INFORMAL LOGIC xv. I , Winter 1993 The Revival of Rhetoric, the New Rhetoric, and the Rhetorical Turn: Some Distinctions DILIP PARAMESHWAR GAONKAR University of Illinois Key Words: Rhetoric; rhetorical tum; new rheto­ were authorized to grant doctoral degrees. ric; revival of rhetoric; rhetoric of inquiry; consti­ As the American teachers of public tutive rhetoric; figural language; ideology. speaking set out to revive rhetoric, there al­ Abstract: Each of the three phrases-the revival ready existed considerable literature on the of rhetoric, the new rhetoric, and the rhetorical study of rhetoric. It consisted of two dis­ turn-points to a rediscovery of rhetoric in con­ tinct types. First, there was abundant peda­ temporary thought. However, the scholarly work, gogical material on the art of public motivation and commitments associated with speaking and on other forms and tech­ each phrase invokes and puts into playa different niques of effective communication. This notion of rhetoric. In this paper, I explore those differences with a view to showing how the "rhe­ pedagogical literature is part of what torical tum," unlike the "revival of rhetoric" and George Kennedy caIls the tradition of the "new rhetoric," repositions rhetoric as a "technical rhetoric" whose roots can be "metadiscipline." Thus, it signifies a radical shift traced with remarkable continuity all the in the self-understanding of rhetoric. way back to the handbook tradition of the ancients. This pedagogical and technical tradition, always susceptible to the chang­ I. The Revival of Rhetoric es in climate of opinion, has been periodi­ cally renovated, and sometimes mutilated, Although the idea of a "rhetorical turn" in response to the dominant intellectual is of recent vintage, there has been inter­ and cultural influences of the time. But on mittent talk about a "revival of rhetoric" the whole, this tradition has survived intact since the beginning of this century. Such with an identifiable core of discursive an anticipation of a revived rhetoric be­ precepts and practices since the demand came an institutional and disciplinary real­ for practical training in communicative ity in the first quarter of this century with skills has remained relatively constant the establishment of separate departments throughout the Western cultural history. of Speech (later known as "Speech The second type of literature dealt with Communication") in some of the leading the history of rhetoric. There was no sepa­ American universities. l Although these de­ rate study of rhetorical theory as such. The partments were initially driven by the ped­ theoretical understanding of rhetoric was agogical ideals of imparting effective equated with a mastery of the history of communicative skills, especially those of rhetoric, or to be more precise, a mastery public speaking, debate and argumenta­ of key texts within the rhetorical tradition. tion, in response to the growing specializa­ Hence, the traditional method of tion and professionalization of higher historical/theoretical studies in rhetoric education, they gradually turned to a may be characterized as that of the history scholarly study of rhetoric in its theoreti­ of ideas. Two books by Charles Sears cal, historical and critical dimensions. In Baldwin, a professor of Rhetoric at the due course, some of these departments Columbia University-Ancient Rhetoric 54 Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar and Poetic (1924) and Medieval Rhetoric terrain of a given age, the Speech Commu­ and Poetic (1928), both bearing the nication scholars began to study it in terms subtitle "interpreted from representative of what was most distinctive about it, works"-provided the model for this sort namely, its persuasive dimension (as con­ of historical/theoretical scholarship.2 stituting a relatively autonomous sphere of The students of rhetoric within the symbolic action).5 Moreover. this conflu­ Speech Communication field continued to ence of interests between an historically operate along these two lines of scholarly grounded study of public address and a endeavor suggested by the existing litera­ theoretically motivated concern for ture. They added a new arena of inquiry rhetorical criticism paved the way towards which gradually came to dominate the establishing an indigenous scholarly tradi­ research activity within the field-the tion within the field, a sign of emerging study of public address. They undertook to maturity. examine public discourse, especially To be sure, during this period research political oratory, in its historical and bio­ in rhetoric was also being conducted by graphical context. Such concentration on a scholars in other fields, especially in clas­ specific object of study in turn gave rise to sics, Renaissance studies, and the modern a distinctive mode of critical practice languages and literatures. Here the motiva­ called "rhetorical criticism." The evolution tion was quite different. These scholars of the relationship between public address were not seeking to revive rhetoric and to studies and rhetorical criticism is itself a