INTRODUCTION
This essay has two heuristic purposes: first, to explore some of the important theoretical and educational implications of rhetorical theory; second, to examine specific areas of rhetorical theory related the teaching of writing. The essay also has rhetorical purposes as well, the most important of which is to demonstrate that rhetoric has an essential role to play in today’s classrooms, not only as a heuristic tool but as a philosophical perspective. The object of this essay is not to elaborate on that role but to explore the connection between language, truth, and reality that gives the discipline of rhetoric so much philosophical and educational significance.
Language and Truth
The philosophical and educational role of rhetoric has received renewed interest during the past three decades because of a growing understanding and appreciation of the influence of language on the concept of truth. Interestingly, the Greeks appear to have recognized this close connection in their identification of truth with logos, which means “either reason or order in worlds or things” (Runes, Dictionary of Philosophy 183). Heraclitus said, “All things come to pass in accordance with this Logos” and “Logos is common to all,” though he believed as well that “most men live as if each of them had a private intelligence of his own” (Wheelwright, The Presocratics 69). In other words, truth, language, thought, and reality are all linked in the same way the Trinity is a tri-model manifestation of the same reality. Because logos manifests itself in language as it does in the world, language does not merely mirror truth but embodies it.
However,
as the critical, philosophical attitude developed among Greek thinkers, they
began to distinguish clearly between true knowledge and false belief or
opinion. If language can embody the truth, it can also misrepresent it. In
Plato’s philosophy the distinction between truth and falsehood is clearly
defined. Truth exists transcendentally in the realm of the forms or ideas, and
falsehood exists immanently in the realm of the material world. Thus, logos or the truth gives intelligibility
(Runes 184) to the world but exists outside of it. This means that language
per se does not embody the truth but merely reflects it. In the Cratylus Plato has Socrates say that
knowledge of things is not to be derived from names but from the study of the
things themselves (Trans.
Benjamin Jowett, The Collected
Dialogues of Plato 473). This radical separation of language from truth
seriously devaluated language and the discipline of rhetoric, which is
essentially a study of the uses of language. Thus, Plato’s became the first
philosophy to espouse a representational theory of truth, which required the
human mind to somehow know reality directly in order to determine whether
language correctly mirrored it.
Today, however, it is recognized that language does not merely mirror reality (or the Truth) but significantly contributes to its construction. To begin to understand this relationship, one can first consider the Aristotelian theory of perception. Aristotle believed that the world is not perceived directly but through the imagination. He says that we can receive “the sensible forms of things without their matter, as wax receives the imprint of a signet-ring without receiving the iron or gold of which it is made” (Aristotle, ed. and trans. by Philip Wheelwright 134). The form of the impression reflects the reality of the object. If the form is clear, the impression will accurately reflect the world. Already, Aristotle begins to raise suggestive questions about human access to reality; for example, he asks whether or not certain aspects of reality can be known without the proper sense organ. He gives the example of the sense of smell: “Hence nothing that cannot smell is ever acted upon by odor” (Aristotle 135). In other words, the world reveals itself only within the limits of the receptive abilities of the human organism.
There
are a number of very significant elements in Aristotle’s theory of perception.
First, he raises the question of just what gives human access to reality, and
he concludes that this access begins with the senses. Second, he develops a
correspondence theory of perception, which means that mental images mirror the
world and are true or false according to how accurate the correspondence is.
Third, he points out that the range of perceptual data received by humans is
limited by the nature and capability of human sense organs. This model becomes
even more interesting if language is introduced as a perceptual faculty, as it
will be momentarily. But first the Kantian theory of perception must be
introduced.
Immanuel Kant’s theory of perception is revolutionary. He states that human perception does not simply receive emanations of objects and reflects them in the imagination. Instead, he argues that the mind consists of perceptual faculties or categories that translated sense data into meaningful objects. For example, the “forms of perception,” space and time, unify experience into spatial-temporal fields. In other words, to quote John Kemp, “our imagination, with the help of pure concepts provided by the understanding, performs the combinatory activity which is necessary to make sense of, or give structure to, material presented to us” (The Philosophy of Kant 21). For Aristotle, the phenomena of the world sent emanations or likenesses of themselves to the human sense organs, but for Kant the phenomenal world is chaotic and becomes organized through the “synthesis of apprehension” (Kemp 28). Kemp explains:
The upshot of all this is that nature is subject to the categories, not because things in themselves are so subject (things in themselves have their own laws, of which we can know nothing), but because nature is nothing for us except as it appears to us, and the way in which it appears to us is determined in its general characteristics by the fact that our intellects have to apply the categories before they can make any sort of sense of the multiplicity of sense impressions which are presented to us. (29)
Kant’s
theory expands the role of the human mind in determining what is real and true.
Kant also introduces the disturbing notion that ultimate reality cannot be
known because of the inherent limitations of human perception and knowledge. At this point Plato’s criticism of human knowledge seems validated. In this
world, humans cannot know reality directly (except for certain logical
and mathematical properties). However, there is a significant difference
between Kant and Plato. For Kant, knowledge and reality are inherently human or
profoundly influenced by the human mind. Kant accepts this and thus accepts the
fact that humans must work within the epistemological context given to them.
