Question A-3

In writing class today, how might a perception that studying rhetoric will lead to virtue manifest itself in pedagogy? You may draw on your experience as a teacher and/or student, as well as our class discussion.

It is the hope of writing instructors that the pedagogy they adopt will lead their students to becoming well-reasoned and more logical beings through the analysis and instruction of rhetoric in the classroom. Our culture values knowledge, and we consider logic and reason to be personal virtues. I think that we have come to equate logic and reason with being honest and true. For this essay, I will define being virtuous as being logical and well-reasoned. Classical studies of rhetoric tell us that we cannot teach an un-virtuous person virtue. But if using rhetoric and knowing rhetoric makes one virtuous and if we can teach the craft of rhetoric, then can’t we teach virtue? If an instructor believes that studying rhetoric will lead to virtue, then his/her pedagogy will reflect this in every aspect from text selection to instruction.

As an instructor, I believe that it is my job to show students the art of argument and persuasion not only so that they themselves may use them but so that they can recognize when others are using these arts. In being able to recognize when rhetoric is being used, they will be able to look for flaws or chinks in the armor of argument and they will be less likely to be taken for a ride by “chicanery” (Isocretes 1).

As a high school student, I was taught a lesson on debate. In this lesson my instructor made us present both sides of the argument. I was told that I needed to look at the issue from both sides and create an argument for each that made the argument and addressed the opposing views objections. In his book, On the Study Methods of Our Time, Giambattista Vico wrote that he believed that a student should “cultivate his mind with an ingenious method; let him study topics, and defend both sides, of a controversy, be it on nature, man, or politics, in a freer and brighter style of expression” (Vico 41). I agree with Vico that teaching students to argue from both sides helps them form stronger arguments. Learning to debate in this way really helped me as a student realize that when constructing an argument, one not only needs to know all of the points of reason but also the opponents’ points so that one can address them and dismiss them as invalid, illogical, or immoral. As a high school student, this was a light bulb moment for me. When writing an argument, I still will ask myself “what will the opposition say to this point and how do I write a rebuttal to their points into my paper?” Until this time, I had thought that covering my argument was enough to persuade people to my side. This was one of my earliest lessons on rhetoric.

If the study of rhetoric is the path to virtue, then one college instructor that I observed was teaching virtue. In her classroom pedagogy, she taught persuasion on topics that were of relevance to her students. It was a community college and most students were from underprivileged groups. On one particular week, the lesson entailed a comparison of “Letters from the Birmingham Jail” by Dr. Martin Luther King and the song “Letter to the President” by Tupac Shakur. In this lesson the students heard the argument from the same side but given in different ways. It was a lesson in persuasion, from two masterful rhetoricians, and yes, I called Tupac a rhetorician.  This was a successful case of an instructor making choices in her pedagogy, the choice to stray from the accepted text to help students learn in a way that was meaningful to them.

Thus far, I have noted that the notion of rhetoric as virtue can affect one’s pedagogy through teaching students both sides of the argument and using topics and arguments that are of relevance to the students. My next point is that this belief will manifest itself through teaching students to question authority: the teacher, the text, the institution, or the Man.

Up until graduate school, most students are trained that the teacher and the text are the authority. As students in our high schools and early college years, we are taught to regurgitate text however it is presented to us. Then we enter into graduate school where it is not only ok to question authority, it is expected that we question the authority. Instruction should encourage students to think freely beyond the words on the page. How is this teaching virtue? It helps students, in theory, to become more honest and critical thinking. In this scenario, students learn to not accept something simply because it is written or spoken by a person with authority. They, the students, must refine the art of searching for holes in logic so that they may become more virtuous.

Unlike the other disciplines, like math and biology, teaching composition is an inherently political task.  An instructor must take a careful look at their personal philosophy before forming a pedagogy for the classroom.  One can teach virtue through rhetoric, even though learning virtue will not make an un-virtuous person virtuous.  As composition instructors our job is to teach our students how to put their world on the page in the most honest and forthwright way that they can.  Rhetoric, is a means to help our students come to a better understanding of their world.

Question B-1

Is it possible to really understand the Rhetorical tradition of another culture? Explain why or why not, based on the arguments of either Ezzaher Yameng Liu, Lu Xing and using examples from these texts and the Wenxin Dialong, Nyaya Sutra’s and the Incoherence of the Incoherence as needed.

There is something to be said for the old cliché that “something gets lost in the translation.” It isn’t possible to understand the rhetorical traditions of another culture unless one is able to restructure completely their place in the world and reform it according to the tradition that they are trying to understand.

In the book, The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, author Liu Hsieh writes about the “musicalness” of Chinese rhetoric (Hsieh 182). According to Hsieh, the words of Chinese rhetoric are chosen very carefully so that they are melodious. They even have what we would consider rhetorical terms like the “ho” which refers to the “harmony of different sounds and tones” (Hsieh 184). This musical element of language is something that cannot be translated. When the words change, the basic meaning may be the same but the harmony represented by the musicalness is lost and harmony is one of the key elements of Chinese rhetoric.

