Rhetorical Perspective

[David Samuels]

Well, that'll teach me to read with only one contact lens in.

Don't know about Navajo specifically - that was just a dummy case - but in
Western Apache, rhetorical forms tend to highlight reported speech in a
very deliberate way; language socialization centers on repeating games, and
adult speakers spend a lot of energy explicitly re-enacting and
re-animating the utterances of others.  In Basso's latest collection of
placename essays, he calls this rhetorical strategy "quoting the ancestors"
- the idea being that the old people named these places, and by speaking
their names in the present, one is doing much more than simply referring to
the place, one is actually quoting the speech of the original namers.

I would oppose this ideology of ventriloquation to the American grade
school ideal of learning to "put things in your own words."  (Margaret
Field could talk about this in Navajo.)  Which isn't to say, of course,
that reported speech isn't of any rhetorical importance in American
English, rather that it isn't foregrounded as a productive resource in the
same way.

As for a dissertation on rhetorical universals?  It wouldn't be my cup of
tea; how would one avoid having it look like a discourse version of HRAF?

Best,

David Samuels

------------

>Yes, I said that the Western model of rhetoric is "only one" model, not "the
>only one".  Glad we got that cleared up.  Right, so what does Navajo
>rhetoric look like, I wonder?  And shouldn't someone be writing a
>dissertation on rhetorical universals?
>
>Phil
>
>----------
>>From: David Samuels <samuels at ANTHRO.UMASS.EDU>
>>To: DISCOURS at LINGUIST.LDC.UPENN.EDU
>>Subject: Re: Rhetorical Perspective
>>Date: Wed, Feb 3, 1999, 8:39 AM
>>
>
>>Maybe I'm misunderstanding Phil Gaines, but why would a gloss of "rhetoric"
>>as "strategies of persuasion" mean that the Western model is the only one
>>out there?  Don't Navajos ever try to persuade each other?  (If you
>>conflate rhetoric and poetic, as many do, does that mean that a Western
>>model of poetics is the only one available?)



David W. Samuels
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
212 Machmer Hall
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003

VOX: (413) 545-2702
FAX: (413) 545-9494
email: samuels at anthro.umass.edu