Classical Canons in Rhetoric

Classical Canons in Rhetoric

Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Augustine, Blair, Ridolfo and DeVoss

The five classical canons are invention (thinking of what to say), arrangement (saying it in the order you want to), style (saying it in the way you want to), memory (memorizing it), and delivery (conveying it to the audience).

Plato

Plato makes his views on memory clear in the Phaedrus. Memory is the most important facility to exercise. Delivering a speech from memory to an audience show more skill than writing one and reading it to them. Such delivery is boring, whereas the delivery of a memorized speech can be more exciting and dynamic because the orator is able to improvise more freely. Plato is against writing because he says it cripples memory.

 

Aristotle

In the Rhetoric, Aristotle only focuses on three canons: invention, arrangement, and style. For invention, he offers the general and special lines of argument (such as questions of conduct), five matters on which everyone debates (such as ways and means), the common topics (example, enthymeme, and maxim), and the 28 lines of proof (such as defining your terms) as resources from which an orator may draw in order to determine what to say. Aristotle also determines four parts for arrangement: introduction, thesis, proof, and conclusion; since the audience is the primary target of the oratory, they should be the deciding factor in how best to arrange those four parts to mirror their thought process. Finally, Aristotle argues that good style should be clear and appropriate; thus, its foundation is correctness.

Cicero

For Cicero, style is amplification: saying the same thing in 2-3 different ways by adding to, elaborating, or qualifying clauses. Delivery is also important. Cicero talks about how the orator must sound and move naturally while speaking, and not exaggerate his tone and/or body movements. They must train like the best actors in order to master using their body while speaking in a way that does not seem rehearsed or robotic.

Augustine

For Augustine, invention is not important because God will tell the preacher what to say. Style should be clear so that the congregation will be able to understand him. Memory and delivery are also important: the preacher should not read a pre-written sermon, but should instead trust that God will give him the right words to say at the right moment.

Blair

Blair also largely ignores invention, claiming that genius is far more important: in other words, writers and orators do not invent new ideas, but learn to manage them; therefore, they need the intelligence to be able to do so, not the ability to come up with new topics on which to write or speak. Blair argues that good style has perspicuity and ornament: it requires purity, propriety, and precision, which means words that belong to our language, selecting pure words, and distinctiveness and accuracy.

Ridolfo and DeVoss

With the prominence of writing over oratory, the canons of memory and delivery fell by the wayside because fewer people were orally presenting their rhetorical artifacts. However, with the rise of digital technologies (part of what Ong refers to as a period of secondary orality), the need for attention to delivery becomes apparent again (some refer to memory as the ability for our computers to store our compositions, but that seems to me like a pretty lame way to re-include memory). Ridolfo and DeVoss argue in “Composition for Recomposition” that because digital artifacts are often used as part(s) of new compositions, it is important for composers to consider their audience and how they may receive the composition; then they must consider how best to compose their artifact in order to have the intended impact (in in order to be potentially useful to those audience members who decide to take elements of composition and use them in their own artifacts in a process that Alexander Reid refers to as “Rip. Mix. Burn.”). Thus, delivery carries many of the same implications it always has, but in the digital realm it necessarily includes some new aspects, such as deciding where or if to place a video, image, sound clip, or other artifact that can be used in composition.

How I would answer a question on this theme

[This could also be an answer to an Aristotle’s Time Machine question]

I would spend the majority of the time tracing delivery through history, perhaps briefly touching on the other canons. Delivery has undergone the most interesting change from being a main part of the oral rhetorical tradition, to disappearing when writing came to the fore (because delivery mostly meant 12pt, Times New Roman font, on 8 ½ x 11 paper), to completely changing with the introduction of digital rhetoric. I briefly mentioned Reid above, but I could draw on him and Yancey as well as Ridolfo and DeVoss for a fruitful discussion of delivery in new media.

Audience in Rhetorical Theory

Audience in Rhetorical Theory

Burke, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Booth

Plato

In the Phaedrus, Plato articulates that good rhetoric is the art of influencing the soul (for the better, toward truth) through words. Thus, he also outlines how the good rhetor must catalog the various kinds of human soul so that s/he can adapt the discourse to an audience. Some people may be persuaded in one manner, but others would be persuaded in a different way, so the rhetorician must be able to perceive and adapt to each kind of person in order to help lead them to truth.

Aristotle

In his Rhetoric, Aristotle defines rhetoric as the study of “all of the available means of persuasion.” But he also clarifies that, even if the orator has mastered every available mean of persuasion, said orator must also be able to appeal to his/her audience. In all three kinds of oratory (forensic, deliberative, epideictic), the audience is addressed and must be persuaded. Persuasion is only successful, Aristotle contends, when the audience believes that the speaker has goodwill toward them, when they believe that the orator has their best interests in mind. Thus, the orator must establish this goodwill with his/her audience, preferably early in the speech. Aristotle explains that one way to establish a rapport with and audience is to argue from common values, from notions possessed by everyone. Aristotle also methodically defines and explores each significant emotion in order to instruct future orators how best to appeal to them.

Augustine

Augustine argues that the only rhetoric that matters is that used by a preacher to preach to his congregation, so the only audience with which he is concerned are the members of a church. He has distinguished three offices of rhetoric (adapted from Cicero)—to please, to instruct, to move to action—that correspond to the three style—plain, middle, and grand, respectively. He emphasizes that teaching through the plain style is the most important, since the preacher must convey the Scripture so that his congregation will understand right from and how to correct wrongs. Thus, preachers must also be very clear in their speaking; eloquence is not nearly as important as clarity since it is imperative that the congregation understand their teachings. Augustine finishes by explaining that the preacher must be genuinely virtuous in order to serve as an example to his congregation.

