T his paper deals with the embodiment in Cicero's De Oratore of a particular rhetorical method. The method is referred to by the Romans as controversia and by the Sophists before them as antilogic and involves the conduct of argument by placing two or more opposing claims in juxtaposition. I will argue that instead of discussing controversia in a formal manner, by abstracting its general nature and detailing its logical parts (diaeresis), Cicero chooses to dramatize controversia in order to transcend abstract principles and allow his students direct access to argument in action. In a word, Cicero chooses to perform the subject, and in so doing to give substance or body to theory and pedagogy. In the process, he also pursues his own most cherished philosophical objective, which is to bring res and verba, the thing and the word into synthesis. I will further suggest that the rhetoric of embodiment which Cicero develops in De Oratore is replete with interesting pedagogical implications. Like much of Cicero's published work, De Oratore was intended to serve as a model for imitation by others (see Axer 59). In this case, the text models both a particular set of rhetorical principles and a distinctive pedagogical stance for teaching them. I am particularly interested in what the pedagogy of De Oratore has to say to us today about an appropriate approach to the teaching of argumentation.' But before I begin with Cicero, De Oratore, antilogic, controversia, and the rhetoric of embodiment, I would go back even further in history, from Rome to the eastern Mediterranean, from the eloquence of Cicero to the arguments of Odysseus, that other man famous for dealing with contention (Odyssey 1.2). You will recall that when Odysseus leaves Calypso after seven years as a captive on her paradisal island, he sails away on a log raft which breaks up in a large storm sent by Poseidon. When it looks as though he is doomed to drown, he laments that all he has accomplished on his way home will perish with him. Would that I had died on the fields of Troy, he cries, where all my deeds would have been noted, praised, and preserved (5.306-12). What Odysseus is concerned with here is his kleos: his fame, honor, stature, renown, that standard heroic obsession that one's reputation will ring out under heaven (8.74f; cf. Thalmann 60-69). Instead of a life of adventure marked by kleos, however, Odysseus in Book V is faced with death at sea, a death unmarked and lonely (5.312). What is notable for us in this episode is that kleos appears only to exist in the reports on one's life; i.e. it requires discourse to give it substance, enough substance to transcend the event itself. Consequently, when Odysseus arrives on land and is taken by Nausikaa to the Phaiakian court, he acts the part of a poet as well as a hero (11.68-69) by recounting his adventures and in the process giving form to his kleos. Discursive enactment, therefore, becomes the only way in which the unforgettable experi-

Persuasion and Privacy in Cyberspace: The Online Protests over Lotus Marketplace and the Clipper Chip by Laura Gurak. New Haven: Yale UP, 1997. 181 pp. Mina P. Shaughnessy: Her Life and Work by Jane Maher. Urbana: NCTE, 1997. 331 pp. Rhetoric and Pluralism: Legacies of Wayne Booth, edited by Frederick J. Antczak. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1995. 335 pp. Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric and Social Construction by Jonathan Potter. London: SAGE Publications, 1996. The Emperor's New Clothes: Literature, Literacy, and the Ideology of Style by Kathryn T. Flannery. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1995. 240 pp.

Few correspondences have enjoyed the widespread readership of the paternal lletters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth earl of Chesterfield. Never actually intended for the public eye, the epistles were written for the explicit purpose of preparing the Earl's son, Philip Stanhope, for a distinguished career in politics. Following the tradition of the courtesy book established in Cicero's De Officiis and further developed in Castiglione's Ii Cortegiano, Chesterfield infused Renaissance courtly rhetoric with Enlightenment pragmatism, rendering it more accessible and applicable to everyday life than ever before. First published posthumously in 1774, the expansive collection of letterswhich extended from 1737, when the lad was a mere five years old, to his protege's untimely death in 1768-became a standard manual for self-improvement. Despite the condemnation of moralists such as Samuel Johnson, who quipped that the letters teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master, twelve editions were brought out in England and Ireland by 1803. On the Continent, the letters were soon published in various forms in Leipzig (1774-76), Paris (1775), Amsterdam (1786), and Vienna (1800), with Spanish and Italian translations coming out in the mid-nineteenth century. The first American edition was published in 1779. In both Europe and America, new editions, abridgements, selections, adaptations, and even parodies of the letters have been popular since the their original publication. In the United States, for example, an adaptation entitled Principles of Politeness was published over twenty times before 1820. In the twentieth century, several significant editions have been issued, including texts by Everyman Library (1929; last reprinted in 1986) and Oxford's World's Classics (1929; most recent edition, 1992). The Earl's letters no longer find their way to aspiring lads' nightstands, yet it is interesting to note that twenty quotes from them are included in the sixteenth edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1992). Because discussion of oratorical prowess-which Chesterfield believed was essential for success in civic life (see Son 1: 521)-pervades the letters, his characterization of persuasion has long been scrutinized by students of rhetoric. In the nineteenth century, Thomas De Quincey praises the Earl as so accomplished a judge [of rhetoric] (111), yet most scholars of our era express skepticism toward the Earl's advice, downplaying his commitment to the full scope of

