Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction.

• Author: Major, Wilfred E.

Kennedy, George A. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.0-19-510932-5 (cl) 0-19-510933-3 (pb) pp. ix + 238.

George Kennedy (K.) is undeniably the American dean of Classical Rhetoric. With Comparative Rhetoric, K. explores new frontiers, compiling a work on rhetorical expression outside the Greco-Roman tradition. K. leaves critical questions and problems in sections of this bold, new work, but he has, more importantly, opened many new frontiers for fruitful study of rhetorical expression in areas well beyond any current research.

K. proposes and maintains throughout the book that rhetoric is best defined as energy committed to communication directed toward more efficient resolution of conflict. He does not hammer away at this thesis constantly-indeed, within the overall the framework the book is quite discursive- but refers to it at a variety of points where he feels the evidence especially supports his cause. Rather, K. organizes the study into chapters, each devoted to examining the rhetorical practices of a particular society or culture. He places these individual studies in two groups: societies without writing and ancient literate societies.

The section devoted to nonliterate societies begins with rhetoric among animals which exhibit social behavior. This chapter sets the tone for the book as well as some of the difficulties which persist throughout the volume. K. uses red stags to set up an important paradigm for his universal definition of rhetoric. Rival male stags can settle their feud through a roaring contest of sorts, which can end when one stag "persuades" the other to back down. Such a ritual distills a fundamental component of rhetoric: communication which achieves its purpose more efficiently than physical force. K. then proceeds to align such actions by other animals, principally primates and birds, with categories of rhetorical expression. There are, of course, hazards to such alignments, and unfortunately K. does not deal with them adequately. It is a matter of distinguishing categories of human thought from categories of activity. It is one thing, although even itself controversial, to say that a mating ritual through song is more efficient, less damaging, than physical conflict, and then to say this is a fundamental basis of rhetoric. It is another to say that the waggle dances of bees in any way constitute deliberative rhetoric because the colony takes an action based on such communication. Are we to equate any social communication...