Bias Towards Western Rhetoric, as Seen through Google

The main point of Villanueva's essay, "On the Rhetoric and Precedents of Racism" is to show that rhetoric is not a purely objective thing, there are many causes for subjectivity in rhetoric, and racism is an issue that, even if we are not aware of it, causes much subjectivity in rhetoric. Some of the subjectivity pointed out is regard to credibility, or more accurately what our ideas of credibility are as have been built from the past. We tend to give more credibility to philosophers who follow western thinking, as demonstrated with the analogy of a Mexican philosopher vs. a French philosopher.

Part of this is that Western philosophers tend to be more well known. The beginning of Villanueva's essay discusses non-European influenced rhetoric in Peru and Mexico. The article demonstrates that the Aztecs and Incas were capable of intelligent rhetoric that is not totally unlike our own rhetorical strategies, but until reading the article last week, I hadn't known that at all. On the flipside, even those who have never taken a philosophy or rhetoric class have probably heard of names like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The way our culture's research and education is currently focused, western rhetoric and philosophy definitely has an advantage over non-western.

Even Google seems to share a bias towards western rhetoric. The other part of our homework was to search for non-Greek, non-traditionally western rhetoricians. This proved to be a bit tricky. Let me demonstrate this: When I type "Ancient Greek Rhetoricians" into Google, the search results give me much about Greek rhetoric and specific Greek rhetoricians, and the first search result is a Wikipedia page with a list of 3 possible subcategories to ancient Greek rhetoric and 55 ancient Greek rhetoricians, including names we have seen in our readings such as Protagoras and Gorgias.

Now what happens when I change my Google search to "Ancient Chinese rhetoricians"? The first search result is the exact same Wikipedia page as the previous search. Never mind that I specified "Greek" nowhere in the search terms, the word rhetoric is so tangled with Greece that Google figured that must've been what I meant. The next search results, rather than offering specific Chinese rhetoricians, instead offer suggested articles under the helpful heading of "Non-Greek Rhetorics." After that, there were only a few links that could be useful. It took several attempts at narrowing my search down before I began to find truly useful info.

If you're thinking that this simply means Chinese rhetoric is just not at thing, this is simply not so. I have found a fair amount of articles and dissertations analyzing specific aspects of Chinese rhetoric, though with the exception of Confucius, very few names are mentioned. Still, this doesn't excuse the relative lack of research I found, on Chinese rhetoric, vs. the amount found on Greek rhetoric.

When we live in a digital age where the potential for so much information is at our fingertips, we sometimes forget that the information we are shown through technology is as subject to social and cultural biases as anything else, and our worldview can become limited through this ignorance. Creating equality in research and digital technology search results, including in issues discussed in Villanueva's essay regarding the relationship of race and ethos, is just one more bridge that will hopefully be crossed at some point in the future.

Finally, here are the articles I found on Chinese rhetoric and rhetoricians:

-Reading the Heavenly Mandate: Dong Zhongshu's Rhetoric of the Way (Dao)

- Cultural Factors and Rhetorical Patterns in Classical Chinese Argumentation

Also, this next link is a super long dissertation that I admittedly haven't looked into much yet, but it seems too interesting to not mention:

- A Comparison of Greek and Chinese Rhetoric and Their Influence on Later Rhetoric

Burke Introduction

The reading of Burke we did seems to focus a lot on motive, semantics, and how arguments can be differently framed. He reminded me of one of the Sophists we originally read about, Prodicus, who had a personal obsession with finding the exact meanings of words. Unlike Prodicus however, Burke seems to enjoy the ambiguity of language, or at least feel that ambiguity isn't something that needs to be completely eliminated, saying that "what we want is not terms that avoid ambiguity, but terms that clearly reveal the strategic spots at which ambiguities necessarily arise" (xvii). Basically, Burke is arguing that you can still have ambiguity in language, as long as the ambiguity or source of ambiguity is clear. 

Burke also speaks of three conventions in language that he called Grammar, Symbolic, and Rhetoric. The reminded me of Aristotle's three canons, Logos, Pathos, and Ethos; while they are not exact equivalents, they are similar. I had a bit of a difficult time understanding what he means by Grammar, since he doesn't seem to mean it in an identical way as we use it today -- in regards to punctuation and whatnot -- but rather as a something like facts or fitting exactly within the intended definition or rules of a convention. Something similar to how we see grammar today, but Burke's version seems to encompass a broader spectrum of language. After that, Symbolic seems to mean expression within language, and Rhetoric is of course equal to persuasion in language. As he points out though, the three often overlap. 