Plato, on the other hand, would be frustrated by the built-in human bias
contained even in the dialectic or scientific modes of understanding. Yet,
Plato also seems to be aware that a problem of this sort is a possibility. Near
the end of the Cratylus he has
Socrates say, “How real existence is to be studied or discovered is, I suspect,
beyond you and me” (473). Socrates adds, however, that knowledge of things will
not be derived from names (language?).
Of course, this was what the sophists were saying all along. In his heart Socrates was religiously and romantically devoted to the truth, but in his mind he appears to acknowledge that direct access to the truth did not seem possible. He simply refused to settle for anything less than the unmediated truth, and this is why he rejected rhetoric. However, rhetoric becomes an important activity when the truth cannot be known directly because, as writers like Stephen Toulmin and Thomas Kuhn explain, the truth becomes a matter of consensus within an investigative and critical environment that is constantly probing, questioning, and changing.
The principle of consensus becomes even more significant for those who believe that reality is constructed. This view is an off-shoot of Kant’s theory but the constructive principles broaden not only to include the mental apparatus of the mind but also constructive fields created by society and language. Radical constructionists reject the claim that the true is that which corresponds to an independent, objective reality. Ernst von Glasersfeld says,
Radical constructivism, thus, is radical because it breaks with convention and develops a theory of knowledge in which knowledge does not reflect an “objective” ontological reality, but exclusively an ordering and organization of a world constituted by our experience. (“An Introduction to Radical Constructivism,” The Invented Reality, edited Paul Watzlawick 24)
Though constructionism has its roots in Kantian philosophy, it breaks with the latter by identifying the constructive mechanism with symbol, generally with culture as a symbolic system and specifically with language, the substance of symbol. The fundamental tenet of constructionism is that we do not know (or even perceive, for that matter) “being” directly but only in a form mediated by the human mind (as a kind of instrument) and by symbol. Thus, reality is not known or understood by an individual but through the individual's language and culture. This is not to imply that an individual does not bring something unique to the experience of the world. He or she does: the uniqueness of an individual life or set of personal experiences. Each person is a unique history, and this personal history colors an individual’s perception and understanding of the world. However, an individual also exists within a particular language and cultural system that is a particular pattern of beliefs—a tapestry of belief woven from the material of language. It is within this tapestry that reality and truth reside. To continue the metaphor, the magic carpet of language and culture is what carries each individual into the world.
It is most important, however, to understand that though in one way language or culture is somehow separated from the world or being, this does not mean that humans are trapped solipsistically by their language and culture. This is not the point at all. The human presence in this world allows being (that which is/reality) to reveal itself to that presence. What is revealed is not purely subjective (belonging only to the subject) nor purely objective (belonging only to the object). What is revealed is the world from the perspective of human beings. In other words, there is no world separate from human being (the Cartesian split); there is only (human) conscious-being-in-the-world. This is a single reality. William Luijpen puts it this way:
If man is fastened to the world, then the world also is fastened to man, so that it is impossible to speak about a world-without-man. In other words, the world is radically human. (Phenomenology and Humanism 64)
In
a sense, the world gives us what we need, what we seek, what we are capable of
receiving. The gift (of knowledge) is something from the world, the flesh and
reality of the world, but the world is always more than that which is given,
and, in as sense, we can never comprehend the abundance of the in-itself, i.e.,
that which lies beyond the horizon of our presence. The existence of religion
is ultimately testimony to the fact that the ultimate being of the world must
remain a mystery for humans. This means only that we recognize that our
understandings are ours, in some profound way belong to us and thus cannot
fully express the reality of that which is other than ourselves.
Even
the very notion of reality is a human one. We stumble upon the world and
immediately assume that it must be something, and so we embark upon the immense
task of transforming it into something, a task which has as much to do with
knowing ourselves as with knowing the world. But in transforming the world into
reality we humanize it. The tree, the ocean, the sky—they all become familiar
things, things whose realities we take for granted as much as we do those of
the things we create: the car, the ball, the hat, the radio, etc. But the difference
is profound and absolute. Regardless of how much we know of a tree, its being
ultimately will continue to reside in mystery. But by giving the name tree to the object, it becomes an object
for-us, something we can comprehend, something no longer absolutely foreign.
This is also true of our utilization of trees—for recreation, lumber, and
fruit. Treating trees as use objects tends to make them familiar to us in the
way the things we build for ourselves are familiar. Trees then become gifts
from nature, which by giving us what we need befriends us. What is lost or
forgotten, however, is the inherent primordial mystery of trees.
In
this sense the constructionists and Kant agree fully—that the noumenon (the
real world as opposed to the appearing world) of the world will always reside
beyond human comprehension, for even if humans were to discover the Truth about
the world, they would have no way of demonstrating that what they had discovered
was in fact the Truth. Thus, he Platonic pursuit of truth needs to be abandoned or qualified. I say
qualified only because the belief in and the search for the truth expresses a
relationship to the world that human being cannot escape, for logical,
emotional, and psychological reasons.
Logically,
even epistemological positions that deny the possibility of absolute truth are
based on a particular view of reality, which is itself absolute. The moral
relativist, for example, is not a relativist when it comes to claiming moral
relativism, and the Kantian who claims that absolute reality cannot be known
implies that there exists an absolute reality that cannot be known. Emotionally and psychologically humans need to believe in absolutes because it
is the commitment to absolutes that sustains the will, that encourages efforts
to live a life that meets ideal standards.
This
need is expressed dramatically and paradoxically by the character of Bazarov in
Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons.
