The Routledge Handbook of Comparative World Rhetorics

Studies in the History, Application, and Teaching of Rhetoric Beyond Traditional Greco-Roman Contexts

Keith Lloyd

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000066272
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Routledge Handbook of Comparative World Rhetorics offers a broad and comprehensive understanding of comparative or world rhetoric, from ancient times to the modern day. Bringing together an international team of established and emergent scholars, this Handbook looks beyond Greco-Roman traditions in the study of rhetoric to provide an international, cross-cultural study of communication practices around the globe.

With dedicated sections covering theory and practice, history, pedagogy, hybrids and the modern context, this extensive collection will provide the reader with a solid understanding of:

• how comparative rhetoric evolved
• how it re-defines and expands the field of rhetorical studies
• what it contributes to our understanding of human communication
• its implications for the advancement of related fields, such as composition, technology, language studies, and literacy.

In a world where understanding how people communicate, argue, and persuade is as important as understanding their languages, The Routledge Handbook of Comparative World Rhetorics is an essential resource for scholars and students of communication, composition, rhetoric, cultural studies, cultural rhetoric, cross-cultural studies, transnational studies, translingual studies, and languages.

1
Comparative World Rhetorics

The What and How

Keith Lloyd

1. Introduction

“Comparative rhetoric” began in earnest with George Kennedy’s 1998 book of that name, identifying a “turn” in the field similar to those in comparative religion and philosophy. His work was the first book-length study to expand upon Robert Oliver’s groundbreaking 1971 book, Communication and Culture in Ancient India and China. Both volumes are impressive in scope, and Kennedy’s idea that rhetoric is a kind of energy, discussed in detail by Thomas Rickert in this volume, was truly groundbreaking. Both authors desired to interpret each individual culture’s rhetoric within the context of that culture, but both ultimately, and understandably, given the newness of the topic, used Greco-Roman framing for their interpretations.

Despite this promising beginning, publications on comparative rhetoric as field of inquiry (the focus of this introductory overview) remained sparse.¹ However, in 2003, LuMing Mao’s “Reflective Encounters: Illustrating Comparative Rhetoric” set coordinates for mapping our current understanding of comparative rhetoric. Mao has published extensive journal articles on comparative rhetoric – “Thinking Beyond Aristotle,” “Writing the Other Into Histories of Rhetoric,” “Doing Comparative Rhetoric Responsibly,” “Illustrating Comparative Rhetoric Through a Socratic Parable,” and “The Rhetoric of Responsibility” – shaping and defining the field. “The Rhetoric of Responsibility” responded to Scott Stroud’s pragmatic view of comparative rhetoric, “Pragmatism and the Methodology of Comparative Rhetoric.” Stroud offers that comparative rhetoric is less about historical accuracy than about discovering solutions for current problems in historical contexts. Mao warns that this pragmatic approach may be irresponsible in terms of the context and history of non-Western traditions.

Mao also edited a collection of comparative essays for RSQ (a stand-alone book as well), and he played a major role in the comparative rhetoric “manifesto,” discussed ahead. I am grateful for his encouragement for, and contribution to, this volume.

Another forerunner in the field, C. Jan Swearingen, reflected upon the nature of comparative rhetoric with Edward Schiappa in 2009’s “Historical and Comparative Rhetorical Studies: Revisionist Methods and New Directions,” in 2011’s “Plato and Confucius, Aristotle and Mencius – the Perils and Prospects of Comparative Studies in Rhetoric,” and 2013’s “Tao Trek: One and Other in Comparative Rhetoric, a Response.” In “Tao Trek” she describes comparative rhetoric as a journey: “Moving beyond sameness and difference, the One and the Many, making many stops along the way, we will often encounter the Stranger at the gate” (307). In another passage she prophecies the future direction of comparative rhetoric:

the virtue of cross cultural and comparative studies in rhetoric is that the dangers of preserving the Other as an other can be minimized by recognizing, or creating, common grounds and common language, an objective that becomes increasingly important in the current climate of resurgent nationalisms and related polarized identities.

(308)

These words underscore the significance of this collection.

In 2009, Sue Hum and Arabella Lyon released a summary study of the field, “Recent Advances in Comparative Rhetoric,” for The SAGE Handbook of Rhetorical Studies. They raise issues this volume attempts to address: our definitions of, and approaches to, rhetoric, ethical questions surrounding comparative work, how we proceed when the discourse communities we study have no terms for rhetoric, and how anyone can understand another culture at all.