I thought Burke's point about how an argument or statement can be portrayed differently depending on the person looking at it, for example his example of how a portrait painter would see the body as an agent versus the medical man who would see the body as the scene of an action/motive, or the more interesting example of the counter-agent being a necessity for the agent. It's sort of an interesting continuation of the "revolutionary" (at the time) discovery way back, the idea that "on every argument there are two sides." What Burke is doing is explaining how both individual people can see a subject or argument differently, or how someone could intentionally take the ambiguity of an argument or statement and twist it into something completely different. 

So Burke's point is both a positive thing and a worrisome thing. On one hand, he helps to explain how someone with a different viewpoint isn't inherently wrong, but that there is enough flexibility in whatever word/title/subject that they see it differently. On the other hand though, you can get some pretty crazy arguments from this sort of thing. The reading used the argument how Judas and the crucifixion of Jesus was a necessity for the resurrection of Jesus and the salvation of mankind, therefore you could turn Judas into a positive sort of figure. In that way, you can make all kinds of positive arguments for various dictators and tyrannies of history, since some good thing likely emerged from them. You can argue that these arguments can be easily outweighed by negative points about the thing, and I can grant you that. However, less extreme versions of this argument could be interesting, you could take something bad but not as obviously bad, but again be able to twist it about and make it seem good -- war, questionable legislation, things like that.

It is good that Burke talks about this though, since he obviously didn't create this, this is a rhetorical device that has likely been used for ages. By bringing it into the open and analyzing it, we are able to consider this strategy and be aware of what it is, how it is used, and the moral/immoral potential of it. So regardless of the point Burke is making with his work (if he is making one), it is a good discussion to have.   

Questions:

1. What do you think Burke means when he talks about Grammar? Do you agree with what I said I think he means, or did he mean something different? 

2. Would it be ideal if we could strike all ambiguity from language, and every word/argument has one precise meaning we could all understand? What would be sacrificed for this total clarity? 

Cicero, Initial Impressions of De Oratore

This is just what I've gathered from reading the assigned Wiki articles, I could be completely wrong about all of this. D: Also, all quotes are from said Wiki articles.

So what strikes me as particularly interesting in Cicero's work, De Oratore, is that while the dialectic style is very similar to Plato's (aside from it being portrayed in a more novel-like format rather than a script format), it is not as clear as it is in Plato's works of who the "good guy" or "inherently right" person is. With Plato's works, it's pretty much obvious from the start that Socrates will be in control of the conversation at pretty much all times and is (according to Plato) always right. In De Oratore though, it is not quite as clear who the main protagonist is. I assumed for a good while that it was Crassus, as he was the one doing most of the speaking, and appeared to be filling a Socrates-like role as the wise instructor tutoring the younger students through dialogue. However, it appears towards the second half of the first book that it may actually be Antonious who may be the lead here, as he talks for a good portion of both the first and second book. But the nice thing is that while these men are debating, both of them appear to be portrayed as intelligent, and even those in smaller roles (with the possible exception of Scaevola) appear to be portrayed mostly positively, not quite as the straw men that Plato could be guilty of creating at times. 

We definitely see some very different veiws between Crassus and Antonious though, and I'll go into analyzing the two for a bit: 

So Crassus seems to hold some very Platonic views here, and reminded me a bit of Socrates with his overall humility, intelligence, with a hint of snark (though he doesn't seem to be quite the amusingly sarcastic jerk that Socrates could be at times). Crassus' view of the perfect orator seems as idealistic and impractically unrealistic as Plato's ideas of ultimate truth and knowledge -- sweet, well-meaning, but laughably unrealistic. Crassus feels that being an orator requires natural talent more than anything else, that being an orator requires "the subtility of a logician, the mind of a philosopher, the language of a poet, the memory of a lawyer, the voice of a tragic actor and the gesture of the most skilled actor" as well as also as natural gifts of "the ability to invent, richness in talking, strong lungs, certain voice tones, particular body physique as well as a pleasant looking face." Oh, and the perfect orator also knows everything. EVERYTHING. For can you speak of something you don't know about? 

