The rhetoric and poetics of speech and debate: resituating and re-disciplining literary argument.

• Author: Johnson, Jeremy David
• Position: Essay

Introduction

Literature speaks for itself. Its voice is powerful and transformative, fostering emotional changes, new perspectives, and collective action. As Kenneth Burke suggests, literature is "equipment for living" (Burke 1998, 593-598). Audiences can actively take in literature, working together with the textual material to make new meanings and forge new relationships. Literature, of course, is one among many art forms with this power: film, painting, sculpture, music, and other kinds of art help constitute our being. In profound ways, art shapes reality.

Much as literature is equipment for living, speech and debate prepare students for interaction in the world. A rich past informs a promising present and vibrant future for speech and debate. So much is clear when one reads Michael Bartanen and Robert Littlefield's 2014 book, Forensics in America: A History. Forensic activity serves as a civic good, as the various contributors to Speech and Debate as Civic Education make abundantly clear (Hogan et al, forthcoming). Put simply, speech and debate prepare students to change the world.

My endeavor in this essay is to more thoroughly link the power of literature and the power of forensics. My argument is that speech and debate should embrace the inherent value of literature as argumentative and rhetorical. This has practical applications in two distinct domains: performative debate and the oral interpretation of literature, both of which have played host to theoretical questioning and practical power struggles. This essay navigates these controversies surrounding literature in forensics, arguing that the inherent argumentative qualities of literature should guide our treatment of poetic forms in speech and debate.

As I detail throughout this essay, beyond the stark distinctions between competitive speech and debate events, there are further distinctions between argumentative events (such as Extemporaneous or Persuasive Speaking) and interpretation events (such as Prose or Drama Interpretation). An informal hierarchy has resulted, relegating interpretation events as less rigorous or less intellectual in nature. My own competitive forensics experience was driven by immense passion for argument and persuasion. As a speech competitor, I participated in all events but tended to emphasize limited preparation and platform speech categories. On the rare occasions I was able to compete in debate at the collegiate level, my practice was driven by what I thought of as clear, rational argumentation. Oral interpretation events, I believed for some time, were somehow inferior; they were created to appease theatre lovers and more emotive individuals. But as I continued to try interpretation events, I found more than that. The literature moved me, sometimes more than I was moved by a persuasive speech. I began to take seriously the rhetorical power of literature.

This essay focuses on the argumentative power of literature in competitive speech. Though I touch on performative debate, I cannot contribute a comprehensive account of its practice or merits. As such, this essay might serve as a provocation, a call for more thoughtful contemplation of literature in debate in addition to speech. I proceed by walking through a few key lines of reasoning, all of which apply to oral interpretation in speech events and in performative modes of debate. Most importantly, I argue that literature is inherently rhetorical. Literary or performance texts need not be "supplemented" by traditional argumentative form in rhetorical performances of literature. Oral interpretation is a rhetorical act wherein form and content cannot be separated, presenting a distinct rhetorical exchange among interpreters/performers/rhetors and audience members. Meaning is constructed in an embodied exchange among the participants.

To support these claims, I first offer an account of rhetorical dynamics in literary texts. Next, I consider the claims of authors writing about argument and literature in oral interpretation events, focusing on the introduction in interpretation as a locus of argumentative theory in competitive speech. Finally, by characterizing literary interpretation as a rhetorical exchange, I offer interpretation as a way of rethinking our practices of performance, competition, and judgment. Literature speaks; as educators, coaches, and theorists, it is time we listen.

Disciplining rhetoric and literature

Forensic argumentation has typically heralded rational, evidence-based speech. The role of literature has been minimal, with it relegated as somehow lesser, at least in terms of making an argument. This stems from a disciplinary divide millennia in the making. A stark separation between "rhetoric" and "literature" has carried from Aristotle into contemporary academia. That divide may be eroding, and if it is, we should welcome such news. As I will argue in more detail, literature's rhetorical dynamics are powerful. Thus, the disciplinary divide I outline here is one we ought to bridge through literary performance in forensics.

In the eyes of Aristotle, poetic forms include poetry and drama; modern forms of literature would fall in this category. The poetic functioned to provide expression and aesthetics. Aristotle opines, "the poet's function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen, i.e. what is possible as being probable or necessary" (1984a, 9.1451a). A rhetor, on the other hand, would enact "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion" (Aristotle 1984b, I.2.1355b). As Jeffrey Walker explains, poetics has been disciplined throughout history by these lines of reasoning, and its power has been diminished as a result. He details that poetics' "rhetorical possibilities" have been limited "to reflecting back its audience's favored philosophical postulates in charmingly figured forms" (Walker 2000, 330). What results is "a rhetoric that serves mainly to ratify and intensify the group's identity and solidarity" (Walker 2000, 330). If we are to view poetics as merely aesthetic or expressive, without considering its fundamental rhetorical dimensions, the author of literary forms falls into a spiral of rhetorical silence. This philosophical perspective has precluded serious study of literature in communication departments, where the residues of the field's historical focus on public address still linger.

Dividing between imagination and deliberation, Aristotle's paradigm seems to have prevailed in modern academia. Rhetorical studies in the twentieth century focused primarily on public address, and particularly so before the interventions of Edwin Black (1965) and the Wingspread Conference volume, The Prospect of Rhetoric (1971). The chasm that spurred communication studies to become its own field, separate from English, drew a boundary between speech and literature. Early scholars such as Herbert Wichelns maintained that rhetoric and literature, despite sharing commonalities, were separate enterprises, demanding different crafts and critiques. Wichelns (1993) situated rhetorical criticism "at the boundary of politics (in the broadest sense) and literature; its atmosphere is that of public life" (31). These boundaries between rhetoric and poetics have been contested throughout our disciplinary history. Such border disputes remain unresolved, but they can teach us much about how literature is seen on a theoretical level.

In 1964, scholars participated in a conference designed to explore the relationship between rhetoric and poetics. The conference, held at the University of Iowa, featured such thinkers as Donald C. Bryant, Edwin Black, Murray Krieger, and Roger Hornsby. Black (1965) offered a number of insightful comments in his address, claiming toward the end of his remarks:

What the literary critics have told us about mythic literature says much about exhortative discourse, and, from the point of view of rhetoric, I do not think it a mere piety but rather the exact truth to observe that one who has surrendered [oneself] to a masterwork of mythic fiction has become thereby a different [person], for the work has quite literally persuaded [her/him] (35). Black's frame serves to problematize the traditional narrative of rhetoric and poetics as distinct categories by pointing out the shaping power of fiction. In fact, most of the discussion recorded from the conference seems to support such blurring of the lines. Importantly, Black was not suggesting that rhetoric and literature are one and the same. He explained, "We cannot doubt that there is an essential difference, but I shall conclude by doubting that an arbitrary distinction between rhetoric and literature can disclose that difference" (Black 1965, 35).

Unlike Black, I deny an essential difference between rhetoric and literature, at least as objects of study. Mailloux (1989) rightly points out the flaws inherent in disciplinary boundaries when he explains, "all critical approaches function rhetorically as institutional sets of interpretive conventions" (33). Every literary work contains rhetorical elements. Literature, at its heart, invites the reader to share in an experience with the author or the text, merely by reading or engaging the text. Rhetoric likewise contains elements of literary merit: literary and rhetorical figures, style choices, narratives, and more permeate what we might study...