ends, not the ends of thought and/or action in themselves.

Where the conception of a cultural-historical conception does bear upon rhetoric, and where it is hard to exclude a particular perspective from those listed previously as “outside” rhetoric, it is with regard to the economics of attention and the close association of that concept with learning. The economics of attention means the use of, and choices from, the limited resources of attention that any one person has during a day, week, or any length of time (ultimately, a lifetime). Attention means the degree of conscious concentration that is used in response to any situation—from flickering and marginal consciousness at one end of the spectrum to the deep or high (according to the metaphorical take) concentration that is deployed in an act of artistic, sporting, intellectual, spiritual, and/or personal engagement. There is no significant purpose, in such a notion, of separating the conscious from the unconscious: both may be at play in an act of attention. In terms of learning, the economics of attention is crucial, not only in distinguishing learning from other states of being, but also in understanding that transformational learning might well be directly linked to the quality of attention that is brought to the
act. Getting people's attention is another aspect of the economics of attention, in that marketing companies, instructors and teachers, the media, and family and friends vie for attention. Some people react by being able to concentrate on activities that require a great deal of undivided attention; others are good at attending to multiple demands at the same time. What is significant for rhetoric in both the economics of attention of the individual, and also for those working to try to attract attention of the individual, is that both are informed by the socio-psychological framings, modal variations, and power relations of rhetoric.

Finally, in this chapter on the limitations of classical rhetoric and the parameters of contemporary rhetoric—its antecedents and its distinctive nature now—we address the question of whether we should be using the pluralistic term
rhetorics
or stick with the singular and overarching term
rhetoric
. Earlier in this chapter, we dealt with the pejorative associations of the term
rhetoric
that occur frequently in everyday discourse and in newspaper, radio, and television media (driven by a journalistic mission to separate the “truth” from “mere rhetoric”). We can learn much from the creation and use—and ultimate demise—of the pluralistic term
literacies
. Coined in the 1990s to reflect the social, anthropological, and political variations in kinds of literacy, and also to refer to different domains of literacy and competence (like computer literacy, emotional literacy, financial literacy), the term
literacies
has been over-used and attentuated to such a degree that it is in danger of losing meaning—and coming to mean mere competence. The balance between unifying and diversifying tendencies in the use of such terms—always remembering that
literacy
implies
literacies
and vice-versa—has been lost as the devaluing of the term
literacies
has washed back to dilute the original singular term,
literacy
. So, too, in the present book we have retained the singular term
rhetoric
, eschewing the opportunity to distinguish between Rhetoric (high, approbational) and rhetoric (low, pejorative) or to pluralize into
rhetorics
(reflecting the diversity of ideology, situation, or application). When “rhetoric” is used in the present book, albeit with its tarnished and battered associations, it is used to imply both high and low associations and to embrace pluralistic versions. Like the field itself, and its principal term, it has limitations.

3

As has been suggested so far, rhetoric is the discipline that has been the basis for theorizing about communication in public since pre-Athenian days—not the pejorative use of the term in phrases such as “mere rhetoric” or “cant, sophistication, and rhetoric.” The knife-edge nature of the term makes use of it risky. Nevertheless, the risk is worth taking in relation to the future of English as a school and university subject.

Rhetoric is about who communicates what to whom about what, in which modes and media, how and (sometimes) why—though the latter function encroaches into the territory of philosophy. It can variously be described as “the arts of discourse” or “the science of communication.” One of its great advantages is that it does not limit itself to any particular language—English, Mandarin, Spanish—nor to any particular mode— writing, for example—or medium (e.g., on screen, on paper). It includes other modes, such as the still image, moving image, gesture, and sound, as well as the verbal mode, which covers speech and writing. It is not only socially situated but politically situated, too, sensitive to the power relations that inform communication between individuals and between groups, on domestic, local, regional, national, and international levels. (The rhetoric of communication beyond the planet has been wittily dealt with in Edwin Morgan's poetry collection,
From Glasgow to Saturn
, 1973.) It is pan- or multi-linguistic, multimodal, and socio/political and thus—potentially—provides a unifying theory for “English” and other subjects concerned with communication.

“English” seems to be a misnomer. We might be engaged with writing in English from across the world, but we should also acknowledge that such writing may have been cast originally in another language and/or culture—and so issues of translation are at play. We are interested in the evolving history of the English language, in all its hybrid color, but we will be also interested, as a result, in world Englishes and how they are being owned and developed in the twenty-first century. And by “English” we will certainly be interested in fictional, dramatic, and lyrical genres, but also in real-world documentaries, manuals, reports, spoken genres,
and other transactional forms of language that go under the broad and strangely negative title of “non-fiction.” We will
not
be interested in a narrowly England-based notion of a national literature: there is too much confusion about whether Irish, Welsh, and Scottish writers are included and whether we are referring to “literature written in England,” “literature written in English,” and/or “literature written as part of a ‘national’ heritage activity.” Equally, as much of world literature in English is composed in the United States, Canada, India, Australia, and elsewhere, and as English as a world language is in the hands of many countries (see Brutt-Griffler 2002), the notion of a narrowly England-based English is out of date by many centuries.

In short, when we use the term
English
are we referring to a language, a country (or nation—and if so, what kind of nation?), or a subject (or discipline)?

The theoretical potential of rhetoric is much needed right now. Its value is clear. First, rhetoric has a long history because every generation has to work out the dynamics of the why and how of who is speaking to whom about what. Second, the re-emergence of rhetoric as a unifying theory for English (and other subjects/disciplines) is much to do with provisionality, democratic pluralism, and socio-economic pressures requiring people to communicate with each other. It does not thrive in an autocracy, other than through propaganda. Third, any remaking of rhetoric has to take into account multimodality and contemporary digital communication in the twenty-first century. We cannot go back to Athenian rhetoric, as Edward Corbett did in the 1960s with
Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student
(1998) for the undergraduate American market, even though there are some generic truths we would want to apply to our current situation. What we need is
contemporary
rhetoric for the modern student, whether he or she is at primary, secondary, or tertiary levels in the education system. Fourth, we need a theory that will unite fiction and the documentary genres, makes sense of and utilizes the relationship between speaking and writing, acknowledges the reciprocity of writing and reading as well as that of speaking and listening, embraces the other modes and is clear about the affordances of each, and accepts digitization and electronic media.