Chapter 9
Rhetoric and Modernity
Chapter Overview
Chapter Nine focuses on renewed interest in theories of argument and audience in the twentieth century. The theories of Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca link argument to a theory of audiences in their search for a new rhetoric. Theorists searched for a means of testing and verifying value claims without reference to transcendent standards such as belief in God or rational confidence only in science. Perceiving a similar problem in Western culture, Jürgen Habermas suggested the means by which we might equip an entire society to conduct more rational discourse. This chapter also explores twentieth century theories focused on rhetoric as situated and possessing a narrative quality. Theories considered in this chapter include those of Lloyd Bitzer, Walter Fisher, and Ernest Bormann. Scholars in the rhetoric of science examined the rhetorical ways that scientists pursue their work. Theorists examined include Geertz, McCloskey, Campbell, Fahnestock, John Lyne, Alan Gross, and others writing on the rhetoric of science.
Review Questions
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Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca saw the “universal audience” as a test of arguments that transcended local or personal biases. Their theory of argument was concerned with non-scientific and non-theistic reasoning for values, and thus audience became central. The “universal audience” then was a check for conscientious rhetors to test their arguments beyond the opinions and values of their immediate audience.
Habermas’ goal is to create a more equal and rational society. He argued for a society that was free from ideological domination. Communicative action is critical discourse that overcomes ideological domination, communication committed to fully explaining one’s position, honestly arguing that position to a hearer, and expressing one’s intentions in communicating. Habermas believed that this type of communication would lead to more rational discourse and create a more rational society.
Simons writes that advocacy is inherent in presenting data, theories, and points of view, while Lyne points out that these scientific communities exist in a communicative network that involves rhetorical practices. Rhetoric is crucial to sciences including economics, anthropology, psychology, and biology. Recognizing the rhetorical dimensions of these fields allows for greater understanding into how they work and limits their power as allegedly neutral and objective institutions.
Rhetoric of science as a field of study, according to Depew and Lyne, is mature and well established compared to many other “Rhetoric of X” fields. They note that the rhetoric of science has sixteen separate genres of research, studying everything from famous scientists to scientific writing. Overall, they describe a field of study that consists of a “small but proud scholarly field that seeks simultaneously to contribute to rhetorical studies and to secure a place for rhetoric in the conversation of … science studies.”
Bormann argues that stories and narrative plots develop within groups to establish mutually accepted meanings. He argues that the community’s identity emerges from the stories that have meaning for the entire group. He uses the term fantasy themes to describe stories or plot lines that develop from a group’s stories. These then form fantasy types which are basic plots that are repeated in a variety of group or organizational stories. Bormann also comes up with the concept of an organizational saga which groups will use over time that acts as a longer story of the group’s history in the form of a legend.
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Essay Questions
- One problem facing modern Western society is its inability to provide a framework for reasoning about questions of value and action. Describe the solution to this problem suggested by Chaim Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca. What is at the heart of their solution? In what ways can their proposal be understood as rhetorical in nature? Is their proposed approach likely to provide a solution to the problem they pose themselves? Does their theory have something to offer by way of providing a means of reasoning reliably about questions of value and action?
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John F. Kennedy’s address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association
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Recommended Readings
Want to learn more? Check out these bonus readings!
On the Place of Argument in Rhetoric
Perspectives on Argumentation: Essays in Honor of Wayne Brockriede. Ed. Janice Schuetz and Robert Trapp. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1990.
Charles Arthur Willard. Argumentation and the Social Grounds of Knowledge. Huntsville, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 1983.
On Chaim Perelman
John R. Anderson. “The Audience as a Concept in the Philosophic Rhetoric of Perelman, Johnstone, and Natanson.” Southern Speech Communication Journal 39 (Fall 1972): 39–50.
Lisa S. Ede. “Rhetoric Versus Philosophy: The Role of the Universal Audience in Chaim Perelman’s The New Rhetoric.” Central States Speech Journal 32 (Summer1981): 118–25.
The New Rhetoric of Chaim Perelman. Ed. Ray Dearin. New York: University Press of America, 1989.
John W. Ray. “Perelman’s Universal Audience.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 64 (December 1978): 361– 75.
Allen Scult. “Perelman’s Universal Audience: One Perspective.” Central States Speech Journal 27 (Fall 1976): 176–80.
By Chaim Perelman
The Idea of Justice and the Problem of Argument. New York: Random House, 1963.
Justice. New York: Random House, 1967.
The New Rhetoric and the Humanities. Trans. William Kluback. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1979.
On Habermas
Andrew Edgar. The Philosophy of Habermas. Montreal: McGill University Press, 2005.
Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, “What Is Maturity? Habermas and Foucault on ‘What Is Enlightenment?’” in Foucault: A Critical Reader, ed. David Couzens Hoy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 110.
Susan Wells, Sweet Reason: Rhetoric and the Discourses of Modernity (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 114.
By Habermas
Toward a Rational Society. Trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1970.
Knowledge and Human Interests. Trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971.
Theory and Practice. Trans. John Viertel. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1973.
Communication and the Evolution of Society. Trans. T. McCarthy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1979. Communication and the Evolution of Society. Trans. Thomas McCarthy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1979.
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures. Trans. Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987.
By Lloyd Bitzer
“The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (December, 1968): 1–14.
On Lloyd Bitzer
Mary Garrett and Xiaosui Xiao. “The Rhetorical Situation Revisited.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 23 (1993, no. 2), 30–40.
On Rhetoric as Narration
Anne Dipardo. “Narrative Knowers, Expository Knowledge.” Written Communication 7 (January 1990): 59–95.
Narrative and Argument. Ed. Richard Andrews. Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1989.
Reading Narrative. Ed. James Phelan. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1989.
On The Rhetoric of Science and Inquiry
Dilip P. Gaonkar. “The Idea of Rhetoric in the Human Sciences.” Southern Communication Journal 58:4 (Summer 1993): 258–295.
Kenneth Gergen and Mary Gergen. “Narrative Form and the Construction of Psychological Sciences.” Narrative Psychology. Ed. T. R. Sarbin. New York: Praeger Press, 1986: 22–44.
Thomas Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Second edition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1970.
John Lyne, “Rhetoric and Scientific Communities,” in Rhetoric and Community: Studies in Unity and Fragmentation, ed. Michael J. Hogan (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), 266.
The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences. Ed. J. Nelson, A. McGill, and D. McCloskey. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.
The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry. Ed. Herbert W. Simons. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
On the Rhetoric of Anthropology
Alessandro Duranti. From Grammar to Politics: Linguistic Anthropology in a Western Samoan Village. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994.
Clifford Geertz. Works and Lives. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988.
Narrative in Culture. Ed. Christopher Nash and Martin Warner, London: Routledge, 1988.
John Van Maanen. Tales of the Field. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
On the Rhetoric of Economics
D. N. McCloskey, The Rhetoric of Economics. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.
On the Rhetoric of History
Allan Megill. “Reconstituting the Past: Description, Explanation, and Narrative in Historiography.” The American Historical Review 94:3 (1989), 627–653.