rhetorical analysis of ready player one

Ilhl~" ',1111' YOIl'V(' r onsidercd YOUI OWil 1I1I11IV.' III WIIIIIIIJ Ilrl' 1111'11',tlild that YOII're wllllllq ,I Pll'( l' tll,ll best embodies and £'1'.111', 1111I .1' 1IIIIIIvI'

o I"" pnnciple that writing makes meaning Iluollqllll,l,'",. 11')/1 Will ~('('P you from lH'lil'Vlllg that Just because you've written sornettunq. YOIiI 1I,,,dl'l', should or must IIiHIPfstilnd II easily and without complication. It helps you remember that your II'.tdl'rs are always bringing their own background, experiences, and language to yow wilting, and that to know how they'll make meaning of the text, you have to IIy 10 anticipate what it is they bring. This principle also reminds you that texts make 111('dl1lngby connecting to other existing texts, and helps you think about to what I'xt('I11you're required to be "original" in a given piece of writing.

• 111(' principle that writing (as a form of rhetoric) is epistemic helps you remember lhtlt you'll never just be "transmitting information" by writing ideas that your 1("Hlers "receive" unaltered. As you think more about this principle, you'll learn to .uitklpate ways that you'll learn from your own writing, and that it will build new ItlPtlS even as you're drafting.

Ill' 1("ldlngs in this chapter help you see why and how these principles work, and they 11'1!'foll' push you to change any conceptions of writing you have that are inconsistent Itb thorn If you believe there's one right way or one best way to write, these readings will

11,,111 '119('you; if you already answer every writing question with" it depends," these read- q', Will give you reasons with which you can explain that answer to others. If you believe I,ll Ih(' best way to write is to figure out everything you want to say before you write and 1!'llll1~t gel It all written down unaltered, never looking back, some of the readings in this l1t1pl(>1show that you might write more successfully if you think about writing as making 11'011 ling rather than just transmitting it. III'( dllse rhetoric offers a systematic explanation of how people make knowledge from

111'I,re tlon through language-helping us see how we make up our minds and how we Ildllt)I' them =lt's excellent for helping writers know what to write, and helping us as 111111111';better understand how we actually work to persuade each other to accept our II.tI~ Ihrlc's great power in this kind of knowledge. As you start seeing the rhetorical 1IIIIIpips these readings demonstrate in action in the world around you, you'll understand ,'111"WilY your writing works as it does.

hapter Goals

• 10 understand the basic outlines of rhetorical theory and its relation to writing and human interaction

o 10 understand the concept of rhetorical situation and be able to apply it to reading ,"HI WIiling situations

• 10 understand how writers construct texts persuasively (or not) • 10understand how readers construct meaning from texts • 10 understand what it means to say tha I knowlodqo ii, (OIlS!r (lewd • to unrlorstand some approaches to rhetollrdlly 11I"rlY/It\lIII'XI~

What Is Rhetoric? .........................................................................................................................

WILLIAM COVINO and DAVID JOLLIFFE

• Covino, William, and David Jolliffe. "What Is Rhetoric?" Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries. Ed. William Covino and David Jolliffe. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1995. 3-26. Print.

Framing the Reading

Rhetoric is an incredibly difficult word to define because it refers to several different but related concepts. Covino and Jolliffe created an anthology of readings to try to build a big picture of what rhetoric is (and what it's about), as a way of trying to give the most com- plete picture. And to introduce that anthology, they wrote the introductory chapter "What is Rhetoric?" to answer that question from several different angles. That is the reading we have included here.

Covino and Jolliffe are well qualified to attempt to answer this big question. William Covino is currently President of California State University-Los Angeles, having spent his career researching persuasive writing and rhetorical theory. He's been very good at explaining some of the relationships between imagination, argument, and how writing can be most persuasive. Covino shares with David Jolliffe an interest also in literacy, with its focus on how people learn and use the systems of argument in their cu Itures. Jolliffe, who holds the Brown Chair in English Literacy at the University of Arkansas- Iayetteville, focuses extensively on the teaching of rhetoric, as well as the history of rhetorical theory.

Their chapter offers a set of comparative definitions of rhetoric from rhetorical theo- Iists throughout time, and in discussing these definitions, a sense of the term starts to ornerqe. Covino and Jolliffe also give an overview of some central principles or con- cepts of rhetorical theory that were first codified by Greek and Roman rhetors such as rsocrates. Aristotle, and Cicero from the fourth through the first centuries BCE. Readers who aren't familiar with rhetoric can experience this chapter as a difficult whirlwind of information. However, those who study rhetoric see it as a compact review of key (oncepts.

Ihis selection won't tell you everything you need to know about rhetoric. Instead, its purpose is to introduce you to key concepts that other rhetoric scholars use and assume tholr readerswill understand. This is a first opportunity to read about rhetoric and have key I oncepts explained. This (cwlIIHJwill serve as a reference; you can return to it for explana- l'I(JI1~of terms you'll C/1COlIIIII'1III 011\(11oltllrl('~

tlA11111I I HIWl<l1 It

tlnq Ready to Read

'/1)/(' YClII retld, do at least one of the following activities:

• WHIP a definition of rhetoric as you understand it right now. What does the word IT1Pdfl to you? How do you usually hear it used?

• (,oogle the two authors and find lists of what they've written. How do the titles of thelr books and articles change your sense of what rhetoric might be about?

" you I pad, consider the following questions:

• How is Covino and Jolliffe's discussion of rhetoric different than what you expected? • C an you think of any aspects of persuasion that don't get discussed in this chapter? • Which concepts do you wish you could learn more about right away?

....................................................................................................................................

I specify 1I0W that rhetoric is the functional organization of discourse, within its socia! and cultural context, in all its aspects, exception made for its realization us c1 strictly formal metalanguage-in formal logic, mathematics, and in the .sciences whose meta languages share the same features. In.other words: rhetoric IS ,111 of language, in its realization as discourse.

PAOLO VALESIO

NOVANTIQUA (1980)

ITlJC [unction of rhetoric} is not to persuade but to see the available means of persuasion ill each case.

ARISTOTLE

RHETORIC (c. 350 8CE)

I lrre (hell we haue in popular use two separate ideas of Rhetoric: one of which is ()(,C'II pied with the general end of the fine arts-that is to say, intellectual I'/(,IISII/'(,; the other applies itself more specifically to a definite purpose of utility, IIIZo, [raud.

TIIOMAS DE QUINCEY

"RltHORIC· (1828)

II rhetorician, I take it, is like one voice in a dialngn«. Put scucml Sitch voices ((JMI'(/U'I; tuitb each voicing its own spedal t/~~('lIil)lI,1,'1(Ii/'I/I til ( IIpOIlone ilIIO(/ler ill cootrcratiue competition, alit! ~'Ij// ~I'I ./ ,flit/I" tu (/'lI/.lmlllerly rI"II"/I1/1I'II, ran fl'ad to the views /1'1111\1 1'1/'/,111' (/'t /111111,1(/111/\ 11/"'11'1,.