Burke

Kenneth Burke outlines his theory of identification in The Rhetoric of Motives. Identification occurs when a speaker appeals to his/her audience through the invocation of a commonality; the audience, believing themselves to consubstantial at the intersection of the invoked identities, identifies with the speaker and is thus more likely to be persuaded by the argument presented. For example, if a politician speaking before a farming community declares that he grew up on a farm, that farming community will perceive a similarity and identify themselves as just like the politician. However, Burke points out that identification does not need to be sincere (though, of course, it may) in order to enact persuasion. In other words, Burke is not concerned with conveying truth to his audience; he is instead concerned with the possibility of persuasion through identification. Thus, a speaker may outright lie to his/her audience, as long as s/he successfully persuades them.

This is in stark contrast to Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine, all three of whom are concerned with conveying truth to an audience while also taking their best interests into account.

Booth

In Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent, Booth takes a completely different approach to audience than Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Burke. He argues that rhetoric is tainted by its concern for audience; it can never be pure because it alters itself according to audiences; opinions. Booth redefines “good” rhetoric as that which moves its audience with good reasons, not audience-based persuasion. We have been taught that “being reasonable” means remaining neutral until solid proof is given. But Booth thinks we have been taught wrong. Remaining neutral is the same thing as doubting, so he argues that we tend to approach new arguments always already suspicious of them. He outlines motivism as an explanation for why this happens: motivism is the belief that we are constantly influenced by our values and present motives or desires. Therefore, we only need to look for a rhetorician’s secret motive (influenced by their own selfish values and motives; based in Burke’s pentad) in order to discover the real reason they are making an argument. Once you find that reason, you have explained away the surface reasons for accepting it. The problem with motivism is that it is self-affirming: any attempt to refute it can by dismissed by its hypothesis.

Booth’s response to this motivism is that we need to look for a philosophy of “good reasons.” We need a way of discovering how motives becomes reasons and how they sometimes can and should influence our choices. Thus, Booth argues that we should approach arguments with assent rather than doubt; that way, we discover new beliefs that fit our structure of perception rather than reject them outright. This new approach of assent would also allow us to think of ourselves a community of persons who have more in common than we previously thought, and language becomes the medium in which selves grow.

How I would answer a question on this theme

[This could also be an answer to an Aristotle’s Time Machine question]

I would point out that Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine all follow similar notions of how to appeal to and convey truth to an audience in a persuasive manner. Burke differs from the three because he is not concerned with truth. Booth differs from all four because his rhetoric of assent is not only a call for rhetoricians to change how they address audiences; it is also, and uniquely, a call for audiences to change how they respond to discourse and rhetoric. Whereas Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Burke provided methods for rhetoricians to appeal to and persuade audiences, Booth puts some of the impetus on the audience themselves by asking them to change how they approach a rhetorical situation.

Metaphor in Rhetorical Theory

Metaphor in Rhetorical Theory

Lakoff and Johnson, Richards, Aristotle, Perelman

Aristotle

Aristotle says that mastering metaphor shows genius because it cannot be learned; it implies an eye for resemblance. He contends that the metaphor “gives style, clearness, charm, and distinction as nothing else can” makes meaning. The clarifying and meaning-making potential of metaphors also makes them a key component of discovering truth. One of the reasons for metaphors seeming usefulness, Aristotle argues, is that they are the only kinds of words that everyone uses; all people use metaphors in order to carry on coherent conversations. He also points out that metaphors are conducive to learning because they produce easy learning by creating a connection between two unlike things (the example Aristotle gives is Homer’s developing a connection between “stubble” and “old age”) and construct understanding and knowledge. In rhetorical oratory, Aristotle says that metaphor can affect the audience. If you wish to make something or someone look good, you can use a metaphor that compares them to something better; if you wish to denigrate them, compare them to something lesser.

Aristotle seems to have conflicting views on metaphor. He says that it takes a genius to master it, but everyone uses them all the time. Perhaps he means that everyone uses them, but not necessarily well, and only a few use them really well?

I.A. Richards

Richards invented the terminology for describing metaphors that many people still use: the tenor is the implied object of the metaphor, and the vehicle is the object used for comparison. In The Philosophy of Rhetoric, Richards takes on three of Aristotle’s assumptions about metaphor: first, Aristotle argues that some people have an eye for resemblances, but not others, to which Richards replies that everyone speaks and lives through resemblances; second, Aristotle says that metaphor cannot be taught, to which Richards replies that metaphors are an inherent part of the language we learn; finally, he says Aristotle thinks metaphors are special and exceptional, but Richards says that they are part of everyday language. Richards goes even further to argue that not only is metaphor an inherent aspect of our language, but it is also inherent to the nature of our thought. Our mind is built to make connections between things, which causes tension; metaphors alleviate the tension and restore order to our thought processes by making sense of an otherwise illogical connection. For example, in Aristotle’s example of Homer making a metaphor that used “stubble” to refer to “old age,” the connection seems illogical until the metaphoric meaning becomes clear: as Aristotle explains, both have lost their luster. Richards finishes by arguing that metaphor is important to rhetoric because the goal of rhetoric is to learn as much about words as is possible so that they will tell us how our minds work.

