On Systems of Rhetoric: Douglas Ehninger

After giving my blog a bit of a rest for a couple of months, I'm starting it again to write about research read for my independent study with Dr. Debra Jacobs in ENC 6700: Studies in Composition Theory.

From Ehninger's article I gathered that there are three areas of development in Western rhetorical thought: the classical period, the late 18th century, and the period extending from the 1930s to the present.

Classical: The rhetoric (which Ehninger defines as an "organized, consistent, coherent way of talking about practical discourse in any of its forms or modes" (131) of the classical period arose out of the need for speechmaking as a needed activity among the democratic institutions in the city states of Sicily and Greece. Speechmaking became known as an art form, as well as a social instrument (132). Its principal functions were to argue the relative merits of laws and policies, and to attack or defend from attack in the courtroom, or the art of persuasion. Its system was basically grammatical in nature (133). Speeches were distinguised and described by "offices" upon which oral communication depends: invention, disposition, style, memory, and delivery.

Late 18th Century: The rhetoric of this period is best described as "psychological". It corrected a deficiency of the classical system by working out the details between the act of oral communication and the mind of the listener-reader. Because the ancients' "lack of attention" to the impact of speeches upon the listener were seen as glaring, "traditional assumptions concerning how men know or are persuaded no longer were acceptable" (135). The statement was shaped by the environment in which it was received, which became an epistemological approach -- analysing the mind of the listener-reader, or concentrating on audience.

"Present": Since the 1930s, the rhetoric has been focused on the "social" aspects of communication, or of rhetoric as an "instrument for understanding and improving human relations" (137). Group discussions, or workshops, I believe became prominent during this time -- because seeing writing as a social activity helped to break down barriers or misunderstandings that are caused through man's habits of using and abusing communication (138). In other words, rhetoric is now not just concerned with the means of the communication, but its ends (139).