Over the weekend I read a book lent to me by my high school friend, Drew, called Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. This book, as you well may guess from the cloyingly chipper title, essentially supports rhetorical theories with data.
It's a book filled with a score of poignant studies, enough to make me wonder what, exactly, I'm doing studying rhetoric. If the business sector has the ability not just to opine and theorize about persuasive appeals, but to hire drones to collect data—data that in the end proves more about rhetoric than a rhetorician can in many cases—why am I studying rhetoric?
It's a question I'll have to keep an eye on after graduation, as I try to decide what to do with an MA in Rhetoric.
But what the book really made me think of had more to do with rhetorology, that stuffy neologism Wayne Booth coined—the subject of my thesis-in-progress (or, more accurately, my thesis-should-be-in progress).
When I gave the book back to Drew we spoke of the studies in the book, among other things. I told him that I like the study of rhetoric, but that I find it frequently fraught with one peril: you generally study rhetoric in order to persuade someone that you're right about something, but you—whoever "you" are—are bound to be wrong about some things. In other words, as much as you'd like to persuade someone that your position is the correct position, you're always at risk of persuading someone of a falsehood.
That is why I find rhetorology so appealing. Instead of asking the question, "How can I persuade you to believe me?," it asks, "How can we see eye-to-eye?"
I realize that some people, rhetoricians particularly, already say that rhetoric is about seeing eye-to-eye. But if the public has for decades slapped connotations of manipulation and deceit onto the word, it might be time to concede that the word has soured, no?
What I'm seeking is a book called Agreed! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to See Eye-to-Eye. Or maybe just a book simply titled Rhetorology. Or maybe just a thesis on the subject . . .
The question is, can a book about something like rhetorology ever catch on, or do the reviews for bestselling non-fiction political books have to look like this, with little room for the middle ground?
A Warning about CBO Scoring
5 hours ago
2 comments:
I may just be confused with what you mean by "seeing eye to eye", but isn't that just the same thing as respecting someone else's opinion or agreeing to disagree? In our society laws have to be one way or the other. Gay marriage, for example, will always be illegal or legal. And there will likely be a group of people who want the law to be changed. Maybe I'm not making sense, but I'm just wondering how we can see eye to eye without trying to persuade them to our side.
That's actually the very question I'm wrestling with most at the moment in thinking about rhetorology, and I think it points to a major flaw in this little post.
I keep wanting to pit persuasion against rhetorology, as though the two are incompatible. But that's off base. Rhetorology is listening fully to the opposing viewpoint, always with the commitment that the speaker is open to being converted to the other side of the debate.
So I think that it doesn't preclude attempts at persuasion, even in the vein of Yes! (which I just did a book report on for a rhetoric group today, recommending that everyone read it). Rhetorology emphasizes that the speakers on both sides should be willing to admit their own fallibility. Once they do this they'll be more willing to listen fully rather than just talk passed the opponent.
Perhaps what rhetorology is then is seeing eye to eye while debating. And that's the first time I thought of that, and it's going in the thesis.
Post a Comment