Chaim Perelman

Perelman defines metaphors as condensed analogies. An analogy is a way to define reality and establish the real by establishing connections between two terms by noting their similarity to each other. The examples Perelman gives is that “truth is to Socrates what gold is to a miser”; since a metaphor is a condensed analogy, this analogy could be condensed to something like “truth is gold to Socrates.” In creating this metaphor, the connection between “truth” and “gold” in relation to Socrates is less explicit than in the analogy. Perelman argues that philosophical thought and rhetoric seek to develop an argumentation that aims to have certain analogies and metaphors accepted as central elements in a worldview.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

Lakoff and Johson follow Aristotle and Richards in asserting that metaphor is an inherent part of thought and language; since our conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical, our perceptions and relations (both of which are influenced by our concepts structure) are the result of the metaphors we live by. The famous example Lakoff and Johnson use is the metaphor “argument is war.” This metaphor implies a verbal contest similar to a physical battle; as such, our terminology (and consequently our conceptual system) is structured through words like “counterattack” and “defense.” Lakoff and Johnson point out that our conceptual system would look very different if our culture conceived of argument metaphorically not as war, but as a dance. This leads to another key point: since metaphors change from culture to culture, a culture’s most fundamental values will be coherent with the metaphorical structure of their most fundamental concepts. For instance, in the US, such metaphors as “labor is a resource” and “time is a resource” are culturally grounded in our experiences with material resources; importantly, such metaphors do not exist in cultures that do not share our views on work, quantification, and purposeful ends. Part of this cultural dependence on metaphor is that people in power get to impose their metaphors on a culture.

Lakoff and Johnson also discuss the nature of truth: philosophers say metaphor cannot express truth, but Lakoff and Johnson argue that truth is a function of our conceptual system, and, since our concepts our metaphorical in nature, metaphors can be true or false. Truth, then, becomes subjective and relative to our conceptual system, which is both grounded in and tested by our daily experiences and interactions with other people and environments. Thus, there is no Truth, but the possibility of many truths.

How I would answer a question on this theme

[This could also answer an Aristotle’s Time Machine question]

I’d move semi-chronologically to follow the development of conceptions of metaphor to show how Aristotle laid the foundations for modern conceptions of metaphor. For Aristotle, metaphor makes and clarifies meaning, and everyone uses it. This is a sentiment echoed in Lakoff and Johnson, who take Aristotle’s notion a step further in arguing that metaphor constructs our conceptual systems, thus influencing how we perceive the world. And, since metaphor is inherent in our thought, it is also inherent in our language and used by everyone. Perelman also argues that metaphors are one way that we create and define reality. Richards challenges Aristotle’s assumptions that metaphor only some people can master metaphor, that it can’t be taught, and that metaphors are exceptional by arguing that metaphors are a part of daily life and experience; however, it seems that Aristotle agrees that everyone uses them, but only a few geniuses can master the art of metaphor.

Purposes/Conceptions of Rhetoric

Purposes/Conceptions of Rhetoric

Plato: Rhetoric is “the art of winning the soul by discourse.” Although technically, Plato is referring to dialectic (the Socratic dialogue), not rhetoric. In fact, Plato distrusts rhetoric because he thinks it misleads the soul. Instead, two people should engage in a dialogue and work together to correct error and discover truth.

Aristotle: Rhetoric is “the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion.” As such, his Rhetoric outlines many of those “available means” in order to help the orator train.

Quintilian: “Oratory is the art of speaking well.” It’s also being a good person (“good man speaking well”). He also believes that rhetoric and grammar should be united because they complement each other. The good orator invents on the spot, but has many examples and precedents memorized for instant recall.

Cicero: Rhetoric is “speech designed to persuade.” He also talks about legal oratory leads to advancement in Rome. Cicero also unites the study of rhetoric and philosophy; both need each other in order to be useful and effective. True skill in oratory comes from the combination of natural talent and learned skill. Eloquence is the most important aspect of oratory? There are three purposes of rhetoric: pleasing, teaching, moving to action. Three levels of style: plain, middle, grand.

Augustine: Rhetoric is preaching God’s word to a congregation. Clearness is more important than eloquence. There are three purposes (taken from Cicero) and three levels of style (inspired by Cicero): subdued, temperate, and grand. Also, there are only three subjects of oratory: justice, holiness, and a good life. Like Cicero and Quintilian, Augustine also believes that the orator must be virtuous.

George Campbell: Rhetoric is “that art or talent by which discourse is adapted to its end. The four ends of discourse are to enlighten the understanding, please the imagination, move the passion, and influence the will.

I.A. Richards: Rhetoric is the study of misunderstanding and its remedies; the goal of rhetoric is to learn so much about words that they will tell us how our minds work. He calls for us to renounce the view that words are only their meaning and that discourse is only the composition of those meanings. Most words change meanings in different contexts; thus, no word can be judged good/bad or correct/incorrect in isolation (interinanimation of words).

Kenneth Burke: “Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric, and wherever there is rhetoric, there is meaning.” Rhetoric is winning an argument at (nearly) all costs. Anything written for a purpose with an audience in mind. Identification is a way of enacting persuasion, not just gaining audience assent.

Wayne Booth: Rhetoric “includes all forms of communication short of physical violence, even such gestures as raising an eyebrow or giving the finger.” He specifically discusses the rhetoric of assent, which he defines as coming into an argument prepared to accept any good reasons, rather than coming in with a neutral or antagonistic attitude.

James Crosswhite: A rhetoric of reason has the task of explaining how reasoning can have effect/force, while forgoing violence and furthering respect.

George Kennedy: Rhetoric is the art of effective expression: it is mental and emotional energy. To Kennedy, rhetoric is almost equivalent to communication; all communication is rhetorical. Even animals can engage in rhetoric.

