As part of my indep. study, I am taking on several excerpts from The Rhetorical Tradition.This book is massive, dating back to Gorgias and the Sophists (circa 480 BCE), and I do not intend, at least for this indep. study, on reading the Classical, Medieval, Renaissance or Enlightenment texts. I have read some scholars ― Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Locke and Hume ― before, but I plan to focus on a couple nineteenth century pieces (Spencer and Nietzsche) and several Modern and Postmodern texts (Bakhtin, Burke, Perelman, Foucault, Derrida, Gates, and Fish).
Herbert Spencer remarks, “A reader or listener has at each moment but a limited amount of mental power available. To recognize and interpret the symbols presented to him, requires part of this power; to arrange and combine the images suggested requires a further part; and only that part which remains can be used for realizing the thought conveyed.Hence, the more time and attention it takes to receive and understand each sentence, the less time and attention can be given to the contained idea; and the less vividly will that idea be conceived” (1155).
Herbert Spencer’s “The Philosophy of Style” is a basic nineteenth-century theory on economy writing.Spencer, ultimately, argues for some essential principles ― ones that I see Joseph Williams argues for in Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace ― that one ought to deploy for direct, clear writing.Spencer posits that “childhood” words rather than “adult” words (e.g. ‘have’ rather than ‘possess’, ‘wish’ rather than ‘desire’,et al.), words with one or two syllables, concrete terms rather than abstract ones, and main ideas (for the most part) should always come first in a sentence (subject à predicate) and constitute clear writing.This style of writing, as Spencer argues, is needed as the system of literature and composition becomes more complex. And this is where Spencer’s paradigms structure his argument. Spencer, as a promoter of social Darwinism, believed that the main principle of evolution ― homogeneity to heterogeneity ― exists in all systems (physics, arts, et al.).As these systems develop further and become much more complex, individuals are able to specialize or be specialized, yet also rely on more and more on the system for their existence.
But, more importantly socially, “The Philosophy of Style” and Spencer’s historical moment was undoubtedly a time of an oppressive racial society.Binary oppositions were ubiquitous, and Spencer’s discourse illuminates such ideologies.He suggests that savages/uncultivated peoples use an indirect method in their colloquial expressions (e.g. “Water, give me”).He remarks that, “the fact that the indirect mode is called the natural one, implies that it is the one spontaneously employed by the common people ― the one easiest for undisciplined minds” (1162-1163). Spencer’s discourse here engenders a hierarchical language use that sustains class and racial divisions, as well as resonates with the civilizing mission: a way for the bourgeoisie to exercise cultural, as well as economic and political, hegemony. Of course, I understand that Spencer is a product of nineteenth century empiricism, but, even outside politics (although I do understand that we cannot ever step outside politics), Spencer’s discourse is problematic in assuming an essentialist, and naturalist, idea about language use. All dimensions of language use, even those much more apparently fixed, for example grammar, as Chomsky contended as a hard-wired, universal aspect of language, may appear to be inherent in usage. But this would assume that language isn’t cultural. However, at times, I wonder if language as strictly cultural holds true: the classic example is the word mom.In various languages, the signifier and signified for “mom” has a similar phonetic: the “mmm” sound.Yet, while a vast number of languages have close phonetics with “mom,” several languages do not have the “mmm” sound. How can we rest on the idea that language is inherent in an individual?
My next reading was Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” from Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870s.I’ve always found Nietzsche fascinating, not just in his writing style and rhetorical approach with aphorisms, poetry and metaphors, but in his ideas.He begins this essay by considering why “the proudest of men, the philosopher” uses “the intellect mainly for dissimulation”(1172). But Nietzsche quickly shifts the direction of what man desires, suggesting that man (humans) wants “to exist socially and with the herd; therefore, he needs to make peace and strives accordingly to banish from his world at least the most flagrant bellum omni contra omnes [war of each against all]” (1172).And, furthermore, Nietzsche directs our attention, and connects these previous two ideas, to how man typically attempts to use words to articulate truth. Nietzsche argues though for the arbitrariness of language (e.g. trees as masculine and the plant as feminine, a snake behaves similarly to a worm, et al.) and that truth is a “movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropolmorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified,, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding” (1174). In analyzing Socrates/Plato’s claim that words/sounds have a natural, inherent connection to the things they signify, Nietzsche unveils the shortcomings of this idealist position and proposes the arbitrariness of language.In addition, words engender concepts that fit to the situation and relate to and within the rhetorical context, as well as things outside the rhetorical context.Nietzsche remarks, “Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to server as reminder of the unique . . . experience . . . but rather . . . as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases . . . Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things” (1174).