Crassus seems to be an interesting blend of Plato and Aristotle, for while Crassus is, like Aristotle, more practical and forgiving of rhetoric and the rules for rhetoric he gives seem very similar to some of the ones Aristotle laid out, he also does support philosophy, have many larger, semi-distant from reality ideas, and seems to be a strong advocate for a moral orator (consideration of morality being something Aristotle left out during his long rhetoric book of "hey, here's this big book on human psychology and how to manipulate people"). 

Antonious on the other hand, seems to be far more practical than Crassus. While he clearly admires Crassus and supports most of his points, Antonious' views seem to be less extreme. He disagrees with Crassus' idea that an orator must know everything, and instead feels that he only need to be able to speak well on the subjects he does know. He does seem to be not as kindly inclined towards philosophy as Crassus, feeling that philosopher "pretends to know everything about everything," and that Plato's ideals were "very far from common life." 

Again, these two characters seem to be portrayed intelligently enough to tell who's going to end up "right" in this debate, or if a winner will even be picked. Reading what I have about Cicero though, I hesitantly feel that his views align more with Crassus, and that he will be the ultimate winner of the debate, but I am not positive about that. If nothing else though, I do approve of Cicero's seemingly lesser use of strawmen arguments. 

Questions:

1. Do you believe Cicero's personal beliefs align closer to Crassus or Antonious?

2. Do you believe that a person must know absolutely everything about a subject in order to speak/debate about it? Or is it possible to only know part of a subject, but still be able to speak knowledgeably enough? And is it morally wrong to speak of a subject that you don't fully understand? 

Poetry and Rhetoric

What I was really surprised about while reading Aristotle’s third book of The Rhetoric was how many of the elements he spoke of can be also seen as crucial parts of poetry, and indeed, he compared and contrasted these element to poetry quite a few times. With the exception of Plato hating both of them, I wouldn't think poetry and rhetoric would have much in common. However, Aristotle makes good points about how some of the crucial elements of poetry can be used in rhetoric, though in a different manner.

For example, in chapter eight, Aristotle talks about “prose rhythm,” the rhythm of delivery and finding a structure consistent enough to keep the listener both listening and understanding. Rhythm is also important in poetry, even in free-form, though especially so in more structured forms where syllables for each stanza are carefully measured, but it is a way to engage the listener’s interest in a way that normal speech or dialogue might not.  Now you don’t want that kind of measurement for rhetoric, for as Aristotle says, “prose, then, is to be rhythmical, not metrical, or it will become not prose but verse” (180). However, you want just the right amount of varied rhythm – varied enough for the speech to not become monotonous, similar enough so nothing sounds disjointed. Rhythm in speech, whether it be poetry or rhetoric, helps engage the listener and keeps them actively engaged during the delivery of the performance.

The element that surprised me the most in this book, but one that Aristotle mentioned quite a few times, was the use of metaphors and similes (which he considers to be basically the same) in rhetoric. I would generally consider metaphors, while useful in poetry and literature, too frou-frou for rhetoric; however, Aristotle makes some good points for their rhetorical use. While he does caution in chapters 2 and 3 against metaphors that are non-fitting or unnecessarily poetic (that could confuse or distract the listener), he also considers the metaphor a way to make your language or the spoken subject seem more impressive (Ch. 6), an important part of clever sayings (Ch. 10), and crucial to allowing your listeners/readers be able to see what is being discussed (Ch. 11). 

I'm actually taking a creative writing class this semester (the intro class, an experienced or skilled creative writer, I am not), so since that class is on our poetry section, it's interesting to compare and contrast how Aristotle speaks of metaphors in ancient rhetoric vs. how it's spoken of today in my creative writing class. Besides the obvious of how poetry is, in it's nature, preformed more artistically than rhetoric (in its vividness and use of abstraction), I feel that a main difference between poetry and rhetoric is that poetry's main purpose isn't necessarily to convince, but perhaps more of to make us think? Rhetoric tries to convince us of a specific point, while poetry is an illustration of a point, but I feel that generally poetry isn't used to drive a purpose home but to get us to consider something. 