T hroughout this essay, I argue that the three primary extant fragments of Gorgias of Leontini-On Non-Existence (or On Nature), the Encomium of Helen, and the Defense of Palamedes-are not disparate or contradictory statements, as is often assumed, but intricately interrelated and internally consistent contributions to a complex theory and art (techne') of rhetoric. Of course, we cannot argue that Gorgias composed these texts with a holistic rhetorical task in mind; however, reconstructing and interpreting On Non-Existence, the Helen, and the Palamedes holistically does shed significant new light on our current understanding of Gorgias' emerging theory and techne' of rhetoric. In brief, On Non-Existence describes the effects that externally given realities (ta onta) have on the human psyche (psuche), the Helen explores the unethical workings of the persuasive arts on the human psuche, and the Palamedes demonstrates rhetorical topoi for the invention of arguments designed to move the human psuche' of a forensic audience to ethical action. Reconstructed thus as a holistic statement, Gorgias' primary extant fragments theorize the social nature of linguistic symbols and explore their artistic uses for both unethical and ethical purposes; and as a holistic interpretation of the extant fragments demonstrates, Gorgias favors the topical invention of ethical arguments over the magical invention of false arguments, unsupported opinions, and deliberate deceptions. Criticism of Gorgianic rhetoric as inartistic is almost as ancient as the very texts themselves. Plato, who probably wrote some of his earliest dialogues while Gorgias was still living and teaching in Athens, argues that Gorgianic rhetoric is not a techne. In the Gorgias, for example, Plato (through the mouthpiece of Socrates) tells the character Gorgias that his conception and practice of rhetoric whose scope is logos is not a true art but merely a false art, a form of flattery because its goal is to elicit pleasure and not to discover the Good. Moreover, in the Phaedrus Plato explains that sophistic rhetoric is irrational and thus atechnical because it is not founded on truth discovered through the principles of philosophical dialectic. No activity, according to Plato, is artistic unless it begins with a foundation of pure universal knowledge discovered through dialectical inquiry, and it is precisely because those who claim to teach and practice the art of rhetoric are ignorant of dialectic that they incapable of properly defining rhetoric, and that in turn leads them to imagine that by possessing themselves of the requisite antecedent learning they have discovered the art itself' (269b). But if we accept Plato's philosophy/rhetoric demarcation along with the claim that all

In one way or another, an interest in has been present in from writings of Gorgias and Plato, through treatises on Rhetoric and Belle Lettres,' and on to work of Kenneth Burke, particularly his notions of identification and consubstantiality.2 As in many disciplines, has played its part implicitly in rhetorical theory and pedagogy. For example, reader response criticism addresses in terms of affective and subjective aspects of epistemic and composition theory; rhetorical interest in memory addresses theories of knowledge, sources of inspiration, and subjectivity in prewriting (see Rider, Reynolds), all of which are body-centered; bodily delivery remains a concern in speech communication. The rhetoric of and, more specifically, of medical science, explores ways in which medicalized is both socially and discursively constructed (see Duden). More recently, feminist rhetoricians such as Janice Norton have begun a historiography of which focuses on need to reread a rhetorical theory that theorizes without reference to sexual difference. Only recently, however, has the body as such become explicit locus of debates about interrelation of power and discourse. This annotated bibliography surveys germinal texts which read in terms of epistemology, gender construction, and social inscription of meaning. Its intent is to assist rhetoricians who wish to investigate as a crucial site of intersection of persuasion, discourse, and power. More explicit discussions of began when Anglo-American feminists asserted that the personal is political and French feminists exhorted us to write body. Since then, a number of disciplines have begun to work out what this focus on personal and could possibly mean: gendered body? symbolic body? social-political body? discursive body? While feminists are credited with initiating discussions of female as text or site in which issues of power are hotly contested, has become locus of cultural, historical, sociological, philosophical, and literary, as well as gender studies. As Anthony Synnott reminds us, is

