Linguistic Returns: the currency of sceptical-rhetorical theory and its stylistic inscription in the Platonic and Derridian text by Monina Wittfoth B.A., The University of Toronto, 2000 M.A., The University of British Columbia, 2003 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in The Faculty of Graduate Studies (English) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) October 2010 © Monina Wittfoth, 2010 ii Abstract Based on the premise that modernity’s understanding of the linguistic sign has a long history dating back to ancient Greece when the linguistic mediation of knowledge preoccupied thinkers like Parmenides and Plato, this dissertation synthesizes contemporary post-structuralist and rhetorical understandings of language with like-minded findings of other fields of language study. It sees post-structuralist and deconstructive understandings of language as being congruent with the long tradition of rhetorical theory and the infamous linguistic turn in philosophy, that was initiated by the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, as a turn away from the actual phenomena of language towards an idealization of it. Nevertheless the thesis discovers recent findings by some of the beneficiaries of the “philosophy of language” that corroborate rhetorical theory’s insights. Inspired by both Derrida and Plato, this dissertation presents a rhetorical-deconstructive image of language that, recalling the root of the term skopevw (‘I look,’ ‘behold,’ ‘contemplate’), I characterize as sceptical. This study follows the theoretical matrix of de Man, Fish, Culler and Barbara Johnson, who are, of course, themselves following Derrida. It has a holistic attitude to language characteristic of the Bakhtin/Volsohinov approach, drawing insights from classical and contemporary rhetorical theory, post-structuralist theory, findings of systemic functional grammar, recent work in cognitive science and psychology on affect and language use, the scholarship of reported speech, and the ostensive-inferential theory of communication called Relevance. This cross border work in intellectual history, language theory and stylistics examines the interstices of theory and style in the work of figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Voloshinov, Bakhtin and Derrida. Sperber and Wilson, Scholars of Reported Speech and Halliday are central to its findings; the thinking of William James and Silvan Tomkins play supporting roles. It positions Plato as the founder of rhetorical theory and studies the voices of Plato and Derrida as language theorists. I examine both how Plato and Derrida talk about language and what theories of language underlie their styles, determining finally that their sceptical-rhetorical theories prompt their ironic-conversational stylistics. iii Table of Contents Abstract. ......................................................................i i Table of Contents. ............................................................. iii Acknowledgements. .............................................................v PART 1 1.1 paving the way............................................................2 1.2 pretexts: Bacon, resistance and the style myth .. 7 1.3 the road ahead. .........................................................1 6 1.4 Wittgenstein & linguistic complexity . .......................................1 9 1.5 the participants and other parts.............................................2 4 PART 2 2.1 adventures of signs in human communication . 2 8 2.2 Relevance Theory . ......................................................3 1 2.3 historical context: Bacon and the “plain style”. 3 8 2.4 epistemological quagmire: affective rationality . 4 2 2.5 epistemological quagmire: analogy & knowledge.. 5 2 2.6 fuzzy logic and the biochemical image of grammar. 5 7 2.7 epistemological quagmire: part-whole relations. 6 5 2.8 the inherent resistance to theory: de Man and rhetorical theory. 7 1 PART 3 3.1 conn-texts & citation. ....................................................7 7 3.2 legacies: code-communication and the written language bias. 8 6 3.3 legacies: performatives, seriousness & ordinary language.. 8 9 3.4 intersections: language theory and reported speech. 9 2 3.5 scholarship of reported speech.............................................9 7 3.6 verbatim’s fraudulent celebrity status. 101 3.7 involvement strategies & affective interests in speech. 102 3.8 from involvement to performativity.........................................106 3.9 Voloshinov’s sign: dancing in the caverns of our minds. 110 3.10 Nietzsche’s metaphorical turn.............................................114 3.11 language’s bewildering complexity..........................................121 PART 4 4.1 stylistic turns...........................................................124 4.2 the vicissitudes of “plain” style myths. ......................................129 4.3 Aristotle’s clarion call for clarity ...........................................137 4.4 good writing and difficult texts: clarity and opacity. 148 4.5 genre expectations......................................................152 PART 5 5.1 “Platonism’s” voice-overs.................................................157 5.2 genre and the style of “propositional knowledge”. 163 5.3 genre and social relations.................................................169 5.4 “Always with irony” (D 67). ..............................................175 5.5 themes, theses, and “the ability to follow the given thread” (D 63). 178 5.6 weaving, meaning, and le vouloir-dire. ......................................188 5.7 reading Derrida writing about Plato ........................................193 iv 5.8 Derrida’s reader and the addressee of “Plato’s Pharmacy”. 197 5.9 Poetry’s banishment re-visited.............................................202 5.10 some polemical mechanics of style .........................................210 5.11 self-referential text as discourse about discourse.. 213 5.12 linguistic cues, ‘how things are said’ & meta-rhetoric. 220 Post Script. ..................................................................237 Works Cited .................................................................239 v Acknowledgements I would like to extend my sincere thanks to a number of friends and colleagues without whom this dissertation would not have been completed. I thank Julian Patrick and Francis Sparshott who got me started on this project way back in 1983. I am grateful to Iain Higgins, who ‘gave me a chance,’ to Nan Johnson who had confidence in me, and to Adam Frank who challenged me. I owe very special thanks to my supervisor at UBC, Janet Giltrow, for her guidance, intellectual engagement and friendship on this great adventure. I would also like to thank Gregory Renault for his early support of my academic aspirations and the ‘social-theory crowd’ who guided my first steps. I am very grateful to my family and Yukon friends for their faith and unwavering support, and to Wayne and Evelyn for lending their eyes to the task of editing. 1 The notion that a theory might be extravagant is probably more controversial; but I have always seen this as a positive feature in the sense that there are more conceptual resources available than are necessitated for any particular task. This seems, perhaps, to go against the usual demand for parsimony, for “the simplest solution that is compatible with the facts”; and it is true that I see no great virtue in simplicity – I prefer the criterion of “the best tool for the job.” M.A.K. Halliday “Linguistics as Metaphor” (OL 265) Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussion . We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with such premises to indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and in speaking about things which are only for the most part true and with premises of the same kind to reach conclusions that are no better. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics (W.D Ross 1094b). 2 PART 1 1.1 paving the way ~ Inspired by both Derrida and Plato, this literary-language theory dissertation presents a rhetorical-deconstructive image of language that follows the theoretical matrix of Paul de Man, Stanley Fish, Jonathan Culler and Barbara Johnson, who, of course, are themselves following Derrida. However, despite Derrida’s intimation that the question of the sign is “an unexpectedly historical one,”1 and despite Nietzsche’s Lectures on Classical Rhetoric,the long history of this supposedly contemporary and post-structuralist understanding of language is not fully appreciated. Plato’s treatment of language – which is especially attentive to the epistemologically problematic but nevertheless creatively productive power of tropes and affect in language use – indexes the linguistic consciousness of his audience. Michael Naas’ account of persuasion (in Turning: From Persuasion to Philosophy) and the dance between trevpw (I turn) and peivqw (I persuade), together with its suggestive middle voice (I obey), outlines a movement which signals not only the human-inter-subjective element of linguistic interactions, but also the tropological nature of language’s reality. The linguistic trope both displaces human experience and filters and shapes our account of it. The trovpoV, or ‘turn,’ is a way, path, or direction, and a manner, fashion, or custom. It is both form and content, style and meaning, both the mechanism