A Theory of Contemporary Rhetoric (24 page)

Phonemic level	Meaningful sounds in the language	Tone = yu qi , sheng diao yu qi focuses more on emotion and feeling sheng diao focuses more on meaning-making (normally first, second, third, and forth tones refer to different “sheng diao”	In English, the phonemic level meets the alphabetic on the grapho-phonemic plane; the phonemic and phonetic are often confusingly conflated under the term phonics and translated into a pedagogic concept “systematic synthetic phonics” or “analytic phonics.”
Phonetic level	The study of the wider set of sounds that are used in spoken language	Yu yin = sounds in the language

The tentative conclusion of the small-scale study described in this chapter is that there is more international agreement on what represents good argument, in the forms of its
products
, than there is on the
processes
via which argumentation, rhetorical, and critical operations take place in the development of a doctoral thesis. If there is a difference in approach between the European Greco-Roman approach and the Chinese
Confucian-inspired approach, it is that the former operates deductively, and the latter inductively. In other words, to posit a generalization that requires further research, it is the tendency of Western students to begin with ideas and hypotheses (even if they are not scientists) and move toward proof via the seeking of empirical or purely logical evidence. It is the tendency of Eastern students to build toward hypotheses and more secure forms of truth from the gradual accumulation of evidence. Each approach is valid; each is dependent on the other. The latter approach could be aligned with the practice of “grounded theory,” while the former is more abstract and more “scientific” in its initial conception. Both are ways of bringing together propositions on the one hand, and data (which becomes evidence when informed by propositions) on the other. It is also the case that different disciplines will operate differently in relation to the deductive/inductive approach.

Related to this mutually complementary distinction between deductive and inductive approaches is that between the degree of explicitness that is customary in the presentation of the thesis. It is now conventional practice in the West to be highly explicit in the writing of a thesis and in the presentation of all aspects of its production. For example, a literature review could be accompanied (perhaps in an appendix) by a search strategy that sets out how the particular literature review was conducted which keywords were used, which sources were investigated, and which languages the search was conducted in. Because of increasing uncertainty about theoretical bases and a widening range of paradigms in which research is conducted, students have felt impelled to make explicit what choices they have made and why. On the other hand, in some countries in East Asia (notably Japan), being explicit about the grounds and processes of argumentation within a thesis can be thought to be inelegant and even inappropriate.

The argument of the present chapter is that preparation for advanced academic study in the East or West needs to include an introduction to argumentational practices and conventions (in effect, the rhetoric of academic discourse in each location) so that students can adapt quickly to what is expected of them. The need is just as great for lecturers and professors, who need to be aware that the conventions by which they operate are often so much a part of custom that they have become habitual and are taken for granted. As students increasingly build international experience into their studies, whether by taking whole degrees overseas, by registering for degrees in other countries, by spending part of their study time abroad and/or by online study, such preparation will become all the more important. In short, they need to learn the rhetoric and discourses of the situations they find themselves in so that they can make a success of their international experience.

9

What can rhetoric offer poetics and literary studies? What place do they have in a theory of contemporary rhetoric? Rhetoricians have always been attracted to the field of poetics—the study of literary form and a close partner of stylistics—as the literary appears to hold a powerful place in human consciousness and in social disengagement: people are reading novels on the train, in isolation, in “their own world,” in cities—and reading them in books and on electronic tablet devices like Kindles and iPads. But although the literary appears to hold sway and to generate and satisfy
private
passions, it also maps out possible worlds and the consequences of action within those worlds.

To begin an exploration of the relationship of rhetoric to poetics, we need to start at the level of the function of the poetic, then move down to individual genres (the novel, the lyric poem, the play), and then to the deployment of verbal language in its multimodal settings.

A discussion of the function of the poetic—of the
place
of the poetic in a universe of discourse—has to ask the following question: the function of the poetic within what kind of construct? The starting point within the current book is that the construct is rhetoric: the arts of discourse. So, to follow the logic, if the arts of discourse is our primary concern and reference point, what kinds of arts does poetics represent, and why do we need it? What function does it play? There are a number of answers.

First—and to borrow the concept of framing—poetic communication is different from everyday discourse because it creates a frame around itself. In the case of poetry, the frame is the white space on the page that requires a different kind of attention to the words within the frame, in their rhythmic organization. In the case of the novel or short story, the text is bound by narrative conventions (and sometimes finds itself in the medium of a bound book) and most obviously creates other possible worlds through the elements of place, character, action, and time. In the case of plays performed in the theatre, the framing is not only literary (the script), but also realized in the shape of the theatre, the direct connection between the actors and the audience, the thin line that separates
the two (and is sometimes transgressed), and the beginning and ending of the performance within institutional and social conventions (the theatre building itself and the practice of “going out to the theatre”). To summarize this first set of characterizations: poetics charts a world of discourse that is highly framed. It is consciously framed so as to draw extra attention to what is inside the frame. The “extra” attention is a demand on consciousness and makes the assumption that what is inside the frame is coherent and informed by principles of unity (cf. Aristotelian poetics). In these senses, the poetic space is different from the rhetorical space because rhetoric is always maneuvering in the wider world of public discourse, where frames are less evident and less consciously defined.

Second, poetic communication invites a step back from the action of the everyday world. It invites absorption and reflection. It holds up “a mirror to nature” so that we can see ourselves in relation to wider patterns of social engagement and/or states of being. Poetic communication provides these spaces, which we assume commuters on trains, solitary readers on park benches, and readers of fiction anywhere are enjoying. The accent on enjoyment of such spaces is important: the poetic space allows the reader to “escape” the “real” world, to inhabit another world, and to compare that other world to the world or worlds he/she habitually inhabits. The key text on this topic is the under-rated
Fictional Worlds
(1986) by Thomas Pavel (initially discussed in
chapter 3
of the present book), which posits the notion of
distance
between the real world and different types of fictional world. Each of the worlds as represented in fiction (principally the novel, though any fictional work can fulfil these functions) is a
possible
world with its own boundaries and its position in relation to the real world (e.g., a novel in the realism tradition like Zola's
Germinal
is close to the real world;
Lord of the Rings
is further away). The further away the fictional world is depicted, the more general its reference to the real world, and the more “escapist” it appears; and yet (cf. the
Harry Potter
phenomenon) it can be populated with detail from the real world. If we use the classical notion of the “mirror held up to nature,” we can see that the degree of distance from the real world presents a different image: “distant” reflections may draw general lineaments of reference to the real world and yet be populated with detail that “creates its own world” (a parallel world as well as a possible world). Reflections that are closer will concentrate on representing the
detail
of everyday life: like figurative painting, it will represent what it sees and feels; it will attempt to record a
true image
of what it is observing. The seeming paradox of the distant worlds as depicted in fiction—the worlds of fantasy literature that nevertheless are populated with details from the real world—creates a magical alternative and parallel world: a world that is radically elsewhere, and yet is comfortingly familiar.