As one member of the only group of three, I think our process to the schema was a little different than everyone else’s, so I’d like to touch on that before going more in-depth about the schema’s effects on my current understanding of the rhetorical theories we have covered thus far. We started with a Google doc, which we populated with what we all thought were key terms and concepts. Thereafter, we met for several hours to discuss how our terms were related to one another and to other readings. Because Angela works best visually, she sketched a draft of our schema in dry erase markers on the wall of the study room while the three of us discussed the terms we chose and the relationships between them. While we were doing that, I used my technological skills to create an electronic version in Microsoft Publisher. While we were populating the one on the wall, I focused on typing terms, quotes, and citations. Afterwards, we all came together as a group behind the laptop and reproduced those connections in one form digitally. In some ways, I think we may have perhaps been acting out some parts of the rhetorical theories we have covered in class as we discussed them, acting as orators (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca), rhetors (Aristotle), readers (Barthes), or maybe even communication people (Asante) on a microcosmic level, drawing on relative truths (or our perceptions of them) to generate a visual representation of how we experienced Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s new rhetoric as we read it. I also almost feel like there were elements of Afrocentrism in it, as we all sought to share communication without privileging one skill set or approach over another.
Here is a link to our schema, both the hand-drawn process of putting it together and the final digital product: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B39I-CR0DhN8NHZmUllrMmRLalU/view?usp=sharing
The schema itself helped me visualize how some of the most important moving parts of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's new rhetoric function, and it reinforced some of Condit's ideas about the new rhetoric while unveiling connections to other readings. I think the name "the new rhetoric" is a bit deceptive, though, because
like Aristotle, Perelman views rhetoric as a system of persuasion, writing, “The
New Rhetoric, like the old, seeks to persuade or convince” (Perelman 1391). The
theory differentiates between argumentation and demonstration, the former of
which “presupposes a meeting of minds” (Perelman 1391) and also “has a wider scope
of nonformal reasoning... It is manifest in discussion as well as debate (1392).
Argumentation is divided by Perelman into three classes: quasi-logical, appeal
to the reason, and establishing the real (1397-98). These arguments are
constructed of five varieties of agreements: facts and truths, presumtpions,
values, hierarchies, and loci of the preferable, the final of which comes
directly from Aristotle (Perelman 1394). In Perelman’s lists, I can see a clear
influence from Aristotle. The old rhetoric seems to serve as a model for the
new rhetoric. In some ways, Perelman attempts to move beyond it by exploring
the pieces that go into arguments.
A further parallel between Aristotle and Perelman, one that became clearer through creating this schema, can be seen
in who addresses—and who is included in—the audience. The person addressing an
argumentation is the orator (Perelman 1391). These orators address one of two types
of audiences: the universal and the (Perelman 1394) and the particular (Bizell
and Herzbrg 1373). The new rhetoric adheres to the idea that audience awareness
is essential to persuasion (Perelman 1393), which on some ways connects to
Aristotle’s idea of audience awareness (199). In some ways, I feel Aristotle
goes beyond that by highlighting the specific kinds of knowledge a
speaker/orator must know that help establish audience awareness: national
income, military power, national defense, amount and types of food, and local
constitutions (187-88). At the same time, Perelman points out that “Audiences
display an infinite variety in both extension and competence” (1393). Still,
for the new rhetoric, audience is Kantian, composed of “all reasonable and
competent men” (Perelman 1393), which in some ways functions to exclude anyone
the dominant culture does not see as “reasonable.” My concern is that such a label could only apply to someone in the dominant culture, which could thereby exclude certain members of an audience.
The role of the audience in the new rhetoric becomes clearer
when the orator is also taken into account. The orator of the new rhetoric is
most closely aligned with Aristotle’s speaker/rhetor. Much like the old
rhetoric, the new rhetoric’s concepts of argumentation, agreements, and orator seem
very Eurocentric. The new rhetoric still places the orator at the center, and
although “a meeting of minds” comes into play, it is “presuppose[d].” There is
some give and take in this theory, but I still feel like Perelman’s
presentation of the orator as the source of argumentation still puts this
person in a privileged position. Rather than sharing information equally, as
Asante’s communication person does (552), the objective of the new rhetoric
remains rooted in the Eurocentric idea of persuasion. This may be a stretch,
but Asante’s equal sharing seems to suggest that we exchange information about
cultures equally and in ways that do not seek to privilege one over the other
but instead to enhance communication between us. Interestingly enough, I also
thought of how the orator of the new rhetoric would relate to Barthes’s idea of
the author, but in placing the orator at the center of argumentation, I feel
like the orator is closer to the Author, the idealized person who we try to
read in a work and who “made of his life a work for which his own book was the
model” (144). There are some clear differences here, however. Barthes was
writing about writers, but the new rhetoric seems focused on the
speaker/orator. Still, Perelman centralizes the orator in his theory and gives
him (in Perelman’s theory, the orator is always male) a certain sense of
control, stating that argumentation “aims at obtaining or reinforcing the adherence of an audience” (Perelman
1392, emphasis mine). Condit points out that, while Perelman is a product of his
time (97), his attempts to overcome binaries actually reinforce the status quo.
Going along with Condit’s idea that Perelman excludes/marginalizes/devalues the
individual (animal passion) in favor of culture (reason [101]), his ideas of
audience serve to exclude marginalized populations like women, or really anyone
who did not concur, and instead put a single orator in a place of power in a
very Eurocentric framework. Creating the schema allowed these relationships to be visualized.
Although a bit divergent from my points thus far, I also
want to note a complication in terms of style that exists within the new
rhetoric, and specifically Perelman’s piece, that is in some ways footnoted in the schema my group members and I developed. Perelman highlights Ramus as one
of several influences that pushed the focus of rhetoric to style, but he writes
that such emphasis is a “symbol of the most outdated elements in the education
of the old regime” and attempts to define, as Aristotle did, rhetoric as a “practical
art” (1387). Yet within the text, Perelman acknowledges that certain arguments,
specifically those established on the real, require illustration or analogy (a
type of metaphor) to function (Perelman 1398-99). Perhaps I am taking this out of
context, but when I think of style, I think of figures of speech like metaphors
and analogies. If this is a correct interpretation of style, it means that while
Perelman decentralizes style in a way that once again reflects its Aristotelian
origins, he does not entirely disavow it. Moving forward, I wonder how the idea
of style, as discussed by other theorists we have not yet read, works with the orator/audience
complex to reinforce the hegemony, and how it works to empower. I also wonder if
certain stylistic approaches could destabilize the orator’s authority and more evenly
redistribute power between him and the audience. I’d be interested to hear
thoughts on this, if there are any.
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