Locations of Rhetoric

Mapping Locations of Rhetoric

 

Aristotle/Plato/Cicero: Oral

Dillon/Bazerman: Writing

Plato and Augustine: Anti-Writing

Bolter: New Media/Digital

Ong: Orality vs. Literacy

 

 

Oral Rhetoric

Plato: dialectic

• Rhetoric should be a dialogue between two people that searches for the ultimate truth
  • It is not used to persuade, but only to correct error and help the other person come to their own internal realization about the nature of truth
    • Persuasion to belief is a bad kind of rhetoric that manipulates
  • The dialectic is between one person who knows the truth (a philosopher) and someone he is trying to help discover it as well
• Oral presentations must acknowledge the counterpart’s “soul” and adapt to it

 

Aristotle: rhetoric is the counterpart to dialectic

• Rhetorical study focuses on the modes of persuasion, which is a form of demonstration
  • He provides the first comprehensive account of how a rhetorician can be effective orally
  • He focuses on the orator balancing ethos, pathos, and logos in his demonstrations
  • He gives general and specific lines of argument
  • He lists five matters on which everyone deliberates: ways and means, peace and war, national defense, food supply, and legislation
  • He distinguishes between artistic and inartistic proofs
    • Artistic: proofs we can create – ethos, pathos, logos
    • Inartistic: those proofs available to the orator – contracts, laws, oaths, testimony
  • He lists 28 lines of proof
  • He lists three different genres in which rhetoric performs: deliberative (future), forensic (past), epideictic (praise and blame)
• In making a speech, he says to study three points:
  • Producing means of persuasion
  • Style must be clear an appropriate
    • It is important to say what we ought as we ought
  • Arrangement
• He also focuses on delivery
  • Pay attention to volume of sound
  • Be aware of the modulation of pitch
  • Be aware of the rhythm at which you are speaking
• Unlike Plato, Aristotle allows for rhetoric to be practiced when one speaker persuades others to agree with him (instead of dialectic)
  • But like Plato, Aristotle believes the orator should be backed by truth
• Good orality is adapted to the audience
  • The orator will present different proofs, etc and arrange and deliver a speech differently for different audiences

 

Cicero: imitate good models

• He wants aspiring orators to practice actual lawsuits
  • He specifies that the common topics must be grounded in social custom to be useful
    • They should focus on winning the audience’s favor
  • As far as delivery, orators should match thoughts to words
    • IE: everyday talk is “dignified”/plain style, or a middle ground between the two
  • True skill in oratory comes from a combination of natural talent and education
  • The “complete” orator upholds his own dignity (Quintilian’s “good man, speaking well”), but also the safety of his own country
  • “Doctus orator” = the good orator must have a wide background in many subjects
    • His harmonious, graceful style must be backed by knowledge and thought
      • This is different from Plato and Aristotle, who think the orator must be backed by truth
    • Wise thinking and elegant speaking are linked
      • Cicero seems to indirectly address Plato when he points out that philosophy is not the only aspect of good rhetoric – wide culture is needed too
      • In other words, one must be keen to both find the probable answer to the problem, but also to give it in an eloquent manner
    • Importantly, good orators realize that speaking in public is difficult
      • They are able to admit that a speech does not always work as well as they had hoped
      • They are fearful/nervous before a speech
    • The art of speaking relies on: proof of allegation, winning favor, and rousing the required impulses

 

Writing

Cicero: Writing is useful

• He thinks writing is how you develop skill in oratory
  • This is how one learns eloquence
  • One can also perfect their arrangement

 

Dillon: focuses on the differences in writing between scientists and scholars

• They are important because learning them is a traditional purpose of schooling
• Discursive terrain is not neutral or inert
  • It is like a culture – it embodies practices and values that conflict, not only within other disciplines, but within the discipline itself
• For Aristotle, orality was a demonstration – for Dillon, (academic) writing presents probable arguments, not demonstrations
• Disciplinary discourse is personal and engages the writer’s and reader’s interests, biases, and desires, even if it pretends not to
• Dillon wants rhetoricians to define rhetoric as the study of discursivity in general, encompassing both oral and written texts

 

Bazerman: must consider social and intellectual endeavors of a discipline in order to write in it

• Focuses on the importance of written genres
  • Students must understand and rethink rhetorical choices embedded in each generic habit to master the genre
  • Even though genre can stabilize the rhetorical situation and simplify the rhetorical choices to be made, the writer loses control of the writing when s/he does not understand the genre
• A writer’s self-consciousness about the power of words allows them to wield that power
  • The writer is self-conscious and reflexive by simply knowing what they are doing
  • Writing is choice making – it is evaluating the options
  • This seems to counter the Ancients’ orality – they focus on orators having immediately at their disposal all of the means of persuasion (Aristotle) and knowledge they need (Cicero), but Bazerman seems to assert that writers only need awareness of their potential power in order to be able to wield any of those things as needed
• The writer sees human consciousness created from nothing
  • Feels responsible to participate in creation of the human world
  • The choices a writer makes shape the contributions to knowledge
• Writing has the capacity to be citational
  • It draws on and ties together other writers, readers, prior texts, and experienced reality to constitute knowledge
  • Oral rhetoric can do this to, but not to as great of a degree given that it has not been recorded

 

 

Anti-Writing

Plato does not trust writing

• He thinks it leads to forgetfulness because writers are not practicing their memories
  • Writing discourages memory, one of the five rhetorical canons
    • (Indeed, it seems as if that particular canon has fallen out of style since the rise of writing)
  • He also points out that written word cannot defend itself like spoken word can
    • Written word never changes, but spoken word (ideally) happens in a dialogue, so it could be defended and/or clarified by the speaker

