Rhetoric and Educational Discourse

Persuasive Texts

Richard Edwards, Katherine Nicoll, Nicky Solomon, Robin Usher

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134434527
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Educational policy is often dismissed as simply rhetoric and a collection of half truths. However, this is to underestimate the power of rhetoric and the ways in which rhetorical strategies are integral to persuasive acts. Through a series of illustrative chapters, this book argues that rather than something to be dismissed, rhetorical analysis offers a rich and deep arena in which to explore and examine educational issues and practices. It adopts an original stance in relation to contemporary debates and will make a significant contribution to educational debates in elucidating and illustrating the pervasiveness of persuasive strategies in educational practices.
Rhetoric and Educational Discourse is a useful resource for postgraduate and research students in education and applied linguistics. The book will also be of interest to academics and researchers in these fields of study and those interested in discursive approaches to research and scholarship.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Acts of seduction?

An impossible task

Writing about rhetoric is inevitably an impossible task. How is it possible to pin down what rhetoric is and do this without resorting to rhetoric? Whatever conception we hold of rhetoric we are bound to find ourselves in an aporia, perplexed. If we take the dominant conventional view that rhetoric is a matter of embellishment and half-truths, then our enterprise is doomed from the start. Clearly, we, the writers of this text, do not take this view. However, even the alternative that we will argue for does not resolve the problem.

In what follows, we present a text which will purport to explain rhetoric ‘as it really is’, which is itself a rhetorical statement. In writing and presenting this text we are ourselves engaging in persuasion. Our text is a speech act, which will ‘talk’ about rhetoric and its place in education, but this talking will also be a doing. There would be no point in writing it and presenting it if we had no hope that it would be persuasive. And rhetoric, no matter what view one takes of its nature, is at the very least about persuasion. We could of course argue that our aim is to persuade with robust, logical and clearly presented arguments. But is that not rhetorical too? The elements of good rhetoric – logos, pathos and ethos – are all present here. It seems we cannot therefore construct a ‘good’ text about rhetoric without resorting to rhetoric.

For some, this would be construed as a fundamental weakness, a failure to find a position outside of rhetoric. For us, however, we see our text as an exemplar of the rhetoricity of language, that there is actually no position outside rhetoric so long as one continues to communicate. In adopting this position, the implication is the need for reflexivity and we have done this throughout the text. Yet in doing so there is also a need to recognize the limits of reflexivity since it is itself a form of rhetoric. It is itself meant to persuade even though it may appear otherwise. Thus we find ourselves in a position of having to acknowledge that it is rhetoric through and through.

Thus, while reflexivity is necessary, there are limits to how far one can take it for us to be able to engage you as readers. This means there is no escape. Rhetoric just keeps popping up whatever writing strategies we might adopt. We simply have to accept therefore that we are embarking on an impossible task. However, the response to that need not be negative. Even if the task is impossible, that does not mean that we should inevitably abandon the effort. It is possible to recognize that texts are rhetorical through and through, that any attempt to write about rhetoric is always going to be rhetorical, and still write. This is what we have attempted in the text that follows. We recognize and accept its rhetoricity. We are reflexive about it, we hope we have constructed an ‘open’ and honest text and most important perhaps we recognize its limitations, which are themselves the limits of language.

Seductive acts?

In much contemporary debate, ‘reality’ is often contrasted with rhetoric, where the latter, as we have noted, is often taken to be a collection of half-truths, embellishments or even lies. Listen to the radio, watch the television, read the newspaper, overhear conversations and you will soon find plenty of examples of this:

That rhetorical adepts are impostors who tell lies and twist the facts, we know from the frequent testimony of the daily newspapers, in which rhetoric is both castigated and manifested. Rhetoric has what is known as a ‘bad press’, and this is almost certainly because it thrives on something the Press regards as its own particular sustenance; a perception of the limitations of the human mind, an exploitation of predictable responses, a grasp of the ideas that rule races, classes and individuals.

