A Theory of Contemporary Rhetoric (17 page)

There is a long history of the theory of argumentation, mostly associated with rhetoric from pre-Athenian times to the contemporary rhetorics of Burke (1969), American composition theorists, the visual/verbal explorations of W.J.T Mitchell (1986) and Lanham (1993) (the Chicago school), and Gunther Kress, Theo van Leeuwen, and colleagues' work on multimodality (e.g., Kress and van Leeuwen 2001). The battle between philosophy or logic on the one hand, and rhetoric on the other, has waged throughout that history, with sometimes one in the ascendancy, and sometimes the other. They appear to be symbiotic: logic needs rhetoric and vice-versa. To compress the debates into a simple equation: logic and philosophy are concerned with substance and method; rhetoric is concerned with process and communication, with the arts of discourse in personal, political, and aesthetic contexts. For the particular purposes of the present chapter, the focus will be on two figures that provide a backdrop to the interest in argumentation in education: Vygotsky, a social psychologist, and the philosopher Habermas. Neither is a rhetorician, though both bodies of work draw on communication and the arts of discourse and have implications for the fields of rhetoric and argumentation. Both have key things to say about the relationship between argument and education, from pre-school through to university level and beyond.

The most extraordinary and significant statement from Vygotsky's work with regard to argument is the connection he makes between reflection and argumentation. With characteristic (not always empirically founded) logical verve, he writes,

there is an indubitable genetic connection between the child's arguments and his reflections. This is confirmed by the child's logic itself. The proofs first arise in the arguments between children and are then transferred within the child … The child's logic develops only with the increasing socialisation of the child's speech and all of the child's experience … Piaget has found that precisely the sudden transition from preschool age to school age leads to a change in the forms of collective activity and that on this basis the child's thinking also changes. ‘Reflection,’ says this author, ‘may be regarded as inner argumentation …’

If we consider this law, we will see very clearly why all that is internal in the higher mental functions was at one time external … In general we may say that
the relations between the higher mental functions were at one time real relations between people
…

We might therefore designate the main result to which we are brought by the history of the child's cultural development as a socio-genesis
of the higher forms of behaviour
. (Vygotsky 1991, 32–41)

The excerpt is quoted at length to demonstrate the steps via which Vygotsky comes to the conclusion that argumentation was once external. Much of the thinking is informed by Vygotsky's well-known theory of the ways in which cultural and historical patterning informs cognitive and conceptual development. But there are a number of striking connections made in the previous statement that shed particular light on argumentation.

First is the connection between arguments and reflections. Putting aside whether the connection is indubitably genetic or not, the link suggests that reflection is more than a miasmic, static read-off from experience. Rather, it is seen as dynamic mental space informed by social arguments (the sociogenetic aspect); furthermore, it is in itself a dialectical operation in which the dialogue is both with experience/the outside world on the one hand, and with ideas themselves in the internal process of reflecting/ thinking.

Second, Vygotsky's statement that “all that is internal in the higher mental functions was at one time external” can be broken down into two propositions: one, that there are relations between the higher mental functions; and two, that these relations “were at one time real relations between people.” We need not spend too much time on the notion that there are relations between the higher mental functions, except to say that hierarchical (“vertical,” “synchronic,” and “ paradigmatic”) and relational (“horizontal,” “diachronic,” and “syntagmatic”) thinking is fundamental to subject and disciplines in various combinations and with varying emphases. Not all these higher mental functions are grounded in verbal language; some are based on other languages, such as dance, the visual arts, architecture, and music. Most are multimodal
in their actual operation in the world. Nevertheless, these hierarchical and relational connections are central to and critical to the operation of learning and teaching in disciplines in higher education. Learning your way across a grid of such relations is learning to become competent (and thus worthy of the award of academic degrees) in the various disciplines, subjects, and fields. The development of the higher mental functions is associated with the entry to and success within higher education.

The proposition that such interconnections “were at one time real relations between people” is the astonishing idea. The logic follows from earlier propositions in the previous quotation and in Vygotsky's work more generally about the formation of thinking in young children. At the higher education level, let us consider the implications of the statement. Part of the underlying justification for the statement is that the development of disciplinary practices, historically, is the result of “real relations between people.” The birth of English Literature as a university subject in England, for example, arose from a dialectical need expressed, over a number of years, by workers' educational associations and particularly by women studying within and beyond those associations, for an alternative to classics as a central (but male-only) humanities discipline at The University of Oxford and subsequently elsewhere. The history of that evolution is well documented in Dixon (1991). As the emergent subject established itself in the university repertoire, discussions between academics, students, and others would determine its development. Specifically, patterns of expectation and convention, for example, what counts as a good argument in the discipline, the nature of the canon, the
modus operandi
in seminars, the journals created, the discourses and Discourse of the discipline—all these would establish themselves and be adapted further. Thus, the lines and conduits along which thought and argumentation take place are determined, distinguishing the discipline from others. When these conduits for thought and argumentation become too over-prescribed, a reaction sets in that changes, with Hegelian inevitability, the nature of discourses that are “allowed” within the disciplinary framework that has been established. Such “real relations between people” are largely mediated by speech, social power, and economics.

A case like the emergence and development of English Literature in England has 150 years of history, and Vygotsky's phrase “at one time” can refer to far-distant history (too far to be evidentially researched and validated) or to a more compressed time-scale. In a much more specific way, Bazerman (1988) charts the development of the experimental article in science, demonstrating how a vehicle for argumentation in a meta-discipline like science emerged from social interactions between people, and relations between people and the material world.

