Generative rhetoric and public argument: a classical approach.

• Author: Zulick, Margaret D.

The larger purpose of this essay is to build a theory of public argument that finds the source of social invention in the generative capacity of language itself. The emancipatory motivation of such an approach should be immediately obvious. Both the imagination necessary to envision alternatives to the social order and the strategies invoked to implement them are shaped and constrained by the languages and arguments available to an emancipatory public in its immediate social context. To the extent those arguments are variable, new ideas are possible. The public itself is, after all, a linguistic construct, a reflexive representation that, while it has material reference, yet has no single, material counterpart. Social theorists often acknowledge but go on to disregard the discursive construction of the public as central to a theory of public discourse. Instead, "the public" figures primarily as a non-discursive site in which or because of which discourse can operate. Habermas, in his terminology of the "public sphere," at times uses the term as a generic designation of discourse and at times as a spatial metaphor. This subtle equivocation motivates his definition from the start:

By "public sphere" we mean first of all a domain of our social life in which such a thing as public opinion can be formed. . . . A portion of the public sphere is constituted in every conversation in which private persons come together to form a public. (Habermas, "Public" 49; cf. Structural 2, 27)

Here "domain" indicates the public as a social "place," which precedes discourse and makes discourse possible but is not itself a discursive construct. Yet in stating that the public sphere is "constituted" in conversation, Habermas must invoke the discursive basis of all metaphors, including those that ground discourse itself in a spatial domain.

This recurring paralepsis regarding the generative relation between discourse and its occasions is often carried through in the second generation of scholarship on the public sphere. Thus, Nancy Fraser notes the importance of Habermas' understanding of the public sphere as an "arena of discursive interaction" ("Rethinking" 2). While it is still expressed in spatial terms, the emphasis here is on discourse. Yet in her work redefining the public sphere in terms of multiple, stratified publics, Fraser returns to a primarily spatial metaphor in which publics are identified in terms of their relative material power. In this arena, the power to invent counter-discourses acts upon, but does not derive from the discursive interaction through which publics contest and negotiate competing claims ("Rethinking" 14-6). Thus the public "arena" itself remains silent as a linguistically active source of social change. Fraser goes some distance in advancing the discursive aspect of Habermas' public sphere. Yet an opportunity still exists to supplement the work of social theory from the vantage point of rhetoric. To set the spiral of social invention in full motion, it is advisable to look for those specific discursive processes that enable social invention to occur, within, across, and among multiple public discourses.

An understanding of the generative role of rhetoric in producing social change requires a more explicit and more complex theory of how the materiality of discourse reflects back on its own preconditions, altering and reconfiguring everything it represents. There are many possible starting points for such a theory. In choosing to begin from classical rhetoric, I am resorting to a tradition that has much to say to contemporary theories of the relation between discourse and power. This effort is not, however, an attempt at an historically accurate rendering of ancient rhetorical theory. It is instead a free translation of certain ideas that have gained new currency in being adapted to the conditions of late modernity.

THE CONCEPT OF GENERATIVE RHETORIC

The notion of generative rhetoric appears in Burke's discussion of the Symbol from "Lexicon Rhetoricae." There he remarks:

When the poet has converted his pattern of experience into a Symbolic equivalent, the Symbol becomes a guiding principle in itself.... As the Symbol is ramified, Symbols within Symbols will arise, many of these secondary Symbols with no direct bearing upon the pattern of experience behind the key Symbol. . . . In each case, the Symbol is a generating principle which entails a selection of different subtilizations and ramifications. (Counter-statement 157).

For Burke, arguments are not functionally different from stylistic patterns. The same principles of order and variation apply whether the content is putatively rational or poetic. Witness his designation of the "syllogistic progression" as one of the means of poetic as well as prosaic form (Counter-statement 124, see below).

The public sphere, as Fraser argues, is heterogeneous, formed by differential economic resources, ideologies and cultural traditions ("Struggle" 164-67; "From Redistribution" 70-1). These multiple publics are only partially interchangeable and often compete for dominance as well as for meaning. But by virtue of this same heterogeneity, they also generate diverse languages and thus supply inventive resources for differentiation and change in public discourse (cf. Zulick and Laffoon). As Bakhtin puts it, "speech genres," that is, the heteroglot styles of speech associated with the heterogeneity of discourse in society, "are the drive belts from the history of society to the history of language" ("Problem" 65). Discourse incorporates elements of both "histories," mingled inseparably but nevertheless working on each other to produce endless variety. Yet the particular discursive functions by which the material and the metaphorical are interlinked often go unremarked. In this paper, I will explore this dimension of generative rhetoric by beginning with the classical sources that centuries ago isolated and put names to some of these particular functions. I will first outline what I believe to be the generative structure of rhetoric in relation to dialectic. I will then examine the generative structure of a specific rhetorical figure, the enthymeme, key both to Aristotle and to contemporary rhetorical theory.

GENERATIVE STRUCTURES IN GREEK INVENTION

The sophistic system of argument employed a device for producing opposite arguments on any question. This device was known as antilogic, and the system itself was known as eristic (Kerferd 62-3). The system created parallel opposing speeches on a given issue, producing "double arguments" on every question (De Romilly 76-7). According to De Romilly, the "secret" of this "elegant trick . . . lay in knowing how to turn to one's own advantage the facts, the ideas, and the very words of one's opponent, making them point to altogether the opposite conclusion" (78). Note that two sorts of opposition pertain in this tradition: that of preparing double sets of contraries, in the style of the Dissoi Logoi, and that of neatly luring one's opponent into a contradictory position.

The eristic system as it stands appears to have made no claim to advance knowledge, but was purely pragmatic and competitive in its goals. While eristic was thus anathema to Plato, his earlier Socrates employs antilogic in the form of elenchic discourse (Kerferd 66-7; Murray 281). However, in the Phaedrus, Plato introduces dialectic as an improvement upon antilogic alone, because in dialectic, through the definition and division of kinds, one can arrive at a truer grasp of phenomena than that with which one started. Thus, Socrates describes the two principles of dialectic, namely definition:

That of perceiving and bringing together in one idea the scattered particulars, that one may make clear by definition the particular thing which he wishes to explain.(1)

and division:

That of dividing things again by classes, where the natural joints are, and not trying to break any part, after the manner of a bad carver.

This system, unlike eristic, is not symmetrical. As exemplified in many dialogues, Plato's dialectic proceeds not simply by division but also by elimination, by dividing false from true possibilities. Moreover, it introduces a progressive sequence into the play of contradiction. Thus, what was in the Sophists an essentially antithetic structure becomes, for Plato, more like a gradatio, a...