It brings me back to our discussion of "is there such thing as communication that is not rhetorical in some aspect." I almost feel that poetry can apply for that, for while stories often have a point or moral, a poem doesn't necessarily have to, and often doesn't, but is pure abstraction. Not to say that a poem can't serve any rhetorical purposes, there are poems, good poems, that serve a larger purpose to make the reader see something from the writer's eyes (to do as Aristotle says, make the listener see the argument), but there are other poems that I'm pretty sure are simply pure abstractions. We've talked before about writing poems that even the writer doesn't necessarily understand what they're writing or why they're writing in, and will accept almost any interpretation of it. Thus it is inherently not rhetorical since the author is not trying to achieve a specific goal. I'd definitely love to hear any counter-arguments to that point though. 

Questions:

1. Do you think poems can be considered largely rhetorical or non-rhetorical? 

2. What do you think about poetic strategies in rhetoric? For example, the use of metaphors or Aristotle's suggestions of, "describe a thing instead of naming it: do not say 'circle' but 'that surface which extends equally from the middle every way'" (176), and "when mentioning anything ugly or unseemly,  use its name if it is the description that is ugly, and describe it if it is the name that is ugly" (177). Do you think they are good strategies for helping the audience see/understand your point, or too evasive and likely to be misused for deceptive purposes?

Aristotelian Argument - Example

So while browsing YouTube for some mood music to help pump me up to get the rest of my homework done, this video showed up in my recommended list. I had a feeling it would turn out to be relevant to our reading, and decided to watch.

Besides the interesting conversation we could have about the apparently very broad use of rhetoric big corporations use to reach an audience without the consumer even being aware of potential hypocrisies connected to their favorite brands, the reason it reminded me of our current Aristotle reading is I found it reminiscent to what Aristotle said about how to prove your opponent as unkind: "[w]e can also see how to eliminate the idea of kindness and make our opponents appear unkind: we may maintain that they are being or have been helpful simply to promote their own interest" (112). Here, the speaker is taking companies, brands, or campaigns that might be seen as respectable, and pointing out that they are also connected to companies/brands/campaigns that are less respectable or just polar opposite to the first, the drawn conclusion being that these companies don't care about their consumers, no matter how noble or caring their message or goal might seem, their work is just one of many ways to get money out of us. Thus, the speaker is able to use an Aristotelian form of rhetoric to turn these companies from seemingly kind to seemingly unkind.

Aristotle, The Rhetoric, Book I

It's interesting to compare and contrast Aristotle's views to the views we saw in Plato's works. Whether the views we see from Aristotle were thoughts Plato encouraged in later years, cultivated by an outside source, or developed purely by Aristotle himself, there are definitely distinct differences between what we read in Plato and what we've read in this first portion of Aristotle. 

The main difference is Aristotle's opinion of rhetoric. In Phaedrus, we did see some hints of "rhetoric might be okay, sometimes, maybe," but otherwise Plato was not too keen on it. Meanwhile, Aristotle has written apparently quite a bit supporting rhetoric, and supporting aspects of rhetoric that Plato would loathe. Plato would want discourse to be strictly academic and calm, but Aristotle seems to have a better understanding of human emotion, and how a strategic use of the various modes of persuasion can move people more effectively than a strictly academic argument. 

However, like Plato, Aristotle seems to hold rhetoric to a very high standard. He sees it as a way of defending truth from those that might obscure it, saying that what is true and just naturally stands out from what is not, so if something that is untrue wins over something that is true, it must be the fault of the speaker (22). Aristotle states that not being able to defend yourself with speech and reason as shameful, if not more so, than being able to defend yourself with your limbs (23). I think Plato and Aristotle would think alike on this, the main difference being one preferring the dialectic form of discourse while Aristotle is a fan or rhetoric. 

Also like Plato, Aristotle also seems to be not a fan of the sophists; the sophists so far have been only briefly mentioned, but it did not seem that Aristotle approved of them. You would think that with his support of rhetoric that he would welcome them, but it appears that, if I understand correctly, that sophists always are trying to achieve a moral purpose but might not take the same intellectual and knowledgeable route as a rhetorician (24). My guess is that because of this, Aristotle sees the sophist as more prone to deceit. 

I say this partially because this reading is vastly different from what I've seen so far when looking at the sophists. It seems that the main difference between Aristotle and the Sophists is the consideration of audience. It seems to me that the Sophists are more concerned on simply getting people to react in appropriate ways using the various appeals, but Aristotle wants to get understanding audience down to an exact science. Reading this text much of the time felt a lot like a text on psychology, for Aristotle was very concerned on what the masses would think and what would drive them to think or act. It's like Aristotle has taken the work the early sophists did, but has run with it and gone way deeper. 