(Nash 1989: 198)

The distrust of rhetoric has a long history, but is no doubt enhanced by the new public discourse of ‘spin’, which it is argued places greater emphasis on presentation than on substance. In this view, the deficiencies of rhetoric ‘are not only epistemological (sundered from truth and fact) and moral (sundered from true knowledge and sincerity) but social: it panders to the worst in people and moves them to base actions’ (Fish 1989: 472). All the world, it is alleged, has become an advertisement. Yet this is not the argument we wish to pursue, directly at least. For while rhetoric has a bad name, there has been, in recent years, a massive growth in interest in the notion of discourse in the social sciences and more widely. Our interest is in exploring the rhetorical practices of educational discourses, as we feel that the latter cannot be fully pursued without an understanding of the former.

Any contemporary study of education demonstrates the growing influence of discourse. Concern for issues of language, text and discourse in policy, practice and research are no longer at the periphery but have begun to develop as distinct strands of interest (MacLure 2003). Partly as a result of the spreading influence of poststructuralism and, more generally, what is known as the ‘linguistic turn’ in the social sciences and the ‘social turn’ in linguistics, the study of discourse and discursive approaches to research have spread beyond the realm of applied linguistics, psychology and the philosophy of language. In a sense, they have become part of the mainstream of social science research. This is particularly marked among those who locate education within the broader social sciences and not simply as an applied area of professional practice and development. This interest in discourse has manifested itself in the study of educational policies and the management of institutions, as well as in relation to pedagogic practices, either in more traditional classroom environments or more recently in relation to information and communications technologies and computer-mediated communication approaches to teaching and learning. Discursive studies can be found in all branches of education: for example, initial schooling, higher education, training, lifelong learning, workplace learning, and vocational education and training. It is also to be found in the reflexive concern for how research is itself to be represented and the types of discourse through which research is fabricated. The discourse of discourse is pervasive.

Yet interestingly, with some notable exceptions, little of this work to date has been located specifically in relation to the ‘noble art’ of rhetoric. Rhetoric examines the practices through which discourse and texts attempt to achieve their goals. The Oxford English Dictionary (1992) defines rhetoric as ‘the art of using language so as to persuade or influence others’. For Potter (1996: 106), ‘rhetoric should be seen as a pervasive feature of the way people interact and arrive at understanding’. This is a definition for which we have much sympathy and whose implications we will explore further as we go along. Rhetorical analysis is conventionally thought of as the study of the ways in which we attempt to persuade or influence in our discursive and textual practices. Yet until recently it largely remained a ghost haunting the machinations of contemporary interest in educational discourses. It is in an attempt to redress this situation that we set out on the journey of this text.

The study of rhetoric and rhetorical education have a long and not always auspicious history from ancient Greece onwards. Even then, for many, the art of persuasion – rhetoric – was an underhand activity. Even then, rhetoric was contrasted with the real and found wanting. We find this stance problematic and, in this text, aim to challenge all reductionist notions of rhetoric based on binary thinking. Not least, we argue, because education, like so many other aspects of human endeavour, is inherently a rhetorical practice. Policy, practice and research are not simply neutral statements of facts but are attempts to persuade in some shape or form. Policy makers, for example, attempt to persuade the public that extending educational opportunities does not impact upon standards of achievement. Facts about standards of achievement are deployed but the persuasive force of the policy does not lie in the facts alone. The phenomenon of interest groups attempting to persuade policy makers that one course of action will achieve better results than another is well known. Governments consult, often on policy levers rather than policy goals. Educational managers attempt to persuade staff that one way of running an institution is better than another. Teachers and lecturers attempt to persuade their students that learning is a worthwhile activity. Motivation may be considered at least in part an outcome of persuasion, for when one is persuaded of the benefits of something, one may be more inclined to learn. Researchers are desperate to persuade themselves, each other and the funders of their research that they have an audience and that their endeavours are worthwhile, or, more potently, useful. And so it goes on …

