A CONCEPTUAL THEORY AND APPLICATION OF A GRICEAN HEURISTIC FOR RHETORIC

GWENDOLYN GONG, Purdue University

Abstract

We live in a new and different rhetorical age. In order to deal effectively with this new age, discoursers need rhetorical theory which can respond to the manifold of rhetorical situations and extralinguistic factors involved. To be sure, there exist some techniques of invention which are available to discoursers, i.e., neo-classical invention, the dramatistic pentad, pre-writing, and tagmentic invention. These systems for invention, however, fall short of addressing the rhetorical needs of the new rhetorical age. And because of their inadequacies, a Gricean heuristic, based on communication-based semantics and rhetorical theory, is needed. Grice, a philosopher of language, asserts that communication hinges on cooperative efforts on the part of discoursers and their audiences. Further, Grice contends that each participant in a communication act abides by the Cooperative Principle to facilitate meaning and intention. The four supermaxims of the Cooperative Principle are quantity, quality, relation, and manner. According to Grice, a violation of one or more of these supermaxims can give rise to an implicature, an inference by audiences about the discoursers' beliefs or intentions. It is here that communication can either fail or succeed, given the presuppositions, intentions, and cooperative efforts of the participants. The notion of cooperation, similar to Burke's notion of identification, operates in texts at the utterance and extended discourse level. As such, Grice's theories about meaning and communication can be combined with rhetorical theory so that a Gricean heuristic can be conceptualized. To achieve this end, Grice's notions of cooperation, mutual efforts, and understanding can be considered as they apply to language production and comprehension, the rhetorical triangle, Kinneavy's aims of discourse, script-pointer + tag hypothesis, and language demarcation in discourse. Once Grice's theories of meaning and conversation have been considered in terms of rhetorical theory to formulate a Gricean heuristic, the inventional system can then be applied to prose samples: expressive discourse, persuasive discourse, and referential discourse. For the purpose of illustration, the Gricean heuristic can be used as a protocol. It is important that the order in which the protocol is implemented, however, not be interpreted as being algorithmic in nature. The Gricean heuristic is a flexible and generative problem-solving procedure. It is intended not only to help discoursers discover information and propositions, but also to tap their rhetorical competence, their intuitive sense of their rhetorical situations and contexts. In this way, the Gricean heuristic offers much to students and teachers of writing. Much development and research of this new inventional system must be carried out to test its power and practicality. Of special interest are the implications for teaching and research that the conceptual framework and applications suggest.

Degree

Ph.D.

Subject Area

Linguistics

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