A Theory of Contemporary Rhetoric (35 page)

But “edge” is exactly what starts the third part of the earlier extract: “Emma, I thought you said a minute ago that you like playtimes.” The ploy is a devastating one, and one with which we are familiar from parliament: “The right honourable member contradicts precisely what he/she said last week, and what is said in the policy statement. …” But Emma moves on to the position that perhaps Richard was stumbling toward earlier in the discussion: “It's bad and good” or the succinct outlet that Carly offers her: “it's a mix.” The collective understanding that at least three of the participants have come to—that “it's a mix, a mix, a mix”—is an important one for 5–6 year olds to have come to through their own deliberations: that the question of whether playtimes are good or bad is a complex one; that there is evidence that can be brought to bear on propositions; that people can disagree without falling out with each other; that thesis and
antithesis can lead to a new synthesis; that if pupils and students argue about topics that they care about, they don't seem to have a problem in bringing complex abstraction and interaction to bear. This last point leads on to the practice in some schools of schools councils, where, if there is genuine consideration of pupils' views leading to action in the community of the school and/or the wider community, then young people will feel “franchised,” that what they say matters and that they can make a difference in the world. The “nesting” of the discussion between four 5–6 year olds within a separate space where they could discuss and record, within a classroom and school, within a curricular framework, and within national priorities regarding the development of speech and thought is a rhetorical contextualization. The fact that school councils and the forging of consensus through argument are taking place is indicative of rhetoric at work in democracy, albeit within the protected space of the classroom. Rhetorically, these 5–6 year olds are assuming agency in their discussion; they have been afforded such power by the teacher, who has given them the freedom and responsibility to try argument together in a relatively safe space.

The school curriculum, since the birth of state schooling in the mid- to late-nineteenth century in England, has moved away from rhetoric as a founding discipline, even though the arts of discourse are central to educational training and development. “English” as a school subject derives from English literature as a university discipline and has a history of about 100 years. Its central ethos is one of a humanizing subject at the core of the curriculum, replacing Classics, and based on literary appreciation and criticism. That emphasis on literariness, in the early part of the twentieth century, was developed further by a remaking of English as a school subject in the 1940s and 1950s with an exploration of speech, a valuing of the everyday experiences and accounts by young people of their ordinary and extraordinary lives, and a consequent rebalancing of the English curriculum (see Hardcastle, Medway, Brewis and Crook, in press). Despite successive governments' attempts to send the English curriculum back to a national heritage model based on a narrow selection of literature and a narrowing focus on to “phonics” and grammar teaching, contemporary curriculum theory has to embrace the demands of real world communication and to adapt to the relationship of in-school and out-of-school modes and media of communication. This means reconceiving curricula in relation to the broad sweep of communication needs, rather than narrowing it down to a directive, functional, and/or elitist conception of “what needs to be taught.”

The second example is from close to the other end of the spectrum: from the work of a third year undergraduate student in English Literature. The course is “Shakespeare on Film,” and the essay question to be answered is
“‘I believe that Shakespeare was a feminist, and all the plays I direct analyse … the roles of women from that ideological point of view’ (Michael Bogdanov). Discuss this view of the presentation of women in one or more Shakespeare films.” The essay has the virtue of diving in at the deep end—though the angle of the dive is very carefully judged, both rhetorically and substantially, to make a point right from the start:

Ostensibly the role of women in Shakespeare's writing seems a negligible one—they can be seen as purely wives, sisters, daughters, mistresses or servants of the male protagonists, functioning only as subservient confidants or messengers. Yet …

What is interesting and impressive in argumentational terms about that opening is that it is contrapuntal: to move the metaphor away from pools and diving, it starts on the offbeat. Immediately, an argumentational voice is established, and the main beat is hit at the beginning of the second sentence with one of the main propositions in the essay, viz that despite the seeming deference of women in Shakespeare (and it can only be the case in some of the roles), they are foregrounded in performance and on film—though this foregrounding in itself may not be ideologically sound:

In film these feminine narratives are constructed technically, in the way the director “photographs women, in close-up, in mid- or long-shot, in tracking shots; by turns intensifying concentration on a face, an eye, a foot or impassively observing, or drawing back, marooning women in compositions that register isolations and them as objects” (Rutter 2007) [and so] their roles are exposed in different ways according to the director's intention.

The essay continues with a critique of Trevor Nunn's film adaptation of
Twelfth Night
, then comes back at the end, more generally, to readdress the question. The contrapuntal start is something many undergraduate students find difficult, in reading argument as well as composing it: they cannot distinguish the main points from the subsidiary ones, and according to research with first year Psychology students in a midwestern university in the USA (Larson, Britt, and Larson 2004), they may often misconstrue an argument because they do not know that an argument can start on the counterpoint. Such tangential writing is typical of arguments in Literature and perhaps other humanities subjects. Such elliptical angles are not the case in Engineering.

The third example, then, is from a Masters level final dissertation project in Engineering—where the argument manifests itself differently. There are words in this 60-page dissertation, but they sit alongside diagrams,
mathematical calculations, and computer programming. The argument is embodied in the whole multimodal work:

The objective of the project was to develop a piece of software for use with gear design. It would act both as a learning aid for students studying engineering … and as a research tool to aid the stress analysis of gear teeth.

The produced software was tested, first with students to measure its usability, then against example calculations from gear handbooks to assess the accuracy of the software's built-in calculations.

