Causing Trouble in Burke's Parlor

            Richards stands apart from the theorists we have read thus far in many ways, but the first is this: he is offering a descriptive rather than prescriptive theory of rhetoric. He notes from the first page that the old theories of rhetoric, exemplified with Aristotle, provided a model derived from combat, a “theory of the battle of words” (1281). The physical spaces, the agents, and the activities they described were scenes of combat, where, as Jacob has pointed out, persuasion means victory. But Richards immediately contests that “persuasion is only one among the aims of discourse” (1281) and so from our first page with him we learned that he sought entirely different goals than the ancients.

            It follows that Richards has thus provided us with an examination of language rather than a handbook for argumentation. That he assumes contingency and indeterminacy in matters of truth and language sets him apart from Plato, who dealt in absolutes. His focus on language as the beginning of the new rhetoric rather than a subcategory of it distinguishes him from Aristotle, who began with probability. Finally, Richard’s emphasis on the ambiguities of language directly clash with the definition-dependent syllogistic reasoning of Ramus and the presumed inerrancy of the Bible (and thus, words) that Astell relies on for her arguments. It’s a party at Burke’s parlor, and Richards showed up late, drank too much, and now no one can shut him up.

            Richards’s fundamental claim is this: the meaning of words are arbitrary and contingent. From this claim, he subverts a common linguistic assumption that words are the basic units which give rises to the sentence – it is, rather, the sentence which gives meaning to the words. No word has meaning except insofar as it relates to another word (1288), so the entire sentence provides the context for interpreting the given meaning of each word. But even as speakers and hearers change, so do the individual contexts which shape the meaning of the sentences they speak.

            This raises, of course, some interesting epistemological implications. It seems to follow that if words are arbitrary signifiers, so too must the information they convey be. And indeed Richards seems to anticipate this in his discussion of causality. He notes, for instance, “we distribute the titles of ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ as we please” (1284) such that cause and effect, like the sentences that express this relationship, are arbitrary and contingent concepts. Taken a step further, Richards seems to anticipate much of the postmodern view of social relationships – that they, like the sentences which express them, are arbitrary and contingent, but with the addition of social power added to the control of meaning.

            I am reminded of a recent series of discussions I have had some of my classmates. We have been discussing the concept of “rights” as a political idea and what that means, whether they really have a natural foundation or referent. Considering Richards views on language, to what degree do our abstract moral ideas, such as “rights” or “law” have meaning? Or does his program reduce them to mere words which we have imbued with meaning for the sake of negotiating social relationships?