James L. Kinneavy, who was until this year the Blumberg Centennial Profes sor of English at the University of Texas, has been one of the major influences on the development of composition for more than 25 years. His bestknown book, A Theory of Discourse, published in 1971, is credited by many in our field with promoting the revival of rhetoric in university English That book was followed in 1976 by Aims and Audiences in Writing and Writing-Basic Modes of Organization (Both written with John Cope and J.W. Campbell). Kinneavy's theory of discourse relies on his definition of discourse as any utterance having a beginning, middle and end, and a purpose. He explained his theory graphically by means of his well-known communications triangle. this interview, conducted in May 1996 in Austin, Texas, he offers some ways that the triangle can be used in teaching writing. He also uses the trianglewith its acknowledged debt to Jakobson-to generate his theory of the major aims of discourse. Using this taxonomy, Kinneavy attempts to explain the basic organizational pattern of each aim of discourse. But Kinneavy does not wish to be known solely or even principally as a taxonomer, for, as he says, taxonomy is only a part of theory, and he has extended much of his influence as a theorist and historian of rhetoric. His 1987 book, Greek Rhetorical Origins of Christian Faith, explains how the new testament idea of faith grew out of the use of the term pisteis by Isocrates and Aristotle. Kairos is another term frequently associated with Kinneavy because of his lucid explanation of the term in his work. Kinneavy is credited with demonstrating the moral aspect of kairos, establishing a link between it and justice by arguing that to be moral and just means to observe the proper measure in action and words. At the end of the interview, with typical Kinneavian modesty in response to a question about how he looks back on his career as a scholar and teacher, he concedes that In the discipline of rhetoric, tried to recognize the importance of history and the importance of theory and the importance of the empirical. Finally, with a touch of pride, he closes with this admission: I think one of the most important contributions gave to rhetoric as a discipline was as one of the people-Corbett comes to mind; a lot of other people come to mind-who gave rhetoric a respectable name as a scholarly discipline in English departments. Few, if any, of the many members of our profession whose minds have been touched by Kinneavy would disagree.

course of his mythic depiction of the struggles of the lover's soul, when the lover's soul is converted from mania to reverence. The soul's conversion to reverence is a key moment in the myth, for it enables the lover to engage his beloved in edifying communication-in the kind of rhetorical discourse literally described by Socrates after reciting his second speech.' This essay interprets the conversion of the lover's soul as an instance (or allegory) of persuasion that sets an attitude of reverence in the lover/student of Plato's ideal rhetoric. The persuasion-to-reverence, the consequence of the lover's appropriate interpretive act, shows how the transformation of a lover's/ student's character is a starting-point in his progress toward becoming a Platonic rhetor-not only in affecting the appropriate ethical stance toward winning his beloved through edifying communication, but also in understanding, and being influenced by, the dual nature of embodied logos-its material and spiritual significance. The lover's reading of the beloved's face-this nondiscursive sensual presence embodying and radiating a Platonic Idea-is explained, in the context of the allegory, as a trope for the appropriate reception of a rhetorical artifact. The difference between the persuasive face and the persuasive word is the difference between the two sites where logos is manifest. Their difference shows how rhetorical words artfully mimic the persuasive face of the natural order. Nevertheless, they both may influence the soul to harmonize with Platonic Ideas in more or less the same way. From this perspective, in Platonic thought the redeeming character of the natural order is the effect it has on souls prepared to receive/observe it appropriately. The same value is attributed to Plato's ideal rhetoric. So part of the idea of learning rhetoric is linked to preparing the soul to appropriately receive/observe embodied logos-to be able to interpret sensually evocative signifiers in morally edifying ways (as the lover does). Thus, in the context of the allegory, Plato's understanding of rhetoric, and what the rhetor must know, encompass not only its appropriate production, but its appropriate reception as well. The lover's conversion is an allegorical case in point. It exemplifies an edifying aim of rhetorical education as a process of being persuaded

Abstract Aeschines and Athenian Politics by Edward M. Harris. New York: Oxford U P, 1995. Pp. x + 233. The Presidency and the Rhetoric of Foreign Crisis by Denise M. Bostdorff. Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 1994. Preface vii, 306 pp. The Fate of Eloquence in the Age of Hume by Adam Potkay. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1994; pp. 253. Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire by Peter Brown. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992. 182 pages. Composition in Context: Essays in Honor of Donald C. Stewart. ed. W. Ross Winterowd and Vincent Gillespie. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois U P, 1994; xxxi; 266.

Scott Cosigny on protagoras and logos: A study in Greek philosophy and rhetoric. by Edward Schiappa. University of South Carolina press, 1991. Pp. xvii & 239.

(1995). Kairos and kerygma: The rhetoric of Christian proclamation. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 25, No. 1-4, pp. 164-178.

(1994). Teaching stones to talk: Using stasis theory to teach students the art of dialectic. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 24, No. 3-4, pp. 88-95.