The dissertation progresses from an introduction, which sets out the background to the problem and reviews existing gear software, through gear transmission theory to an account of the software development. It then discusses the software capabilities; tests the software, gauging its effectiveness as a learning aid and research tool; and finally discusses and concludes. The argument is basically, “there is a need for new software in this field. I created it, tested it, and conclude that it makes an effective contribution to the field. Here is the tested product.” Behind that ostensibly simple argument is a wealth of data that provides evidence for the claims and the process.

The main point is that argument manifests itself in different subject and disciplines in different ways, and these ways have to be learnt as thl pupil or student makes his or her way through schooling to university Differentiation increases as subjects turn into disciplines. Often the crite ria for success in argumentation are hidden or not made explicit, and ye they remain one of the most important criteria for success.

To return to the main theme, however, certain elements of argument and argumentation remain constantly important throughout education. These are: the formulation of propositions or claims; supporting and/or testing those propositions with evidence; being clear about how the links are made between propositions and claims (what Toulmin calls the “warrant”); using rebuttal to challenge the proposition, the evidence and/or the link between the two; and understanding the sets of values, ideologies, or disciplinary practices and
mores
that provide further contextual validation for the argument.

It was noted that the engineering dissertation used a range of modes to build its argument. The chapter now turns to consider whether, and if so in what ways and to what degree, an argument can be carried by visual images alone.

At the advanced and cutting edge of learning—the production of dissertations at undergraduate, Masters, or doctoral levels—learning and knowledge take conventional forms. The convention is that a dissertation or thesis
is presented for examination. It is usually bound, taking its model as the monograph or published book. In the arts, humanities, and social sciences at least, but spilling over into other meta-disciplines and fields of enquiry, the thesis or dissertation is seen as the summation of a phase of education and the gateway to an award. At a symposium at the Royal College of Art in London in 2012 (RCA 2012), four contributors from the
Handbook of Digital Dissertations and Theses
(Andrews et al. 2012) and a visiting professor of Design Theory and History gathered to present and discuss issues of the representation of research knowledge. The event, situated within a series on research methods, raised issues that were deeply rhetorical (see Boyd Davis 2012; Andrews 2012; Dogantan-Dack 2012; Milsom 2012; and Hohl 2012). In turn, the topics addressed were a defense of the
power of words
in the thesis or dissertation,
non-verbal argument
and argumentation, capturing musical
rehearsal and performance
, representing
ethnographic “thickness”
in the dissertation by using a multimodal approach to translation, and consideration of
grounded theory
in relation to the evaluation of an immersive art work.

Let's take two of these in more depth (full accounts of all except Hohl are to be found in Andrews et al. 2012): Dogantan-Dack on performance research and Milsom on multimodal presentation of translation research. Performance studies have grown in response to the idea that—in musical performance, for example—the actual rehearsal and performance of musical works is under-researched and somehow taken for granted. Musicology has explored scores, notations, the history of styles, social history of music, and the languages of music, but not the performances. The paper explored the differences between rehearsal and public performance and the particular “magic” that ideally is generated by the performance of musical works to an audience. That “magic” is a result, first, of hard work in practicing and rehearsal; the confidence that a musician brings to a piece, having practiced it on his or her own before coming together in a chamber group or orchestra to rehearse it; and his or her knowledge of the instrument. But it is also a result of the interaction between the musicians as they rehearse together, their prior knowledge of each other and each other's styles, and their exploration of the piece as it lifts from the score and becomes realized in sound.

The core performance moment, then, is the production of the piece in sound before an audience. Social conventions frame the occasion: people buy tickets, they dress accordingly for a lunchtime or evening concert, and they arrive in time for the concert, perhaps buying and reading a program (words, images) about the history of the piece, of the chamber group or orchestra that is performing, and of the composer. Lights may or may not illuminate the stage; the performers emerge through a door on to stage; the audience is aware that this movement signals the beginning of the concert. Some tuning up takes place. Then the piece begins, and—save for coughing between movements—proceeds to its conclusion and appreciation from
the audience (applause). The concert may be made up of a number of such pieces and an encore or two. What comes together in such a performance is a rich complex of context, engagement, and activity that makes for the communicative experience: the historical moment, the presence of the audience, the preparedness of the musicians, the nature of the piece. Such is a rhetorical occasion because of the multifaceted communication in sound, sight, word, and image. The sound is different from that of a recording because of its physical resonance and multidimensional spatial character. The dynamics of the performers add to the experience. Ultimately, if the technique is impressive, the interpretation is fresh and insightful, the degree of concentration and energy is high, and the audience is attentive, the occasion will generate the quality of attention and experience that is characterized by the somewhat mysterious term
magic
.

Researching such phenomena is difficult. Like all research, it is a question of pattern-seeking. Methods and data are almost always tangential to or partial to the core experience. They provide traces of the actual performance, or recordings of it (in video, sound, transcription) that attempt to capture the essence of the experience via framed approaches in order to understand it better. In the light of our broader theme of the relations of the communication arts and rhetoric to learning and education, it can be said that there is no substitute for engagement with actual moments of performance, for both performers and audience; but that the vestigial traces of the experience can be used to “capture” the essence of the experience, to “frame” it. No (apparently) single mode of communication—like the notation of a score, the conversation prior to a rehearsal, or the listening to a recording of the performance in the dark, on a CD—can do justice to the full nature of the performed experience. And yet education often reduces aspects of full experience to coded two-dimensional takes on it in order to rationalize and “bring order and system” to it. Research often requires the distillation of the experience into written form, following the conventions of academic journal or book-production.