Yet to study education as rhetorical practices, while not entirely unheard of, seems somehow unseemly, an act to be undertaken in the dark corners of urban streets, since it seems to challenge the role of reason, rationality, science and evidence in education. It seems to suggest that policy and practice-informed evidence should take priority over evidence-informed policy and practice. Propaganda seems a more appropriate bed-partner for persuasion and, while education is recognized as playing a role in supporting the ideologies of specific states, this is in some ways seen as questionable. While itself rhetorically powerful as an argument, this is not our position. For us, rhetoric problematizes the role of education as a crucial aspect of modernity. This of course is not in itself new. But to undertake rhetorical studies of education is to position it as a rhetorical practice and it is this that we would claim is distinctive about the argument in this text. Whether it is persuasive is another matter. Persuasion may be coercive, reasoned or seductive. Power, reason and desire are therefore embedded within rhetorical acts but these acts always have one vital characteristic and that is that they are embodied in language. In this text we aim to explore the multiple workings of rhetoric in many aspects of education. In the process, we are not only attempting to locate educational practices within rhetoric, but also to demonstrate that the ‘linguistic turn’ has historical forerunners, which positions as not entirely new, poststructuralist and postmodern approaches that focus on discourse, language and text.

Science and rhetoric

Simplifying to a large extent, in ancient Greece, a distinction was made between rhetoric and philosophy. Rhetoric was about the form of communication, while the content of communication was the concern of philosophy. This developed into a distinction between rhetoric as persuasion and philosophy as truth. According to Plato, it was only through philosophy that truth and justice could be established and it was this which had to constitute the content of speech. Its form, on the other hand, could be constructed, analysed and pedagogized as rhetoric.

Science eventually replaced classical deductive philosophy as the basis for establishing what was true about the natural world, with empirical evidence replacing contemplation and logic. Reason and truth was contrasted with the emotions and ignorance. Attempts began to develop a scientific discourse based in a literal rather than metaphorical use of language. Here then we find in some ways a return to Plato, who associated rhetoric with the appeal to emotions. But now science rather than philosophy became concerned with establishing what was rational, what was true, what was the case. A distinction between the cognitive and emotive aspects of language came to be made. This, ‘coupled with the belief that scientific knowledge can be reduced to a system of literal sentences, implies that metaphor has no cognitive import’ (Bicchieri 1988: 102). Rhetoric became positioned as part of the arts and humanities, a line of literary enquiry separate from that of the experimental sciences. ‘As rhetoric is a classical “art” or techne, its historical attitude toward knowledge production is much more at home with literary criticism than with sociology’ (Leach 2000: 211, emphasis in original). Insofar as education became eventually positioned as part of the social sciences, the rhetorical aspects of the practices associated with education were overlooked. A rhetorical understanding of education being an art rather than a social science was considered beyond the boundaries of legitimate investigation. One may still have had an education in rhetoric, but the analysis of education as rhetoric was positioned outside the boundary of legitimate concern, although occasional eruptions of interest can be found (e.g. Taylor 1984a). In other words, the discourse of science played a powerful rhetorical role in positioning education as a science, distinct from rhetoric, and in strongly policing the boundaries between arts and sciences. Over time, the influence of rhetoric itself waned in the arts. This meant, as Nelson et al. (1987a: 15–16) comment, that ‘the role of rhetoric has been played down in the humanities, but it has been downright ignored in the social sciences. In consequence, the social sciences float in warm seas of unexamined rhetoric.’ It is those seas we are entering here.

