A Theory of Contemporary Rhetoric (3 page)

Judt (2010) suffered from a variant of motor neuron disorder: one that deprived him of speech in his last years. But the relationship between clear communication and the articulation of thought continued to be a preoccupation. In reference to the debate between philosophy and rhetoric, his dependence on language was countered by a loss of control of words, and yet “they still form with impeccable discipline and unreduced range in the silence of my thoughts … Communication, performance, assertion: these are now my
weakest
assets. Translating being into thought, thought into words, and words into communication will soon be beyond me and I shall be confined to
the rhetorical landscape of my inner re flections
” (153–4). This latter phrase has my italics (the others are Judt's). As testimony from an active mind in the grip of a loss of oral articulacy, it is a telling tribute to the power of rhetoric to map the nature and direction of thought—as if the outside, public channels and patterns of
communication had lent shape to the formulation of thought. Stronger justification comes from the final paragraph of the essay: “No longer free to exercise it myself, I appreciate more than ever how vital communication is to the republic: not just the means by which we live together but part of what living together means. The wealth of words in which I was raised were [
sic
] a public space in their own right” (154).

It is partly Judt's inspiration that has led me to write this book in words only, eschewing the chance to produce a multimodal text. It is a decision that has consequences, some of them in limiting the scope of the book itself. But in other ways, it has forced me to try to articulate a theory of contemporary rhetoric and to translate what I have wanted to “say” in other modes into words.

The social and political
raison d'être
of rhetoric with regard to the maintenance of the republic for the public (“the arts of social and political discourse”) is reinforced by Judt's inspirational account. His emphasis on words is pre-multimodal, but the principles he outlines would apply to the multimodal as well as to the modes and sub-modes of verbal language: clarity of expression, sharp distinctions between words, and a belief in rhetoric (“from the spartan to the baroque”) as a means to effect communication. As was the case for Pound, the loss of clarity and distinction in language is a loss of clarity of thought and ultimately a loss to civilized life. Such responsibility of the part of all language users emphasizes the socio-political nature of Judt's vision: a republic in which the citizens are responsible for its quality of communication as well as for its
mores
, practices, and infrastructures. Rhetoric's vision is similar: no individual exists outside the society that he or she inhabits. All have a responsibility to maintaining and developing the tools of communication that enable the society to operate. But words are not “all we have” (Judt 2010, 154). There are others resources at our disposal, and these are set out more fully in
chapter 11
, “Rhetoric and Multimodality.”

Indeed, the limitations and affordances of words need to be set out so that we are clear, from the start, that contemporary rhetoric is more than just a science or art of verbal language. Words—verbal language, whether it is spoken or written and in any language—are abstractions from the real, material, perceived world. The nouns and verbs, adjectives and adverbs are conceptual in that they offer an
idea
of a range of possibilities in that category (green, for example, covers a multitude of actualities). They can be combined into endless permutations, with the help of “joining” words like definite and indefinite articles, prepositions, modal verbs, and conjunctions, and modulated by tense to give a sense of a position in time (in some languages). The special characteristics of verbal language can be said to be its flexibility of use (charting degrees of abstraction), its ability to link concept to concept (for example, in argumentation), its physicality (in voice), its potential for further abstraction (in written form), its
potential subtlety, and its economic virtues (in normal circumstances, its relative low cost as a resource in terms of production and reception). We should also note its propensity to modulate between the relative closeness to reality (descriptive, functional, manual-like uses) on the one hand, and metaphorical uses (on a macro-scale, in terms of degrees of fictionality and distance from the real world) on the other.

Conversely, what are the limitations of verbal language? We should be cautious here, as the affordances of language can be stretched and adapted to cover what other modes can more readily achieve (for example, a painting can be described in words). But we can say that words find it more difficult to chart space; to convey close physical feeling; to replicate touch; to communicate the direct, visceral nature of the
seen
, whether in photographic or painted or sculpted form, or simply in the perceived everyday world; and to convey movement. On first consideration, it would seem that words cannot match the
senses
or combinations of sensory experience in terms of their directness. The very abstracted nature of the word removes it at one stage from the immediate experience of everyday life. This general point holds true, even though we can all provide examples of where verbal language had a direct, physical, visceral effect on a situation or state of being: a declaration of love, a decision of “guilty” or “not guilty,” the communication of failure or success. We also know from speech act theory that small words (“I do” in a marriage ceremony, for example) can have long-reaching personal, legal, spiritual, financial, and public consequences. Nevertheless, we must accept that words alone do not constitute the entire communicational repertoire; thus, they should not determine the scope of rhetoric. One of the main points of the present book is that we need a new theory of rhetoric because we have come to realize that words alone do not represent the full range of communicational resource available to us to make and convey meaning.

To reinforce the point about the limitations of words, consider the following scenarios. The direction of gaze in a crowded room, especially when two sets of eyes meet, can communicate mutual interest and engagement. Hunched shoulders and a stooped physical posture in any number of sports can indicate the acceptance of defeat and the end of team effort. In a dance, the intricate positioning and repositioning of bodies in relation to each other communicate an expressive, aesthetic kind of meaning to an audience that is not expressed in words. A music composition, or the sound of wind in the trees on a winter walk in a landscape devoid of verbal language both convey the structure of feeling and perception, and the read-off of meaning, that may be partially shaped by previous verbal encounters and repositories, but in their immediate state, do not call on words for their communicational power. A final example: the construction of a city, its architecture and its layout,
although partially constructed with the help of words, depends also on mathematical calculations, spatial considerations, and the sheer deployment of physical materials to “make a statement.” Rhetoric, because it is the theory of the arts of discourse and communication in any mode (and, verbally, in any language), has the power not only to delineate and explore the internal workings of those separate fields and modes, but also to link them.

If words themselves are inadequate to the task of providing an overarching, explanatory theory for the experiences on the Berlin street, and if, too, “there is more than multimodality here,” how could rhetoric describe and explain the phenomena? Further, how would a theory of contemporary rhetoric begin to make sense of the scene?

One could circumvent and short-circuit the argument by saying that a description of the scene in words defeats itself from the start. There is more to the scene than words. But we have already accepted that words in themselves—and the whole repertoire of verbal language—can perform certain functions and not others. So we need to set a more demanding challenge. If multimodality acknowledges the range and combination of modes that are deployed in the production and experience of the scene, then why cannot multimodality provide a full account of the scene? The reason is that multimodality, along with consideration of media, describes
resources
rather than operations and communicative lines. As Kress has acknowledged, multimodality does not constitute a theory (a patterned means of explaining how its constituent parts relate to each other and to the world), but rather
material for a theory
. Later in the book (
chapters 11
,
12
) there is discussion of how social semiotics and rhetoric relate to each other in terms of providing such a theory.

In terms of media, one could say that a different mode and medium than words on a printed page might capture the completeness of the scene better than my minimal written notes in the café. To move quickly through the possibilities of soundscapes and still images (painting, photography) to fully fledged film, how would this twentieth-century medium,
film
— incorporating, as it does, moving image, sound (including speech), written words, and time/spatial characteristics—represent the actual scene? The limitations of film immediately present themselves as problems in representing the totality of the experience: first, film tends to use a limited number of cameras and thus a limited number of perspectives on the scene. It would need hundreds of cameras and the combinations of their recorded images to represent the scene in its totality. There would need to be extensive and judicious editing to frame the scene. At best, a kaleidoscopic and selective representation of the scene would be all that we could
produce. There is no substitute for being in the actual scene, with smells, air quality, and ambience, even though a limited individual perspective shares the same limitations of a filmic camera position with its ability to focus, change aperture, and so forth. Second, film is subject to its own affordances and limitations—it is, by nature, a representative, selective take on a scene. Third, you need some kind of hardware viewer (the medium of smartphone, TV screen, computer screen, or cinema screen) to receive the message.

Elsewhere (Andrews 2010), I have explored the contribution of
framing
to the understanding of how communication acts are made and received. But, again, framing does not constitute a theory
per se
. It is a mezzanine-level heuristic for working out how the resources of modes, via their various media, can be made to “make sense” in a shared communicational space. Framing comes close to a theory because it draws on social and aesthetic considerations in order to define the parameters of the communicational encounter. But it remains an act (of framing) rather than an underpinning or overarching theory.

So, multimodality and framing are important constituents in helping us to make meaning and to communicate it. The third element that is needed in order to complete the repertoire of resources and heuristics is articulation.
Articulation
is a useful term in that it has two meanings: One is concerned with the clear expression of ideas, thoughts, and feelings. This aspect of the term is usually associated with words. The other is to do with the joining of parts of an entity, as in the example of an articulated truck. We can apply both meanings of the terms to a range of different modes and their combination, in order to bring the term
articulation
into line with the way we are moving: toward a comprehensive and multimodal theory of contemporary rhetoric.

Judt (2010) was particularly concerned with the sense of articulation in terms of clear expression of thought. To state clearly what is intended, without obfuscation or unnecessary decoration, hesitation, diversion, or vagueness, is an art. The articulation can be of feelings as well as thoughts and ideas, or it can be more coolly to do with the accurate and valid expression of an idea—like the design of the London underground map. This latter example makes it clear that articulation is more than just the expression of thoughts or feelings by an individual; it can also apply to sound, visual art, film-making, or design work of any kind. The idea of articulation in this sense is central to rhetoric because of rhetoric's desire to find the most appropriate form for expression of an idea or need. The underlying principle here is one of clarity and functionality, of using the modes and media of expression to provide a valid and transparent account of that which is being expressed.

But articulation can also refer to how elements of communication are joined to each other, and for what purpose, in a composition of any kind.
Examples are the joining of one piece of wood to another in a'joint'—say, in the design and making of a chair; the linking of one idea to another in verbal argumentation; the conjunctions in a narrative; the way the frames of a comic strip or
manga
are joined (sometimes in straight sequence, sometimes with one large frame leading to smaller ones, or vice-versa); or the way different modes combine, for example, a caption with a photograph, or the score of musical composition with verbal annotations and photographs. Each
join
is a conscious compositional decision. Indeed, the joining together of parts into a new whole is at the heart of the nature of composition (as in collage, bricolage, or patchwork where joining is most obviously evident). The chapter on rhetoric and composition attempts to explore such articulation in more detail.

So far we have mentioned multimodality, framing, and articulation. There are at least three further considerations before the theory of contemporary rhetoric is complete in its outline form. These elements are outside the immediate frame of reference for composition but help to determine the framing itself. They are the time-based dimension, contextual factors, and the question of digitization.

Articulation has a part to play in the editing of a film. Conventionally, in predigital technology, each image of a film was captured on celluloid, each image was further articulated with another, and the overall articulation of the sequence, played at a particular speed, gave the impression of verisimilitude. Such time-based representation aimed to capture “realtime,” at least in part, in the effort to construct a work that was either fictional or documentary.
Time
, then, is a dimension of experience that rhetoric has to accommodate in order to build a theory that is adequate to needs, not least because digital media, such as smartphones and television or computer screens, increasingly provide the means not only to read the moving image, but also to create it. From my static desk, composing text in words, the world of the moving image seems some way off; so too, to an artist composing a painting or sculpture, or to a designer working on a new object. But the dimension of time is never far away: the written text is not only composed over time, it is also read or received over time. Paintings are viewed in particular places and times. Time, if we see it from a Western perspective, is continually moving, even if we have the impression that it can stand still. Rhetoric, therefore, has to embrace the dimension of time, most ostensibly in musical compositions, in films, in TV programs, and in clips that are created for YouTube; but also as a fundamental principle of operation in the world in whichever mode and/ or medium. The least that rhetoric can do is to create snapshots in time in order to create and analyze communicative phenomena; but it can do more—it can provide subcategories of analysis and consideration, such as rhythm, pace, and tempo, which in themselves help to define and create communication.