Aristotle, an amendment

On our makeshift Christmas Eve last night, my significant other asked me, would I rather sit down and share a meal with Plato or Aristotle? My mind immediately picked Aristotle, as his writings on rhetoric created and have forever impacted my field of study and my own personal interest in rhetoric. There are many aspects of communication and rhetoric that find their roots in Aristotle's writings, but there has always been one aspect of his teachings that has bothered me. I believe my first issue was learning about the distinction between types of rhetoric in my Classical Rhetoric class in undergraduate. Aristotle detailed the separation of rhetoric into four aims or goals: to inform, to entertain, to seek truth, and to persuade. When one thinks of rhetoric, one primarily thinks of the classic, Aristotelian definition: the ability to see and understand in any situation, the available means of persuasion. This prioritizes "to persuade" as the most important and valuable aim of rhetoric. Without going into too much detail on the nuances of rhetoric, this is the aspect with which I have dedicated my education and (I hope) my future career into researching, teaching, and advising about. I began thinking to myself, though, what really separates these aspects? Is persuasion truly that different from informing, entertaining, and seeking truth?

I would like to argue and state here, that persuasion should actually be a heading for all of these aims, an end goal for each of the subsequent three types, with entertainment, information, and truth-seeking as methods and types of persuasion. Persuasion becomes a more generalized term that all three methods of communication have in common: imparting words, meanings, and nonverbal cues to a consumer and receiver with the attempts to create understanding, acceptance, and a desired response. In an expansion of Stuart Halls, "Encoding/Decoding" piece, I would like to amend that words, messages, ideas, are not passed simply for the sake of passing, but that every word, meaning, idea, or gesture, has a purpose in its sending. The addition of a purpose or motivation is not unlike Kenneth Burke's idea of the pentad, in which motivation is a powerful concept. By combining the two, and indicating motivation as an inseparable part of any type of communication, it all becomes influencing and persuasion. For example, are teachers not educators, sharing information with students? But, are they also not trying at every turn to persuade the students that this information is true? That their class is the most important and should be given the most time and attention? That the subject matter and homework is worthwhile to know, to study, to understand? Is this not a type of persuasion that the words and ideas being transmitted to the student are of value? When one is being entertained, whether at a movie, by a story of a friend, or through various aspects of media, is one not being persuaded of a way to feel? An emotion to have? A response to give to the producer? Are we not being persuaded by stand-up comedians that their art is deserving of a laugh? Or that a song by Lady Gaga deserves our dancing along? If we are not convinced a joke is funny, or that the song has a catchy beat, then hasn't the form of entertainment failed to persuade us of its importance? When one tries to seek truth, are they not seeking truth in order to share the truth with others? Convince them that they have finally found truth? This reminds me of the book I have recently finished, The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins (see next blog post for a book review), in which the entire book is an argument trying to seek the truth about religion, the creation of the universe, evolution, and the human condition. Is this book in and of itself not a larger argument for atheism, the truth of evolution, and the abandonment of faith? Is not the purpose of the book to persuade the reader to accept this truth?

These points are important to me, as my interest in studying rhetoric is the means of which persuasion occurs, how power is transmitted, obtained, and enforced, along with different categories of situations where persuasion occurs. If rhetoric can and should involve all aspects of communication, then there are many unstudied and little examined paths of inquiry that could benefit from a rhetorical lens. There are examples of persuasion being applied as a method to what might be considered traditional forms of media, such as movies. One that comes to mind is the work of Rushing and Frentz on symbolic convergence theory in movies , notably their 1995 book, Projecting the Shadow, The Cyborg Hero in American film.

These crossovers between the three can occur and I believe they should occur more often. There are opportunities for more ideas to be created, overlaps to reveal hidden meanings, and new partnerships in the research in fields of cultural, critical, rhetorical, and political endeavors.