Augustine: sermons must be memorized, not delivered from writing

• Prayer will help the preacher learn rhetorical skill
  • Praying is more important than oratorical skill
• Writing is not necessary
• Information must be presented in several forms – writing inhibits this

 

New Media/Digital Rhetoric

• Bolter: still talking about writing, but now it’s in a new location – digital
  • Most people use computers as the primary medium for communication
• The impermanence and changeability of text in digital technology reduces the distance between author and reader, and even makes the reader into an author
• Ideally, the digital text can tailor itself to each reader’s needs
  • This is a huge revolution that mixes orality and writing
  • The product is still written, but the author is able to read his/her audience in a way that can accommodate them instantly (in much the same way an orator would be able to read the audience and adjust his tone, volume, subject, etc)
• Writing no longer needs to linear – it can be rhizomatic
• Digital writing can make use of remediation: this is where a newer medium takes the place of an older one, borrowing and reorganizing the characteristics of writing in the older medium and reforming its cultural space
  • It is both homage and rivalry
• Hypertext: each topic may participate in several paths – reader chooses which to take
  • This means the reader can be a sort of author that “writes” the text they are reading as they choose which path to take
  • Bazerman says writing is all about the writer making conscious choices
  • Bolter here suggests that it is also about the reader making conscious or unconscious choices about how to progress through the text
    • This means the reader can become an “adversary” by making the text in a way the author did not intend

 

Orality and Literacy

Ong: the literate mind is analytic/objective – the oral mind is aggregative/traditional/attached to context

• Writing makes it easier to see the logical relationships and to hierarchicalize ideas
• Writing enacts more genres than orality because it allows the “speaker” to maintain a train of thought longer, go back and revise, etc

 

If I had to answer a question on this theme:

I would start with Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero to establish some of their commonalities: all three focus on developing the skill necessary to be successful in oral speaking. Plato focuses on how good rhetoric is used in a dialectic where one person (a philosopher) helps another discover Truth for themselves through correction of error. Aristotle sees rhetoric as one orator coming to an oratory with all of the available means of persuasion (proofs, lines of argument, delivery, style, arrangement, etc) under his belt to be used at a given moment to persuade an audience to truth. Cicero thinks good oratory is a combination of natural skill and talent, and that the orator must be well-versed in both philosophy and wide culture. All three focus on the necessity of reading and responding to their audience.

Next, I would move on and contrast Plato and Augustine’s distaste for writing with Ong’s notion that literacy changed the way people think and gave rise to more genres. Plato distrusts writing because he thinks it decays memory. Augustine dislikes writing because he thinks prayer is more important (God will provide the necessary words at the right moment) and writing a speech ahead of time would damage the spontaneity of delivery. Ong contradicts both by pointing out that literacy allows anyone to think more analytically and objectively. Oral cultures are more aggregative, traditional, and dependent on context because they are not used to being able to step back and analyze their situations. Literature cultures are able to see logical relationships and hierarchicalize their ideas. They are able to write in more genres (Aristotle only lists three in his oral culture).

Next, I would discuss the importance of writing to developing knowledge. I probably wouldn’t bring up Dillon as I had originally planned; he’s not very interesting or as relevant as I thought. I would, however, focus on Bazerman and his notion that writing is key to developing human knowledge. Writing’s power comes from the writer realizing their power and wielding it in writing. Unlike the ancient orators (who needed to have immediately at their disposal all available means of persuasion [Aristotle] and the knowledge they may need [Cicero]) the writer is able to draw on these resources when/if they see fit; they only need to be aware of their potential in Bazerman’s construction. Bazerman’s notions of genres also fit nicely with Ong’s notion that writing changes the way people think. Now that there are more genres available, writers need to be aware of them. Writers must understand and rethink their rhetorical choices in order to master genre. The writer will lose control of his/her writing if s/he does not understand the genre. Genre, then, becomes much more important in written rhetorical situations than oral simply because there are more of them (than Aristotle’s three).

Finally, I would close with a discussion of Bolter’s notions of digital writing in order to discuss how it revolutionizes both written and oral discourse. Digital rhetoric is based in writing and so is able to draw on all of the genres and conventions of writing. However, it also hearkens back to orality. Ong mentions that the move from orality to literacy resulted in the ability to think hierarchically, but Bolter argues that hypertext, a digital means of writing, deconstructs hierarchicalization because the reader can choose which path s/he wants to take. Just as Bazerman’s writer makes conscious choices in writing, Bolter’s reader makes conscious or unconscious choices when moving through digital texts, thus becoming a sort of author. This collapses the differences between readers and authors, while also allowing readers more power to be adversaries since they can read/write the text in ways the author did not intend.

Genre in Rhetoric

Mapping Genre in Comp Studies

 

Aristotle: Rhetoric

• He argued that every audience is either a judge or not a judge
  • If the audience is a judge of what has happened in the past, the species is judicial (forensic)
  • If it judges what action to take in the future the species is deliberative
  • If it is not a judge but hearers/readers who are not asked to take any specific action, the species is epdeictic
• There are only three kinds of genres: deliberative, judicial, epideictic
  • They are both formal and social
  • In one sense, the genre will determine all formal elements of the oratory: the arrangement, style, subject matter, delivery, etc
  • In another sense, the decision to use a particular genre is socially constructed: the aim of each is to persuade, but needing to use forensic, for example, comes from the need to convict someone of wrongdoing or to defend them against such accusations
    • It would be socially inappropriate to use epideictic or deliberative in this situation
    • Although, it may be necessary to use elements of each – the three genres do not need to be mutually exclusive
      • To convict/defend someone, you will undoubtedly use epideictic’s “praise and blame” approach, though the focus will fall more heavily on judicial

