Canned Goods

Here are most of my notes (no analysis in here) of this text, all 1200+ words of it!. NOTE: I don’t have the time to format the text as I did in Word, so I’m sure it will be more difficult to read without all the bold, underlined, and italicized text.

I’ve focused on the early chapter because I wanted to have summary of his taxonomy of rhetorics. I see these Prelim posts as serving myself, as I work on my prelims, and others who’d like the quick-notes version. This one begins with defining terms Berlin uses that one should be clear on before reading.

–Epistemology: “the study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge especially with reference to its limits and validity” (webster’s)

–Ideology: “a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture b : a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture c : the integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program “(webster’s)

–Empiricism: “2..the practice of relying on observation and experiment especially in the natural sciences b : a tenet arrived at empirically 3 : a theory that all knowledge originates in experience” (webster’s)

Berlin finds three other Objective Rhetorics (in addition to CTR), which locate reality in the external world, in the material objects of experience. Language is a sign system, a simple transcribing device for recording. TRUTH IS PRIOR TO LANGUAGE:
–CTR: truth in the material world (based on Scottish Common Sense Realism—popular in American 19th century). Collection of sense data and the arriving at generalizations. Observer attempts to be as objective as possible. Truth exists prior to language, in nature and then in the response of the faculties to nature (8). Led to the modes of discourse — narration & description (sense impression and imagination) & exposition (putting forth of generalized ideas from sense impression and understanding). Patterns of arrangement and superficial correctness are the main ends. Invention is unnecessary; it’s about observation. Don’t distort what is to be communicated.
–Behaviorist: from Skinner’s psychology of learning — “writing can be taught as a variety of operant conditioning in which the student is given reinforcement when appropriate behavior is demonstrated.” (10). It’s epistemology is identical to CTR’s
–Semanticist: from Korzybski’s Theory of General Semanticist (arising in 1930s)—“first offered as a device for propaganda analysis . . .” and then seen “as a useful approach to the teaching of reading and writing. Semanticist rhetoric focuses of the distortions that are introduced in communication through the misuse of language” (10). It assumes an objective reality. (1940-60s rise of communications course after General Semantics “moved from a positivistic to phenomenological and transactional epistemology (95)).
–Linguistic (structural): (1950s-60s) – “The composition class, it was thought, would have its own subject matter, the structure of language, and with it an effective method for the teaching of writing. It shared the same epistemology as Semanticist rhetoric: “a conviction that the empirical study of the structure of language would serve as a model for the empirical investigation that is at the heart of rhetoric . . . structural linguistics implied a positivistic view of reality . . .” (11).

Subjective Rhetorics, which “locate truth either within the individual or within a realm that is accessible only through the individual’s internal apprehension” (Platonic idealism of Emerson and Thoreau & 20th cent depth psychology):
–Rhetoric of liberal culture: an elitist and aristocratic rhetoric from the East (1900-1920). In 60s and 70s subjective rhetorics were influenced by cognitive psychology, post-Freudian psychologists Carl Rogers and Maslow, and English department interpretations of romanticism, as found in MH Abrams.
— Subjective Rhetorics “are grounded in philosophical idealism and commonly present a subjectivist stance – Plato. Truth transcends the mutable material world, being located in an unchanging realm of ideas . . . discovered by the individual through private vision. Ordinarily, however, it cannot be expressed. Truth can thus be known but not shared, not communicated” (12). “{A]n interlocuter can suggest truths already discovered by her auditor or she can suggest truths not yet discovered.” But truth is only confirmed through private vision. So writing instruction, with subjective rhetorics, foster learning environments that encourage private vision in students.

Transactional Rhetorics, “are based on an epistemology that sees truth as arising out of interaction of the elements of the rhetorical situation”:
–classical (Baldiwn, early in century, then in 50s-60s): (Most common of the transactional); “Truth is here located in a social construct involving the interaction of interlocuter and audience (or discourse community)” (15). These truths “are by their very nature uncertain, open to debate, contingent, probable” (15). Postmodernism(??) “choices [in politics and social groups] are made on the basis of public discourse . . .” (15). “[N]ew knowledge, new truths, emerge from interaction (16). Language is not significant.
–cognitive (60s-70s: Emig, Lauer, Frank D’Angelo): (grew from psychological studies of Bruner and Piaget)—“The epistemology of these rhetorics assume a correspondence between the structures of the mind and the structures of nature. The mind, furthermore, passes through a series of stages in achieving maturity” (16). Emphasis is on the individual and helping them in developing the skills to “arrive at truth through engaging the surrounding material and social environment” (16). Language is not significant.
–epistemic (1900-30;60s-70s: Ohmann, Bertoff): a transaction “that involves all elements of the rhetorical situation: interlocuter, audience, material reality, and language” (16). Language is always present because each element is a verbal construct. There “is never a division between experience and language . . . [a]ll experiences, even the scientific and logical, are grounded in language, and language determines their content and structure” (16). “Rhetoric thus becomes implicated in all human behavior”(16). “Truth is never simply “out there” in the material word or the social realm, or simply “in here” in a private and personal world. It emerges only as the three—the material, the social, and the personal—interact, and the agent of mediation is language” (16-17).

–Rhetoric’s diversity as diachronic “(3): of, relating to, or dealing with phenomena (as of language or culture) as they occur or change over a period of time” (webster’s)

–And synchronic “(3): concerned with events existing in a limited time period and ignoring historical antecedents” (webster’s)

There are therefore Rhetorics, no just a rhetoric. For Berlin, “[t]he difference has to do with epistemology—with assumptions about the very nature of the known, the knower, and the discourse community involved in considering the known” (3). A rhetoric, then, “is a way of speaking and writing within the confines of specific social sanctions” (4), and “is possible because every rhetorical system is based on epistemological assumptions about the nature of reality, the nature of the knower, and the rules governing discovery and communication of the known” (4). The rhetorical triangle—reality, interlocuter, audience, and language.

For Berlin, ideology “will simply refer to the pluralistic conceptions of social and political arguments that are present in a society at any given time” (4). –based on “discursive (verbal) and nondiscursive (nonverbal) formations designating the shape of social and political structures, the nature and role of the individual within these structures, and the distribution of power in society” (4).

Berlins states that his research shows that the college writing course responds to changes in society’s social developments throughout the century (5).

The difference between rhetoric and poetic: (pg 26): “rhetoric is concerned with symbolic action within the material world, with practical consequences as the end, while poetic is concerned with symbolic action for itself, with contemplation of the text for its own sake.” –“the one art and the other ‘mere’ science” (29).