If there's anything I learned from our recent reading assignment, is that rhetoric can be found and determined from anywhere and everywhere. It's a point definitely relevant to previous discussions we've had, from last week's discussion of "you should probably get to know the culture a little bit and step away from your own biases before trying to study someone else's rhetoric" to our questions throughout the semester of what is or isn't rhetoric.
In a way, the way the chapters tell about how rhetoric in foreign cultures can be pieced together reminds me of a detective story. Anything and everything can be suspect (of rhetorical influence) and potentially related (to a single canon/set of canons), and if you can piece together each piece or story, perhaps you might find a pattern. The reading showed how many things can be used to cautiously piece together how rhetoric might work within a specific culture, from pottery, to specific people, to religious texts.
However, it is important to remember to be careful when putting these puzzle pieces together. As we discussed on Thursday, it is extremely important to leave your own biases and assumptions at the door when analyzing foreign rhetorics. Of course, the best way to begin to analysis is to get as close to the source and immerse yourself in the people and culture. The problem is that many of the examples being discussed are extinct cultures, such as the Incas or Native Americans for example, who it would be highly difficult, if not impossible, to find a legitimate representative for.
The problem that I felt existed in the chapters we read is that while the people and items examined by the professors are technically able to lead to legitimate conclusions about how rhetoric might have worked in early cultures, it would also be too easy to place personal biases into that analysis. For example, when looking at the rhetorical figure of a historical figure such as La Malinche, one cannot be too quick to assign motive to her, or even to say the strategies she used would be common canons for her culture. After all, Confucious seemed to have his own ideas of rhetoric that varied a bit from other Chinese rhetoric.
But what can be used to objectively analyze a culture of the past? In one of the articles we read last week, "Reflective Encounters: Illustrating Comparative Rhetoric," Mao talks basically about how reflective encounters may be the best way to objectively analyze a culture's rhetoric and its canons. As far as I can tell, we understood reflective encounters to basically boil down to analyzing rhetoric through a thorough understanding of language and surrounding culture, so that we can understand exactly how rhetoric canons work as if we were in that culture, rather than analyzing through western eyes.
On Thursday we talked a bit about the Sapir-Worf hypothesis, which basically demonstrates how language can show what a culture perceives, values, and how they think. I think this actually relates a bit to what we discussed about reflective encounters, as well as to the current reading. By discovering what words are repeated or less stressed upon in a language we gain insight to how a society might think or value in a relatively objective way.
Of course, all of the puzzle pieces are important. In order to understand and try to present from anyone's perspective we need to gain as thorough of an understanding as we can, whatever form of expression of that culture we might look at -- art, writing, debate, or a personal history. I'm just making the point that in the important quest to remain objective in this research, whatever we can learn of language should likely remain as a starting point.
Questions:
1. When hoping to find rhetorical canons of a foreign and now extinct culture, is there any additional suggestions you would make to look for? (texts, art, etc.)
2. Can you make any connections to the Sapir-Worf hypothesis and what is rhetorically valuable in our society today?
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