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Rhetorical Theory - Coggle Diagram

- - - - locutionary ("saying") and illocutionary (performing of the act)
    - - Burke: act-agent ratio operates temporally, not spatially i.e. becoming the President
      - Burke's pentad: act is the key term and the source of others (Creation story)
    - - Burke: persuasion and identification/consubstantiality are related, at different points each of them may be highlighted
        
        you persuade someone by identifying your interests with his
      - Burke: persuasion implies choice and "is directed to a man only insofar as he is free"
  - - - Burke: Rhetoric is concerned with the state of Babelafter the Fall. Its contribution to a "sociology of knowledge" must often carry us far into the lugubrious regions of malice and the lie. P. 23
    - - Burke: rhetoric is characterized by ambiguity (inherent in the notion of substance itself): it's not science, but it is "real"
      - Burke: rhetoric is both realistic and idealistic
      - Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteca: argumentation (rhetoric) as the realm of the probable/possible
      - Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteca: they don't like the idea that humans are divided between reason and intiution/feeling. They want to chart a middle way between logic and feeling.
    - - Burke: Rhetoric is an art, not just a magical "bad science". That means we should not try to treat it “scientifically” because this will be reductive and make our society look more primitive than it is.
    - - Burke: dialectic, unlike rhetoric, is designed to get to truth; we can't test rhetoric on a true/false basis
      - Austin: all statements are only true/false contextually; there's no such thing as a constative utterance really
      - Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteca: argumentation is not about finding truth, but promoting adherence/assent
        
        in philosophic arguments, philosophers want to get to truth, not adherence, but this is really just an instance of a specific elite audience (other philosophers)
        
        "facts" and "truths" are things presupposed/agreed on by the universal audience, which can be challenged as the audience changes
      - Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteca: quasi-logical arguments
        
        key point: quasi-logical arguments "derive their persuasive strength from their similarity" with formal reasoning
    - - Burke: science isn't really "autonomous" either but "smuggles in" a theological motive
    - - Perelman and Obrects-Tyteca: their study as a break with Descartian reasoning
        
        rhetoric combines the mind and the emotions
  - - - Burke: rhetorical motives can operate "without conscious direction by any particular agent"
      - Berger and Luckmann: processes like reification cover up the world's socially created character, reversing the relationship of nature and culture/manmade creation
        
        but this is not bad
    - - Burke: "An intermediate area of expression that is not wholly deliberate, yet not wholly unconscious. It lies midway between aimless utterance and speech directly purposive"
      - Burke: Rhetoric has particular problems with consciousness--it's not easy to tell what people are aware of, what they are responsible for
      - Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteca: the "rhetorical value" of a statement isn't diminished if it was added after the decision has been made. Sincerity doesn’t matter in argument.
        
        Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteca: we should see rationalizing as "a pleading that is thought out in advance for the benefit of others" 42 (example: magistrates making decisions first then rationalizing them,
    - - Goffman: people can be cynical or sincere in performing social roles
    - - Austin
    - - Burke: rhetoric is unnecessary under compulsion
      - Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteca: Some people think argument is just a sham, a cover for coercion. they don't totally reject this, but don't totally agree either. They think there is some real persuasion sometimes, but "it is an illusion to imagine that the conditions for this communion of minds occur naturally"55
      - Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteca: "when a value is in question, a person may disqualify it, subordinate it to others, or interpret it but may not reject all values as a whole: this would amount to leaving the realm of discussion to enter that of force" 75
- - - - rhetorical tropes often do this for us: "many purely formal patterns can readily awaken an attitude of collaborative expectancy in us"
      - versus persuasion
        
        we persuade through identifications, but we might also use persuasion to create identification: overlap/not really separable
      - "the rhetorician may have to change an audience's opinion in one respect; but he can succeed only insofar as he yields to that audience's opinions in other respects"
      - :
    - - Goffman: audience plays an important role in interactions
        
        audiences judge if a performer "deserves" the role (connection to status)
        
        "mystification"=distance between performer and audience
        
        udiences also manage definitions for performers through a "veneer of consensus" and various protective practices like tact
        
        audience segregation: keeping the same audience from seeing different performances
      - Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteca: argument (rhetoric) is totally relative to audience
        
        audiences are "systematically constructed" by speakers
        
        "universal" audience: universal audience imagined by speakers: "refers...not to an experimentally proven fact, but to a universality and unanimity imagined by the speaker"31.
      - the self as audience
        
        Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteca: Agreement with oneself is merely a particular case of agreement with others" 41
        
        Burke: rhetoric is always addressed to an audience, but the audience can be in your head (psychological subterfuge)
        
        adherence requires a "community of minds" even if someone is just talking to themselves
        
        Goffman: the audience can be an idealized "reference group"
    - - Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteca: the point of rhetoric (argument) is adherence
        
        arguments must therefore start with agreement between speaker and audience
        
        Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteca: speakers in epidictic genres try to "establish a sense of communion centered around particular values recognized by the audience" 51
      - Burke: "belonging" is a rhetorical act
        
        for effective rhetoric, you need a match: "only those voices from without are effective which can speak in the language of a voice within"
  - - - Identities
        
        Berger and Luckmann: identity as a location within the social world
      - Berger and Luckmann: social roles can be reified, for example “The Jew.” Reification is not just typification because it has an “ontological and total status”
      - Goffman's "role": "the enactment of rights and duties attached to a given status"
        
        "impersonation" is allowed to differing degrees depending on context/status
        
        often involves credentialing or training periods
    - - Institutionalization (Berger and Luckmann):a “reciprocal typification of habitualized actions by types of actors” 72, i.e. the coming together in agreement on a certain typification.
        
        institutions become reified
    - - later Goffman (frame analysis)
      - Burke: circumference: Every act, even “scientific” ones like animal experimentation, is shaped by the circumference we use to frame it
        
        "To select a set of terms is, by the same token, to select a circumference"
        
        Burke: Reflection is selection is deflection--what we think we "see" is really a reduction of the world (also, terministic screens)
      - Berger and Luckmann: Institutions define the limits of the “knowable” in society, so deviance from their knowledge feels like a departure from reality.
        
        Berger and Luckmann: Berger and Luckmann: the uneven distribution of social knowledge is "like a flashlight beam in the forest"
        
        Berger and Luckmann: symbolic universes "set the limits of what is relevant in a social interaction"
      - Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteca: presence
        
        Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteca: "all argument is selective. It chooses the elements and the method of making them present"
        
        things that are present to consciousness gain importance for us
        
        Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteca: people choose facts in order to persuade not just in obvious cases like newspaper editorials, but also in science, etc. this chioce includes "choice of the actual elements that constitute facts" 116
        
        speakers can also deny presence to manipulate (example: dehumanizing an enemy)
      - Berger and Luckmann: social stock of knowledge: Social Stock of Knowledge: language organizes things into semantic fields, which make up the social stock of knowledge that we participate in together. and permits the 'location" of individuals in society and the 'handling' of them in an appropriate manner
        
        unevely distributed
        
        includes "recipe knowledge" (how to do things, not why)
  - - - Berger and Luckmann: (at least partially rhetorical) processes
        
        legitimation
        
        "maintenance" processes
        
        socialization
        
        institutionalization
        
        leads to symbolic universes, which are totalizing
    - - rhetoric is a means of "inducing cooperation"
      - Burke's identification makes "making A "consubstantial" with B (paradox of substance means that such identifications are always partial and contain division)
        
        "But put identification and division ambiguously together, so that you cannot know for certain just where one ends and the other begins, and you have the characteristic invitation to rhetoric"
        
        rhetorical tropes involve identification both "universally" and by including a partisan statement within that universal appeal (for example in nationalism)
      - Burke: images "body forth" the ideas of their age; image and idea come together and are bound by identifications
    - - primary socialization
        
        happens in childhood through "internalization"
        
        creates a "home world"
        
        Is a strong force; the child has no choice and participation is “quasi-automatic”:
        
        creates subjective identity through interaction with significant others: "the self is a reflected entity"
      - secondary socialization
        
        institutional socialization; roles are often partial
        
        the more like primary, the stronger
        
        problem of dealing with primary socialization
    - - performers manage audience impressions through defining social situations
        
        regions
        
        Front region: where the performance is given
        
        backstage
        
        less formal but still performative
        
        hidden from audience
        
        outside
- - - - see circumference
      - Burke: governments and others can manipulate the ratios of the pentad to deflect/redirect attention
      - Burke: the more autonomous or aesthetic something appears, the more political it is
        
        examples from college education (status) or science
      - Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteca: People use quasi-logic to criticize others’ thinking:
        "By making this charge, one takes advantage of the prestige of rigorous thought" 194
    - - therapy (bring dissidents back in line)
      - nihilation (deny dissidence/alternate realities)