Dialectical Rhetoric - Softcover

McComiskey, Bruce

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0874219817 ISBN 13: 9780874219814

Verlag: Utah State University Press, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

In Dialectical Rhetoric, Bruce McComiskey argues that the historical conflict between rhetoric and dialectic can be overcome in ways useful to both composition theory and the composition classroom.

Historically, dialectic has taken two forms in relation to rhetoric. First, it has been the logical development of linear propositions leading to necessary conclusions, a one-dimensional form that was the counterpart of rhetorics in which philosophical, metaphysical, and scientific truths were conveyed with as little cognitive interference from language as possible. Second, dialectic has been the topical development of opposed arguments on controversial issues and the judgment of their relative strengths and weaknesses, usually in political and legal contexts, a two-dimensional form that was the counterpart of rhetorics in which verbal battles over competing probabilities in public institutions revealed distinct winners and losers.

The discipline of writing studies is on the brink of developing a new relationship between dialectic and rhetoric, one in which dialectics and rhetorics mediate and negotiate different arguments and orientations that are engaged in any rhetorical situation. This new relationship consists of a three-dimensional hybrid art called “dialectical rhetoric,” whose method is based on five topoi: deconstruction, dialogue, identification, critique, and juxtaposition. Three-dimensional dialectical rhetorics function effectively in a wide variety of discursive contexts, including digital environments, since they can invoke contrasts in stagnant contexts and promote associations in chaotic contexts. Dialectical Rhetoric focuses more attention on three-dimensional rhetorics from the rhetoric and composition community. 

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Bruce McComiskey specializes in rhetoric and composition, classical rhetoric, and professional writing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His most recent publications include Teaching Composition as a Social Process, Gorgias and the New Sophistic Rhetoric, a coedited collection titled City Comp: Identities, Spaces, Practices, and the edited collection English Studies: An Introduction to the Disciplines.

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Dialectical Rhetoric

By Bruce Mccomiskey

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2015 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-87421-981-4

Contents

Preface, 
Introduction, 
1 Historical Trajectories of Dialectic and Rhetoric, 
2 Dialectic in (and out of) Rhetoric and Composition, 
3 The Dimensions of Rhetoric, 
4 Three-Dimensional Dialectical Rhetorics, 
[5 Three-Dimensional Dialectical Rhetorics in Digital Contexts, 
Appendix A: Assignment Sheet, 
Appendix B: The Grass Is Greener, 
Appendix C: Infiltrating Our Home with Love, 
Appendix D: The Constant Power Struggle, 
Appendix E: Jumping in the Car, 
Appendix F: The Journey to Motherhood, 
References, 
About the Author, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Historical Trajectories of Dialectic and Rhetoric

Throughout their history together, dialectic and rhetoric have been engaged in an uncertain and sometimes difficult relationship. At its best, dialectic has been the counterpart of rhetoric, the fullest development of argumentative knowledge on any given subject; and at its worst, dialectic has been the useless claptrap of academic disputation. At its best, rhetoric has been the counterpart of dialectic, a means to construct new knowledge and convey it to public audiences following dialectical deliberation; and at its worst, rhetoric has been the aesthetic dress of dialectical thought or the clear transmission of dialectical truth. Throughout their relationship, the meanings of dialectic and rhetoric have shifted according to the personal interests of individual authors, the institutionalized pressures of social forces, and the material circumstances of historical contexts.

It is not my goal in this chapter to provide a definitive description of dialectic and its relationship to rhetoric for each individual figure or historical period I discuss. My goal is to describe the historical relationships between dialectic and rhetoric by selecting from certain influential figures the salient aspects of their approaches to dialectic and rhetoric that illuminate the historical evolution of the concepts. In other words, I intend to paint a picture of dialectic, rhetoric, and their relationship through time in broad historical strokes rather than minute textual pixels. I will first examine the birth of dialectic and rhetoric in sophistic practice and their systematization as arts in Plato's (1961a; 1961b) Gorgias and Phaedrus. I will then trace the evolution of dialectic and rhetoric through various subsequent historical contexts, all of which exert different pressures on the individual characteristics of dialectic and rhetoric and on their relationship together, highlighting conditions of acceptance and rejection and the transformations that have accompanied dialectic and rhetoric throughout their journeys.