establish it as an autonomous discipline. complex subject which requires further They were drawn to a study of rhetoric be­ study.' But one thing is clear. It is by cause it so happened that an understanding means of historical and critical study of of rhetoric was indispensable in making public address more than any other subject sense of the texts and times they were ex­ that the American Speech Communication amining. And through such studies they departments as a whole were able to place came to appreciate rhetoric as a ubiquitous their distinctive stamp on the study of rhet­ cultural process that stretches across the oric. This is not to suggest that the Speech whole of Western civilization. A great deal Communication scholars were the first to of first rate historical and textual (theoreti­ study oratory and other forms of public cal) scholarship in rhetoric thus originated discourse. Nor am I claiming that they in­ in fields outside of Speech Communication vented the genre of "rhetorical criticism." and was unencumbered by disciplinary One can find the rudiments of a rhetorical anxieties. criticism of oratory as early as Longinus's It is against this background of modern astute observations on Demosthenic style.4 academic scholarship in rhetoric that one Cicero's Brutus and De Optimo Genere has to examine the idea of a "rhetorical Oratorum furnish additional evidence of a turn." In the literature broadly identified critical impulse that sought to examine or­ above, one is unlikely to come across the atorical discourse in terms of its suasory claim regarding the centrality of rhetoric in qualities. But within the ambit of modern contemporary thought, a key presupposi­ academic scholarship, it was clearly the tion of the rhetorical turn. To find the prec­ Speech Communication scholars who first edents for such a claim one has to return to attempted to treat oratorical discourse as the classical texts. It is the sort of claim an autonomous cultural artifact worthy of Plato ironically ascribes to the sophist critical attention. While the historians and Gorgias who, when asked by Socrates (0 political philosophers were content to ex­ specify the subject-matter of rhetoric, spa­ amine oratorical discourse as documentary ciously declares that it deals with "the evidence in reconstructing the ideological greatest of human concerns." and thal it. Rhetoric: Some Distinctions 55 the greatest good because it insures "not like Shorey said it, but rather that this tell­ only personal freedom for individuals, but ing phrase serves as the inaugural epigram also mastery over others in one's own fifty five years later to George Kennedy's country" (Gorgias, 451-452). Similarly, The Art of Persuasion in Greece (1963), the youthful Cicero, in De lnventione, de­ the first in a multivolume historical study scribes the orator as a culture-hero who by of classical rhetoric and its abiding cultural employing his powers of "reason and elo­ influence. Kennedy, while manifestly sym­ quence" (ratio and Of"atio) once taught men pathetic to his subject, nevertheless assumes, that "wandered at large in the fields like as it were unconsciously, a defensive pos­ animals and lived on wild fare" to volun­ ture by citing Shorey'S dictum without tarily give up their savage ways and to comment or irony.8 It was unlikely that any found political communities in which they scholar would have ventured to anoint could engage in "every useful and honora­ rhetoric as the queen of cultural studies ble occupation," and "submit to justice within such a climate of opinion. without violence" (I. ii. 2-3). Later in the Renaissance we find Lorenzo Valla fulmi­ nating against philosophy as he "revives II. The New Rhetoric Quintilian's claim that philosophers originally stole from oratory, and wishes This defensive posture persists in the that Cicero 'would have attacked the twentieth century academic scholarship on thieving philosophers with the sword of rhetoric. The Speech Communication eloquence-queen of all things-entrusted scholars, the group most explicitly com­ to him, and had punished the mitted to a revival of rhetoric, were more malefactors"'.6 But these were generally concerned about the viability of rhetoric in polemical and promotional claims (what the modern age than its alleged centrality_ Vickers calls laus eloquentiae), frequently There was genuine anxiety about concep­ found as commonplaces in the "accessus" tual ossification-an uneasy perception section of the ancient rhetorical treatises, that rhetoric had not progressed signifi­ and obviously never meant to be argumen­ cantly beyond what the ancients had enun­ tatively secured.7 However, in the modern ciated. There were periodic calls for a new, era almost from the time of Descartes, es­ conceptually refurbished rhetoric better pecially in the academic scholarship of the adapted to the exigencies of the modern age. 19th and the 20th centuries after the Thus, the idea of a "new rhetoric" came Romantic upsurge against rhetoric, one into vogue. The relevant writings of a rarely finds rhetoric given a pivotal plaee group of scholars-LA.