Let's just cut to the chase: 3 weeks until Comps. Let's not kid ourselves. We're in the trenches.
As such, this morning's topic of choice is :::drum roll:::
Rhetoric & and its relation to audiences. Why? Well I'm glad you asked, that's because it's the intersection I studied today. And in order for the information to sink just a bit more comfortably into my short-term memory, I'm going to synthesize it here, with a quick discussion on rhetoric according to Herrick (2009).
[Segue: I threw a fit for about 3 minutes earlier today complete with kicking a box in my study and a surprising shout of "LIFE SUCKS!" that startled no one but Duke. Although even he was only half-startled given my odd hours and strange behaviors these days. But yeah, life is not splendid at the moment and except for periods of glee when I'm occupied with work or with social gatherings, I am not un-depressed.]
Herrick defines rhetoric as the "systematic study and the intentional practice of effective symbolic expression" (7).
Rhetorical discourse boasts six features:
1. Planned
2. Adapted to an audience
3. Shaped by human motives
4. Responsive to a situation
5. Persuasion-seeking
6. Concerned with contingent issues
Most of these are self-explanatory, or which I can elaborate on fairly easily, but Audience requires its own spotlight, because as Herrick notes, "Rhetoric stresses commonality between a rhetor and an audience" (10).
On this topic, from the classical tradition we have an obvious choice in Aristotle, who in Book II of Rhetoric, not only identifies three very specific audiences in his discussion on forensic (jurors), deliberative (legislators), and the epideidic, explores the roles of the audience as well as the characteristics held by those who sit in the audience. To the former, Aristotle believes audiences are responsible for holding the rhetor accountable for what they say. Whereas the rhetor seeks to persuade the audience through the artistic proofs of appeal, audience is still the one who must grant that they have been so persuaded. One key feature of argumentation under the topoi of logos is the employment of deductive reasoning, specifically with the use of the enthymeme. Enthymeme are considered rhetorical syllogisms, which are "arguments built from values, beliefs, or knowledge held in common by a speaker and an audience." This is clear when we consider that while a syllogism may be structurally sound, the conclusion will be false if the premise is false, namely if the audience is not "in on the joke," or in agreement to the unspoken premise.
[Segue: I've decided to hand-write the comps, because typing out answers will take too much time. I'm more fluid with a pen.]
Moving toward the Modernists, we have Kenneth Burke, although it may be a good idea to reserve him to bat cleanup when it comes time to write my rhetorical criticism of whatever artifact. Nevertheless, a quick and very easy connection to draw between Burke and audiences can be found in identification, one of the tenets to his logology. As quoted in Herrick, Burke observes that "you persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your ways with his" (A Rhetoric of Motives, 1996, 55). Identification is also derivative of the Catholic idea of consubstantiation, or the taking of the body an blood of Christ, in that identification means an exchange of essence with one another, thereby establishing a mutual recognition. A rhetor, in order to achieve their purpose, must be able to establish identification in such a way. Through some type of mean. For example, in visual communication, identification may be achieved through the use of recognizable symbols that inspire certain emotions or joined meaning. This ties back to Burke's most well-known articulation of the definition of human: "Man is the symbol-using (symbol-making, symbol-misusing) animal, inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative), separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the sense of order), and rotten with perfection" (Language as Symbolic Action, 1966).
Finally, we have Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca's discussion on particular and universal audiences. To P&O-T (to save time), "all argumentation aims at gaining the adherence of minds, and by this fact, assumes the existence of intellectual contact" (The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, 14). They chose to use argumentation as the topic of discussion given the context of the times, where rhetoric had been reduced to being talked of as mere fluff, so they wanted to reframe the discussion in an attempt to revive rhetoric. Returning to their definition of the nature of argumentation, where essentially it means there is no argument if there is no one we're trying to convince, they propose the two types of audiences. Furthermore, they state that the quality of the audience ultimately determines the quality of rhetoric. In this vein, it sounds similar to the Aristotelian proposal of the responsibility of the audience.
Tomorrow, I will wrap up audiences and continue with a discussion on the functions served by rhetoric, it's another set of six. And then we'll take a look at the relationship between rhetoric and power. Did someone say Foucault...?
Time to pass out so I can wake up to study some more.
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