DIALECTIC AND RHETORIC IN THE CLASSICAL PERIOD

Before Plato systematized the difference between dialectic (the mutual pursuit of metaphysical truth and ethical action through conversation) and rhetoric (the individual pursuit of popular opinion and public success through uninterrupted speech), many of the fifth-century BCE Sophists made no distinction between a person's knowledge of right and wrong and the language that person used to convey ethical values and recommend right conduct. In the Protagorean text called the Dissoi Logoi, for example, the anonymous author writes, "It is necessary for the man who intends to speak correctly to have a knowledge of whatever things he might discuss and to give the city correct instruction in doing good things and thus prevent it from doing bad ones" (Sprague 1972, sec. 8.6). And in the Defense on Behalf of Palamedes, Gorgias (1972a) points out that Odysseus's own crime is speaking without knowledge: "It is clear that you do not have knowledge of the things about which you make accusation. It follows that since you do have knowledge, you have an opinion. Do you then, O most daring of all men, trusting in opinion, a most untrustworthy thing, not knowing the truth, dare to bring a capital charge against a man?" (sec. 11a.24). For many of the Sophists, then, what they called logôn technê (a phrase that appears in the Dissoi Logoi) was essentially the art of appropriate knowledge and ethical speech. And while what we now know as dialectic may not have been practiced by these Sophists, some of them did base certain aspects of their rhetorical practice on the notion that opposing arguments exist and must be understood.

The fifth-century BCE Sophist Protagoras believed that for every matter there are two opposing arguments (logoi), and the Dissoi Logoi suggests that the opposed arguments are based in the distinction between nature (phusis) and culture (nomos). In what I like to call the garage-sale metaphor, the author of the Dissoi Logoi writes, "I think that if someone should order all men to make a single heap of everything that each of them regards as disgraceful and then again to take from the collection what each of them regards as seemly, not a thing be left, but they would all divide up everything, because not all men are of the same opinion" (Sprague 1972, sec. 2.18). This is the culture argument — that judgments regarding what is seemly and shameful derive from individual and communal values. Later in the Dissoi Logoi, the author provides the opposing argument:

I would be surprised if things which were disgraceful when they were collected should turn out to be seemly and not what they were when they came. At least if people had brought horses or cows or sheep or men, they would not have taken away anything else. Nor, again, if they had brought gold, would they have taken away brass, nor if they had brought silver, would they have taken away lead. Do they then take away seemly things in exchange for disgraceful ones? Now really, if anyone had brought an ugly , would he take him away handsome? (Sprague 1972, sec. 2.26–28)

This is the nature argument — that a thing either is or is not seemly or shameful, and one's individual or cultural values are irrelevant to such judgments. Although the author of the Dissoi Logoi does not suggest any practical rhetorical uses for opposing arguments, any modern reader of the text can see applications to concepts such as invention and audience awareness.

In sophistic dissoi logoi, opposing arguments (nature, culture) exist side by side and are not brought together in any particular way. Interestingly, in Plato's early dialogues, before he had fully formalized what we now know as dialectic, Plato's character Socrates practiced a strategy of argumentation based in the Protagorean distinction between nature and culture. In the Gorgias, Callicles points out how Socrates caught Polus in a contradiction about the nature of rhetoric:

For, Socrates, though you claim to pursue the truth, you actually drag us into these tiresome popular fallacies, looking to what is fine and noble, not by nature, but by convention. Now, for the most part, these two, nature and convention, are antagonistic to each other. And so, if a man is ashamed and dares not say what he thinks, he is compelled to contradict himself. And you have discovered this clever trick and do not play fair in your arguments, for if a man speaks on the basis of convention, you slyly question him on the basis of nature, but if he follows nature, you follow...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Utah State University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0874219817
• ISBN 13: 9780874219814
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 236
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar