A Theory of Contemporary Rhetoric (38 page)

There is rhetoric for academic study, for example, “the discourses of the Norwegian North Sea oil and gas industry,” that may have real world application; and there is “pure” rhetorical scholarship, which I have suggested in this book should be reserved for reconfiguration of theory rather than the proliferation of manuals, as was the case in the Renaissance (and which led, ultimately, to the demise of rhetoric). There is also the place of rhetoric in the school and university curriculum. As fits the tenor of the present theory as a whole, there is no argument here for a return to the medieval Trivium—Rhetoric, Grammar, and Logic—but, rather, a different suggestion that can be interpreted by designers of school, college, or university curricula to suit their particular ends and purposes. In the previous chapter, we have considered some aspects of curriculum and assessment. Here we sketch the outlines of a new curricular design that takes into account rhetorical principles and a range of modal expression on one axis, and a range of epistemological categories on the other.

Because the modes and media of communication are essential to accessing the range of substantial subjects, and also because they are essential to an education in how to operate in the world, the proposal is to array the rhetorical fields and disciplines along one axis, and the “substantial” subjects—subjects that are “about” something—on the other (see
Table 14.1
).

Table 14.1
A Curriculum Matrix Based on Rhetoric and Multimodality

All curricular designs are limited by time and resource. Curricula are a selection of what is teachable from an unlimited world of knowledge. Nevertheless, we can bring some theory to curricular design by the combination of the vertical axis and the horizontal axis in a grid, as in
Table 14.1
. The vertical axis arrays the range of modes we have been discussing in the present book, all coming under the broad heading of rhetorical approaches to communication and the arts of discourse. The horizontal axis shows a selection of the possible bodies of knowledge—a selection that could be extended along the horizontal axis as new subject areas are deemed worthy of inclusion (computer science, for example), or that might be added as components or subcategories of the main “subjects” (in the way that engineering might be seen as a subcategory of science, or geology of geographical knowledge).

How would such a curricular grid work in practice? The rhetorical subjects could be taught generically, meaning that the characteristics of each of the subjects could be taught, including the modes of operation, the systems, and the core principles and features. In each of the boxes on the grid (take, for example, the visual/scientific nexus), the particular applications and rhetorics of the use of the visual in science would be taught. Work on the visual presentation of data could form part of such an education; the use of
photography in science, with everything from Landsat to microscopic photography, could be employed; the observation of the visual properties of phenomena form part of the curricular approach. In each of the “substantial” subjects, the emphasis on the communicative means of representing the knowledge would be brought out, thus providing not only a mechanism as to how the subject can be understood and taken forward, but also insight into how the particular discoursal mode operates in a specific subject, thus providing the possibility of a critical dimension to study in that subject.

Balancing the subject-based rhetorical fields across the subjects is a way of ensuring broad-based communicative understanding, but also reducing overload. For example, it could be in science that the visual is given prominence; and it could be in history that the linguistic is privileged. This arrangement does not mean to say that the study of history would be without images (photographs, maps), moving image (documentary film), movement (drama), or sound (recording of oral history)—all these would be available as the rhetorical curriculum would ensure that history teachers and students knew the range of communicative possibilities. But it does mean that in history, the depth of access and analysis would be through linguistic texts, thus enhancing both the study of history and of linguistic texts themselves.

The advantages of such a principled matrix for curriculum design are many. Any school, college, or university (and university department) can map their particular focus on the broader template, thus making clear how their work stood in relation to other areas and means of knowledge and knowledge creation. The range of subjects on the horizontal axis can be limited or extended as necessary. There would no longer be misconception between, say, those who teach sport and those who teach language, as both would find their place on the rhetorical spectrum—and both would see that their expertise and teaching was part of a modal spectrum that can be applied in the study of particular “subjects.”

In the mid-1990s, proponents of socially situated literacies used the plural form of literacy to indicate that there was no single “literacy” that was suitable to describe or proscribe for all situations and purposes. Indeed, that the universal notion of literacy was inappropriate in that standards differed from country to country, and from place to place. “Literacy,” it was argued, had, through its generation of its antithesis, illiteracy, hindered more than it had helped. The social turn in literacy studies thus differentiated and distinguished between different types of literacy by its very nature as an aspect of social study.

A similar problem faces rhetoric. It can be argued that a single rhetorical system is insensitive to local subtleties; that it appears to create a hegemony
(e.g., male-driven, corporate rhetoric) that is “imposed” on others; that it carries the pejorative associations of cant and sophistry; and that it ties contemporary references to rhetoric too closely to classical precedents.
Rhetorics
seems attractive as a term for the field because it avoids all of these problems: it is sensitive and representative of differences in social and political positions; it is more broadly democratic and can admit new voices and new perspectives; it carries fewer of the pejorative associations; and it does not seem so closely linked to classical “Rhetoric,” especially in its capital letter form.

The present book argues for the singular form, qualified by the adjective “contemporary.” First, there is a need for a unifying theory for a number of reasons. One of these is that without such a unifying theory, there can be no integration or full understanding of the field of communication as a whole. Such a theory, like any theory, allows for a number of disparate elements and phenomena and practices to be placed in relation to each other and for their
common
elements to be acknowledged so that their different and
distinctive
elements can be highlighted more sharply. Communication itself, of all kinds, is understood more fully, and there is less likelihood of misunderstanding (which, at the extreme, can be catastrophic). The function of theory is to play the role of unifying agent among a number of different phenomena and practices and for clarification of the various parts that make up the whole. Its function is also to link practice to theory. The adage that “there is nothing so practical as a good theory” indicates that theory must explain the operation and relations of its constituent parts.

Second, as has been argued earlier in this chapter, the theory must be singular but lightweight. It must be fit for purpose, which is to shed light on a wide range of phenomena and practices. It must not become an end in itself, nor the subject of endless reference. It works best in the background, out of sight; but at the same time, an understanding of its workings is essential for the maintenance of the system—the commerce of meaning and expression. Its goal and purpose is effective communication.

The qualifier “contemporary” is deliberate and is meant to indicate that rhetoric can and must be renewed at every turn to ensure that it is fit for purpose. The adjective is
not
intended to suggest that what is contemporary in 2010 will be the same kind of contemporariness in 2020; but rather that a set of principles and questions will be as current at the moment you read this as at the time of composition.

Lastly, the capital letter can be dropped to suggest that rhetoric is a modest and economical theory about the processes of communication, not a theoretical edifice that has its own
raison d'être
. It can and should be reconfigured. Part of the problem with some twentieth-century rhetorics was that they adopted the classical template and applied this to problems of the time, rather than remaking rhetoric to fit the needs of the
present. Inevitably there are scholars who wish to explore the minutiae of rhetorical and/or argumentative theory through classificatory systems that have outlived their social and political usefulness. There is historical justification for such study, but in terms of application for real-world purposes, including that of helping students to learn academic rhetorics, the use of classical or other outmoded rhetorics as a guide to write well, for example, is itself misguided. Over-classification, the over-use of “rules” for a good essay, a general approach that suggests there is a technique to be learnt—all these approaches mistake the system for the solution.

Rhetoric suffered a fracture in the late nineteenth century in England, leading to a separation of language/linguistic studies on the one hand, and literary studies on the other. In Scotland and the United States, for different reasons and in different ways, it has survived: as an ancient and unbroken tradition in the former, and a field of academic interest; and in the United States, despite various attempts at remaking in the twentieth century, as a theoretical partner to composition in introductory undergraduate programs, drawing on classical rhetoric and grafting upon it new understandings about writing process. With continued use of the term
rhetoric
in a pejorative sense in the media, what hope is there for the future of rhetoric?

There are a number of trends that offer such hope. One is the growing recognition that communication is multimodal. The dominance of the verbal in education has been reinforced for the last 600 years by the invention of the printing press, making the printed word a source of authority and dissemination. That picture is now changing with understanding that other modes of communication—speech, still and moving images, sound, gesture, movement—play a significant part in communication. Not only is each mode important in its own right, but the norm is for them to work in combination. This multimodal and hybrid nature of communication is not only critical to reading and interpretation, but also to “writing” and composition. Rhetoric offers a theoretical perspective that allows consideration of the various modes and their combination in relation to the intention of the rhetor and his or her audience, and within a wider context of social and political imperatives.

Secondly, there is a need for stronger links between home, work, and academia. It is now no longer tenable to assume all learning takes place in school, college, or university. Learning is an effect of the inter-relationship of communities and the way the learner is primed to make connections between these communities—including electronic communities. Rhetoric provides a means of describing the communicational dynamics of each of these communities, of the way power operates within them, and of the
social nature of each of these communities, bound as they are by their own conventions and practices for social engagement. Rhetoric thus draws on the sociology of the new work order, the changing nature (and wide range, globally) of family and community life, and the changing demands of education in its mediation between family and work.

There is also, thirdly, a “push” factor in that current models of language education are unable to account for the richness of contemporary communication or the need for an adequate theory to inform practice—both in their actual manifestation in social life or in curricular and assessment design in education. As this book goes to press, the coalition government in the UK is proposing a narrower curriculum for English in schools, as if to retreat, “assured of certain certainties,” to a particular conception of heritage that they think will form the foundation for communicational needs in the early twenty-first century. To build such a curriculum on a narrow foundation of literature and grammar (there is no research to show that the teaching of formal grammar in decontextualized exercises is helpful in improving the quality of children's writing) is badly informed and retrogressive, symptomatic of a narrowing of the curricular aperture in the face of a widening and more complex dynamic of communication. Consequently, the curriculum will move further from the actualities of cultural experience and need, schooling will become less relevant to everyday life and work, and disaffection will spread.

Fourthly, there is a renewed need for a theory to bring together first and second (or additional) language acquisition and development. The different theoretical bases for the two fields has been partly the reason for a different set of pedagogical practices that have characterized teaching. First, language acquisition has been driven by cognitive theories of development and a desire to widen and refine the range of spoken and written genres that define the scope of being highly literate in one's own native language; as well as by the connection between language, culture, and identities. Second and additional language acquisition has been predicated more on linguistic descriptions of the languages in question and has operated on a spectrum of approaches from immersive theory at one end to the so-called grammar-translation approach at the other, where the lineaments of the
system
of the target language are taught and learnt. What rhetoric offers these two worlds is a theory of the arts of communication that embraces both approaches, that sees language development and acquisition as part of a social and political nexus, and that offers a range of pedagogical approaches that can be used for first or additional language learning.