 

Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy

• Ong explains the link between Aristotle’s oral genres and written genres
  • Written cultures are more objected, analytical, and hierarchical than oral cultures simply because writing things down allows people to remember and refer back to them more easily
  • This also allows room for more genres than Aristotle’s original three

 

Carolyn R. Miller: “Genre As Social Action”

Miller, quite simply, argues that genre is a social action – a rhetorically sound definition of genre is centered on the action it is used to accomplish because genre is typified rhetorical action. Miller’s definition is a pragmatic (not syntactic or semantic) discourse classification based in rhetorical practice; it is open rather than closed, and organized around situated actions. When constructing discourse, we deal with purpose (which is similar to Bitzer’s exigence) at several levels (we learn to adopt social motives as way of satisfying private intentions through rhetorical action); this is how recurring situations invite a particular type of discourse. This definition of genre helps us learn to understand our rhetorical situations better, and helps us understand how to participate in the actions of a community.

• Definitions of rhetorical genres are grounded in: strategies/forms in discourse; similarities in audience; similarities in rhetorical situations
• Useful principle of classification for discourse: should have some basis in conventions of rhetorical practice, including ways actual rhetors/audiences comprehend discourses they use
• Aristotle: 3 genres: forensic, epideictic, deliberative
  • Each has a characteristic substance and each has appropriate forms
  • Explicate the knowledge that practice creates
• Classification is important to human action – must classify situation before forming action
• Rhetorical situation: is social construct / semiotic structure, then exigence (social motive) must be located in the social world
  • Exigence provides a sense of rhetorical purpose, but not rhetor’s intention
• Form, substance, and context are relative (not absolute) and occur at many levels on a hierarchy of meaning
• Genres change (evolve and decay) – the number of genres current in any society depends on complexity and diversity of the society
• 5 understandings of genre:
  • 1) It is a category of discourse based in large-scale typification of action – acquires meaning from situation and social context
  • 2) It is interpretable by rules that occur at a high level on a hierarchy of rules for symbolic interaction
  • 3) It is distinct from form – it is a fusion of lower-level form and characteristic substance
  • 4) It is the substance of forms at higher levels – as recurrent patterns of language use, genres help constitute the substance of our cultural life
  • 5) It is a means for mediating private intentions and social exigence; it motivates by connecting that private with the public, and the singular with the recurrent
• 3 ways a collection of discourse may fail to constitute a genre:
  • 1) Failure of significant substantive/formal similarities at the lower levels of the hierarchy
  • 2) Inadequate consideration of all the elements in recurrent rhetorical situations
  • 3) No pragmatic component – no way to understand genre as a social action
• To say it’s not a genre is to say that its interpretive rules do not form a normative whole that we can consider a cultural artifact – a representation of reasoning and purposes characteristic of that culture

 

 

Charles Bazerman: Speech Acts, Genres, and Activity Systems: How Texts Organize Activity and People” (in, What Writing Does and How it Does it)

Bazerman makes an argument that genres are not only embedded within structured social activities, but that they also depend on previous texts the influence social activity and organization. Thus, genres are not only social action, but social actions influence which genres are selected. These genres are also antecedent – the previous genres are taken into account whenever a new text is created. Bazerman also defines genre sets (the collection of types of texts someone in a particular role is likely to produce, IE: all of the documents a teacher produces for a course) and genre systems (comprised of the several genre sets of people working together in an organized way, plus the patterned relationships in the production, flow, and use of these documents, IE: The teacher’s documents and the students’ documents working together in the classroom setting) He suggests that examining genre sets allows you to see the full range and variety of the writing work that can be required within a role (IE: all of the different documents a teacher could be expected to create), as well as identifying the genre knowledge and skills you need to accomplish that work (IE: how a teacher could craft all of those documents)

• Each successful text creates a social fact for its reader
  • These social facts consist of meaningful social actions being accomplished through language, or speech acts
  • These speech acts are carried out in patterned, typical, and therefore intelligible textual forms or genres, which are related to other texts and genres that occur in related circumstances
  • Together the text types fit together as genre sets within genre systems, which are part of the systems of human activity
• The definition of genres only as a set of textual features ignores the role of individuals in using and making meaning
  • It ignores the differences of perception and understanding, the creative use of communications to meet perceived novel needs in novel circumstances, and the changing of genre understanding over time
  • Genres arise in social processes of people trying to understand each other well enough to coordinate activities and share meanings for their practical purposes
• The system of genres is also part of the system of activity of the class
  • In defining a system of genres people engage in, you also identify a framework which organizes their work, attention, and accomplishment
• Examining the genre system allows you to understand the practical, functional, and sequential interactions of documents, which allows you to see how individuals writing any new text are intertextually situated within a system and how their writing is directed by genre expectations and supported by systematic resources
  • Considering the activity system enables you to understand the total work accomplished by the system and how each piece of writing contributes to the total work

 

Charles Bazerman: Shaping Written Knowledge

            Bazerman is looking at how many textual elements shape written knowledge, but regarding genre he examines how genres help shape that knowledge. His work with genre is clearly inspired by Miller’s “Genre as Social action” (he even thanks her in the acknowledgements for her help). Specifically, he argues that “genre is a sociopsychological category which we use to recognize and construct typified actions within typified solutions – it is a way of creating order in the ever-fluid symbolic world.” Text and genre do not just respond to the rhetorical world – they help create it. When discussing the scientific academic community, Bazerman suggest that regularizing the writing genres and situations within specific communities can increase the likelihood of successful communication and thus knowledge creation. Only with a communally shared, reliable set of formulations will we be able to develop intelligent curricula to meet the local rhetorical needs of students entering into specific knowledge-generating communities, to frame efficient analytical procedures to allow writers to analyze their rhetorical situations and rhetorical options, and to present to other disciplines a knowledge and technology that will be of obvious use and power.