Bazarov, a proclaimed nihilist, denies all principles and social institutions,
saying, “There are no principles in general.... There are only sensations.
Everything depends on them” (133). Yet, though Bazarov denies principles in
general he does so for the most idealistic reason, so that a just society
replaces the unjust society created by the traditional Russian aristocracy. The
reason why people require absolute truth is that truth establishes and defines
their relationship to the world, and this relationship defines the proper life
to be lived.
It
is natural that people want to believe that their relationship to the world is
the correct one because if it is not, they are living a life that is false and
empty, a life that is not only inauthentic but lacking reality. Such a life is fraught with ontological anxiety, the fear of one’s own lack of
reality. In James Joyce’s short story “A Little Cloud,” the main character,
Chandler, senses acutely his own nothingness. Intuitively, he believes that his
life is false, and he believes this because he has a very clear idea of what
living truly would be for him. Thus, he is an ontological ghost passing his
days in unending regret.
Consequently, it seems that though one can reject the possibility of absolute truth or at least of knowing it, one must live in the belief that it does exist and can be known. This was Kant’s conclusion. However, this commitment to absolute, universal truth does not explain away the predicament of not being able to verify the absoluteness and universality of one’s beliefs. It only illustrates the importance of absolutes—ontological, epistemological, and ethical—to human beings. However, regardless of one’s philosophical position toward the existence or knowability of absolute truth, one must recognize the importance of language in the revelation of truth.
Language and Reality
In an article titled “The Resources of Language,” Friedrich Waismann says the following:
If we spoke a different language
we would perceive a different world. By growing up in a certain language, by
thinking in its semantic and syntactical grooves, we acquire a certain more or
less uniform outlook on the world—an outlook we are scarcely aware of until
(say) by coming across a language of a totally different structure we are
shocked into seeing the oddity of the obvious, or what seemed to be obvious.
Finally, I want to say that philosophy begins
with distrusting language—that medium that pervades, and warps, our very
thought.
The point is that it supplies us with certain categorical forms without which the formation of a coherent system of experience, a world picture, would be impossible. (The Importance of Language 108)
Waismann
is making the linguistic point that thinking in a particular language
influences how one perceives reality, and thus conceives truth. Throughout most of human history this characteristic of language was either
not recognized, fully understood, or fully appreciated. People existed within a
particular language system (including both the linguistic structure of the
language and the language’s mythical content), and it was through this language
system that the world was revealed. Within a coherent language system, the reality of the world will remain
homogeneous, and it was almost impossible for the individual to step outside of
the language system to understand the influence of language on thinking,
perception, truth, and reality.
The
Greeks were certainly the first to study systematically the use of language to shape thought and to investigate
language’s relationship to reality. Undoubtedly, one of the factors that
enabled them to step outside their language was the demands that their changing
society placed upon their language. Their culture’s becoming at once more
democratic and more commercial required more sophisticated uses of uses of language. These demands resulted in a need to better understand the
function of language, resulting in language being understood as a tool, a
highly abstract tool, but a tool nonetheless. And this objectification of
language enabled the Greeks to approach it from the outside.
However,
once JudeoChristianity had become the dominate worldview in the West, the
language of Christianity (which included much of the philosophical language of
the ancient Greeks but Christianized) sealed up the world once more in a
homogenous linguistic universe. Not until the beginning of the
Enlightenment did the dominance of the JudeoChristian worldview begin to
decline. Up until this time JudeoChristianity defined thinking in the West. It
was the West’s great river of thought. And though tributaries of language
inconsistent with JudeoChristianity fed into this great river, they were either
transformed, Christianized, or lost in the magnitude of its current.
About three-hundred years ago the river reached a sea, fanning out into all directions at once, both its identity and directions disappeared in the sea. What was the sea? It was, and is, many things but most of all endless new information that produced leviathans of doubt that harried old archaic ideas. Science had become a young, powerful worldview that now sought to separate itself from religion; however, in spite of the wealth of information that science provided, it was science’s critical attitude—not its content—that most influenced moderns. It required that all beliefs be questioned and established rigid standards for beliefs to be accepted as legitimate. Most traditional view could not meet these standards.
Also,
science and technology helped bring into existence a different world—a world of
commerce, wealth, progress, and materialism. It was a world where modern forms
of transportation and communication could unite all the cultures and worldviews
into a single global lifeworld. The global village of Marshall McLuhan had
become a single site in which was gathered all the ideas, experiences, and
beliefs of a heterogenic world. The modern world had become a Disney World,
where the visitor could pick and choose among cultures and worldviews,
selecting those that seemed most attractive and satisfying.
Because
of the multiplicity, as well as the trivialization, of worldviews, it is
imperative that people understand the nature of worldviews and their
relationship to language: the underlying theme here is of course that the
worldviews are invented by, preserved in, and expressed through language. In other words, it
is important that people have a definite rhetorical sensibility if they are to
understand and be able to adapt to the modern world as well as to critically evaluate ideologies old and new that continue to entrap lives. I will now begin a closer analysis of how language establishes a relationship
between the individual and reality by comparing the worldview and language of
the scientist with that of the artist.