Dissertation Abstracts 48 (June 1988): 3125-A: Emphasizes medieval Arabic philosophers al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes. Attention to general logical and epistemological topics: the relationship between language and argumentation; the end of logic as the production of conception (tasawwur) or assent (tasdiq); the orientation of logic towards demonstration; the relationship between logic and syllogistic. Also includes detailed analyses of the formal This content downloaded from 157.55.39.171 on Sat, 23 Jul 2016 05:36:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Whenever I give a talk about the Rhetoric, audiences ask about rhetorical deception and fraud, about the morality of rhetoric, and about how to tell a good rhetorician from a sophist. The first and most important thing to say about the Rhetoric in connection with such questions of the morality of rhetoric is that Aristotle has very little to say about them, and, as far as I can tell, very little interest in them. Contemporary readers of the Rhetoric see people constantly duped by slick commercial and political advertisements, and hope that the Rhetoric can help them become conscious of hidden persuasion, or to make more morally based discriminations between decent appeals, which they should trust, and immoral ones, which they should reject. Rhetoric is often promoted today as an equivalent to defensive driving. It is worth asking why these questions have so little interest for Aristotle.

(1994). Patient compliance, the rhetoric of rhetoric, and the rhetoric of persuasion. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 23, No. 3-4, pp. 90-102.

Two admissions in Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres seem peculiar in relation to his own rhetorical practice. One is his observation in Lecture 25 that it is debate in popular assemblies, rather than the pulpit, which provides the illustrious field for the highest kind of eloquence. The other, not so striking in itself, but somewhat so in relation to Blair's own choice of rhetorical strategies as a preacher, is his judgment in Lecture 26, and again in Lecture 29, that among modern divines, it is French preachers rather than English who most nearly approach the ideal of true eloquence. There are repeated indications in the middle parts of Blair's Lectures that he accepts the Ciceronian view that the truest eloquence is strongly pathetic in the sense of vigorously arousing the more violent and more perturbing emotions. This highest degree of eloquence he characterizes in Lecture 25 as eloquence

readers a philosophical endorsement of rhetoric, an argument for narrative, a hypotactical defense of parataxis, and a serious discussion of playfulness. The one exception to this cryptodialectical commentary is Jarratt's second chapter. There she skillfully avoids the binary trope of mythos-logos, rejects convincingly the logic of linear historical progress, and demonstrates nicely how the sophistical affinity for nomos shifts our attention from a questionable and outdated dichotomy to a field large enough to include both binary terms and meaningful enough to transcend their differences. Dismissing neither mythos nor logos, nomos appropriates both, and in so doing invents something other that problematizes the already familiar. Unfortunately, the story of nomos is only half of a larger sophistical story. The other, opposing half, the story of physis, finds itself associated only with the philosophers. Insofar as Antiphon's and Hippias' arguments for physis support part of her agenda, this omission or misassociation is all the more perplexing. In the 1850's George Grote observed that the sophists were the mainstream intellectuals in their culture and Plato an eccentric reformer. True, many historians of philosophy reversed this historical reality, making Plato the intellectual king and the sophists his unworthy subjects. Now Jarratt urges historians of rhetoric to give the sophists, women, and teachers of English composition a more prominent role in the new histories of rhetoric. Recent works by Vickers, Conley, and Bizzell are already doing what she is urging. If Jarratt is looking for more recognition as a historian of rhetoric, a feminist intellectual, and a teacher of college composition, she has a great deal more support than she may realize.

Abstract Nineteenth‐Century Rhetoric in North America by Nan Johnson. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1991. 313. Protagoras and Logos: A Study in Greek Philosophy and Rhetoric by Edward Schiappa. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1991. xvii + 239. Rhetoric and Irony, Western Literacy and Western Lies by C. Jan Swearingen. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991; xiv + 323. Democracy and the Mass Media: A Collection of Essays ed. Judith Lichtenberg. New York: Cambridge UP, 1990; 410. The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy by Albert O. Hirschman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991, pp. xi+197.

James Boyd White in Heracles' Bow: Essays on the Rhetoric and Poetics of the explains one of his uses of the term rhetoric, of which, he contends, the language of law is species (33): A judge's or lawyer's language, he notes, is argumentatively constitutive of the language it employs; such language is not only instrumental in arguing but announces, in effect, Here in this language is the way this and similar cases should be talked (34). Legal professionals thus shape language behavior; the dynamics of such processes and similar ones are the objects of White's attention and analysis in the several studies included in Heracles' Bow and in When Words Lose Their Meaning. White's analyses of the rhetorical nature of the law embody detailed suggestions which, if realized, could work positive influences. He frequently makes statements like the following: Law should take as its most central question what kind of we should be, with what values, motives, and aims (42). Indeed, in White's thinking, law and rhetoric are to be seen as linked in broad shaping process, one which promises to build a of certain sort, set of shared relations, attitudes, and meanings. To view law as rhetoric might enable us to attend to the spiritual or meaningful side of our collective life (42-43). The points made by White in his essays embody praiseworthy aims; in the present essay, I will illuminate one type of aim in exploring White's claims concerning law and rhetoric operating in communities of certain sort, those of the U. S. Constitution. When Words Lose Their Meaning presents the legal and epistemological basis for the communities of the Constitution in reading of Justice John Marshall's Supreme Court decision of McCulloch v. Maryland. This decision, White contends, activated the inert Constitution of the United States and, in effect, exercised reconstitution of culture and community (247). The issues he treats are complex and of interest to rhetoricians. The discussion here will emphasize U. S. Constitution that establishes variety of communities engaged in rhetorical practices. The variety occurs along with number of benefits, because the Constitution's communicants are invited to act in most cases while free of specifications and directives. Such an invitation leaves room for communicator to consider specific circumstances, to engage in the activity Aristotle designated in terms of blank paradigm, that is, to find the available means of persuasion in given case (7). White in his confrontation of several paradoxical issues suggested by McCulloch v. Maryland raises the sorts of questions which he asks in his other essays, questions about communities and the nature of the texts with which they are associated. He is interested in the boundaries, strengths and limitations of the Constitution and of the nature of its rhetorical communities.

Oral and Written Communication: Historical Approaches. Edited by Richard Leo Enos. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990. Pp.vi + 264. Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Newly Translated, with Introduction, Notes and Appendices by George Kennedy. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991, xvi + 335 pp. Writing Biology: Texts in the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge by Greg Meyers. Madison: Wisconsin UP, 1990. Ethics in Human Communication by Richard L. Johannesen. 3rd Edition. Waveland Press, 1990. Voices of the Mind: A Sociocultural Approach to Mediated Action by James V. Wertsch. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1991. 147 pp. + references and name and subject index. Thomas Henry Huxley: Communicating for Science by J. Vernon Jensen. Newark: University of Delaware, 1991. Pp. 253. The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry. Edited by Herbert W. Simons. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Pp. xii + 388.

As with On the Origin of Species, we find that the work to be considered here-The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs-demonstrates Darwin's use of hedges to project the ethos of a cautious scientist. Hedges are linguistic elements such as perhaps, might, to a certain degree, or it is possible that. When people use hedges, they signal that they are taking a cautious stance on the truth-value of the referential matter they seek to convey. Hedges are a type of metadiscourse, a level of writing in which authors draw attention to the very art of writing itself-they discourse about their discourse (Crismore, Talking to Readers). This metadiscursive trait, however, represents only one aspect of Darwin's rhetoric. In Coral Reefs, he sculpts a key chapter into a Ciceronian form so pure that one might have to return to the Renaissance to find a parallel, and within this larger form, he strategically places hedges and other metadiscourse. He, further, employs visuals (drawings, diagrams, and maps) for persuasion at those points were the tension between his audiences preconceptions and the new theory being presented threatens to reach a dangerous level. The visuals and the metadiscursive commentary about them, also, help to establish his ethos and to build the argument for his theory of coral reefs. These elements, so perfectly embodied in Coral Reefs, were the rhetorical tools of an extremely sophisticated scientific mind which has much to pass down to our own conception of scientific writing. All too many of today's professional, academic, and textbook writers view exposition of findings as being all that is needed-and other parts of the written document, including visuals, can be handled even more perfunctorily: facts by themselves are enough, after all, according to this view. Darwin, however, believed that bald facts and blunt explanations were insufficient, as he clearly indicates in his A utobiography. There, he writes that in Origin he had first presented a short and rather vague discussion of his own innovative idea in the area of embryology. Later, other scientists got the for the new idea. Darwin felt no bitterness, for he knew that the fault had been his alone and that this fault was a rhetorical one: I failed to impress my readers; and he who succeeds in doing so deserves, in my opinion, all the credit (Barlow 125). Facts and blunt explanations were not enough-rhetorical strategies were needed to impress the reader-even (and we have some reason to say especially) professional scientists. Since, even granting the A utobiography, there will always remain a question about the precise nature of the intended audience for Origin, and since, moreover, a cloud of non-scientific, anachronistic controversy hangs over its theory of natural selection, we have turned to Darwin's work on coral reefs: this work was unquestionably intended for the professional scientists, and yet it also, like Origin, sets forth a theory that involves a historical development measured in geological time. Coral Reefs has, we think, some

(1991). Aristotle and the stasis theory: A reexamination. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 53-59.

