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Finally noticed this conversation. If this meet-up isn't buried on the North side, we (SoulessAutomaton and I) could possibly make it. We'd have to drive in from Grand Rapids.
I have a BA and MA in English Lit, and I can't sincerely answer you. I know several of the standard answers--most of which are derived from and are designed to promote various literary theories and the associated coterie of career minded professors. I left Lit in large part because of those (non-) answers, and did my PhD in Rhetoric instead.
Painting with a very broad brush here, but mainly why people study lit groups into five areas.
Art for art's sake-->new criticism, structuralism, deconstructuralism: those fields that see studying literature of value in itself for understanding how literature works.
Author worship-->few scholars still do this, but these see studying literature as valuable as a way to understand a great writer. A modern version is the "shrink crit" types who use literature to do armchair psychoanalysis of the author (too often using extremely outdated Freudian theory).
Reader worship-->reader response theory, mainly, though some accuse rhetoricians of doing this: these theories mainly look at what readers make of a text as being the meaning/value of that text (sometimes they argue that the author is nothing more than a first reader).
How a text works-->linguistics and literature, mainly. These critics study literature to understand how the artistry shapes and is shaped by the constraints of language.
What it means in context-->there's two separate groups here. One is the social/cultural critics who build out of the class/race/gender studies (Marxist, Feminist, et al). The other are the "New Historicist" critics who study lit to see how it lends insight into it's historical context and how the historical context lends insight into the text.
There's a graph of this, but my ability to do ASCII art is ... not up to the task. Basically, you draw 5 circles, one in the center, the other for at the cardinal points. In the center are the text focused people (art for art's sake). To the left are the author focused types, to the right are the reader focused types. You can draw arrows from the author circle to the text circle and from the text circle to the reader circle, but that leads to a whole 'nother can of worms. Anyhow, above the text circle can either be the linguistics/language one or the history/culture one. The other goes below. (What gets put on top can be telling about the teacher's biases.
And, of course, any literary critic worth their salt will immediately violate any of these groupings if that's what makes the most sense to developing insight into the text/reading experience.
I hope that helps.
The wiki is a good starting tool, but it's not yet as fully developed as I would like. I'm still working to develop sufficient background knowledge of the discussions, assumptions, and definitions used in Less Wrong so as to be sufficiently confident in commenting.
So I will forgive the occasions when someone who sincerely wants information and thoughtful reactions stumbles into spaces that have already been well-trodden.
Nevertheless, the wiki itself isn't yet fully developed with interconnections and links to definitions: until such internal tagging is complete, newer people will sometimes fail to find what they are searching for and will instead ask it directly.
I welcome these questions being asked, and if only as a sign that Less Wrong does not encourage self-censorship (which, I gather from conversations elsewhere, may have been a concern on Overcoming Bias).
I am trying to contextualize this discussion, given that my background in rhetoric and ethos is far removed from the background of the author.
So, I'm going to ask this simply (pun intended) to hopefully generate some useful complexity.
Is the goal of this analysis to systematize the implementation of pre-established ethical guidelines, or, as implied by Soulless Automaton's comment, to derive the ethical guidelines themselves?
Also, does this assume that ethics are derived from observing behavior and then selecting the best behavior given observed results? (If so, I would have to suggest most ethical choices are trained into people before they have enough experience to act outside of the ethical systems developed through our history. In effect, is this discussion assuming a tabula rosa that doesn't exist?)
Actually, I'm a bit afraid of the opposite--as an older fart who has a degree through an English Department... I'm often more than a little unsure and I'm concerned I'll be rejected out of hand, or, worse, simply ignored.
I suspect, though, that this crowd is inherently friendly, even when the arguments end up using sarcasm. ;-)
- Handle: thoughtdancer
- Name: Deb
- Location: Middle of nowhere, Michigan
- Age: 44
- Gender: Female
- Education: PhD Rhetoric
- Occupation: Writer-wannabe, adjunct Prof (formerly tenure-track, didn't like it)
- Blog: thoughtdances Just starting, be gentle please
I'm here because of SoullessAutomaton, who is my apartment-mate and long term friend. I am interested in discussing rhetoric and rationality. I have a few questions that I would pose to the group to open up the topic.