The
world for the artist is merely a construct of language—which is the stuff of
human subjectivity, not a world created ex
nihilo, but neither an object dangling in space and time—fixed, complete,
and self-contained. No, for the artist, the world is experience. And no writer has expressed this
notion more beautifully than Virginia Woolf. She opens her novel The Waves with the following sentences: The
sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that
the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it.” (Woolf’s
italics, 1). What she describes is not the world as an object in-itself but as
an object of perception. But as we have already noted, perception is informed
by language. Woolf in this passage gives us the perspective of a child, but we get this
perspective through language, her language. Furthermore, her language gives us
only one of an endless number of perspectives.
To use Jean-Paul Sartre’s conception of the revelatory nature of human being, the presence of human being allows the world to be revealed. Sartre’s words express this wonderfully: “It is we who set up a relationship between this tree and that bit of sky. Thanks to us, that star which has been dead for millennia, that quarter moon, and that dark river are disclosed in the unity of a landscape” (Literature & Existentialism 23).
The
points that I want to emphasize here are that landscape is the revealing
element (and we are the bearers of language) and that in the modern world
people have become self-conscious of this process because the language they
live within is no longer a given; they must seek it out, creating from it the
worldview they believe to be most true, honest, and meaningful.
The
artist has always been the one who recognized—though perhaps not in any
scientific fashion—that languages fashion the world and peoples’ relationship
to it and to one another. The artist has also characterized the ontological,
ethical, and aesthetic openness that is now associated with the modern
temperament. Finally, the artist is most aware of the interwoven intimacy that
exists between the world and the subject. Science has attempted to minimize
this intimacy in an attempt to reveal the world objectively, as it is
in-itself. But in fact this is only one perspective—one that significantly
reduces the meaning of the world. The language of art invites closeness with
the world as it invites the reader (listener or viewer) to explore new
relationships and understandings. The scientist seeks Truth—universal,
absolute, and objective. The artist seeks truth—personal, subjective, and
emotional. Says Waismann, “Poetry is forever groping along the borders of the
unspeakable, wresting new land from the vast void of the unexpressed” (116).
However,
the truth of the artist contains in its own way universality, even if it is the
truth of a single person. Like a lone tree burning upon the vast prairie, it
can be witnessed by anyone. It is a unique event unlike any other. It may be
even totally unexpected and perhaps even unbelievable. And yet there it is:
Upon the great empty expanse a column of fire fueled by the life of a single
tree reaches briefly to the cloudless blue sky. Except for a single
subjectivity, the event slips into nothingness, to occur never again.
What
really occurred? After investigating the ashes, the surrounding area, the time
of day, etc., the scientist would explain that the fire, like the tree itself,
was a highly improbable occurrence caused by a unique combination of
factors—the sun’s rays striking a piece of glass at just the right angle, the
presence of dry grass, just enough breeze to ignite the fire and blow the ashes
upward into the leaves of the tree, which were especially dry due to months of
hot, dry weather. And if the scientist told you the story, you would have to agree
that his understanding of the event was correct, universally correct. And even
if the scientist had overlooked some relevant piece of evidence, you would
still say that what he said was true if only because it was possibly true, even
if highly unlikely.
But
had the subject been a pioneer woman, whose family had newly staked out their
claim upon the treeless expanse, would she have seen exactly what the scientist
saw? No. She could not have seen what he saw, not exactly. She knew of the
tree. It was part of the home she was creating. When her husband said that the
tree should be cut down, she objected. There was only that tree, and its old,
twisted trunk could not have provided enough usable wood for anything but the
fire. It would be a sin and a crime to cut down such a tree. For the pioneer
woman the tree was her friend and companion when she on her lonely walks. She
could talk to the tree, and her children loved to play on and about the tree.
Besides, it was old and beautiful. In the light of the setting sun the old tree
became so beautiful that it brought tears to the woman’s eyes. And when she
became discouraged, she would go to look at the tree and feel its presence upon
the lonely plain. It spoke to the woman silently about enduring. So the woman
came to love the tree.
And
on that day when she discovered that the tree was burning she did not think of
why it was burning, no more than she would think such things if one of her
children suddenly died. She felt only loss. This was not merely the burning of
the tree but a friend suddenly dying before her. She could almost feel the
flames consume her own flesh as she fell upon her knees weeping. The tree that
had been a sign endurance and courage to her had suddenly perished. She felt an
overwhelming oppression crushing her to the earth. She was alone in a vast
emptiness. If only the tree had remained, she might have endured. This thought
came to her mind because at the very moment she saw the tree being consumed,
she believed that she could not endure. Like the tree she did not belong in
that empty wilderness.
Why
the tree had been in this place, she did not know. It did not belong there.
Probably some traveler had carried the seed from the east where the great
forests grew, and the seed had fallen to the ground and miraculously had taken
root. The pioneer woman thought of the home she had left behind. It had been a
place of many trees, of a community and family. She felt in the loss of the
tree all that she had left behind. And now the tree was gone, and there was
nothing but emptiness, and she felt this emptiness in her. She remained upon
her knees for a long time, and she might have spent the entire night in that
spot had she not heard the long grass rustle in the late afternoon breeze. She
would never forget the burning of the tree that had encouraged and comforted
her during her first year on the Great Plains. As the years passed the tree and
its burning took on even deeper meaning for the woman.