When speaking of students, he points out that each new text in a genre reinforces or remolds some aspect of the genre, so each reading of a text reshapes the social understanding of that text. However, genres should not be followed so meticulously that we must teach students cookie cutter approaches for their anticipated careers; instead, the students must understand and rethink rhetorical choices embedded in each generic habit in order to master the genre. Genre can stabilize the rhetorical situation and simplify rhetorical choices to be made, but the writer loses control of the writing when they do not understand the genre. As teachers, if we provide our students with only the formal trappings of the genres they need to work in, we offer them nothing more than unreflecting slavery to current practice and no means to ride the change that inevitably will come in the forty to fifty years they will practice their professions; we need to show students that genre is a flexible and ever-changing social phenomenon.

• There are many ways of grouping texts, depending on the analyst’s purposes, but when considering genres within their contexts, the generic classification that matters most must be the classification recognized by the users of those genres
• Writing is choice making, the evaluation of options – genres determine our choices
  • In whatever way these writing choices are realized and become institutionalized, they shape the kind of thing we consider contributions to knowledge
• It is remarkable that statements emerge over time that represent an overwhelming consensus as the best of currently available formulations, and that these formulations are sufficiently reliable to be near infallible
  • Ex: operating microwave ovens
• Theme of book: variety of discourse systems and their relation to evolving communities
• The differences between texts are not just on the page, but in how the page places itself with respect to social, psychological, textual, and natural worlds
• If the communal wisdom of a discipline has stabilized the rhetorical situation, rhetorical goals, and rhetorical solutions for accomplishing those goals in those situations, the individual writer and reader no longer need make so many fundamental choices and perform virtuosities of communication
• Genre is not just a linguistic category defined by a structured arrangement of textual features
• The textual features associated with any particular genre do not necessarily have a fixed definition – even attempts by social processes of institutionalization to hold features firm only lead to temporary stability
• In recognizing and using genre, we are mobilizing multidimensional clusters of our understanding of the situation, our goals, and our activity
  • Understanding the genre one is working in is understanding decorum in the most fundamental sense – what stance and attitude is appropriate given the world one is engaged in at that moment
• Because genre is such a multidimensional, fluid category that only gains meaning through its use as an interpretive, constructive tool, the reduction of any genre to a few formal items that must be followed for the sake of propriety misses the life that is embodied in the generically shaped moment
  • A list of formal requirements of any particular genre gives us only weak command over what we are doing and gives us no choice in mastering or transforming the moment
  • We do better to grant ourselves and our students means to understand the forms of life embodied in current symbolic practice, to evaluate the consequences of the received rhetoric, and to attempt to transform our rhetorical world when such transformation appears advisable

 

Amy J. Devitt: Writing Genres

Devitt builds upon and extend Miller’s definition of genre as a typified social action. She associates genre with recurrent situation; in other words, she expands from “rhetorical situation” to an interaction of different contexts at different levels that encompass the impact of preexisting genres as well as situation and cultural context. Most definitions of genre refer only to a genre’s situational context, but Devitt adds two more levels: culture and other genres. Culture (a shared set of material contexts and learned behaviors, values, beliefs, and templates) influences how situation is constructed and how it is seen as recurring in genres. It defines what situations and genres are possible or likely (and it is a dynamic element in constructing both; adding culture is important because it captures the way existing ideological contexts partially construct what genres are and are in turn constructed by performing genre actions. “Other genres” refers to the fact that one never speaks/writes in a void; we always have access to existing genres we have encountered through experience or suggestion. The “context of genres” includes all the existing genres in that society, the individual genres and sets of genres, the relatively stagnant and the changing genres, the genres commonly used and those not used. The existence of prior genres shapes the development of new or newly learned genres. The context of situation, context of culture, and context of genres all influence the actions of writers/speakers, speakers/listeners – and they do it partly through genre

Devitt also argues for teachers to teach contextual genres, situated within their contexts of culture, situation, and other genres. She explains that generic forms must be embedded within their social and rhetorical purposes so that rhetorical understanding can counter their urge toward following a formula. Genres must also be embedded within their social and cultural ideology so that critical awareness can counter potential ideological effects. Genres must also be taught as both constraint and choice so that individual awareness can lead to individual creativity. Devitt is arguing for teaching genre awareness, a critical consciousness of both rhetorical purpose and ideological effects of generic forms. This method of teaching will enable writers to learn newly encountered genres when they are immersed in a context for which they need those genres; students may also acquire new genres that can serve as antecedent genres for their future writing. The goals of teaching genre awareness are for students to understand the intricate connectedness between contexts and forms, to perceive potential ideological effects of genres, and to discern both constraints and choices that genres make possible. Devitt believes that to deny this knowledge of genre to students is to hide the fact the language, genre, and writing interact; she also believe that this would deny them access to a better understanding of why and what they write (similar to Mitchell)

• Genres as types of rhetorical actions that people perform in their everyday interactions with their worlds
• She breaks with older, traditional notions of genre and moves toward more contemporary views in order to explain why genre cannot be equated with classification (though they do classify), and why genre cannot be equated with forms (though they are often associated with formal features)
• She argues that genre both encourages standardization and enables variation and that, similarly, genre both constrains and enables individual creativity