1) Are people interested in rhetoric, persuasion, and the systematic study thereof? Does anyone want a primer? (My PhD is in the History and Theory of Rhetoric, so I could develop such a primer.)
2) What would a rationalist rhetoric look like?
3) What would be the goals / theory / overarching observations that would be the drivers behind a rationalist rhetoric?
4) Would a rationalist rhetoric be more ethical than current rhetorics, and if so, why?
5) Can rhetoric ever be fully rational and rationalized, or is the study of how people are persuaded inevitably or inherently a-rational or anti-rational (I would say that rhetoric can be rationalized, but I know too many scholars who would disagree with me here, either explicitly or implicitly)?
6) Question to the group: to what degree might unfamiliar terminology derived from prior discussions here and in the sister-blog be functioning as an unintentional gatekeeper? Corollary question: to what degree is the common knowledge of math and sciences--and the relevant jargon terms thereof--functioning as a gatekeeper? (As an older woman, I was forbidden from pursuing my best skill--math--because women "didn't study math". I am finding that I have to dig pretty deeply into Wikipedia and elsewhere to make sure I'm following the conversation--that or I have to pester SoullessAutomaton with questions that I should not have to ask. sigh)
Thanks. Last time I googled it--before there was a Google--I came up with nothing.
The dieting discussion seems to have slipped from the intended purpose into a discussion of, well, dieting. I'm wondering if some of that discussion belongs over here, under "open thread" discussion, instead?
Also, am I the only person who has problems dieting because sometimes, for causes yet to be identified, hunger can trigger a migraine? I'll do anything to avoid migraines, including being fat. (Though today I started experimenting with the Shangri-La diet: if it works and doesn't trigger migraines, I would be delighted.)
Thanks for the confirmation, and yes, I appear to be at 20.
Now to start thinking about how to open up a discussion about rationalist approach to rhetoric.
:-)
Wouldn't it take human readers to separate out the trolls from the new posters, and wouldn't such human readers need to be paid for that work? I'm assuming a lot, granted, but isn't this site volunteer work? Who would want to slough through the new posts to remove the trolls from the new people?
Ok, that could sound sarcastic. It isn't. I really don't think that many people would volunteer for such work for long, and I honestly don't know about any computer programs that could make that sort of judgment about posters.
Agreed, the karma system is not fundamentally flawed (I realize that there's further discussion on the karma system, like over here ). Maybe the karma system is a little frustrating because it does force the new person to be careful, but a bit of frustration now to improve the latter dialogue makes sense.
I just wanted to know that that was the intention here, not an accidental (if beneficial) by-product of the karma system.
Ah, but I have an ulterior motive. I'm here in part because I want to read discussions of a rationalist approach to rhetoric. And we can't create new posts until we hit 20 I believe.
But I'm really curious about how a rationalist group would approach rhetoric, so I want to get the discussion started. :-)
That's why I care about my karma score so much.
I just stopped myself from commenting on a thread because I was worried for my itty bitty karma score. I'm new, so my karma score is tiny. I'm new enough to know that I might not know all the relevant context, so I stopped myself in case what I was going to say was too obvious.
I wish that newbies could have a protected period from being downvoted to the pits of negative karma if the new person is clearly giving an honest effort. But at the same time, downvoting trolls makes very good sense. I realize it's not practical to separate out new people from potential trolls. So for now, I find that I am being very, very careful.
Nevertheless, do we want the new people to feel the need to be careful? (Yes, I know that other sites do this: I have a decent karma on slashdot. Is it what this site wants?)
Got it in one. I remember SoullessAutomaton saying that rhetoric was called one of the "Dark Arts" in the originating post, so it had to have been this one.