death of the is a familiar refrain among poststructuralists, a phrase used to mean nonhermeneutic approaches to textsa label against which to react in the name of the historical subject (Kamuf 5). Probably the source of this controversial slogan is Barthes' precisely titled, brief essay, Death of the Author, in which he charts the postmodern move from a literature tyrannically centred on the author.... [where] the explanation of a work is always sought in the man or woman who produced it, to the ascendancy of the reader (143). When Barthes replaces the terms authori scriptor with critic/reader, he suggests that the future movement of literary theory requires the author's death to enable the reader's birth. Foucault, also making a distinction between the author and what happens in the text, offers the term author-function as being outside and preceding the text itself. True, the author is maker of text, but disappears once this is performed, only the function remaining, that is, being outside and preceding the text. In this role the author must accept in the text. Whereas the author in the epic form accepted early death because the epic itself would bring immortality, Foucault says that modem writing no longer is linked to death but to sacrifice of life because the author must accept obliteration of the self that does not require representation in books because it takes place in the everyday existence of the (117). More and more we're hearing another slogan: The tyranny of the author has been replaced by that of the reader. Yet I think one has to accept autonomy of neither author nor reader if we approach poststructuralist theory rhetorically. To do this we need to (1) broaden thinking about literature not only to include the discursive nature of language but also to accept its persuasive nature; (2) attempt distinctions between author and writer; (3) acknowledge the presence of the writer in the text itself (ethos); (4) embrace the concept of the world as language.

Persuasive discourse, either as a separate mode of discourse (Kinneavy 1971) or as a distinctive part of argumentative discourse,2 frequendy remains part of the overall writing assignment for our composition students. Although we may disagree as to how to define exactly or teach persuasive discourse in writing classrooms, we have more or less followed the tradition of Western classical rhetoric with respect to our basic understanding of it--although few of us would now restrict ourselves only to discovering in the particular case what are the available means of persuasion (Aristotle 1960: 7). For example, we teach our students different sub-types of persuasive discourse and ask them to apply ethical, emotional (pathetic) and logical proofs to their own persuasive essays; we select political speeches, polemic essays or modern advertising materials as prime examples of how different persuasive strategies and techniques can be most effectively invoked to achieve their respective objectives of winning. To varying degrees, many composition text books have adopted, and thus perpetuated this normal way of doing things with persuasive discourse.3 In so doing, however, we have--perhaps unknowingly--imparted to our students two problematic notions, which underlie much of what has been believed to be persuasive discourse. The first assumes that persuasive discourse is grounded in or predicated on conflict or confrontation, which it aims to overcome or eradicate. The second perceives audience as both external4 and oppositional, whom persuasive discourse is intended to transform or convert. It is these two notions and their probable consequences that I will discuss first in this essay. Following this discussion, I will draw upon, respectively, Grice's cooperative model of conversation (1975; 1989) and Burke's concept of (1962) to propose a new heuristic model5 of persuasive discourse, one that takes cooperation through identification as a core constituent and provides a dynamic setting that is conducive to rhetorical diversities. Finally, I will consider some potentials of this new model in our writing classrooms.

From 1887 to 1904, Science and The Popular Science Monthly published a series of articles on the characteristics of composition, articles pointed out an uneasy alliance between scientific methodology and traditional rhetorical assumptions about the nature of writing. This turn-of-the-century dispute between Robert Moritz and Thomas Mendenhall shows how early researchers in rhetoric cast their inquiries in scientific terms to gain the legitimacy of scientific findings. Further, the little-known debate can be read as a precursor to the many debates followed over whether and how quantitative methods can resolve questions in rhetorical inquiry, and more fundamentally, what vision of language underwrites the assumptions of such methods. The debate I want to focus on began with Mendenhall, who first argued for his version of composition analysis in the March 1887 issue of Science.' In this article, as well as in his papers of 1901 and 1904, he seeks to prove his hypothesis (based on a remark by Augustus DeMorgan) each author has a of composition. The curve is based on the frequency with which an author uses words of different lengths, is, one-letter words, two-letter words, and so on. The number of words of each length, when tabulated and graphed, shows the characteristic curve of author. Mendenhall was a noted nineteenth century scientist who published in a wide variety of areas, including geology, geography and science education. He was a president of Worcester Polytechnic Institute and served for a time as an editor of Science. Thus a scientific approach to composition was for him merely an extension of methods he used in his daily work. Indeed, he originated his theory based on an analogy to spectral analysis, a method of determining the elements of a given physical substance. Just as each element gives forth a group of waves of definite length, and appearing in certain definite proportions (Mendenhall 1887, 238), so each person's style is marked by numerical constants--the frequency of words of each length. This analogy with spectral analysis reveals not only Mendenhall's procedure but also his notion of the inevitability of style. The style of people, like of elements, is determined by their nature and not their mode of existence; is, their texts are determined by inevitable displays of their fixed personality and not their rhetorical choices. The merits of this approach, according to Mendenhall, are that it offers a means of investigating and displaying the mere mechanism of composition, and it is purely mechanical in its application. (Mendenhall 1887, 245). Mechanism makes impossible human failings of choice and error: by focusing on a meaningless aspect of composition, the researcher can avoid the effects of deliberate changes by the author; by using a mechanistic data gathering method,