Where
is the truth in the pioneer woman’s experience of the burning tree? It is easy
to understand the truth of this event for the scientist because the scientist
only attempts to understand one aspect of the burning tree, the mechanics of
combustion. But for the woman the burning of the tree is a much broader event
because for her the tree is more than an isolated thing. It is part of her
lifeworld experience. It is an object of special concern and as such has
broader significance for her. Yet, though her relationship to the tree is
different from that of the scientist, it is fundamentally the same because each
individual experience of the tree is subjective. The subjectivity of the
scientist is precisely defined and formalized. The scientist’s experience of
the burning tree is experience or subjectivity that has been restricted or
limited by the criteria of scientific objectivity. In other words, the
relationship between the scientist and the burning tree is also essentially
subjective, but it is a formalized, codified subjectivity. It is subjectivity
with preconceived criteria for what will be considered meaningful and
meaningless. But even these criteria are subjective. For the scientist that
which is meaningful is that which can be predicted, tested, and utilized.
The
pioneer woman’s experience of the burning tree also has subjective
preconceptions, but these are not formal or codified but simply the content of
her own personal life experience. Is her experience of the burning tree false?
Of course not. Even the scientist would not deny the truth of her experience.
But the scientist would say that such truth is not useful, but useless to
science because such truth is too personal and beyond codification and
predictability. The universality of the pioneer woman’s experience of the
burning tree is contained in our acceptance of her experience. It may not be
our experience, yet that does not lessen its reality or universality. And
though such experience cannot be codified as precisely, preferably quantifiably,
as the scientist’s, it is an experience that is archetypal, for it is the
experience of loss, suffering, and death.
Furthermore, though such an experience does not have the kind of utility that comes from being predictable within a precise range of probability, the highly personal experience of the pioneer woman is not without utility. In the same way the tree had many meanings for the woman, the woman’s experience may have many meanings for those who hear or read of her experiences. She too can become a friend, a soul-mate, a source of sorrow, comfort, or encouragement, a reminder of the human struggle for survival and significance, a new way of understanding or responding to the world, an expression of the subjective nature of our encounters with the world, a reminder that all things must die and that in death all things are related. The pioneer woman’s experience is significant but too unique to be comprehended by the strict methodologies of science. As an object of literary art, however, her experience is significant because the truth she illustrates is nonquantifiable lived truth that is as emotional as it is intellectual, and as such reveals the world as felt experience.
The
truth in both cases is revelatory, each revealing different aspects of reality. The
difference between the two is that the scientist imposes restrictions for what
will count as real, whereas the pioneer woman imposes no restrictions so that
the reality of the world reveals itself within the full range of her
subjectivity: sensate, emotional, cognitive, and experiential. Thus, for example, the
tree can become a friend, a thing of beauty, a fellow creature, and so on. Even
more relevant to this study, the reality of the tree is revealed through the
linguistic universe of the observers. The scientist experiences the tree within
the context of his (or her) scientific training, which includes concepts such
as process, cause and effect, objectivity, verifiability, quantification,
empiricism, and analysis.
The
scientist also has been trained to operate within the language of science. He
will understand or interpret the experience through the language that he used to describe the experience. The woman is unable to make such
distinctions. She sees the world from the entirety of her linguistic and personal history.
In a sense, she is unable to see the tree from the perspective of the scientist
because she lacks his professional training and his scientific detachment. Nevertheless, her experience of
the tree is more complete than that of the scientist because it is an
experience based on the entirety of her life-experience.
One might argue that her experience cannot be reduced to language alone because it is experience influenced by the unique collective experience of one individual’s life. This is of course true; however, her history is also a linguistic history. As a child she began to interpret experience in terms of the language she was acquiring. In fact, she grew up in a world that was already defined by the language of culture. Furthermore, language and experience of the world is a dialectic. Returning to the Greeks, as the Greeks’ social-political-economic world changed, new demands were placed upon their language, which itself changed and adapted. But until the language changed, the Greeks could not understand the new realities of their circumstances. When the new languages of art, myth, politics, science, commerce, law, etc., appeared, the realities of the Greek world changed. These languages created the gestalts of consciousness through which the world is perceived and understood. About this James Burke says, “The structure [gestalt] therefore sets the values, bestows meaning, determines the morals, ethics, aims, limitations and purpose of life. It imposes on the external world the contemporary version of reality” (The Day the Universe Changed 310).
To further demonstrate the influence of language on perception I would draw the attention to the above text that describes the experience of the scientist and that of the pioneer woman. Through these texts, the reader is drawn into different perspectives of the world, that is, exposed to different realities latent in the world. The task of rhetoric is to introduce one to the important revelatory function of language. This task is especially important today for a number of reasons. First, no dominate language system exists. This means that individuals must find for themselves linguistic perspectives that reveal the world in ways that are meaningful and beneficial to them, to others, and to the world. Second, some linguistic perspectives are better than others. Some are hurtful and destructive; some trivialize experience; some are narrow, thus leaving invisible significant areas of experience and reality; some are degrading to the earth and its creatures; and finally some are the products of powerful social institutions that seek not to liberate and enrich human subjectivity but to enslave, manipulate, and/or commodify it. The irony here is that rhetoric can be used to enslave and to liberate. Consequently, it becomes the task of society to enhance rhetorical awareness in order to reveal what language can do as language in order to prepare the individual to live meaningfully and freely in a world that has become a tempestuous sea of language that can easily destroy the inexperience sailor.
Plato was the first to put people on guard concerning the powerful influence of rhetoric on what and how people think. The dialogue The Gorgias is a study of how rhetoric can mislead. In The Phaedrus the reader discovers how language can be critically examined to determine whether its claims are valid or invalid. Plato believed the method of dialectic analysis was the best method for getting at the truth concerning a problem or issue. Basically, it is an approach based on an initial attitude of skepticism. Socrates, Plato’s spokesman, refuses to accept at face value claims made by those he engages in discussion. All claims must be scrutinized and tested (not so much empirically but logically). The irony here is that Plato himself would use his masterful rhetorical skills to fabricate one of the most influential yet erroneous views of reality that would be used to reinforce JudeoChristianity’s denigration of material world of nature.
Language and the Individual
Rhetoric
is important not only because the rhetorical stance is essential if one is
going to create successfully a meaningful and beneficial worldview, but also if
one is going to participate cognitively in the creation of one’s self (and even
the self of others for those who have such influence, such as teachers and
parents).
Jerome Bruner says, “French toys create consumers” (Actual Minds, Possible Worlds 130). His point is that consumer society is made up of languages. Most obviously it is the language of advertisement and fashion. But it is also the language of the objects of the society. (An automobile, for example, is much more than a transportation device.) They are symbols, metaphors, messages—that make a statement for those who make them and for those who use them. The problem occurs when the dominance of a particular language game obscures all other possibilities. This is a problem not simply because the dominate game may be harmful or distorted, but because it simply prevents individuals from seeing other possibilities of “being-in-the-world.”
The
self is a text. We (our understanding of reality, our moral attitudes, our
values, our goals, our estimation of others, etc.) consist of the narratives
that we have internalized from culture. We interpret ourselves as a text
(Bruner 131).
Awareness
of rhetoric allows us to understand the role that texts play in forming our
lives and opening them to other possible modes of being and to other possible
interpretations of reality. Just as rhetoric can enslave us, it can free us.
And this type of freedom is probably what Plato feared most about rhetoric: the
freedom of multiple interpretations of the world and of being in it. Plato
understood freedom mainly as doing the right (rational) thing. This freedom is
essential to the well-being of human beings. When a doctor is making a
diagnosis, he must use reason to eliminate false diagnoses. There can be only
one correct diagnosis.
But
the freedom of rhetoric is the opening up of possibilities, which may not have
been discovered through dialectic or other logical methods. The doctor who is a
rhetorician will understand that in some cases the scientific paradigm may not
be the best method for approaching a problem or its solution. For example, a
doctor may become a psychologist, social, worker, artist, philosopher, or
friend in determining and treating a medical condition.
In
Tolstoy’s story The Death of Ivan Ilyich,
Ivan hates his doctors because they never step out of their role as doctors,
even when they know no treatment will save him. It is the peasant Gerisim who
responds to Ivan simply as a human being whom Ivan appreciates most. Other
characters categorize Ivan according to their own mindset (father, husband, or
colleague) and respond to him accordingly. Gerisim’s response seems free of any
particular way of thinking. He is employed by Ivan as his servant, yet Gerisim’s
caring for Ivan does not appear to be dictated by a master-servant
relationship. His sympathetic, caring response seems to transcend language. The Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan
has a similar theme. The Samaritan does not categorize and then judge a man who
has been robbed, beaten, and left lying on the side of the road. He simply
response to the man as a human being and aids him. On the other hand, the
priest and Levite also see the injured man but their religious language game
causes them to judge the man as unclean and thus to be avoided. So they pass to
the other side of road and continue on their way.
On the other hand, Robert Terwilliger, “Words can put a set of blinders on the individual—but we can also see that they may facilitate his behavior in other situations” (Meaning and Mind: A Study of the Psychology of Language 274). The stories just describe do just this. They open the reader’s mind to different ways of responding to the world, even suggesting that one should consider whether or not society or a language game has narrowed one’s worldview with blinders. Many of the texts of postmodern culture are designed to promote consumption. Says Jean Baudrillard, “Marketing, purchasing, sales, the acquisition of differentiated commodities and object/signs—all of these presently constitute our language, a code with which our entire society communicates and speaks of and to itself (“The Ecstasy of Communication.” In The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster 48). People might not wish to give themselves over to consumption—to becoming essentially consumers—if they were aware of other ways of being in the world (other lebensforms to use Wittgenstein’s term). However, if people are unaware of other language games (a term introduced by Wittgenstein), then they may not be able to evaluate the language game that is determining their mode of being in the world.
To illustrate how texts can present or reveal reality, both human and nonhuman, differently and by doing so offer a different path for the development of the self, I provide a lengthy excerpt from Land of the Spotted Eagle by Luther Standing bear:
In talking to children, the old Lakota would place a hand on the ground and explain: “We sit in the lap of our mother. From her we, and all other living things, come. We shall soon pass, but the place where we now rest will last forever.” So we, too, learned to sit or lie on the ground and become conscious of life about us in its multitude of forms. Sometimes we boys would sit motionless and watch the swallow, the tiny ants, or perhaps some small animal at its work and ponder on its industry and ingenuity; or we lay on our backs and looked long at the sky and when the stars came out made shapes from the various groups.... The old people told us to heed wa maka skan, which were the “moving things of the earth.” This meant, of course, the animals that lived and moved about, and the stories they told of wa maka skan increased our interest and delight. The wolf, the duck, eagle, hawk, spider, bear, and other creatures, had marvelous powers, and each one was useful and helpful to us. Then there were the warriors who lived in the sky and dashed about on their spirited horses during a thunder storm, their lances clashing with the thunder and glittering with the lightning. There was wiwila, the living spirit of the spring, and the stones that flew like a bird and talked like a man. Everything was possessed of personality, only differing with us in form. Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library and its books were the stones, leaves, grass, brooks, and the birds, and animals that shared, alike with us, the storms and blessings of the earth. We learned to do what only the student of nature ever learns, and that was to feel beauty. (194)
This text offers a unique relationship to the world, an understanding of the world, and a way of being in the world—all of which together offers a different path for the developing the self—that is radically different from most Western thought, but especially different from the messages sent by consumer culture of the late 20th century. In addition, the passage reveals the importance of
language and rhetoric. The old Lakota is a storyteller, and his words reveal
his vision of the world. Through those words his young listeners are to
share that vision and perception of the world—one that might otherwise not be
available them. And when such text is lost or replaced by newer texts, a unique
vision of the world is lost.
