Todd Oakley - Rhetorical Minds: Meditations on the Cognitive Science of Persuasion

Series Editors:
Jamin Pelkey, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada
Theresia Hofer, University of Bristol, United Kingdom

Through innovative monographs and collections, this series explores the intertwining relationships shared between culture, society, and language, asking how such relations might help us better understand what it means to be human. Empirically grounded, conceptually critical, and theoretically aware, studies in the series explore speech, sign, and social performance as modeling systems not limited to observable behavior. The series thus encompasses social and cognitive dimensions of human experience.

Volume 1
Rhetorical Minds: Meditations on the Cognitive Science of Persuasion
Todd Oakley

Todd Oakley

First published in 2020 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com

2020 Todd Oakley

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.

A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2020006109

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78920-669-2 hardback
ISBN 978-1-78920-670-8 ebook

For the past decade, Rhetorical Minds has been on my mind, but the project would not have taken shape without the help of many colleagues and friends. I am most grateful to my colleagues in the Cognitive Science Department at Case Western Reserve University for our many discussions, and especially to Mark Turner and Vera Tobin, for taking the time to read and comment on earlier drafts. I am also grateful to other colleagues from around the world who listened patiently, commented extensively, and otherwise provided invaluable moral support for the project. These include: Mihailo Antovic, Per Aage Brandt, Line Brandt, Per Bundgaard, Bill FitzGerald, Vladimir Fligar, Renata Geld, Anders Hougaard, David Kaufer, Irene Mittelberg, Esther Pascual, Chris Sinha, Gran Sonesson, Dusan Stemenkovic, Frederik Stjernfelt, Kristian Tyln, Djordje Vidanovic, and Jordan Zlatev. I am much obliged to the anonymous reviews that provided excellent advice for revision. Many thanks to Tom Bonnington, Ann Przyzycki, and Lizzie Martinez at Berghahn Books for their excellent editorship! I am most grateful to Cindy, Ben, and Simon Oakley for their patience and forbearance throughout, and to my father, Eric Oakley, for his continuous encouragement. Finally, I dedicate this book to the memory of my mother, Linda M. Oakley, who taught me early on that if I wanted something, I had to make a persuasive case for it.

Portions of and 10 appeared in 2017 as Debtors, Creditors, and Sovereign Money Systems: A Case for Institutional Blending and the Amalgamated Mind. Cognitive Semiotics 10(2): 169203.

Most of appeared in 2016 as Deonstemic Modals in Legal Discourse: The Cognitive Semiotics of Layered Actions. In Meaning, Mind, and Communication: Explorations in Cognitive Semiotics, ed. J. Zlatev, G. Sonesson, and P. Konderak, 299316. Bern: Peter Lang Verlag.

appeared in 2013 as Semantic Domains in Dream of the Rood. In RASK 40: Per Aage Brandt at 70, ed. J. Mey, 33152. Odense: RASK.

We all know what rhetoric is, dont we? Its vernacular for all those attempts to persuade us to buy some product or to vote for some candidate or ballot initiative. We are far more likely to use the term in the pejorative: a candidates speech was nothing but empty rhetoric, or anodyne rhetoric aside, these bankers really are asking for a tax-payer bailout with no strings attached. We like to think of ourselves as good at sniffing out mere rhetoric from substance.

The art of rhetoric, however, has been an ongoing course of study for 2500 years in the West, with a reputation that has risen and fallen more often than any other academic subject. But for most of that history, rhetoric (Greek for oratory) has been seen as a general art of discovering in any particular case, the available means of persuasion, so says Aristotle. Thus, rhetoric formed a basic part of any educated persons training.

While pejorative uses are handy means of identifying, evaluating, and attending to that which we deem distasteful, even destructive, we do well to remember that the term applies equally to those practices with which we identify, evaluate, and attend to as tasteful, even inspirational. The scope of communicative practices falling within rhetorics ambit is much broader than is usually believed. This is not to suggest that everything is rhetoric, but it does imply that rhetoric is implicated in just about everything we do.

For present purposes, let us define rhetoric as the practice that enables strategic discourse, rhetors or orators as those who practice it, rhetorical theory as the study of said practices and rhetoricians as those who study these practices. Let us position these designations relative to Kenneth Burkes characterization thereof:

Rhetoric is rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic and continually born anew: the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols. ([1945] 1950: 43, italics in original)

The phrases of specific relevance to rhetorical minds are essential function of language, wholly realistic and continually born anew, and inducing cooperation. As we shall see, the rhetorical characteristics of language are not really superimposed on language but are constitutive of the very thing we call language. Such a view has not been self-evident among formal linguists and first-generation cognitive scientists. Yet, it can be asked: how different does higher-order cognition appear when we consider the study of rhetoric and the study of language as consubstantial? This book argues that the picture of human cognition looks very different from first-generation cognitive science. Rhetoric is wholly realistic by being an irrepressible attribute of human behavior. However, Burke means something more significant: rhetorical practices enable new social realities to emerge.