Considering Definitions

In “Toward a Sophistic Definition of Rhetoric” John Poulakos proposes we focus on sophistic concerns of timeliness (in terms of audience and occasion) and the appropriate (to prepon) features of rhetoric. His definition also encompasses attention to the ‘possible,’ which relates to the question of intention. If the purpose of rhetoric, following Gorgias, is to have “the citizens protest against the injurious practices of their civic leaders,” (Poulakos 28) then we are advocating for an activist function in the study/practice of rhetoric. Further, the rhetorical act of persuasion can have several receptions, it either “rejects permanence and favors change; it privileges becoming over being … [or it can be] always potentially dismissible” (Poulakos 31). Poulakos maintains that this is a risk that speakers should face nonetheless if one is to “offer an alternative to the mundanity, the mediocrity, or misery of those he wishes to address” (33). In this view, there is a reliance on studying rhetoric with aims that entail social action.

 
On the other hand, social action can be equated with protection, or salvation in a more loftier sense, of the “other.” In highlighting the status and marginality of rhetorical theory, Robert Hariman also suggests a classification of high and low status and marginality formation of social groups, or their particular discourses. For example, “attributions of status are a characteristic of arguments about discourse, and also how rhetoric—or the techniques of ornamentation typically consigned to rhetoric – often are assigned an inferior status in regard to another discourse,” (Hariman 40) which can be equated to the forms in which particular race, or ethnicities can be conceived as inferior in relation to others.

 
A more specific mention of this definition as a negative value of marginality is that “social marginality is the zone of what is recognizable as pertaining to one’s identity, but is undesirable … marginal behavior is an essential part of society, something that cannot be eliminated without undermining a community’s morality and cohesiveness” (Hariman 41). He goes on to provide examples of how high and low status identify marginal classifications between “social drinker and a drunk, or a lady and a whore … [which] contain reciprocal attributions of status and identity, and these operations themselves require social validation” (41). In so doing, he is concerning the different views that have been taken in regards to rhetoric as a field or discipline, but a more useful application of these positions would be to consider these aspects in relation to social group formations of identity.

 
Another point that Hariman poses is that rhetorical discourse has to be interpreted in relation to doxa, or public opinion, and that “it can be understood better by identifying how it is a complex of the relations of regard, ranking and concealment” (45). Once again, there is a correlation that can be made in relation to the classification of status of both rhetoric and social marginalization, in that one formulates such notions or definitions because of a social influence in the construction of knowledge, or how we conceive of our lives in this world.

 
In determining the isolation between text and context, and proposing a view of ‘text’ as “discursive fragments of context,” (76) Michael Calvin McGee makes note of how we make interpretation “the primary task of speakers and writers and text construction the primary task of audiences, readers, and critics” (65). In identifying structural relationships between “apparently finished discourse” and its sources, culture, and influence, he ultimately poses that context must be taken into consideration in rhetorical criticism. Indeed, “since all apparently finished discourses presuppose taken-for-granted cultural imperatives, all of culture is implicated in every instance of discourse … [further] the effects of unmasking cultural imperatives, giving voice to the silences of doxa” (McGee 71) must be taken into consideration. Here is a relevant consideration of how we construct “presumptions of cultural heterogeneity” (McGee 74) by aiming to identify one all-encompassing view of rhetoric, and I would add a view of culture and knowledge construction. Lastly, McGee suggests that “the only was to ‘say it all’ in our fractured culture is to provide readers/audiences with dense, truncated fragments that cue them to produce a finished discourse in their minds” (76). He also expands the notion that discourse is carried out in electronic media more so than print, which is relevant for my own scholarly interest in music media.

 
The theoretical constructs that these authors highlighted are important in considering issues of definition, intention, and situational construct of rhetoric. By tracing the historical development of these ideas from ancient rhetorical schools of thought to the newly incorporation of English Studies, Composition and Communication Theories, there is an obvious acceptance of the interdisciplinarity of the use/study of rhetoric. Ironically, in doing so, they all argue for a specific definition that might set it apart from these disciplines, which seems to me a bit paradoxical.