Socrates, of course, does not mean to venerate the art of discourse here. He is telling Phaedrus that there is discourse and there is truth. Once you have gone out and dug up the truth somewhere else, you apply the art of discourse to it and fashion a persuasive argument that will permit others to partake also of the truth. Two immediate implications follow from Socrates' position. First, only when the art of discourse, rhetoric, is put to the task of selling truth to the benighted does it become real. Second, rhetoric is necessary human affairs just to the extent that humans are unable to apprehend truth directly. It is an unfortunate evil, required because we are rationally degenerate creatures. Both positions have remained very popular over the intervening two millenia. Bitzer, for instance, can still say that in the best of all possible worlds there would be communication perhaps, but not rhetoric;'I we get our truth and knowledge somewhere else, and only our lack of perfection prevents us from casting rhetoric out of the garden. But there is an important lesson those two millenia that can help us to see the Spartan's words another light: the sources of truth which rhetoric has been obliged to serve have changed dramatically-from Socrates' dialectic and Aristotle's apodeixis, to Christianity's biblical exegesis and divine revelation, to the current authority on matters of knowledge and truth, Science. This rotation of leading roles while the supporting actress, Lady Rhetoric, remains constant indicates that the real art of discourse is connected with truth not because of human degeneracy, but because of precisely the reverse, because of our spark of perfection, because we are truth-seeking, knowledge-making creatures who sometimes get it right. We occasionally do something important with rhetoric: we find truth and we build knowledge out of it. When we manage the trick, though, we are so eager to dissociate it from all the foul and inane things we also do with rhetoric that we give the process another name. But these other names are clearly just aliases for rhetoric, or for some subset of rhetorical interests. Dialectic, for instance, is essentially questing debate. Apodeixis is distinguished only by the level of rigor Aristotle demands of the argumentation, not by any qualitative difference. Exegesis is rhetorical analysis. The only possible gap to this pattern is divine revelation, whose capacity to generate truth I will leave to more knowledgeable commentators, pausing only to notice that, true or not, reports of revelation usually involve a fair amount of persuasive machinery-burning bushes, hovering spirits, and the like. In any case, science is certainly no exception.

building on some common ground with the audience. Aristotle's concept of the enthymeme as a fundamental source of persuasion requires the audience to grant or accept the premises of the rhetor. Aristotle says that a speaker should start from opinions accepted by our judges or by those whose authority they recognize (1395b). Similarly, for Kenneth Burke the key term in rhetoric is identification, which is established between a persuader and an audience by finding some substance or underlying ground in common (consubstantiality) (I 969, 19-23). But what if there is little or nothing in common between a speaker and an audience? What if the audience does not accept the value system of the speaker? How could a speaker proceed in such an extreme case? As Wayne Booth explains, classical rhetoric offers little help, for it assumes

As Otto A. L. Dieter argues in his landmark essay, (1959), Greek concepts of motion provided classical rhetoricians with a theoretical framework for analyzing and conducting rational argument.' The various ways in which motion can be considered contrary, the different grounds on which contrary motions come to rest, the array of faults impeding contrary motions--all these distinctions, borrowed from the philosophic study of kinesis (movements) and metabolai (changes in Being), were applied by rhetoricians to describe and facilitate amphisbetesis, or the moving apart of opposing assertions. Stasis theory, then, provided a paradigm essential to the two phases of the rhetorical process: Noesis (Cogitation) and Poiesis (Production). This paradigm allowed the rhetorician to reflect upon--and upon reflection, to judge--whether a conflict of wills and a contest of assertions truly existed, and therefore, whether the matter under dispute was properly rhetorical. Likewise, the paradigm allowed him to anticipate the question to be resolved, the strategies of accusation or defense most likely to be adopted by the opponent, and consequently, the posture or strategy best suited to winning the dispute. If it is true that theories of classical rhetoric have survived because of their utility, then stasis theory has proven indispensable: for over 2000 years it has survived within the canon of rhetorical theory.2 Its most recent incarnation has taken place during the past four decades. Motivated first by historical interest, rhetorical scholars are now reconstituting stasis theory for much the same reason that prompted its formalization in the second century B.C.: the need to find an overarching paradigm that shapes the vast array of distinctions belonging to rhetorical theory into a practical system, one capable of identifying and resolving current communication problems.3

(1989). Argumentation in Chomsky's syntactic structures an exercise in rhetoric of science. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 105-130.