Like Plato, Aristotle also seems to assign a deep moral meaning to rhetoric, with all of his talk on human nature, as well as going deep into what is good and just, and degrees between good, bad, and excessive. I'm definitely curious to see where Aristotle will take us, since it seems much of the next book also focuses on human character, rather than be a straight guidebook of "yo, this is how to get people to listen to you." I definitely wasn't expecting this level of psychological introspection from Aristotle, who I always heard was a big math/logic/science-y guy. 

Questions:

1. Do you think a deep understanding of social psychology is, as Aristotle seems to imply, necessary for rhetoric? Should it be necessary for rhetoric? Is understanding happiness and motive for example a necessity, or is a basic understanding of "what makes people tick" enough?

2. What do you think of Aristotle's idea of "things that are true and things that are just have a natural tendency to prevail over their opposites" (22)? Do you think this is largely true, or hopelessly naive? Are there specific subjects where this is more/less true?  

Phaedrus (39-68)

So around page 39, the tone of the dialogue shifts abruptly from “let’s use a metaphor of love to talk about seeking and conveying wisdom” to “let’s go straight up into rhetoric.” Towards the end of the dialogue, we also get into what Socrates thinks rhetoric is (or rather, should be), and also why he has disdain for the execution of speech and rhetoric as he knows it. 

One of the most interesting lines of the dialogue, I thought, was when Socrates called the power of speech “a leading of the soul,” (58) it makes sense, but I never thought of it like that.  We saw earlier in the text how serious a matter Plato considers the soul, so it makes sense that Socrates later gets into what he thinks an orator should be and just how serious a job it would be (56-58).

It seems that Socrates’ main criticism with speech and rhetoric is that the focus seems to be not on the truth itself, but on convincing others: “for, they say, in the law-courts no one cares in the slightest for truth about these things but only for what is convincing; and what is convincing is what is probable, which is what the person who means to speak scientifically must pay attention to” (59). The main point that Socrates seems to be making about speech in rhetoric in the last pages of the dialogue is that they are not about the science of delivering truth in a manner than any person can follow, but merely the science of being convincing to anyone.

Overall, I found Plato’s high, if unmet, standards for rhetoricians interesting, and I can’t help but wonder what it be like if they were actually applied to the rhetoric we see today. I’d call a lot of today’s rhetoricians, at least in U.S. culture, hardly advocates of truth and justice, but rather bordering on completely shameless in their quest to be convincing. Whether its politics or advertising, rhetoric is less about getting the facts out, and more about saying what you need to in order to convince. Advertisers for example will utilize sex and personal insecurities for the sake of sales -- beauty ads, anyone? Then we have the politicians who will take advantage of people’s real struggles to emphasize that they’re good. For example, in Rod Blagojevich’s impeachment speech, he had several supposedly less fortunate people that supposedly benefited from his actions as governor stand behind him for rhetorical impact (introduction of them starts at 5:45). Even President Obama, I have no specific videos, but if I remember correctly he will often tell stories of specific people he’s met for rhetoric impact. And pretty much all politicians wants that golden photoshoot of them helping the homeless or chillaxing in a bar and drinking beer with the "regular people," in order to make them look honorable or like a cool person.    Politics and advertising are only the surface of the debatably dishonest means that can be gone through to get a point or create an image; it can be applied to celebrity culture, news and opinion, law, and even job hunters who will doctor their resume or fudge answers to interview questions or those personality/scenario quizzes given. Even in class scenarios here at WSU, I've gotten frustrated with group members, whether we’re writing memos or advertising materials, who are often eager to ignore or hide the truth in order to further our agenda, which always feels frustratingly dishonest to me. However, such is the definition that rhetoric shaped as: primarily about convincing a large population. I have no problem with advertising, speeches, or two sides debating individual points, I just wish honesty was more largely emphasized in rhetoric. 

Questions:

1. What level of dishonesty would you be willing to engage in so that you can convince someone of something? Especially if it involves say advertising or a grade, an issue that might cause real consequences if your agenda isn’t achieved. Would you lie? Would you bring up examples that accent your point and ignore others that would take away from it? Would you just frame the not necessarily positive truth in a more appealing light? Or could you tell the complete and honest truth?

2. How different do you think society would be if rhetoricians were truly advocates of truth? Do you think there are any areas in society today where rhetoric is purely (or even mostly) used for delivering truth?