KINNLllIOURKr

"tlill rome 01 D 11"'1) JIllW" (1!1~O)

l OVINO ,,"d JOLUI f E Wll<It Is Hhetor ir 1 327

Rbetcric ill (/'" /1/(111 g"I1,'/,d «onsclIIay perhaps be identified with the energy inherent in ctnnnuttucul unt: the emotional energy that impels the speaker to speak, the plrysica! energy expended in the utterance, the energy leuel coded in the message, and the energy experienced by the recipient in decoding the message. -GEORGE KENNEDY

"A HOOT IN THE DARK" (1992)

Nearly the entire history of writing is confounded with the history of reason, of which it is at once the effect, the support, and one of the privileged alibis. It has been one with the phallocentric tradition. It is indeed that same self-admiring, self-stimulating, self-congratulatory phallocentricism. -HELENE ClXOUS

"THE LAUGH OFTHE MEDUSA" (1975)

"What is Rhetoric?" This a difficult question for which there is no short answer. The difficulty begins with the fact that rhetoric is not a

content area that contains a definite body of knowledge, like physics: instead, rhetoric might be understood as the study and practice of shaping content . This is a common definition that has informed the vilification of rhetoric since antiquity. When rhetoric is regarded as the manipulation of the linguistic features of a text, it becomes associated by some with fraud, by others with the maintenance of institutional hierarchies. In this connection, studying rhetoric means studying how people get fooled, and rhetoric is understood as the opposite of troth. The rhetoric of a text is seen as its use of ornamental, pretentious, carefully calculated, sometimes bombastic language, through which the writer or speaker seeks power over listeners or readers.

If we consider rhetoric as the study and practice of featu.ring rather than 2 shaping content, we foreground its function as a tool for "special-interest groups." The special-interest-group rhetor selects and configures language so that certain terms are privileged and endorsed, and others are ignored. In liter- ary studies, for example, the rhetoric of the New Criticism appreciates unity, continuity, and coherence in literary works, and directs our attention to these elements; by contrast, the rhetoric of deconstruction finds literary value in the breah.down of these same elements. These two groups adopt different criticnl lexicons that strike us as mutually exclusive:

lr will be sufficient if [the reader] will understand the unit meanings with which Ihe poet begins-that is, that he understands the meanings of the words which the poet uses-and if he will so far suppress his convictions or prejudices as to sec how the unit f1)t:nnllll',~ 01 1~,lill;ilIIH':lninAS are built into a total context. (Cleanrh I\f't)oks, The WI,II Wi'll/Ill/II' 1111, ) ~))

In this id(.',rItnl, rill 1t,I \\1111 III 111.1111 .uul uuernct, without :lny one of them Iwillg :1111(' Itl ~IIIP,'~~ lilt" , 1111 I' I I~ II 1'"tI,I\Y 01 ~Igldril'r!>, nOI .r ~llllllll"I'

U8 (III\I'III{) f{lwlufil

of sll-\nificds; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we glllil ,I~U'~~ 10 It by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared 10 he the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can reach ... based as it is on the infin- ity of language. (Roland Barthes, S/2, 5-6)

Brooks employs the lexicon of units and unity, Barthes of multiplicity and I infinity. Analyzing the connection of lexical and syntactic choices to the special interest group that an author represents has become a common academic and journalistic enterprise, so that there are numerous studies of, for instance, the rhetoric of advertising and marketing, the rhetoric of political movements, and the rhetoric of religious institutions, as well as the rhetoric of academic language itself, such as literary criticism and philosophy. However, to the extent that the meaning of rhetoric is restricted in such studies to the linguistic features of the text, they evade a fuller-and, in fact, classical-portrayal of rhetoric.

The power of eloquence, as defined in 55 CE by the Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero, indicates the scope of rhetoric: "The real power of eloquence is such that it embraces the origin, the influence, the changes of all things in the world, all virtues, duties, and all nature, so far as it affects the manners, minds, and lives of mankind" (De Oratore 3.20). Eloquence, which is for Cicero an- other word for rhetoric, is activated by and affects changing manners, minds, and lives as it constructs our knowledge of the world. Taking as our cue this representative classical view, we would like to present the practice of rhetoric here as much more than verbal ornamentation, and the study of rhetoric as much more than a catalog of ideological buzz words.

Rhetoric is a primarily verbal, situationally contingent, epistemic art that is ~ both philosophical and practical and gives rise to potentially active texts. As we explicate this definition, we will attempt to interrogate it as well, recogniz- ing that any conception of rhetoric-no matter how broad-s-entails ambigui- ties and limitations. As twentieth-century rhetorician and philosopher Kenneth Burke said, "A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing" (Permanence and Change, 49).

The word text in our definition of rhetoric can be understood in both its (, conventional, quite limited sense, and its ambiguous, more rhetorical sense. In the former sense, we mean by text any instance of spoken or written language that could be considered in isolation as a self-sufficient entity. Thus, a book, an essay, an editorial, a song's lyrics, a joke, and a speech are texts, but so are a chapter, a section of an article, a refrain in a song or poem, and a contribution to a conversation. This definition of text may remind you of the definition of sentence that you learned in elementary school: "a statement tbat can stand alone." You probably realize now that this is an inadequate definition of a sen- tence, because no statement can "stand alone"; every utterance depends for its meaning on extrinsic factors. This fact is epitomized by a famous passage from Kenneth Burke's Philosophy of Literary Form:

Il1lilgilil' Ihal YOLI ('ilia a parlor. You COlllt' 11111'WIII'II ~"" IIIIVI', I1IIH'r~ h:1Vl! 101111 PI'I'Ii'dl,d YOII, IlIld tl1I'Y MI' l'n~;lgl'd III I III III tI til 'II lilli, II dl',I'II\\j(1I1

( ClVINCI nlld JOlliff I Wlt"l 1'1HIII.lol II I U9

lOll hcnrcd for theru III P,II1\I' .u«] 11'11you ex.u rly what it is about. III l.u t, I hI' discussion had already hl'l.\1111II)II~ before .IIlY of them got there, so th.u no 0111' present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before, You I" len for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the nrgumvnt, then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another COIlH.':-' III your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassrnvm or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of YOLlrally\ assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, YOli must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously ill progress, (110-111)

If we imagine a text as the momentary entry iMO an unending conversatinn connected to what Burke calls (after anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski) shifting "contexts of situation," we see that defining it as an independent and self-contained entity is something of a convenience.

We will use the term rhetor here to indicate an individual involved ill H t he production of a text, usually a speaker or writer; we will call reader .. and listeners who attend to and interpret a text auditors, or, as a group, till' audience. A text is potentially active when the rhetor intends it to do S0I111' thing, to affect or change the auditors' minds or actions or environ 111(' ntv. Rhetorical analysis is the study of whether and how texts actually do a I'll-I I, influence, or change auditors. The term potentially active bears some SCI'LII III here, as one of our students, Ulrike Jaeckel, indicated in her review 01 Ihl~ Introduction:

Does a rhetor ever NOT intend a text to do something? Since you include II ,I contribution to conversation" under "texts," pretty much any utterance CGII 1)(' come a text, ... even (specific instances of) "hello" or "thank you." Aren't thl'sl' "potentially active"-capable of producing an effect on a hearer-just by being uttered?

We agree that all utterances are texts, and all texts have the potential to ch n n~l' auditors. As Ulrike Jaeckel's response indicates, our term potentially active h,HI effects that we did not anticipate; that is, we did not assess its potential fully enough to predict that it might activate her questions. With this admission, WI' might draw a distinction between the intended potential activity of a text illHI its unintended potential activity. Rhetorical analysis is interested in both kind ... of potential.

As a primarily verbal art, rhetoric has as its medium the written and ~po 'I ken word, although many scholars study how visual images and nonvci h.1I sounds can complement the effect of a text's words. Some use the term rhe/ol'ic metaphorically and speak of the rhetoric of, for instance, gestures, paint illgs, or fi Ims. The elocutionn ry 1ll0V('I11l'nt of t he eighteenth and nineteen th ccmu rll'~ attempted an exhaustive IlIlilly~i, of jill' rommunicanve effects of bodily IIII1Vl' 1)1ClltS in order to :1dviM' III ,llllI~ 111111111 wluu kinds of body bngll::tg<' Nltill'd whnt kinds or SPl'l'dH'~. 11111till Illlllltlllllt~l~ 1I1,llk (;k'at' Ih:1I gl'SIUI'l'S do tlllt Iht'IIIM'lvt'~ l'Otlstillltl' 1'111'111111 I I till I. 1111 \1~II,d 1Ill.lgl· of IIIl' Ill('till Pilldllll'd

HO CHAPTER 3 Rhetollc

linguistic understanding in the auditors. For inst.uu v, II u'flllin contorti,on of the facial features would have them think and feci "pity." l'ollowing this un- derstanding, we may say that rhetoric inheres in the words that a visual image activates, so that the rhetoric of a painting, for instance, may be understood as the verbal understanding that accompanies its viewing.

As a situationally contingent art, rhetoric guides prospective writers and 10 speakers to consider the timeliness and suitability for the particular si~~ation of any text they might produce. Ancient Greek philosophers and rh~tonCla~s,h~d a useful term for this abstract concept: kairos. Inherent in kairos IS a sensitivity to the belief that in any situation where the potential for active communication exists rhetors must consider whether, from the point of view of potential audi- tors, the time, the circumstances, and the intellectual and ideological cl~mate are right. These are factors that are very difficult to control, let alone predict, In recent years, scholarship in the humanities and the social sciences has begun to recognize the difficulty of maintaining "stable" texts with determinate mean- ing; this recognition accounts for the difference in t~e statements by Brooks and Barthes above written in 1947 and 1970, respectively. Barthes's statement suggests that-giv~n infinite possibilities for meaning-kairo~ is an unachiev- able ideal. Adding to this view our recognition that the public realm any text enters is today more politically, ethnically, and intellectually diversified than ever, the contingent nature of rhetoric becomes a very prominent and formi- dable consideration.

As an epistemic art, rhetoric leads prospective auditors to see "truth" nei- II ther as something that exists in their own minds before communication nor as something that exists in the world of empirical observation that they must sim- ply report "objectively." Instead, rhetorical truth is something achieved transac- tionally among the rhetor and the auditors whenever they come to some shared understanding, knowledge, or belief. As coparticipants in a verbal exchange, aU the parties involved are knowledge-makers.

Philosophical rhetoric is primarily concerned with the exploratory c~n- 12 struction of knowledge. The philosophical rhetor is less concerned WIth the composition of a particular text than with exploring ways of knowing and defining a subject. Plato attempts to illustrate philosophical rhetoric m Phaedrus, in which Socrates engages in a question-and-answer exchange with Phaedrus about the nature of love, of rhetoric, and of writing, working through different possible meanings of each term. Ann E. Bertho~f has recently tried to engage writing students in a kind of philosophical rhetoric t~rou?h the use of a "double-entry notebook," in which they write about a subject U1 one column and then return to that writing at a later date, reconsider it, and write a critique of their prior thinking/writi~g in a facing column. In this ~a~, writers engage in a dialectical exchange With themselves a,s they :ry to chl,nk, and think again," as Berthoff puts it. Another form of philosophical rhetoric ml~ht be called topical rather than dialectical, originating in Aristotle's definition of rhetoric as "seeing the available 111cnns of persuasion" (Hhetol';r 1355b) through the subjection of an iSSlIl' 10 /(Jlm; or "topics," which :1rc ~tl':lt1:gi<:s

COVINO ond rorurre WIt,11 1\ HI" 101117 B1

(..uc II ;" comparison or nualogy) that contribute to full investigation, A~ .1 plulovophical art, rhetoric guides rhetors to think and observe deeply muuuvcly, systematically, and empirically. Philosophic or exploratory rhetoric ~11II ,11:-'0 be seen as the foundation for practical rhetoric. That is, sysrcrnnuc ('"plo~·ati,on I~ads prospective rhetors to find what they could say or write in IIpl'llhc situations when they plan a potentially active text, even if they do not Idually produce it.

Rhetoric is not logic, but tbey are related fields of inquiry. Logic studies I I IIIl' way a chain of reasoning leads from premises to incontrovertible conclu "1I111~. Rhetoric also studies how rhetors and auditors reason from premises to ~,,"c1l1sions, but it is located in the realm of uncertainty and probable truth, in wluch conclusions are arguable rather than incontrovertible.

Rhetoric is not dialectic, although Aristotle calls rhetoric the antistropbos 14 (WlInlerpart) to dialectic, and the examples from Plato and Berthoff above 'lIggl'st that rhetorical exploration can take on a dialectical-question-answer III cornrnent-response=forrn. In its classical sense, dialectic is a system of rea- voning about subjects for which there are few or no "hard," scientific data or proven premises. Rhetoric also addresses such subjects, but because the prac- IIll' :ln~ study of rh~toric take into account how rhetors actually shape their 1I';lM)nlllg processes 111totexts that appeal to a potential auditor's understand lUg and emotions, it is a more expansive, inclusive, and sociocultural1y alert :l1'1 t 11,111 dialectic.

Rhetoric is not poetics, but they are related fields as well, Poetics studicx I~ hu-rnry texts-poetry, fiction, drama, and so forth-as linguistic artifacts ex .unining such features as imagery, diction, textual organization, and rhythm. 111 III~Poetics,Aristotle discusses the ways in which tragic drama affects its audi "II(.'e,and this perspective suggests that both rhetoric and poetics are audience- oriented. The decisive distinction between rhetoric and poetics rests on rhero- 1 H, 's concern with tbe invention of an effective text: whereas poetics regards thi' clements of an effective live composition, rhetoric is additionally a body of resources for composing.

To anyone who would hold that rhetoric is merely an empty display of vcr- II> h.,! ornamentation or a facile use of one-sided terms and concepts, we would nllcr a broader view of rhetoric's scope: Certainly, the rhetoric of a text is the ",'Il'ction and organization of language it uses to move potential readers and lis- trners to consider its ideas and conclusions, But the rhetoric of a text is also the uucllccrual, cognitive, affective, and social considerations that guide the writer or speaker to use the language as he or she does, and the rhetoric of a text is till' "'ket it actually bas on people who listen to it or read it.

The Elements of Rhetoric ()Vl'l' rhe centllr,ics',Sl'h()III1'~ 1t,IVI"pi ndllll'ti works that explain principles, 1'l'cll 17 IlhIIH':S, :lnd All1d('hlll'~ 1111 I" III tit 1111\ rill' ,II'I of rhemric. Bectllls(' Ihey h,lYl' 1'.I'III'r:llly IWl'll IIsed 111 11',1, It 1'111 1"1111'1 1111'111 .... , "H''iL' w()1'ks hnvv O(ll'l1 h"l"ll

332 CHAPTER 3 Rhetoric

called rbetorica docens, the Latin term for a "tcnclung" rhetoric book, In midi tion, scholars over the centuries have studied what they regarded as excellent and effective texts-often speeches-produced by renowned rhetors, tl'ylill', to infer principles that other rhetors could follow, Collectively, the exernpl.u Y texts have been called rhetorica utens, Latin for rhetoric in use. The tradirion.rl body of concepts that we know as rhetorical theory is derived from both thI' works of rbetorica docens and rhetorica utens.

The major elements of rhetorical theory are the rhetorical situation, the elil I~ dience, the pisteis or "proofs" (and their subdivisions), and the five canons of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.

Although the concept of the rhetorical situation is inherent in the history I' of rhetoric from antiquity to the present, it is most clearly explicated ill an essay written in 1968 by Lloyd Bitzer titled "The Rhetorical Situation" (reprinted in Part III). According to Bitzer, a situation is rhetorical when three elements are present: an exigence, an audience, and rhetorical constraint' An exigence is a need, a gap, something wanting, that can be met, filled ill, or supplied only by a spoken or written text. We can say that the exigcnu- of a situation calls forth a text. Thus, exigence is related to kairos as ,I kind of "generative timeliness": The death of a famous person creates all exigence that calls forth a eulogy. Receiving lousy service from a public utility company creates an exigence that calls forth a letter of complaint. "1'11(' discovery of a new concept by researchers-for example, the discovery of till' dou ble-helix structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick-create, an exigence that calls forth an article reporting the discovery and arguing fOI' its importance.

The audience, according to Bitzer, is not simply the aggregation of people 'II who listen to or read the text called forth by the exigence. More specif cally, the audience comprises the people who have a reason to be concerned about the exigence and who are capable of acting on it or being acted UpOIi by it. The audience for a euLogy is the people who were connected, however remotely, to the deceased person and who are in the position to have thcii feelings of grief assuaged by the text. The audience for the letter of com pia inl is the people connected with the utility company who are in some position to see that the lousy service improves in the future. The audience for the rc port of tbe new discovery is the people who are concerned about the state of knowledge in the field and who believe that future research projects should be buiLt on the foundations of newly validated concepts, whether they aclu ally conduct those research projects themselves or simply keep informed of others who do.

Rhetorical constraints, according to Bitzer, are the features of the 'I audience's-and perhaps the speaker's or writer's-frames of mind, belid systems, and ways of life that lead the audience to accept the speaker's 01' writer's ideas and to act upon the exip,encc. I~hl'(()rical constraints include tlw ;llIdicl1cc's presuppositions and b(.'lid~ ,Jimlll IIIL' !-lIbjcct of the leXt n~ w('11 til-; thl' P:1t1'('1'1I1i of dt'l1Ionstrntiol1 (II pltHt! Ihllt liI(' i1lldii.'nci.' will ,H.:n'pl. It,

(OVINO iI'ICIJOtII" I Wltdl I', IU,,'lflll, I H

UtiWI word" t he constraints ,11 (' Id('.r:. .uid attitudes IhUI cxts: hl't W('\'II t lu- rlll'tor motivated to create discourse by the cxigence=-und the uuduor ..., who ideally will net upon this exigcnce. Constraints upon a eulogy include tln- f.lll" about the deceased person's life and works that the audience can he cxpnlt'd to kIlOW, ns well as the audience's beliefs about the thoughts and selltil1l('l1t~ that ,tn' comforting in a time of grief, Constraints upon the letter of C0ll1pLlill1 include the writer's conception of what would constitute good service, the fat. t, of till' situation that amount to lousy service, and the types of nppc.ils Ilw wriu-r believes she can make-appeals to her status as a good customer who rcgul.irly pays her bill, say, or appeals to the company's image as a truthworj hy provider of service-that will induce the company to improve. Consrrauu, UpOIl the research report include the beliefs, shared by the writers and till' audience, about the nature of an experiment or research project in the field, presumptions about the "objective" roles of the researchers themselves, tht- fact s of the experiment or project that the researchers are reporting, n nd till' patterns of reasoning they use (and fully expect their audience to "buy") ill order to argue for their discovery as something significant in the intellct:lllal community.

Although Bitzer's article brought together concepts that had already hn'lI " developed in rhetorical theory, some scholars found his characterizauon III cxigcncc, audience, and constraints a bit too passive, Thus, his work WI), \ ('I) productively revised in an article written eight years later by Richnrrl V'II/, titled "The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation" (reprinted in Part IV). TIH' pllIl, lem with Bitzer's depiction of the rhetorical situation, Vatz mainrniuv, I"". III Bitzer's tacit suggestion that exigences, audiences, and constraints (''il',t .1\ ,/ priori categories, before a rhetor chooses to produce a text. It's not t It,ll (' I gCIlCCS,audiences, and constraints are simply there, Vatz argues, and n 1111'1"1 simply trips over them and uses them. On the contrary, says Vatz, cxigl'IIU'" audiences, and constraints are created by rhetors who choose to activate Ihl'lli by inscribing them into their texts. In other words, a situation becomes rlWI01'1 cal only when a speaker or writer evokes an audience within a text, cmbodir, an ('xigence within the text that the evoked audience is led to respond to, ,llId bnndles the constraints in sLich a way that the audience is cOllvinced thai tlH'Y arc t rLieor valid. Bitzer's and Vatz's articles represent two major cOl1lrihllt i()m to an important debate within rhetorical theory about whether text:, :-.illlply recognize and make use of certain conditions or whether texts actually 1.:1'\',111' those cond,itions.

Audience At first glance, the concept of alldience in rhetorical theory Sl'elllS ,il11pll 'r to ilhlstrntc, but thai sinlplit ily i~ lil'ccptive. The term atldi('I/((' eillilodl(" a IlIl'taphor from the "WIIII'I, ,lIld IIrd,'('d when n speech is givt'll Iwf'ml' ,Ill ,'~"l'l1lbly, we can i"lY Ih.11 "1.11 (,,11"1111'11 of pl'opl(.' i~ :11) :1 lid 1\' III I' 101 1111 I;Pl'\'~h, In Otlli.'1 word .., II" 111111 ,mdtf'llff'l,lll Idl'I'nlill:-.ivl'iy 10 rllIl~I' whl!

{"',I/ ,I "pt'('lh or pvrlormnncc, as suggested h} ,I 'oIllllll.lIIsl.lllOIl of atultn-, 10 111',11, Bill the definilion of audience become 1111I\ldl'I,lhly t.uigfcd wlu-n W(' (oll"dn three complications: First, spoken 11',1.. ,II,' ulu-n recorded 101 1.11('I 11'01l'1I11l~or transmiued electronically beyond the SC:Iling where they ;H(' pl'I'lorll1l'd, Second, spoken texts are often performed versions of previouslj \\'1'111('11 1C:)(I1"or nrc trallsc,ribed into written form after they are spoken, and .irc Ihll10 available for audiences completely removed in both time and span' 110111the person who delivered the speech, Third, most of the texts we en rruuucr nrc never spoken or intended to be spoken, but instead are written .1~ld, like transcribed spoken texts, may be read by anyone who happens to PI, k t hem up,

SdH!I~r~ have trie~ to accommodate these complications by reconsidering 'I thI' ~1l'hnJtl()n of audience. ~hey have, for instance, distinguished the primary .uuli: ..-nce for a text from various subsidiary audiences; this distinction has also hl'('11 drawn using thc terms immediate audience and mediated audiences. Con "Idn ;~Ilexample: The ,governing council of an economically developing city lOll1mls.~I()nSan ecologist to write a report on the environmental implications of ()p~I~lng 1I~ a cer,tain re?ion of the city for commercial real estate develop mcnt. I he primary, immediate audience for the ecologist's report would be the cuy council members. The report, however, would probably have at least sev n.t! subsidiary or mediated audiences: the aides to the council members who Il';ld il~,p()rrant documents for their bosses and help them digest the ma~erial; Potl'l1fta I rea I estate developers, who want to see whether their entrepreneur. 1.11 pl:ln~ arc favored or foiled by the document; writers for the local medin, wlto ;lre r,c~pollsible for reporting such issues in newspapers, magazines, radio, .llId lelevlslon; and members of environmental protection groups, who wanl I~I111;)ll1lnll1thc ecological viability of the region in tbe face of what they con- ~Id('f t hrcats ~osed by commercial development plans, The ecologist's text, to 1)('II10SIeffective, would have to add(ess the concerns of all these audiences in ~(jlll(' wny.

I~r:lwillg on ca~lonical works from antiquity thwugh the eighteenth century, 'I Ir:ldlllon:ll rhetOrical theory has conceived a text's audience as some individual 01 l'nllt-ct~ve "other" whom the rhetor must identify, analyze in psychological .llld ('m()tlO~al tcrms, and then, by means of the text, "change" in some way so thal they will adhere to the rhetor's central idea or thesis. This traditional view 1t.1~ .1hree.drawback~. Firs.t, it I.argely limits attention to tbe primary, immediatc ."Idltol's ,Ill a rhetOrical SItuatIOn, and generally ignores any subsidiary, medi- ,I('t.! :llIdlellces. Second, the traditional view tends to assume an antagonistic Il-LltlOIl hetwcen the roetor and the audience; it tacitly posits that there is somc Idl'ologi,t:nl, cmotional, or psychological condition that must be changed withi.11 till' ;'Iudltors before they can accept the rhetor's ideas. Third the traditional Vil'Wigllor.cs t1~cshare?, dialectical nature of communication b'y characterizing III(' I'hl"1onca I IJ1teractlon as moving i.n onc d ireel jon, (roil) lilt' rhcror to the ,\llditor: The rhctor is the sender and thc :ltldil()1 i-: IIH' l"I'l't'iV('r.

Clrarly, rC:11cOl11l11unication does IlOI 0IWloIti' 011 ~11I1t1111 1lllllIl'tiinrc OIlC· lh w,'y, agonistic Strcet. SOl11erhcOI"isTs h,IVI' I 1I1111.lI. d lit. Illlh Ipl o( :llId;l'Ilt'l"

I ClVINIl1111111111111't Wh.1 t Hill I " 10 J i" ••, tr.uhuunnlly tl·'·illl·d III 1111IDlll.11 rlu-ory, WIth the concept of speech; (0//1 III/II/If)!, as developed III 'PI 11111111',111\1Il\. The result has bccu the (orging oj ,I ucw concept, discourse cnnunurnt y, un entity defined by Martin Nystrnnd ill 19HZ. A. discourse community, according to Nystrand, comprises people who "m.iy very well never speak or write to each other," but who "could effectively '" interact if required since they know the ways-of-speaking of the group" ( I ~;emphasis in original). In a 1991 work, John Swales provides a more eOI11- pn-hcnsive definition of discourse community: It comprises people who strive III achieve a "broadly agreed set" of epistemological or social goals by means III their spoken or written texts, who employ "mechanisms of intercornmu- mention alllong members," who use "participatory mechanisms" to provide information and feedback concerning one another's texts, who lise one or more ucnrcs "in the communicative furtherance of [the common] aims," and who conventionally use "some specific lexis" (24-27). Consider, for example, the kind of discourse community that has developed in many contemporary in- dustrial settings as quality control operations have been shifted from a single department to the production workforce as a whole. Instead of having a com- pany inspector examining the products as they are being made, the workers themselves assess the products and they document, in writing, what is working well, what is not working, and what needs to be done differently in future ~hifrs. They meet regularly, usuaUy in "quality control teams," to go over the quality control documents they are writing and to pJan modifications to both production and the documentation system; they produce a common genre, thc "quality management report," which embodies their common knowledge o( appropriate content, diction, and format. These workers form a discourse t:ol11mLInity,

The concept of a discourse community allows rhetorical theorists to analyze 27 interactions among rhetors and both primary and subsidiary audiences, and to illustrate how audiences and speakers and writers influence each other's texts. A clear example of such an analysis is provided by the work of Greg Myers, a linguist at Lancaster University in Great Britain. In the early 19805, Myers studied how two academic biologists-one a well-known researcher in his field and the other attempting to publish his first article in what for him was a new area-shaped their personae as they wrote grant proposals and articles for pro- (essional journals. Myers was able to analyze how the two biologists reacted diFferently to the responses by the grant proposal reviewers, as well as how the biologists tried to shape their articles to accommodate the range of auditors in their discourse community, which included the reviewers, the journal editors, and the readership of the journal.

Thc concept of audience is further complicated by the question whether the 2H audience in mind is "addressed" or "evoked." As noted previously, rhetorical Ihcory has traditionally wnceivcd the audiencc as an isolated, llsually all 1:1~()nistic other wholl1 1'I1l'tori."nvc to "lIddrcss" and "accommodate" in thcir texts. Icarl y, thert' ill'(' flOIIlI' Ihl'lt II'i~;l1~illl,1t ions in wh ieh rhe tranStlt:rioll hl·t'WL't'nthe rheto .. ;\1It11111 .lllIllltll~ 1111111,..11.. 11'l'xat:tly thr.t wny. Hul (IS cnrly :l~ 11)7~, wilh thl' puhlirlllfUIl III \V till I 11111'.... 1·'~.ly, "The Wriler's Alidil'lIl'I'

Hfl UIAPII II I Hllt't or l:

I~ Alw,IY~ a Fiction," rhetorical theorists hq'"lll III I h.iructcrizc the Wlill'l render i~lIl'raction in s~me texts as construcuvc 1':l1l1l'1' I han adaptive. I n (II III I words, II~ some rhetorical situations, writers cannot know with any ccn.nun who, their readers are; accordingly, writers work to construct an audience. pbYIll,g on the assumptions and operating within the rhetorical constr.uur-, to which ,tI,ley presume the constructed audience would adhere. For example, when, writmg a letter to a friend or colleague, discussing common ideal> III l'xpenence~, a writer addresses an auditor personally and immediately a , ,I I.,nown en,tlty. On t~le o~her hand, when writing an article for mass public.i non, a writer I?Ust Inscr~be or Invoke the interests, knowledge, and needs of ,I presumed audience. In either case, the rhetor determines the role of the auch t',nce as par~ of tl:e pr.ocess of composing. A full explanation of this conccp ~:on ~f audience IS offered. by Lisa Ede's and Andrea Lunsford's 1984 article, ,AlI~lence Addressed/Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Compos: non I'heory and Pedagogy."

Means of Persuasion ~.Il ancient term for the kinds of appeals that may affect an audience is pisteis. I he concept of the pisteis is Aristotelian, and the singular term pistis, usually IIIH.le,rstood as "proof," "appeal," or "means of persuasion," is one of those l ~asslca~ Gre~k term~ for which we have no precise English equivalent. In hi .. /,In'/orrc, Anstotle discusses three sorts of textual appeals: to the authority of the rhctor (ethos), to the ~motions or "stages of life" of the audience (pathos), ,Illd to syste~ns of reasonmg (logos) that the rhetor and the audience shart'. 011hough Anstotle categorizes the appeals separately, examining their open! IIon clearly shows that they intersect and interact. , ,~3thos is generally defined as the good character and the consequent cred Ibllity of the rhetor. Theorists. in ancient Greece and Rome did not agree among themselves whether ethos eXlsts solely in the text a rhetor creates or whetbcl' ~hc rhetor, lUll,st evince ethos in his or her life as well as in his or her texts. Ar- Istotle mallltamed the former position: He taught that a text must demonstrate Ih,:lt the rh,etor is a person of good sense (phronesis), virtue (arete), and good wtll (eunola). A rbetor could not depend, according to Aristotle on the audi- :~cc's knowing more about the rhetor's ethos than the text itseif established. Ihe tC,xt must do the job. The theorists who translated and adapted Greek I'hctonc for Roman life, notably Cicero and later Quintilian tended to take the cxternalist position. Quintilian, who referred to ethos with the Latin term al/ctori/as, maintained that the character of a speaker or writer was as v.ital as thl.! repre~entations of ,it within a text. Thus, Quintilian taught that the expert ill rh~tol'lc was the VII' bonus dicendi peritus: the good ml/II Isicl skilled at qp<..'uklllg.

i\l.though rhcl'c arc clearly instances WIlI'I'I' till' "t/III~ 111,1 l'helOI' is dCIl1- II ()1l~tr:11('(1,by n~tions ,1ncl examplcs ill lif('1 h('IIIII',1 tl' t~ ,III' (Odny so (rc- ljlll'llIly dls~enllnilted and C0t1S1111Wd ,1'1111'11111\, l'tlII' 1111' ,,"thor, it is Sl:1l "hll' 10 l'x,lIl1illl' IIH' WilyN Ill(' Il"o;l~ 1l1l11l~11'1 III 111111,I 1llI'lor's I'Ilms.

IIlVltW ",,,I JOIII" I Wh,ll I 111...1'111" HI

( ()1l~ltlcl, lor I.!xall1pk, tI", IIIIIVI 11111111 III published academic papers of us- IIIg f(;olnotcs and bihllogl ,l(1hll'~ to cite prcviously published ~tudies. Why dtll'~;1 writer do this? Surely, some readers could lise these citatIOnS to check till' accuracy and validity of the writer's intellectual antecedents, and some renders might use them to guide their own reading 0: research on ,the same vubjcct. Actually, however, such citations operate to mvest the wnter-and rhus the text-with phronesis: good sense or "practical" wisdom. The wnt~r hecomes more credible because she has done the required homework m t he field and shown it through the citations. Consider, to continue using the published academic paper as an example, the tradition of. listing .the ,!IIthor's academic affiliation in a byline, an address line, or a bIOgraphlcal paragraph; here is an example recently published to accompany an article

hy William Covino: William A. Covino is professor of English at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where he teaches in the graduate program in language, literacy, and rhetoric, His articles on rhetorical theory and history have appeared in several journals, and his books include The Art of Wondering: A Revisionist Return to the His- lory of Rhetoric, Forms of Wondering: A Dialogue on Writing for Writ~rs, and Magic, Rhetoric, and Literacy: An Eccentric History of the Composing

Imagination. Although certainly some readers might want to corr,es~ond with the aut~or or 32 read sometlling else he has written, for most such a Itstmg amounts to a d~splay of arete a demonstration of affiliations and activities that amount to "virtue" in an a~ademic context. Consider, to take a final example from this genre, the degree of deference an author shows to previous studies, ~ven if ~is or her work will diverge radically from them, and the amount of polIte hedgl11g the au~llOr of an academic paper demonstrates when setting out the significance of hiS or her own thesis.

The pioneering histories of rhetoric produced early in the current revival (Ken- nedy, Corbett, and Kinneavy) have served virtually to bring into existence for ~ twentieth-century audience authors and text ignored under the philosophic tradi- tion. The task at hand now is to examine more closely the method of reading we bring to those texts and, more broadly, to the whole discursive field v:ithin which they take their places. The result will be different readings of canorucal texts, as well as the identi.fication of new significant sites of" rhetoric" in its more compre- hensive sophistic definition. (Susan Jarratt, Recreating the Sophists, xix).

Jarratt might conceivably have been more dismissive of previous s~bol~r. II ship and more brash in asserting the importance of !ler own, Mallltaln ing eunoia.-good will toward the discourse commumty she hopes to cn- p;age with her work-requires the more respec~ful tone struck here" a t o IlL' wc recognize as a !it I'rltql,i~ ('IPP('('II at d,c Sill11etime that we presume It to he

sinccrc. ' We have nlready n'hllil-ll til tIll' ~I'IIIIHI tl',ldicional pistis in our disCL1~SIl)1I III

01 Illitiit'llCl'. Thi~ i~ till' ,IPI" t1 ttl /llltIJl", ',nllit'lillles called Ihe /Jllth()IIt' ()I'

338 CHAl1rl!fi ~ 1{I)(Itollt:

thl' emotional appeal. The central idea Ill1d"II}1I11\/1,111,11 I.. Ih,'1 .m effective text will somehow activate Or draw upon the SYIIlP,Ilhil'" ,lIld l'llIolions of the nudirors, causing them to attend to and accept its ideas, propovuions, or calls for action. As with ethos, the source of most later rhetorical theory concerning pathos is Aristotle's Rhetoric. In Book 1, Aristotle describes in detail the emo- tions he believes a text, depending on the rhetorical situation, could activate in order to persuade one's audience: anger, calmness, friendship, enmity, fear, confidence, shame, shamelessness, kindness, unkindness, pity, indignation, envy, and emulation. In addition, he categorizes potential audiences into social groupings according to character types-the young, the elderly, people in their prime, aristocrats, the wealthy, and the powerful-and analyzes the dominant emotions inherent in each of these character types that a text might try to animate.

Two points about Aristotle'S view of pathos are noteworthy for understand- H ing the role of this appeal in rhetorical theory. First, his catalog of emotions and characters is thoroughly ethnocentric, tied to his purpose of providing instruction in rhetoric to young men who strove to gain political influence in fourth-century BeE Athens. There is little to suggest that rhetors in all, or even most, current rhetorical situations would find it wise to appeal to the emotions as Aristotle defines them. Nor would it probably be wise for rhetors to stereotype their auditors into Aristotle's categories. Nonetheless, the basic move that Aristotle's treatment illustrates-fitting one's text to the character Iypcs and states of mind that make up one's audience-remains legitimate in ell rrent rhetorical activity. Second, Aristotle assumes a neutral stance toward ethical issues related to pathetic appeals. Certainty current rhetorical theorists, ;1~well as rhetors, need to distinguish between texts that indiscriminately titil- "He and pander to an audience's emotions and texts in which pathos is tied to a virtuous ethos, in which a rhetor of goodwill seeks to evoke the same in the audience.

The third pistis is logos, the appeal to patterns, conventions, and modes of 110 reasoning that the audience finds convincing and persuasive. Although it is common to translate logos into its cognate, the "logical" appeal, such a trans- lation is imprecise and potentially misleading. Logos in ancient Greek means more than simply logic or reasoning; it means something like "thought plus action." Thus, just as ethos moves an audience by activating their faith in the credibility of the rhetor and pathos stimulates their feelings and seeks a change in their attitudes and actions, so logos, accompanied by the other two appeals, mobilizes the powers of reasoning.