I should chat with Yvain sometime: it sounds like he? she? knows the old myth of Rhetorica as the dark sister of the goddess Philosophy. Yes, Rhetoric is very much one of the "Dark Arts"--for, unlike Philosophy--Rhetorica looks to derive her knowledge by paying attention to what actually works in the observed world. Her light sister Philosophy derives her knowledge from some great "Truth"--be it a deity, Plato's Forms, or such. Or so one can read the myth.
Not to say that Rhetoric hasn't fallen prey to the great truths repeatedly over the centuries--St Augustine, for instance, was a trained rhetor before he converted, and one of his major treatises is his attempt to Christianize rhetoric so that it would reify the "great truth" of his religion.
Yet as I read the history of Rhetoric, I find that it fits very nicely with Science, thank you very much. Yes, Rhetoric is the study of how to persuade, but that study assumes that all comers can learn the techniques, and so they can learn to disregard those techniques when the substance of a communicative act necessitates it. And Rhetoric has mostly been using observed results to establish its knowledge, not imposing philosophical ideals onto the perceived world.
(Well, mostly. We do go through periods when Rhetoric is subsumed by some of those groups that believe deeply in "great truths"--right now the political "truths" of a particular stripe has Rhetorica in chains. And don't get me started on that soapbox of mine.)
I will. My main advice to SoullessAutomaton was having a clear statement of context/purpose right at the top of the page, preferably followed by a table of contents. Wikipedia's format is the inspiration here, and it is a good one: the format is familiar and it handles the immediate question "what is this?" that is likely to be first on a new person's mind.
But, if I'm going to be a usability tester, I may be of more use if I leave the wiki alone until you all feel it's ready for a usability tester. I'm far less likely to be biased/predisposed to unhelpful reactions if I've not been watching the development process.
I've tried to find the thread that inspired SoullessAutomaton to chat with me about the thread, and I can't find it. I gather that the thread occurred a few weeks ago. So I don't have that context.
A rhetorical analysis assess the persuasiveness of a text/speech/communication act. Rhetorical analyses use the rhetorical concepts (ethos/logos/pathos, for instance, or concepts from Burke's Grammar of Motives, or any of the rest of the tools of the trade) to pick apart the communicative act to see how it makes its meaning (both the substance and style). I gather that somewhere on one of the previous threads, a subset of you were attempting to make such an assessment, but no one happened to know those tools of the trade. I could have given pointers to resources for making that sort of analysis and for keeping the terms used clear for everyone involved.
I specifically remember from my conversation with SoullessAutomaton that the parties involved in the thread were trying to understand some element of the kairos of the communicative act (kairos is best translated as "situatedness", which is not the same as being only "situated"--"situatedness" assumes that the context is impacted by the text, not merely having the text be impacted by the context).
I also gather that there was some discussion between that communication act's kairos and the logos involved (logic and truth tied together--verity and veracity as a single unit). I also gather that somewhere in the discussion, someone may have implied some thoughts about the relationship between the kairos and the communicative act's pathos (appeals to emotion--we get the word "pathetic" from it for a reason, in my mind ;-) ).
But I don't know the details, and I was receiving the information through someone who was not a direct participant in the original thread. (I also believe that my conversation with SoullessAutomaton occurred after a glass and a half of wine, so my memory is a bit blurred by alcohol, as well as by time.)
Nevertheless, if you all do need to pick apart a communicative act to see how it creates the impacts it creates, I can certainly point you towards useful ideas/tools for doing it consistently.
I live with one of that merry band, and a series of comments came up that inspired him to ask me about the content. (I gather you all stumbled onto and into the concepts of a rhetorical analysis, kairos, and pathos appeals the hard way.) So I'm going to lurk, learn, and see if there's a place for a PhD in Rhetoric to add her two cents.
I'm completely new to LessWrong, and so I could make a decent usability tester if you want one. I've also done usability testing and taught elements of it, so I could also help create / refine the usability procedures if there's an interest in creating such.