At first comparative rhetoric featured historical recoveries from ancient periods, most often those in China. However, in 2004 and 2009, Carol Lipson and Roberta Binkley expanded studies in comparative rhetoric in the anthologies Rhetoric Before and Beyond the Greeks and Ancient Non-Greek Rhetorics. The first opened doors for Middle Eastern, Egyptian, Chinese, Biblical, and Alternate Greek rhetorics, studies continued here in the work of Diab, Özye ş ilpinar and Jabeen, Vélez Ortiz, Katz, Gellis, Enos, Twal, and Rashwan.

Non-Greek Rhetorics included essays on Chinese rhetorics by authors featured in this book, Xiaoye You and Arabella Lyon. Steven B. Katz, also in this volume, explores Jewish rhetoric, extended here by Eliza Gellis’s erudite study of the Book of Esther. Non-Greek Rhetorics featured Japanese rhetoric, a topic continued here by Massimiliano Tomasi. It also featured Mari Lee Mifsud, included in this volume, and Scott Stroud on Indian rhetorics. I am indebted to their work in my own studies of Indian rhetoric, which began with “Rethinking Rhetoric from an Indian Perspective” in 2007.

The idea of a singular history of rhetoric beginning in Greece alone was challenged in Patricia Bizzell and Susan Jarratt’s 2004 “Rhetorical Traditions, Pluralized Canons, Relevant History, and Other Disputed Terms: A Report From the History of Rhetoric Discussion Groups at the ARS Conference,” published in Rhetoric Society Quarterly. This meeting of comparative scholars offered and agreed that rhetorical studies should consist of histories of “rhetorics,” the primary reason for the “History/Recovery” section of this book. Participants also lamented the lack of publications on teaching comparative rhetoric, and the lack of impact the field was having on coursework in universities, topics richly addressed here in Part V, Applying and Promoting Comparative Pedagogies.

In 2013, another meeting of stakeholders in the field published a piece in Rhetoric Review, “Manifesting a Future for Comparative Rhetoric”; its tenets excerpted here:

• Definition: “Comparative rhetoric examines communicative practices across time and space”;
• Object of study: “communicative practices frequently originating in non-canonical contexts… often… marginalized, forgotten, dismissed as anything but rhetoric, and/or erased altogether”;
• Goals: to “promote and practice a way of doing, knowing, and being that moves away from defining/claiming a finite set of objects of study and that transcends borders, binaries, and biases”;
• Methodology: “Comparative rhetoric practices the art of recontextualization” [discussed below]

Every chapter in this book in some ways engages these tenets.

This Handbook begins with a discussion of what comparative rhetoric is; moves to innovative historical recoveries of World Rhetorics, including Chinese, Biblical, Japanese, Egyptian, Hindu, Islamic, Turkish, and Indigenous American; and moves on to studies related to Jesuits, archaeology, feminism, and music. It brings into the discussion rhetorics of Indonesia, Africa, and the Philippines.

These pages lead the field of comparative rhetoric, and rhetorical studies in general, into fresh directions, unexplored histories and practices, new territories, unique and engaging terminologies, interesting blends and hybrids, smart pedagogies and methodologies, new connections.

The chapters in this book relate not only to comparative rhetoric but also its cousins cultural rhetorics, intercultural rhetorics, transnational studies, translingual studies, rhetoric and composition, communications, intercultural communication, and more. Many of the chapters intersect these fields. The recovery sections will be of special interest to historians, anthropologists, and even scholars of comparative philosophy and religion. Contemporary studies and Part VI, New Directions, will also be relevant to political scientists. Xiaobo Wang and Mari Lee Mifsud’s work interweave comparative rhetoric with feminist theory and transnational feminism. The collection as a whole illustrates the myriad possibilities in extending rhetorical study beyond Greco-Roman and Euro-American limitations.

2. How This Book Came Into Being

When I began studying rhetorical practices in India, comparative rhetors were rare, so I attended every relevant talk, scoured publications, sought new colleagues. The College Composition and Communications Conference welcomed comparative presentations, and its Special Interest Group, Non-Western Global Rhetorics, proved a gold mine. Tarez Graban (included here), Nicole Khouri, Adnan Sahli, and I collaborated to shape that organization, soon to be a standing group. Graban and Hui Wu (also included here) have been creating a collection of translations of key texts from non-Western contexts. Anne Melfi (included here) and Nicole Khouri continue the work of Graban and others to publish the first extensive annotated bibliography of comparative rhetoric.