Modern science attempts to establish the truth of the world, or the best approximating truth to date. It is a discourse of facts, of how things are, or are thought to be, constituted by empirical evidence. It rhetorically appeals to evidence and logic and by so doing positions itself as eschewing the need for rhetoric. In the development of modern science, rhetoric and truth were therefore held to be mutually exclusive, with science concerned with truth devoid of rhetoric. The persuasiveness of science was held to rest in its truth claims, not in its rhetoric, an aspect fundamental to the struggle against social practices based on superstition and religion. Yet, for much of its history and even today, scientific discourse has itself been circumscribed by strict rules of what can be written and how it can be written. Witness, for example, the guidelines for the submission of journal articles published by organizations such as the American Psychological Association (Bazerman 1987). Even in less positivistic research, the power of rhetoric is clear once one starts being aware of and looking for it. For example, Atkinson (1996: 17) argues that the impact of Whyte’s classic ethnography, Street Corner Society, on modern sociology was made ‘very largely by virtue of its textual features … we cannot afford to lose sight of the persuasive power of style and rhetoric even in the context of such scholarly written products’. And indeed there has been much discussion of rhetoric among ethnographers over the years (Clifford and Marcus 1986). In addition, philosophers of science, such as Kuhn and Feyerabend, have pointed to the discursive conventions that govern science. More radically, Freedman and Medway (1994a: 8) argue that ‘science advances not by the inexorable logic of successive revelations of nature but by the persuasion of influential groups; arguments are only locally valid; there are no truths, only assertions with a backing that is not universal but communal’. In other words, truth, rather than a faithful representation of the real world out there, is a convention constituted by agreement among a socio-rhetorical network. This position undermines the rhetoric of science by arguing that ‘truth itself is a contingent affair and assumes a different shape in the light of differing local urgencies and the convictions associated with them’ (Fish 1989: 481). What emerges from this is the argument that whenever a case needs to be made that something is true, therein lies a situation ripe for the play of rhetoric.

It is imperative that we recognize that scholarly, factual work is inescapably rhetorical. It draws on conventions of representation and argumentation in order to convey plausible arguments to readers or hearers. A recognition of rhetoric is not an abnegation of scientific or scholarly responsibility. The either/or separation of rhetoric from science is an unnecessary and indeed misleading legacy of Enlightenment thinking. Rhetoric has been relegated to the fringes of the social sciences for too long. It is vital that we recognize and celebrate its rightful place.

(Atkinson 1996: 145)

The linguistic turn in the social sciences over the last century has resulted in an increased interest in scientific discourse rather than science as such. Yet overall this has been informed by the development of the social science of applied linguistics more than the study of rhetoric, which once again reflects the concern for scientific legitimacy and the power of the signifiers of science and arts in attempting to divide different understandings of the world.

Rhetoric and discourse

Alongside the study of rhetoric in the arts, an area of relative decline in many parts of the world over the last hundred years, we have seen the emergence and growth of applied linguistics as a social science. The study of language has moved to the fore and, with the linguistic turn in the social sciences, language, discourses and texts have made a major appearance in social sciences in general and in the arena of education specifically. For some, like Vickers (1999), who wishes to argue for a revitalized understanding of rhetoric, the primacy of linguistics represents an atrophying of the study of rhetoric. This echoes the argument of Leith and Myerson (1989: xiii) about ‘the imperialism of linguistics within the field of language study’. However, perhaps this is too gloomy an assessment. Developments in a range of disciplines – for example, speech act theory in philosophy, critical discourse analysis in applied linguistics, semiotics in cultural studies, genre studies, actor-network theory in the sociology of science and technology, and poststructuralism and postmodernism in a range of subjects – have all, in different ways, drawn upon and pointed to the centrality of language and rhetoric in human practices. Names such as Bahktin, Barthes, Searle, Latour, Fairclough and Swales spring to mind. Thus, Freedman and Medway (1994a: 3) argue that ‘if twentieth century humanists and social scientists have tended to define and differentiate human beings by their ability to use language, more recently it is the rhetorical dimensions of that capacity that have captured our attention’. The study of rhetoric has therefore itself become persuasive, with increasing numbers of studies examining the rhetoric of scientific and social scientific discourse – spoken, visual and written texts (for example, Taylor 1984a; Nelson et al. 1987b; Klamer et al. 1988; Swal...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: acts of seduction?
• 2 Rhetorical practices
• 3 Metaphors of and in learning and teaching
• 4 Inventing the ‘good teacher’
• 5 Cyberspace, cyberbole: metaphorizing the virtual
• 6 Taking up workplace learning
• 7 Action at a distance: the rhetoric of research management
• 8 Sultans of spin?
• 9 The migrating and forging of policy
• 10 Writing research
• Bibliography
• Index