Zoom: Across Archives 'n Ngrams

My group’s approach to “Across Archives ‘n Ngrams” could be compared to a camera’s focus options. While the purpose of the assignment was to consider patterns using our chosen terms (to zoom out and examine terms across texts and over time), we honed in on the details of those terms. We focused carefully on the individual instances and patterns presented in the archival tools themselves, noting the local inconsistencies and surprises they revealed. We recognize that our close and deliberate analysis needed to take a big step backward.

To look at this:

In the larger scheme of this: 

(what do those little orange locations tell us about the term in this text and in the others?) 

To respond to Dr. Graban’s prompt, the archival tools addressed and illumined my understanding of the texts. My post will consider the use of perception and language, both as the basis for Locke’s theory of understanding and as guiding terms for Campbell’s “The Philosophy of Rhetoric.”

This week’s Book III excerpt of Locke’s “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” focused primarily on language and the abstract nature of words. The concordance helped us to understand the role of larger concepts in Locke’s complete essay. For instance, perception was Locke’s most used term. Perception precedes language, serving as a kind of imperfect doorway to understanding. As Bizzell and Herzberg note, Locke’s pursuit of “truth in the physical world” led to his “attempts to understand knowledge as a psychological phenomenon” (814). The psychological concept of perception, taken up as philosophical inquiry during the Enlightenment period, is tied to the senses (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy); the senses perceive stimuli which, related to Locke’s essay, becomes translated into a series of signs (Bizzell and Herzberg 817). Therefore, as Locke reflects upon human understanding, which begins with perception, he segues into language. Although it may have seemed obvious, the concordance furthered my understanding of Locke’s philosophy and created a mental picture of where these terms existed in relation to one another.

In “The Philosophy of Rhetoric,” the Internet Archive gave me a new perspective on Campbell’s text as an educational tool. While Campbell continues to build on Locke’s philosophy, he also examines rhetoric related to “elocution, grammar, pulpit oratory, and literary criticisms” (Bizzell and Herzberg 898). The Internet Archive found “language” was used on more occasions than the other terms. Building on Locke’s idea that perception leads to language, Campbell frequently depicts language – the highest form of which is eloquence – in a philosophical context and one related to usage.

Although learning did not have a strong, quantifiable presence in the archive, the few times it did turn up, there seemed to be an implicit connection between understanding and education/study, particularly within Campbell’s usage sections. For instance, our search results tied language to Campbell’s “The Foundations and Essential Properties of Elocutions,” a section which looks at the conventions of language and grammar including style. Similarly, the instances where “writing” is used in Campbell’s text linked the term to usage and occasion. In one of our passages, Campbell notes tautology as an unnecessary ornament for “descriptive, pathetic, and declamatory” writing (358). He critiques certain authors, providing specific examples and explaining their errors in thought and presentation. In such places, I am reminded that Bizzell and Herzberg excerpted the more philosophical sections of Campbell’s text in order to draw clearer connections to authors such as Locke and as a response to Hume's "famous attack on religion" (Bizzell and Herzberg 898).

Certainly, our presentation materials concentrated on the terms’ immediate contexts and the tools’ findings. That said, perhaps these became our focus because Angela and I kept returning to a discussion of what the tools were teaching us about research and making meaning. Our approach reflects detailed, localized attempts to extract meaning from the terms -- a meaning that an algorithm, a concordance, and an Ngram cannot write out for us. As students and as researchers, we must draw connections between terms which, taken at face value through the Alex Concordance, could reveal very different results than if we were to look at those terms in context. Similarly, the Google Ngram presented instances of the terms over time, but if a term took on a different meaning from one century to the next, the results were affected. There were so many tools and factors to consider as we made (and continue to make) sense of our terms. Nevertheless, I believe our approach to the project helped us better grasp the reader's/researcher's role in making meaning of the terms, the texts, and the larger conversations within rhetorical theory.

Works Cited:

Bizzell, Patricia and Bruce Herzberg. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times

to the Present. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002.

Campbell, George. The Philosophy of Rhetoric, Edited by Lloyd F. Bitzer. 2nd ed., Southern

Illinois University Press, 1963. The Internet Archive.

https://archive.org/details/philosophyofrhet00campuoft.

----. “The Philosophy of Rhetoric.” The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to

the Present, edited by Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002, pp. 902-946.

“John Locke.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2001.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/

Locke, John. “From An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.” The Rhetorical Tradition:

Readings from Classical Times to the Present, edited by Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002, pp. 817-827.