Narrowly
defined terms provide peoples’ lives and activities with structure. If a person
had to constantly ponder the meaning of words, he or she would never accomplish
anything, would be unreliable, and would be very insecure about the world and
its inhabitants. Even negative stereotypes (such as black cats are bad luck)
give the subject a clear course of action—fight or flight. Such narrowly defined
language gives the subject a sense of security about the nature of the world
and the courses of action to be taken in response to others. An approach to
the world that interprets others ambiguously is more stressful—even if more
accurate.
Another
example would be the attitude of the settlers of the New World toward its
native peoples and nature. It was much easier—practically, morally, and
psychologically—to believe that nature and the native peoples were inferior
beings that had to be removed or transformed in order that civilization could
be established. The alternative was to allow a situation that would be morally
uncomfortable, economically disadvantageous, and politically complex. In other
words, people often choose to view the world—that is, create a cultural
narrative—in a way that is first of all useful to their lives and only
secondarily factually accurate. But in doing so, they also cut themselves off
from other forms of seeing and being that are both profoundly revealing and
deeply meaningful.
Recently,
women have made a concerted effort to revise the language of their culture, a
language that has both distorted their meaning as human beings and limited
their possibilities for living. Here
are some of the words for women that are sexually abusive and sexual: “dish, piece, piece of ass, piece of tail.” The main point is that
there are many more such words for women than there are for men. An important issue is the effect these words
have on the perception of women within society. These words transform women
into things, specifically, object of consumption (as well as objects of
derision and contempt). And once humans are reified, they can be treated merely
as things because things are generally thought of as having no moral rights. Of course, the basis of this treatment lies in the very perception of the
woman, which has been influenced by language.
The rhetorical issue here is freeing oneself from linguistic determinism, which can influence not only one’s attitude toward others but influence the kind of individual one becomes: black males perceiving themselves as violent or women perceiving themselves as sex objects. This is a rhetorical issue because it has to do with the general question of using language to achieve certain desired ends (which is not a question of linguistics, philosophy, or philology). Rhetoric deals with how we use language to achieve our purposes. The Greek rhetoricians were concerned exactly with this use of language, and Plato certainly understood that how language is used can have far reaching consequences—including peace and war and even strict limits being imposed upon free speech.
Language and Education
Bruner
says, “Language necessarily imposes a perspective in which things are view and
a stance toward what we view” (121). This defines much of what rhetoric should
seek to do in an educational environment: to free the mind from slavery to any
single language game or system, to open the mind to the possibility of other
language games, and to make the mind aware of the influence of langue upon its
understanding and appreciation of the world. This does not mean, of course,
that the purpose of rhetoric is to undermine belief systems. In fact, the
rhetorical perspective is characterized by openness. It only seeks to make the
student aware of the role of language in his or her life.
Rhetoric
can also do this by drawing the students’ attention to the various forums of
deliberation or exploration that exist in all cultures, but are most pervasive
in Western cultures. Bruner says that culture should be looked upon as a kind
of forum. He says, “Indeed, every culture maintains specialized institutions or
occasions for intensifying this ‘forum-like’ feature. Storytelling, theater,
science, even jurisprudence are all techniques for intensifying this
function—ways of exploring possible worlds out of the context of immediate
need” (123).
But
this view of culture as forum conflicts with the view that understands culture
as an authority. In this view, education is a process of transmission of
knowledge and values by those who know more to those who know less and know
less expertly. This is the Platonic view which understands reality to be fixed
and unchanging—which means that the ideal society, social institutions, ways of
life (individual and social), goods to be sought, etc., do not change. In fact,
change is often dangerous because it may lead away from the ideal. The problem
of this view arises with its tendency toward totalitarianism of the ideal and
the inability to provide universal verification, leaving many groups believing
that they have the truth.
Robert
Terwilliger’s understanding of teaching is useful here. It is something closer to training. He uses the military as an example. The
efficient use of the military depends on using a language the words of which
are narrowly defined. Thus, words are given a single or very narrow range of
meaning. This ensures precise communication (a reduction of ambiguity) and more
reliable (predictable) responses from those who receive the communication. The
same is true for other groups that must solve problems, often under restricting
conditions such as time constraints. An example would be a surgical team.
During an operation each member of the team must react quickly and accurately
to the commands of the surgeons performing the operation. Ambiguity can result
in mistakes or dangerous delays.
Traditional
education was designed pretty much to train minds, not to open them.