• Genre entails purposes, participants, and themes, so understanding it entails understanding a rhetorical situation and its social context
• Genres help people do things in the world
  • They are both social and rhetorical actions – they operate as people interact with others in purposeful ways
  • Genres are strategies that have commonly been used to answer situations
• The genre a writer needs for a particular situation often already exists and hence already guides responses to that situation
  • Genre depends heavily on the intertextuality of discourse
• Knowing the genre means knowing such rhetorical aspects as appropriate subject matter, level of detail, tone, and approach as well as the expected layout and organization
  • Knowing a genre means not only knowing how to conform to generic conventions, but also knowing one way of responding appropriately to a given situation
• If genre is based on recurrence at all, it must be a recurrence perceived by the individuals who use genres
• A writer/reader recognizes recurrence because they recognized an existing genre
  • But for existing genres to exist at all, people must have perceived similarities among disparate situations
  • Paradoxically, people recognize recurring situations because they know genres, yet genres exist only because people have acted as though situations have recurred
• This paradox works because people construct genre through situation and situation through genre – their relationship is reciprocal and dynamic
• Rhetorical situations never actually recur – each situation is unique
  • Genre and situation are reciprocal, mutually constructed, and integrally interrelated
• Because a genre develops from the actions of the people in the group in the context of a perceived situation, the genre will show how most people in the group act or are expected to act and what most of its members believe, behave as if they believe, or think they should believe
• The encouragement of conformity among its participants is a fact of genre, for genres provide an expected way of acting
• The loss of a genre reflects the loss of its function, the result of changing needs and ideologies as society and individuals change
• The existence of a genre in an established rhetorical and social context does not dictate any writing – it is a choice to be made with powerful incentives and punishments attached
• Genre necessarily simultaneously both constrains and enables writers and such a combination of constraint and choice is essential to creativity
  • Creativity theory suggests that creativity derives from constraint as much as from freedom, giving genres a significant role in making choices possible
• Genres conventionalize formal expectations, and make visible opportunities for variations
• Having learned how to perceive the purpose behind form, the learner can discover the purposes behind the particular forms they notice
  • Having learned how to discern potential ideological effects, the learner can be alert to the ideologies underlying the genres they are acquiring
• Teaching language and genre explicitly risks enforced conformity to formula, but it also has the potential reward of helping students integrate their understanding of rhetoric with linguistic and generic forms that they produce

 

How I would answer a question related to genre:

(This would be a good Aristotle’s Time Machine approach)

I would move chronologically through all five authors. I would treat Aristotle’s conception of the three oral genres first. I would mention what they are and define them, then move into Ong’s notion that the move from orality to literacy influenced the way people think; thus, literacy enabled the existence of more genres than orality did. Ong’s notion is the bridge between Aristotle and Miller, Bazerman, and Devitt.

Next, I’d treat Miller’s argument that genre is social action: a rhetorically sound definition of genre is centered on the action is it meant to perform. When constructing a discourse, we adopt social motivations to make our private intentions a reality. This kind of a definition helps us understand rhetorical situations better, as well as adapt to a discourse community. I would compare Miller to Aristotle, pointing out that her idea is not as revolutionary as it may seem; indeed, it is a response to contemporary notions of genre that construe it as a form, not to Aristotle. Aristotle’s three genres are both formal and social: they suggest formal elements, but their use is social in nature. An orator would not use epideictic in the place of forensic, though a forensic speech may call for elements of the epideictic in order to perform its intended action.

Then, I’d move on to Bazerman. He expands on Miller: genres are not only social action, but social forces also effect which genre will be chosen. Text and genre do not just respond to the rhetorical world; they help create the knowledge within it (writing is a set of choices, and its power lies in the writer’s self-consciousness of those choices). However, a writer must fully understand a genre before using it; failure to understand it can result in its misuse and thus a failure of the text to effect its social action. This is another notion of genre that it seems Aristotle would agree with. Though he only advocates three genres, it seems he would argue that the orator must fully understand their formal conventions as well as typical situations in which they occur. For example, if an orator is making a speech in a situation that calls for him to prove someone innocent of wrongdoing (forensic/judicial), but focuses heavily on asking the judges to deliberate, it is likely that they do not understand the genre and will fail to convince his audience in his favor.

Finally, I’d bring up Devitt’s expanded definition of genre. Where Miller and Bazerman seem to bring up elements of genre with which Aristotle would agree (since they are built into his own genres), Devitt blows up the typical definition a makes it much more broad than it seems Aristotle would have conceived of. She add two more levels to the standard definition of genre: it is not only situational context, but also cultural context and other genres. Cultural context limits and promotes certain genres in certain contexts, while other genres set a precedent for what has been done in the past (as well as implications of what can be done in the future). Such antecedence is grounded in literacy, as Ong’s argument suggests. Devitt also argues for teaching genre awareness. Like Bazerman (who argues for regulating genres so that students may learn more easily how to operate within them), she does not mean drilling students on the formal qualities of particular genres. Instead, she wants so make students aware of the opportunities and constraints genres entail and how they can help students realize their own ability to work within and without of particular genres (by either adhering to or manipulating them). Students would then develop knowledge of a large supply of antecedent genres from which they may draw. Aristotle appears to be silent on this issue of the impact a broadened social awareness would have on genre, as well was the effect of genre awareness on an orator’s ability to speak. Obviously, an orator must have some awareness of his genre (enough that, as Bazerman suggest, he will not fail in his rhetorical situation), but since he only needs to be conversant in three genres, he need not establish a pool of antecedent genres form which he may draw.