To give a much more contemporary example, consider the relations between a student on an undergraduate course and his or her lecturer/teacher. The student submits a piece of writing. Explicitly and/or implicitly, the lecturer proves feedback in spoken or written form that suggests to the student how he/she might “improve,” that is, might get closer to and exceed the expected discourses of the discipline at undergraduate level. Such interaction, at its best, is specific, extensive, formative, and positively critical. Whatever its quality, it is
always
part of a set of institutional and personal power relations. Thus “real relations between people,” different in nature from the previous two examples of the birth of a discipline or the creation of the scientific article, determine the operation of the higher mental functions.

At the core of Habermas's work is the notion that communicative competence is more than being able to generate and understand utterances and sentences. He suggests that we are constantly making claims. These claims are often implicit, and often they are not backed up by evidence; but the exchange of claims appears to be part of the fabric of human interaction. As McCarthy puts it in the introduction to his translated edition of Habermas's (1984) major work on rationality and communication,
The Theory of Communicative Action
,

we are constantly making claims, even if usually only implicitly, concerning the validity of what we are saying, implying or presupposing— claims, for instance, regarding the truth of what we say in relation to the objective world; or claims concerning the rightness, appropriateness, or legitimacy of our speech acts in relation to the shared values and norms of our social lifeworld; or claims to sincerity or authenticity in regard to the manifest expressions of our intentions and feelings. (x)

Claims do require evidence—or at least they need a degree of validation that might come from logical consistency, the character of the speaker, the nature of the context, or via methodological support—and they are more likely to be accepted if they are supported in a number of these ways. At the same time, they can be challenged, defended, and qualified. As suggested previously, claims might be strengthened by being subjected to challenge. Indeed, the very nature of making claims (one ingredient in the making of an argument) is that they invite counter-claim. Habermas's particular contribution to the thinking about communication is his insistence that mutual understanding without coercion is the basis of rationality and of human consensus and social action.

Thus, to varying degrees, and in contexts ranging from the everyday and seemingly mundane at one end of the spectrum to high politics at the other end, argumentation is part of the fabric of human existence. Its status as a “court of appeal” suggests that it can be made explicit and raised to a level of social consciousness where the best way forward can be debated. But it is also implicit in the conduct of human interaction, even when it is not acknowledged as such. Such a fundamental and central role for argumentation is important for the thesis of the present chapter. For example, tacit and implicit practices in higher education often need to be made more explicit in order to help teachers understand what they are asking students to do and, in turn, for students to understand what they are being asked to do.

Like Vygotsky's statement on the genesis of the higher mental functions, Habermas's insight into the centrality of a process, argumentation, which is at the heart of primary, secondary, and tertiary education, is a crucial one. Being rational means being able to learn from mistakes, from critiquing half-formed hypotheses, and from the failure of interventions in experimental and non-experimental situations. Such openness to learning via the process of argumentation is one to which teachers, lecturers, and professors, at their very best, are amenable; and one that pupils and students have to learn to develop if they are to progress within their chosen subjects, disciplines, or fields of inquiry.

There is no doubt that images can persuade, and there are countless examples from advertising through photojournalism to fine art that could be cited. But can still images, sequences of still images, and moving images
argue
without words? If so, how do they operate? And is it the same kind of argument that Toulmin (2003) would find to be argument, with claims, evidence, rebuttals, warrants, and backing as part of its armory, its architecture? Some would argue that visual argumentation is just not possible.

It is, however, important to consider the possibility of visual argumentation in thinking more generally about the importance of argument in education. Here, education is taken to be the whole sum of education— not just schooling. Consideration of visual argumentation is important because it is ubiquitous, subliminal, sometimes (like words) insidious, visceral, and engaging, as well as consciously designed, a language and semiotic of its own, and a universal agent of communication. We need to be aware of the ways it operates so that we can accept it via a suspension of disbelief, or resist it, and/or
transform
it in some way (the key act of learning and education). By visual
argumentation
as opposed to visual
persuasion
, what is meant is a focus on the way the visual articulates, or is articulated, in order to communicate and possibly persuade.

The first example combines the visual with the verbal. It is simply a photograph of a kettle alongside verbal text.

The verbal text of the advertisement is a mini-argument in its own right:

We've been designing products for over 30 years and we're constantly looking at ways to perfect them. Out latest creation is something special. The kettle's unique double wall jacket retains heat, so once you've boiled the kettle, any water left inside stays warm for longer. Which means, next time it's boiled you'll use less electricity, saving you money and helping save the environment. More tea anyone?

In fact, it is not just a good piece of advertising copy; it follows classical structuring possibilities of the kind mapped out by Aristotle, Quintilian, Cicero, and others. The appeal to trust to establish the position (“We've been designing products for over 30 years …”), the future-looking vision and commitment (“… and we're constantly looking at ways to perfect them”), the distinctiveness of the case (“Our latest creation is something special”), the
narratio
or facts of the case (“The kettle's … stays warm for longer”), development (“Which means … helping save the environment”), and, finally, the
peroratio
(“More tea anyone?”), answering the cleverly nuanced invitation of the title (“Anyone for
green
tea?”). There is no need to labor the effect of the verbal language: it's witty, directed at a certain class of people (those who perhaps have been thinking of switching to a healthier tea, or those who want to do something for global warming), concise, fleeting, and persuasive.