Most post-structuralists have deployed Nietzsche’s framework, and thus language as arbitrary, words as signifiers, speech as fragmented is common understanding for those academics in the liberal arts and humanities.Ultimately, Nietzsche sees philosophy as inseparable from language, and, more importantly for my study, all language as rhetoric. For philosophy to seek truth beyond language is impossible and unfruitful. To consider language as literal is impossible.For Nietzsche, both truth and lies are conventions of discourse, meaning that since there is no way to transform things directly into language, we project our impressions onto the thing and in return attempt to articulate our impression. Consequently, all things become metaphors, and “truth” becomes a rhetoric by humans creativity in language.
One quote that I think will be valuable in my studies of visual rhetoric is when Nietzsche remarks, “the concept ― which is as bony, foursquare, and transposable as a die ― is nevertheless merely the residue of a metaphor, and that the illusion which is involved in the artistic transference of a nerve stimulus into images is, if not the mother, then the grandmother of every single concept” (1175).The translator’s footnote remarks, “i.e. concepts are derived from images, which are, in turn, derived from nerve stimuli” (1175).What I’m interested in is how nations and communities develop their narratives, which are complied of numerous concepts, as well as consciousness via visual and material artifacts. In other words, I want to take Nietzsche two steps further: nerve stimuli àimages (as well as words) àconcepts à narratives à consciousness.Obviously, this outline is a very nascent understanding of the connections between a subject/text and text, but if concepts are the remnants of images and words/metaphors, then narratives would possibly all be allegory (the residue of multiple metaphors); yet, what happens to my outline with consciousness?Would consciousness have multilayered allegories? What does that even mean?And, finally, how does this brief outline I’ve developed here connect to the nation or community?
I’m also interested in how Nietzsche connects to Roland Barthes.I plan to read Image Music Text next, and I know, as the title suggests, that Barthes discusses the production of meanings in photographs/images and music.Nietzsche suggests that empty space and empty time provide an empty metaphor, which produces every concept.We begin with space, time and causality.Then, an act of transference into images creates the matter. Next, “the qualities which we believe in” are created.In this last “step” or transference, Barthes’argument about mythologies appears to resonate.
Bizzell, Patricia and Bruce Herzberg, eds. The Rhetorical Tradition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. Print.
Phil,
ReplyDeleteI think your summary of two of Spencer's points is really interesting and I think that Spencer is "typical" 19th century thinker not only for his social Darwinist perspective and his hierarchy of discourse (used to justify racial stereotypes concerning the intellect), but also because of his clear distinction between "style" and "content" : "the more time and attention it takes to receive and understand each sentence, the less time and attention can be given to the contained idea; and the less vividly will that idea be conceived” (1155)."
I'm not sure this holds true. Or, at the very least, one must consider that certain sentences difficult to understand may contain several "ideas" or more complex "ideas." I put "ideas" in quotations because I think that to think about the "ideas" as the content whereas style is simply there to frame it, is to deny that style structures content in a way that makes them inseparable. I will grant that this is generally a good principle to follow, but more theoretically, such clear distinctions are untenable. I think that your word-- "the economy" of writing is an apt term, since this assumes that writing that is easy to follow better expresses a certain content.
Also, on Nietzsche, I like to think of the "concept" as a hardened metaphor, a metaphor that sticks -- a "dead metaphor."
ReplyDeleteI think you've got a great point in terms of Spencer's neglect of content, and part of his neglect, I believe, arises in his 19th century paradigm of language as a hard science. In other words, the words used are irrelevant, or at least not as important, to conveying concepts because words have a fixed meaning, and it is style and one's control of it that will enable a clear communication of meaning. But you're right: style structures content to point that both become interlocked (or have a distinct symbiotic relationship). I also think this is why Bizzell and Herzberg included Nietzsche as the following piece: two stark positions on words, meanings and the function of language (although Spencer isn't particularly dealing with denotation and connotation and Nietzsche isn't particularly dealing with style).
ReplyDeleteI found your "'concept' as a hardened metaphor, in which it sticks a 'dead metaphor'" interesting, especially as you see a metaphor ceases to be a metaphor once a concept forms. I'm trying to think of an example where a metaphor loses its metaphor quality . . . but part of the issue is that Nietzsche posits that all language is metaphorical, and thus any time we attempt to develop a concept, there will be that “slippage” (which you had mentioned before), and limitations, as well as contradictions, inevitably arise: the signified is an illusion, and really a signifier, which wears a mask under the cloak (in Nietzschean fashion).