Although logos has been explained using different terminology by rhetorical thcorisrs over the centu ries, the "logical" transaction they describe can always be characterized in the same general way. A rhetor enters a rhetorical situation either knowing, or prepared to discover, what she and her audience hold as WIll1110n assumptions about the subject that she will di~CII~~.Knowing that she will hnve to invoke these common assull1plioll\ l'llllI'l IIl1pllritly or explicitly ill "('I' lexI, silt' prl)t.:t'ed~ to offer:l pn:ll1i'>I' III 011,,11111111111 "hOIII Iht' sitU:1liOIi

l()VIN() IIntl)0111111 Wh I I 111111 III tty

,11 hand, about the SlIhjl'l I III till" u-xt. With the commou :1Sl,lIlllpllllll\ Illvul,nl and the premise or ohscrvnuon put into play, the speaker can t111'11 posn ,I i un elusion that follows from the assumption and the premise; this L()mlll~I()1I I.... in general terms, the central idea or thesis that the speaker or writer hOPl'''' I hI' audience will believe or act upon. The key feature of this basic "logicn l " Inlll.., action of rhetoric is that none of its constituent elements is alway", 01 l'VI'1i frequently, certain and beyond argument. That is, the speaker or writer l11ighl find herself in a wrangle with the audience about (1) what they do believe, think, or feel in common; (2) whether the premise or observation is just ,111<1 appropriate; or (3) whether the conclusion-> the centra I idea or thesis-actu:l lIy does follow from the assumptions and premise, and even if it docs, whcrlu-i there are other circumstances that would prevent the audience from acccpum; the conclusion. Conversely, the speaker or writer might find the audience III perfect agreement with some or all of the constituents, in which case the '(10).',1 cal" rhetorical transaction succeeds grandly ....

This basic transaction of logos-assumptions, assertion or observation, alld IN claim-is called an enthymeme. According to Aristotle, speakers or writers ,II guing a case either construct enthymernes or cite examples; those arc the oulv two persuasive devices available. Unfortunately, Aristotle's own dennilioll "I the enthymeme is quite sketchy. He explains that the enthymeme is to 1"1,("111111 what the syllogism is to logic. A syllogism offers an incontrovertible pi (lpCl',' tion as its major premise, an empirically verifiable observation as it~ 111111111 premise, and a necessary, logical conclusion; an enthymeme, however, mighl 111 contentious at all three points. It is a "rhetorical syllogism" that depend,> fill acceptance upon the context in which it occurs. In the centuries since Amll1 tie, rhetorical theorists have tried to flesh out his suggestive definition. SIIIIH' have seen the enthymeme as a materially deficient syllogism because neither II'> premises or conclusions are provable; some have seen it as formally dditil'lll because the major premise-what the rhetor believes that the audience Pi" surnes to be true-often goes unstated, and the minor premise-the a~sl'rt 1011 or observation-is occasionally implicit as well. Contemporary rhctork i;lll~ have largely stopped trying to distinguish the enthymerne from the syllogi..,lI, simply accepting that the two logical devices have some formal and mntcn.il similarities but are essentially different.

The other logical device Aristotle describes, the example, might illlll,d" seem the converse of the enthymeme, but actually the two devices arl' relnll'll. Anyone who has ever argued a case knows the value of ciring a precedent. II you are campaigning for a Republican presidential candidate and al'gllil'fl ,1,011 he or she will act decisively to protect American economic interests ill 1111' 1111 rich Middle East, you might cite the precedent of George Bush's ""I lOll'>III IIII' Gulf War and claim rhar your candidate will be equally decisive. 'I'll Amilltl,. however, an example i:-.more than a single instance that acts as ;1 pi "II,tI, III The Creek word AI'I~I(l' It, II~I'~for example is paradeigiua, (rom wlucl: 1;lIf~II~11 draws the cogn:lll' /1111'/1/,,1:111 It I 111' rhl.'lorically effective, nil r\llillpll' 11111',1 ()f'(l'r:1 "('/>('II/I't/ /It/I/I'III III 1111'11'11"111'. For l'x,lrnpil-, if ,I rlW11l1 " ,111',111111\

140 (ItAI'!II. I Khl'lOlic

Ih,ll, dcspirc ils advocates' claims to the (0111,,11),. Ihl' "Stnr Wars" tldc'ml' ,y"H'1Il will probably be used aggressively .uul UItI'II'1IVl'ly, she might l'lll' till' example of previous weapons systems: "They said the incendiary bond, would be used only for defense and it was used offensively; they said til!' hydrogen bomb would be used only for defense and it was used offensively; they said the atomic bomb would be used only for defense and it was USl'" offensively. Shouldn't we expect, then, that the 'Star Wars' system will be used offensively?"

Although the enthymeme looks like what a logician would call a deduction I" ;111d the example looks logically like an induction, they are similar in theil effect rhetorically. As James Raymond has percepti.vely noted, the example is itself a kind of enthymeme. Its major premise, the unstated assumption, i~ that history tends to repeat itself. Its observation, its assertion about the situ ntion at hand, consists of the pattern of precedent-setting instances. Its claim is the conjecture about the future that follows from this premise and the cited instances.

Although the enthymeme and example are usually discussed in rhetorical II theory under the rubric of logos, these two tools of argument are not devoted exclusively to appealing to the logic and reasoning of the audience. Indeed, in order to move an audience to believe what the rhetor holds as a cornmu nnl assumption, to accept her observation about the subject at hand as valid .md legitimate, and to adhere to the conclusion that she claims follows from I lu- assumption and the observation, she may need to deploy pathos and dims as well. That is, arguing enthymematically may require her to appeal 10 the audience's reasoning, emotions, interests, and to her own credibility and character,

The Canons of Rhetoric III addition, altbough the enthymeme and example are often discussed in rhc torical theory as elements of logos, they are also central elements in the first 01 what the Roman rhetoricians proposed as the five canons of rhetoric: invcn Iion, a rrangernent, style, memory, and delivery. Each of these canons is con sid crcd separately later in Part II,but conceptual definitions of each at this point will suggest how they have been developed as general features within rhetorical theory.

luueution is the art of generating effective material for a particular rhc II rorical situation. Some rhetorical theorists have argued that invention is not ,I completely appropriate term for this canon because the rhetor often docs 1I0t generate new material, but simply calls it forth from memory. Invention requires the rhetor to assess the audience in order to determine what they (l'('I, think, and know about the subject he intends to spcnk or write about; 10 d(·t~'rnlill(.', at lensl provisionally, whar PIlI'pOSt' I1\' hOI'I'~ hi" Il'xt wi.1IRCCOlll plish; :111<1Ihus to decide what kinds of IIIIIII'II,iI I II t~, PI'opllsitions, idcnl'\, illld ~!) oll-l1l' will inscribe in rhe 11''(1. 11111 1111111\ tllI'IIII~, litl'Hl' ddcnni'Hl t ions tlt'l' II1:1d('SllhC()IlSd()u~ly, sitnltltllill l"l ..h, 111.1 1'1111.'1" I'VI'II f'iltld()lIt1y,

lOVIN() '''Itl )0111111 wu,u I, HI,,'IIIIIII .i41

NI tlwt he less, such dcdi'i'()II~ .illow lite rhctor to probe his thoughts, k nowlcdge h.l.,l'; .md experiences and the data in the world around him, and to generate m.ru-rinl he believes will be effective for the particular audience and purposes Ill' will invoke. Some rhetors effect this search for material using techniques "'Ill'tific to their particular discipline. For example, a writer constructing an "~lIl1lel1t in literary criticism may search a novel, poem, or play for some apparently anomalous or distinct feature of plot, character, theme, or diction, with a view to explicating it. Some rhetors, on the other hand, invent material hy using some form of structured heuristic (derived from the Greek for finding) technique, such as an abbreviated form of Aristotle's topoi, Kenneth Burke's dr.unatistic pentad (which investigates human action as the interaction of All, Agent, Scene, Agency, and Purpose), the common "journalist's questions," 01' t he tagmemic matrix (which adapts terms from physics-particle, wave, lil'ld-as categories for understanding the nature of a unit of information). l'inn Ily, some rhetors may generate material using a relatively unstructured, even intuitive, heuristic such as freewriting, brainstorming, and drawing tree diagrams.