Another problem with trying to understand Chinese rhetoric is brought forth in Rhetoric in Ancient China fifth to third century B.C.E. by Xing Lu. When trying to come to an understanding of a new rhetoric, scholars will try to apply their agreed upon terms to the language. This is a mistake because for some words there is no equal that translates and for some concepts there is no translation as well. Lu writes about the word “rhetoric” that there is no equivalent in Chinese. It is not that rhetoric doesn’t exist, it’s simply that they think of it differently and do not name it in the same way (Lu 2). Lu quotes a scholar as saying that in Chinese “‘people generally have a sense or feeling’” of what is rhetoric and that meaning is inextricably tied to culture. In other words, one cannot pick up a Chinese rhetoric book and understand it because he understands Chinese. One must also have a cultural understanding of what it is to be Chinese. A solution to this would be to have a Chinese scholar translate the works except Lu write that this too is a problem because in a translation one is relying on one person’s interpretation and that to do this is to “run a great risk of drawing inaccurate conclusions” (Lu 38).

Another reason that Lu believes keeps outsiders from understanding Chinese rhetoric is that western scholars tend to over analyze and make concrete definitions of what they are studying. Lu writes that western scholars try to study Chinese rhetoric “through an occidental lens, looking for explicit theories, concepts, and statements” (Lu 35). This is a mistake because in focusing on the small parts that make up a rhetorical tradition, one is unable to see the full concept and they may miss many subtle meanings and variations. According to Lu, when you take certain elements out of context, the elements lose meaning or the meaning is changed. Lu gives the example of the word “bian.” Translated directly this word means argument but Lu goes on to explain that this word is far more complex than that simple definition and that it actually means “‘embellishment of words, making distinctions, and disputing for a particular reason’” (Lu 38).

The Incoherence of the Incoherence brings forth another point that prevents us from fully understanding foreign rhetoric. The point is illustrated in the following quote: “In the sublunary world the differences arise from the four causes, that is to say, the difference of the agents, the matter, the instruments, and the intermediaries” (Rushd). When one ingredient in the rhetoric recipe changes, so does the end result or the final understanding. Let’s begin with the “agent.” It is difficult, nearly impossible to rid oneself of one’s cultural past and to rebuild a cultural understanding to fit that of the rhetoric at hand. However, unless one is able to do this, will they ever be able to fully understand the rhetoric of another culture? This would be redefining one’s place and understanding in the world. Few scholars would even want to do this were it possible. The instruments of a rhetorician are words and as discussed earlier, many words are culturally understood and defined; They cannot be translated.

The “occidental lens” that Lu refers to is another reason why we cannot fully understand the rhetoric of another culture (Lu 35). The occidental lens can also be a “ terministic screen” (Burke 50). In his discussion on “terministic screens,” Kenneth Burke writes that “we must use terministic screens since we can’t say anything without the use of terms” (Burke 50). If the terms we accept are culturally defined, then when we view another culture through these “terministic screens,” we are, in a sense, using our culture to explain another and that will yield inaccurate results while being culturally insensitive because it kind of implies that the culture being explained is less complex because it can be explained in these general terms.

Westerners generally view things that are different as inferior. Xing Lu touches on this when he writes about how “western perceptions of Chinese rhetoric are, by and large, defined by the limits of Orientalism” (Lu 17). Westerners are known for being single-mindedly western in all that they do. Therefore, it makes sense that when we try to come to an understanding of a foreign rhetoric, we try to understand it by pounding it into a western rhetoric mold. We cannot simply accept that it is different and as correct as our rhetoric. We become obsessed with the differences and try to understand something entirely different through comparison to what we know.

Then comes the issue of harmony. In our readings on Chinese rhetoric and Indian Rhetoric, we are presented with the idea of harmony–harmony in thought and word choice. In Literary Minds and the Carving of Dragons, there is an entire section on “musicalness” and another on “harmony” (Hsieh 182). The Nyaya Sutras of Gotma describes not harmony but “balance” (Gotma 140).  The Gotma text also spens a gret ammount of time arguing that there needs to be an accepted and agreed upon defintion of terms before a discussion of rhetoric can begin.  This goes back tot he idea thatone cannot undersand terms that are taken out of their cultural context.  Western rhetoric is less concerned with harmony and more with being very explicit and understandable. Western rhetoric is not about maintaining balance; it is about defending, attacking, or swaying someone to our side.

In conclusion, I would argue that one cannot come to a complete understanding of a foreign cultures’ rhetoric.  Aside from the expected complications in translation, like using text that has already been interpreted, it is nearly impossible to undo ones education, cultural beliefs, and perceptions so that they could come to understand a text as it was written.  To do so would be to reconstruct our view of the world and our place in it.