(1989). Bibliography on Argumentation. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 71-81.

An Early Commentary on the “Poetria Nova”; of Geoffrey of Vinsauf. Marjorie Curry Woods, ed. New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1986. Pp. Ixvi + 505. Studying Writing: Linguistic Approaches. Charles R. Cooper and Sydney Greenbaum, eds. (Written Communication Annual, Vol. 1.) Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Rhetoric and Praxis: The Contribution of Classical Rhetoric to Practical Reasoning. Edited by Jean Dietz Moss. Washington, D.C.: Catholic U of America P, 1986, Pp. xi + 172.

(1986). A critical thinking heuristic for the argumentative composition. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 16, No. 1-2, pp. 67-78.

(1983). Metaphor in argumentation. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 13, No. 3-4, pp. 201-207.

Review: Argument texts and audience REASONS AND ARGUMENTS, By Gerald M. Nosich (Belmont. CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1982) ARGUMENTATION AND DEBATE: PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONS, By James Edward Sayer (Sherman Oaks. CA: Alfred Publishing Co., 1980) BETTER REASONING: TECHNIQUES FOR HANDLING ARGUMENT, EVIDENCE, AND ABSTRACTION, By Larry Wright (New York: Holt. Rinehart and Winston, 1982) INTERPRETATIVE CONVENTIONS: THE READER IN THE STUDY OF AMERICAN FICTION, by Steven Mailloux. Cornell University Press, 1982.

FOUR WORLDS OF WRITING, By Janice M. Lauer, Gene Montague, Andrea Lunsford, and Janet Emig (New York: Harper and Row, 1981, xvii + 423 pp.) REINVENTING THE RHETORICAL TRADITION, ed. Aviva Freedman and Ian Pringle (Conway, Arkansas: L & S Books, for the Canadian Council of Teachers of English, 1980, 197 pp.) UNDERSTANDING PERSUASION. By Raymond S. Ross and Mark G. Ross (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice‐Hall, 1981, xii+228 pp.)

At the beginning of his Rhetoric, Aristotle reviews the state of current thinking and finds it lacking because it has not dealt with rhetoric's essential feature, proof. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle's professed mission is to correct this fault, to found rhetoric as an art through an examination of its essence. This concern for the essence of rhetoric-that which makes it to be what it is and not something else leads me to a familiar passage which I nominate as among the most fundamental in its significance for the way in which we read the Rhetoric. I refer to Aristotle's definition, offered in Book I. He states: Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art. Every other art can instruct or persuade about its own particular subject-matter . . . But rhetoric we look upon as the power of observing the means of persuasion on almost any subject presented to us. . . 1 The part of this passage which the literature overlooks, for the most part, is Aristotle's indication that his definition refers to rhetoric's unique function. It is function, ergon, which I wish to discuss as holding enormous potential for our understanding of Aristotle's work, for understanding what he considered to be rhetoric' s essence. As you know, Aristotle abandoned Plato's theory of Forms. But in so doing Aristotle did not wish to relinquish the idea that one could get at definitions which would explain the essence of a thing.2 His notion of scientific knowledge turns, in fact, on being able to explain a thing's essence. Essence will be reflected in a true definition. Thus, since essence is so important, Aristotle wishes to make clear what it means and how we would discover it. Essence is not some additional component in a thing separate from material components. Nor can he say it is a material component either. So he rejects the tack of explaining essence in relationship to matter. Instead, he treats essence as the structure of a thing and links it with causality. Usually this linkage is with formal cause, and sometimes with efficient cause. For instance, the reason why some flesh and bone is cat is because it is structured by the form of cat. It is a cat because it is organized in a way that it can perform the function of cat-can realize its end-and so is influenced by its teleological striving for perfection.4 Similarly, a particular hunk of matter is human because it is organized or structured to achieve the end of humans-rational activity. As we are familiar, this is man's end. Why is it man's end? Because this is the function unique to man. Thus it is that Aristotle's discussion of the essence of anything gets tied to the crucial notion of function. And, by implication, the discussion of a thing' s function is simultaneously indicative of its essence.

Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic. Robert J. Fogelin. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1978. Pp. 351. An Introduction to Reasoning. Stephen Toulmin, Richard Rieke, Allan Janik. New York: Macmillan, 1979. Pp. 343. Historical Linguistics. Theodora Bynon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics), 1978. Pp. x + 301, 7.95 (paper).

Perelman, Chaim. L'Empire rhétorique; rhétorique et argumentation. Collection “Tour Demain,” Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1977. Perelman, Chaim and Olbrechts‐Tyteca, L. The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation. Trans, by J. Wilkinson and P. Weaver. Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969. First paperback edition, 1971.