Assumptions About Regions and Rhetoric

          The Mapping "Global Rhetorics" assignment was somewhat confusing for me. As my group looked over the readings (Kennedy, Borrowman, Lyon, and Al-Musawi), we started to see how the focus of rhetoric was different for different regions. Recognizing regional focus of rhetoric brought up several questions, but the one that stood out the most for me was: Do different regions have distinct canons for rhetoric?
          At first, it seemed pretty straightforward. Different regions have different cultures, so it seemed that rhetoric would follow suit. We mapped out the regions we wanted to focus on. Greece, Egypt, the Arabic Middle East, and China stood out from the readings, and they are the focal points on our map. Each region corresponds to a central focus of rhetoric. We found Greece was focused on persuasion; Egypt, eloquence; the Arabic Middle East, hermeneutics; and China, remonstration.

How did we come to these conclusions (or maybe it's better to refer to them as assumptions)? 

*To keep things brief, I will only show one reference from each text that brought us to an assumption.*

          The first two assumptions came from the reading of George A. Kennedy's Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction.  For Greece: Kennedy says, "A common brief definition of 'rhetoric'...was 'the art of persuasion,' or...'an ability, in each case, to see the available means of persuasion'" (Kennedy 3). For Egypt: Kennedy says, "Egyptian writers often celebrated eloquence," and goes on to say, "Several registers of formal language are found in Egyptian texts" (Kennedy 138). We argued that these were the main points for rhetoric in those two regions, because they were referred to frequently within the text and seemed to be at least Kennedy's focus towards those regions.
          For me (I cannot speak for my partners, because they read more of Shane Borrowman's "Recovering the Arabic Aristotle" than I did), the assumption of the Arabic Middle East's focus on hermeneutics for rhetoric came from Al-Musawi's reference to "Arabic Rhetoric". Specifically, it comes from this quote: "'from the art of making speeches into the art of following discourses with understanding, which means into hermeneutics," which is in reference to the "Qur'anic exegisis" of Arabic rhetoric (Al-Musawi 30). Also, our assumption towards Chinese rhetoric came from Carol S. Lipson and Roberta Binkley's Ancient Non-Greek Rhetorics (where I would go into more explanation, but I am running out of time to post this blog).

Now, for the question: "Do different regions have distinct canons for rhetoric?" 

          I personally looked to Kennedy to help find some evidence (for or against) the possibility of canons for each region. Kennedy's prologue in Comparative Rhetoric provides a detailed description of Greco-Roman rhetoric (or traditional Western rhetoric) and breaks it down into parts, including the canons: "invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery" (Kennedy 6). Kennedy later talks about Egypt and mentions the "earliest known rhetorical handbook", which "[set] out canons of silence, choosing the right moment to speak, facility, restraint, and truthfulness" (Kennedy 138). There is a lot more to Kennedy's Comparative Rhetoric that the class was not assigned to read, so I cannot be certain that he does or does not map out some sort of canons for other regions/countries.
          I did try to formulate canons for Mesopotamia, which Kennedy talks about in Chapter 6: "Literacy and Rhetoric in the Ancient Near East" of Comparative Rhetoric. I mapped out what I thought were the most important points of rhetoric for Mesopotamia [and my partners traced possible canons for other regions  (Reference Sheet - Exploratory 1 Notes )], but my trace led me in a direction I did not expect to go; my tracing of "canons" felt more like an assumption I was making about a region that I knew little about.
          I was basing my assumption on Kennedy's text, where he in no way established canons for Mesopotamia. It complicated things for me. It made me think that rhetoric could not be separated by region based on canonical differences, that maybe making canons for rhetoric is not the way to describe how rhetoric works. Maybe all rhetoric is associated with the principles of the Dao and cannot be defined. Maybe rhetoric is "energy" (Kennedy 3), and it is more complicating to define than what canons can offer. Maybe canons are a product of our own "side of the looking-glass," which Arabella Lyon references from I.A. Richards on Page 176 of Ancient Non-Greek Rhetorics.

Works Cited:

Al-Musawi, Muhsin J. “Arabic Rhetoric.” Encyclopedia of Rhetoric. Ed. Thomas O. Sloane. New York: Oxford UP, 29-33. Print.

Kennedy, George A. Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction. New York: Oxford UP, 1998. Excerpts. Print.