Educational institutions were created to produce useful workers and
citizens—not philosophers. Nazi Germany was an extreme—but otherwise not
unusual—example of a nation using its educational institutions to train rather
than to educate (in the sense of opening the mind). The training included not
only the skills to perform needed work, but propaganda which trained the mind
to see the world in only certain terms (“terms” meaning language categories).
As Terwilliger says, training is a process of establishing certain meanings by
eliminating others.
The
non-Aryan, for example, became for the Nazis non-human. (The syllogism is simple enough to construct.) What of all the other meanings and
language games (of philosophy, literature, poetry, history, etc.) of the German
culture? They were declared acceptable if compatible with the new language game.
What was not compatible was ignored or discredited. This is an important point.
Because reality is constructed, truth becomes contextual. There is no
extra-textual metalanguage that one can appeal to—like that of the Bible. Thus,
no language game is completely safe from being discredited. This occurs, Bruner
explains, by simply relegating incompatible elements to another language game
that one is not playing.
The result of the considerable autonomy of language games is conflict. Western history can be traced very neatly by its major conflicts, which occurred especially often in the 20th century between groups existing in separate, opposing language games. Nelson Goodman’s explanation of world creation or worldmaking (Of Mind and Other Matters 31) suggests that the perspective of socially created reality can avoid such conflict because it does not view language games as an either-or situation. The principle of non-contradiction is suspended between language games or worlds (to use Goodman’s term), though not within a particular world. In a sense, the Germans could believe that Jews were inferior, but would also have to accept and respect that other perspectives exist. Also, the fact that there exists no ultimate method of verification means that people cannot hold beliefs with the certainty that their beliefs are accurate reflections of an independently existing reality. Of course, people can go on hating one another for whatever reason, and there is nothing that can finally be done to stop this—because of the nature and limits and of language, language games, and their epistemological methods.
The
only hope, to use Terwilliger’s phrasing (311), is to remove “the blinders”
placed on thinking thus behavior that limit linguistic categories. Opening up the categories
through education—that is, immersion into the worlds of language—will result in
what I will call the “rhetorical attitude.” The rhetorical attitude is one that
refuses to allow itself to be dominated by or a slave to any particular
language game or worldview. One having this attitude continues to live within
language games but recognizes the epistemological and ontological status of
such games. There are two cardinal principles of the rhetorical attitude.
First, worldviews are created through language and thus do not have the
absolute status of being the Truth.
Second, language changes and by doing so changes the world; thus attitudes or
worldviews must be flexible. The responsibilities that this attitude imposes
upon the individual are simple: One must retain an open mind when deciding
important issues, being willing to enter into other language games to gain a
comprehensive view of various perspective; one must realize and consider that
other people naturally think differently (and not necessarily wrongly for that)
because they dwell in different linguistically constructed worlds; and finally
one must accept the inherent ontological and epistemological limits of one’s own
language game.
Terwilliger’s interpretation of meaning is helpful here. He says,
Meaning is a tendency to respond in a particular manner in a particular situation; and the more different tendencies to respond there are connected to a particular word, the more meaning it can be said to have. (314)
“Meaning”
adds ambiguity to the significance of words. This may result in greater
ontological, epistemological, and ethical anxiety, but it also results in
greater freedom to enrich one’s life by broadening one’s understanding,
experience, and perception of reality. Furthermore, it results in greater
tolerance for and acceptance of others and frees people from the kind of
personal, social, and institutional dogmatism that has too often led to the
destruction of human life and other forms of being.
Rhetoric
must teach students that today one must learn to live with a certain degree of
ambiguity and uncertainty and that these attitudes are not evil but to be
admired if they lead to tolerance of the views of other cultures and their
language games even though they differ from one’s own. In fact, what has been
wrong throughout his is the demand of unquestioned loyalty to one’s nation,
political leaders, and religion. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “A foolish
consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and
philosophers and divines.”
Bruner
adds that culture consists of an “ambiguous text that is constantly in need of
interpretation by those who participate in it...” Once this is understood,
“Then” continues Bruner, “the constitutive role of language in creating social
reality becomes a topic of practical concern” (122). The role of rhetoric in
education is to make students aware of their rhetorical responsibility—which is
not to be like the butler in Remains of
the Day, but to construct their own reality and be responsible for
understanding and accepting its implications for their world. Thus, ideally,
learning is invention, not merely the consumption of data nor the acquisitions
of skills, and certainly should not be a process of cultural indoctrination.
Bruner
says, “The language of education, if it is to be an invitation to reflection
and culture creating, cannot be the so-called uncontaminated language of fact
and ‘objectivity.' It must express stance and must invite counter-stance and in
the process leave place for reflection, for metacognition” (129).
By
showing students how reality is constructed, teachers reveal to them that
reality is not set in stone and that present conceptions, perspectives, worlds,
and paradigms may not be the most beneficial ways of understanding and seeing
the world for humanity, the world, or themselves. By understanding that
reality (as a set of notions and concepts) is socially created, students will
begin to see the importance of the critical perspective, which is a perspective
that requires that worldviews, attitudes, and even “facts” must meet certain
standards of not only truth but goodness.
Knowing that our views of reality are constructed helps us understand why there are so many different views and makes us more tolerant of difference. In the modern world where local cultures are brought into the global exchange of ideas through various transportation and communication technologies, the acceptance of difference will be much more conducive to world peace than a continuation of ethnocentric attitudes.