Arrangement, sometimes called "disposition," is the art of ordering the 44 material in a text so that it is most appropriate for the needs of the audience .uid the purpose the text is designed to accomplish. Every effective rhetor understands, at least intuitively, that in most conventional situations a text must have a beginning, a middle, and an end but methods of producing this order differ widely. Some speakers and writers considering arrangement mny use principles drawn from ancient rhetoric; in general terms, these principles suggest that an effective argument is specifically ordered first to rapture the audience's attention, second to provide necessary background information, third to state and prove the text's thesis or central idea, fourth I() anticipate and address possible countertheses, and finally to conclude by .ippcaling to the audience's emotions. Rather than relying on any general laws, however, most rhetors derive principles of arrangement from the genres thci r discourse community values and expects from speakers and writers wirhin it. For example, a writer of scientific research reports knows that lor her text to command the attention of people in the discipline, she must write an introduction that frames a research question, a section outlining the methods and materials involved in her research, a section detailing the results of the specific project, and a section arguing that these results actually mean something significant.

Some rhetorical theorists have included under the rubric of arrangement 4S not only principles for ordering entire texts, but also guidelines for arranging information within smaller units, such as paragraphs. The work of the Scottish rhetorician Alexander Bain, for example, led many scholars in the lute nincreenth and early twentieth centuries to describe the arrangement or mnrcrial in both whole lcxt~ nnd parngrophs according to the mode of dis('()II'rs(J they were SUppos('d III dl~plny: ll:trr:11'ion, description, cxpositioll (oftt't1 suhdivided into Sill'll "1I1I'''IOd~ III I"jlosirion" as Ctlllse-:\l1d (,(fl.'cl, d!'lillilioll, COlllpllrisoll contl,lId, 111111 ',11 (111), ,llId nrglll1ll'l1t<1liol1, Filially,

342 (HAPTER 3 Rl1ctori{

~OI1'C rhetorical theorists have trca LCd ""Ill''' fli I ht· 11'1.11ivc im portnncc III mformarion under arrangement. One mode 01 .111,1I1f.\1.·l1lcnt-by-impof'l:1l1ll' i" Ncstorian order, named after the clear-voiced orator of the Greeks in Ih(' Trojan War. Nestor, according to legend, would begin a speech with the nex: 10 most important information, then provide the least important, and elm" with the most important.

The canon of arrangement has been called into question with the advent " of postmodernisrn, in particular through the insistence rhat no text ever IT ally "begins" or "ends"; rather, as Burke's "conversation in the parlor" above suggests, all texts enter into a larger text. The artificiality of beginnings a I1d endings has been explored by postmodern writers such as Roland Barrhes, ;" the excerpt above from S/Z indicates. For an audience of postmodern literary theorists, then, the rhetor might deliberately create a discourse that violates till' conventions of arrangement, one that accepts and welcomes the disorderliness of open intellectual play.

Style, sometimes called elocution, is the art of producing sentences and words that will make an appropriately favorable impression on readers 01 listeners. Traditionally, the canon of style has included discussions of levels of language-the grand, the middle, and the low, for example-as well ;I.. explanations of tropes, or figures of thought, and schemes, or figures of actual expression. To cite just three examples: Under the rubric of tropes, rhetorical Iheorists have explained the nature and uses of metaphor (implied comparison). personification (the attribution of human qualities to nonhuman entities), and synechdoche (the substitution of the part for the whole). Under schemes, rhetorical theorists have catalogued such devices as parallelism (creating n similarity of structure in a set of related words, phrases, or clauses), ellipsis (a deliberate omission of words that are readily supplied by the context), and anaphora (the repetition of the same words at the beginning of success iVI.' phrases or clauses). A great debate in the history of rhetoric has surrounded till' question of whether style is simply an ornamentation of thought and speech, or whether style is "organic" to the specific text and represents, as Thomas De Quincey proposed, the "incarnation of thought."

Most modern rhetorical theorists have adopted some version of the latter position and see style as the process of "giving presence" to ideas that rhcrors want their audiences to attend to. Chaim Perelman, among others, has dis- cussed presence in terms of the emphasis that the rhetor gives to "events which, without his intervention, would be neglected but now occupy our attention." The rhctor can do this by presenting images that will affect an audience- "Caesar's bloody tunic as brandished by Antony, the children of the viet im of thc accllsed"-or by applying techniques of amplification (e.g., "repctition. accuillulation, accentuation of particular passages") Chill highlight the "renl ilY" Ihat the rhetor would like to presenl (PcI·l'IIII~III.TIlt' l{eai11'1 of nhe/()rIC, H ~7),

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however, memory is lIlItll'l going something of a revival in corucmpor.u y theory. In classical periods, rhetors were expected to commit their spccchc-, 10 memory, In later periods, the art of memory was taught to young rhciors .," a means of mental discipline, even though they most often read texts thnt had been written out. The most commonly taught mnemonic method was tor rhcrors to associate the parts of the speech with visual images in some specific physical setting. For example, a rhetor could mentally connect the uuroduction of his speech to the porch of a house, the background narration 10 the foyer, the thesis and proof to the arch and the grand ballroom, and the conclusion to the antechamber. As rhetoric over the centuries became more .md more an art of crafting and delivering written texts, the canon of memory diminished in importance. In current rhetorical theory, however, computers .irc being used to store monumental databases and rhetors arc devising in- I rcasingly inventive ways to manipulate these data, so memory is becoming a vital canon once again.

Delivery, the final traditional canon of rhetorical theory, once constituted lO the art of using one's voice and body effectively when speaking. Elaborate Iheory and pedagogy, in both classical periods and later in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was developed to teach rhetors how to pronounce words. project their voices, and move their faces, arms, hands, and even legs and feci. III departments offering courses in public speaking today, contemporary prin- ciples of delivery are still being developed; where rhetorical theory and peda- gogy are more concerned with written texts, the canon of delivery has come to embrace the study of graphemics, the display of material on the printed page Ill' screen.

When one teaches rhetoric, either its theory or its effective practice, one 51 1.111 teach principles of invention, arrangement, style, memory, and deliv- l'r'y as general tenets, applicable in varying degrees to discourse in aLI fields. Ilowever, as suggested earlier, rhetoric has developed during the second half of this century as the study and practice of the featuring of specific content t hat is vital to the epistemological and social functions of special-interest groups. The title of a 1983 book by Christopher Norris, The Deconstructiue l'urn: Essays in the Rhetoric of Pbilosopby, suggests what might have been rcga rded as a heretical idea in centuries past-that philosophy is rhetorica I. l'hc "rhetoricizing" of academic subjects that were once regarded as objcc- live, and whose scholars regarded themselves as disinterested, comes along wi Ih the postmodern recognition that a II discourse serves to adva nee ccrrn iII mtcrcsts, certain versions of truth and facts that serve individual and inst i !ll!ional biases and motives. One of the projects of rhetoric has become till' IIlvcstigation of how such biases and motives are insctibed into acadclllh.: .Intl scholarly discourses, and so we see increasing attention by hUm::lniSl\, ,,~'il.'l1tists, and social SCi('l)lisl\ 10 Ihe pis/C'is of the writing that defincs [heir fit'ltls. The presence of dH'lnl'il III o!llvI' fi('lds is addressed extensively in Pili'! IV of this book in onl"1 III ',11".1\1" \dr.11 ,I ",Iohnl :lrt rhetoric has bl.·col1l~· 111 0111Iilll~',