Note: This piece was originally published in the Journal of South Texas English Studies
This article is the Part Two of a four-part essay series by Dr. Erec Smith on The Lotus Sutra as a Rhetorical Doctrine
I think there are very few things more indicative of an intellectually, culturally and experientially diverse society than the eclecticism of opinion and the variety of defenses to those opinions. The last third of Gorgias’ famous statement about knowledge, “If something can be known, it cannot be communicated,” is the main culprit, and the validity of this statement is blatant in the ubiquity of persuasive appeals. Everywhere I go, I hear an argument. The coffee house at the end of my street, my classroom, each of the 24 hour news channels, my kitchen, cartoons. It seems as if to be human is to argue for the validity of one’s specific point of view. Are we doomed to a fate of what Deborah Tannen calls “argument culture?” I see a solution not in our need to assuage such an argument culture, but to notice its stifling effects: is it at all possible to truly convince people to see things in exactly the way we see them? Can works sway someone into our exact viewpoint, our exact memories and bodily experiences? Is not approximate understanding the best we could ever do?
I often find myself trying to explain things to people who are not incapable of getting complex ideas, but are not used to the discourse I am using. My way of speaking may be commonplace in the discourse communities I frequent, but completely foreign to the intelligent person to whom I speak at a different time and place. This is normal; it is the manifestation of rhetoric’s importance to any speaker. In order to be a clear and persuasive speaker, one must have, as Aristotle put it, “the ability, in each [particular] case, to see the various means of persuasion”. The more sparse or less available those means, the more miraculous (abstract) a speaker must be. This is common knowledge among many.
However, for speakers whose insights have made them see something never before seen, for orators who must explain something never before considered, desires to be straightforward may be thwarted by a lack of a straightforward discourse to sufficiently convey insights and considerations. Although they have the potential to be innovators and trailblazers, they have few, if any, verbal tools to express such views. A popular saying that reveres the knowledgeable man among the ignorant must be revised: In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is not king; he is that crazy guy who keeps saying he can “see” things.
A speaker’s desire to have a straightforward and subdued tone in his speeches may be upset when confronted with those people who know neither the speaker’s motivations nor the directions of his intentions. Such a speaker, even though he knows the truth and the potentially grand benefits of the truth, may be seen and heard as a fool to those not familiar with the topic or the means of explaining the topic. I am reminded of Foucault’s snippet in “The Order of Discourse” about the shunning of Mendel by the botanical community of the nineteenth century:
“People have often wondered how the botanists or biologists of the nineteenth century managed not to see that what Mendel was saying was true. But it was because Mendel was speaking of objects, applying methods, and placing himself on a theoretical horizon which were alien to the biology of his time … Mendel spoke the truth, but he was not “within the true” of the biological discourse of his time: it was not according to such rules that biological objects and concepts were formed.”
Mendel, who we know was very much onto something in his assessment of plant life and is now revered as a “Father” of biology, was seen as “alien” while the revered Scheiden was incorrect but speaking in a manner indicative of the current discourse in the field was accepted. It would seem that sounding correct is more important than being correct.
Of course, Mendel’s situation is neither old nor new. We are warned of it in Aristotle, but can see it today in the acquisition of lofty positions by those who lack the merit but have the wherewithal to know their audiences. What some would call “sound bite” rhetoric resonates with those who feel “talked over” by politicians who try to explain larger, complicated issues with the meticulous explanations that apparently suit upperclass, highly educated audiences.
Perhaps the issue is that we try to explain too meticulously, try too hard to get our listeners to understand exactly what it is we understand. Gerald Graff says that this attempt actually gets in the way of persuasion and insists that there is something to be said of the “sound bite” concept. He writes that “ideas cannot circulate in a complex society unless they can be reduced to concise formulations that encapsulate a concept or argument, often in speech genres of the vernacular. Simplify Whenever You Complexify is the general rule."
At worst, this is a sign of the Lowest Common Denominator rhetoric that John Boghosian Arden calls a “meltdown” in American society. At best, however, this seems like a pitch for an Aristotelian enthymeme: a conclusion that presupposes major premises.
Fair enough, but what of the really important issues? What about those speakers who don’t want to simply convey relatively mundane and “known” things, but want to express the unknown? What if that guy on the side of the road wearing the sandwich board riddled with nonsense knows something we don’t but simply doesn’t have the words to articulate it in a way we deem sane? How do sages let us know they are sages? It would seem that something as reductive as a sound bite just would not cut it.