Richards: Reframing Rhetoric

Although Richards and the ancients have many differing opinions, they do certainly have one thing in common. I believe that Richards, Plato, and Aristotle could all come to the agreement that words are “instruments” (1274). Although they would be able to make that concession, I think that they would quickly start to debate about what words are instruments for. Plato would argue that they’re instruments for finding capital-T “Truth”; Aristotle would argue they’re instruments for persuasion, and for finding probable “truth”; and Richards would argue that they’re instruments for conveying meaning. 

This commonality brings us to one of the major differences that I see between Richards and Plato. In Richards essays, I don’t see any room for the “Truth” that Plato thinks rhetoric should be used to discover. It seems to me that with Plato’s idea of “Truth” there would have to be a direct connection between the symbol and the referent, because that symbol is based off some type of divine, transcendent truth. “If such relations could be admitted” Richards says, “then there would of course be no problem as to the nature of Meaning” (1275). But as Richards tells us, (outside of onomatopoeias and words describing gestures) there is no connection between the symbols we use and their referents. Additionally, our interpretation of those symbols are contingent on the context they’re used and interpreted in. For Plato’s “Truth” to be accurate, then there shouldn’t be any room for our past experiences to shape the message of a rhetor; instead, the audience’s interpretation should be static. As Richards points out in his two essays, interpretation is far from static.

This moves us to another one of Richards departures from the ancients. It seems to me that Richards is refocusing the conversation of our field from the rhetor to to the audience. The ancients seemed to be more concerned with persuasion, the job of the rhetor, while Richards is much more concerned with interpretation, the job of the audience. The ancients were certainly concerned with the audience, but from the perspective of the rhetor. Conversely, Richards is certainly concerned with the rhetor, but seemingly from the perspective of the audience. Aristotle, for example, was attempting to develop what Richards would call a "theory of the battle of words” (1281). The tools that Aristotle lays out in Rhetoric help the rhetor take what s/he knows about his/her situation and his/her audience, and helps him/her utilize “the available means of persuasion” and develop a speech that will be most effective in that situation. Richards on the other hands seems to be giving the audience a system they can use to figure out how the rhetor is using words to persuade them, deceive them, and/or misdirect them. 

As many posters have already pointed out, I think Richards’ biggest difference from the ancients is that he broadened the scope of rhetoric. The ancients were said that province finding “Truth,” or persuading; the Renaissance rhetors said that it was dressing up your speech; but Richards says that it’s about finding out how we make meaning, which helps us figure out how we make (what we consider to be) the truth, or why we find some language to be more pleasing than others.