In the meantime, the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (ISHR), the American Society for the History of Rhetoric (ASHR), the Rhetoric Society of America and their journals Rhetorica, Advances in the History of Rhetoric, and RSQ offered increasing opportunities for comparative scholarship, as did the journal Rhetoric Review. RSQ and Advances published special issues on the topic, and ISHR and ASHR each devoted a conference on related topics. Scott Stroud, currently president of ASHR, is developing web-linked specialized descriptions and bibliographies in comparative studies that will be available on the ASHR website.

So when Routledge approached me, I was already creating a list of contributors in my head and, inspired by the publisher’s invitation, continued making connections by attending three to five conferences a year. As a result, I met with and/or shared meals with almost every author in the book. Word of mouth brought me to others and others to me, and I wrote invitations to scholars listed on a bibliography one of my students, Jason Sharier, created in a graduate course in World Rhetorics (which grew into the annotated bibliography just mentioned). Even as the book moves forward, I will continue to search for emerging work.

While editing this book I also sought to resist forces within the field edging emergent scholars toward the normalized discourse of Greco-Roman rhetoric. The comparative field is growing beyond even its own name, but many scholars, mostly, but certainly not all, of color or from underrepresented populations, or both, were telling me, and continue to tell me, that their well-meaning professors are steering them toward mainstream hot topics. They need jobs, true, but our field, as well as our universities, can no longer marginalize all but Western European and American perspectives. Shyam Sharma’s chapter in this volume wonderfully illustrates the benefits of promoting comparative work in academia.

The beginning, emerging, and established scholars in this volume respond in rich ways to the issues just outlined – the need for expansion into new territories, the need to redefine the field of rhetoric from a global perspective, the need for comparative pedagogies. These scholars took a chance on me, and for that I am very grateful. Their work validates comparative rhetoric as not only legitimate but also as an emergent and significant next very fruitful phase for the discipline. The world is literally at our feet.

3. The “Rhetoric” in Comparative Rhetoric

As C. Jan Swearingen noted previously, comparative rhetoric is especially needed at this historical moment; we see daily examples of mis-communication between nations, ethnic groups, language groups, etc. For instance, I once looked at how the Obama administration framed a terrorist attack and compared it to an explanation released by the terrorists responsible. The US interpretation focused on the terrorist’s hatred of freedom and democracy, while the terrorist account focused on hundreds of years of Western oppression and occupation, the need for recognition of the terrorist’s complaints, and the desire for the US and Europe to stop interfering. Peoples of the world not only speak different languages, but also employ different rhetorics. We ignore this reality at our peril. As these chapters illustrate, some knowledge of the rhetorics of “non-Western” peoples can ensure all are more conversing with than talking at.

To know what comparative rhetoric is, we need some sense of what rhetoric is. Every chapter in this collection provides its own definition, and I defer to their work for a complete picture. For me, Arabella Lyon’s (one of the authors in this collection) “Tricky Words: Rhetoric and Comparative” from Mao et al.’s “Manifesting a Future” provides a perfect starting point. Lyon wisely notes, “Words bring confiscations, hierarchies, and histories. Rhetoric has a deep archive, even if one seeks to circumscribe its definitions.” She remarks that her only reason for continuing to use the term is because other scholars caused her to see that it may be “an acceptable placeholder, if only because it is so loose in meaning” (244).

That looseness offers an open door. Although traditional Aristotelian rhetoric defines rhetoric as an art of persuasion, in considering a more overarching view, I return to my introductory writing course definition: Rhetoric is the shaping of What and How. Though different, the words are interrelated. Brits actually say, “How do you mean? where someone in the States would say, “What do you mean?” How and What arise together, similar to linguistically converse antonyms, like husband/wife, parent/child, and even teacher/student, “opposites” that come into existence together and cannot exist without one another. For explanatory purposes, we can describe a What, a message that we wish to convey to ourselves or another. However, we cannot relay that message without creating it within a How, within a variety of tones, vocabularies, languages, dialects, idiolects, media, registers, conventions, conscious and unconscious motives, etc. The How shapes the message, even as the message shapes the How. Rhetoric, from this point of view, is the active shaping of the What and How in any communicative act.

This may seem a simplification of Aristotle’s logos, ethos, and pathos, the so-called rhetorical triangle. However, the intent of this model is to create a space for rhetoric as a global phenomenon, not to define it within a persuasive framework. Beings shape what they say or do not say, what they depict or not depict, what they embody or do not embody – for a variety of purposes. This shaping, both conscious a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Comparative World Rhetorics: The What and How
• PART I What Is Comparative (World) Rhetoric(s)?
• PART II History/Recovery
• PART III Contemporary Comparative Studies
• PART IV Hybrids
• PART V Applying and Promoting Comparative Pedagogies
• PART VI New Directions
• Index