Figure, ground and presence: A phenomenology of meaning in rhetoric

Quarterly Journal of Speech

Volumn 87, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 396-414

  Tucker, Robert E ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Gestalt psychology; Meaning; Perelman; Phenomenology; Presence; Time

Indexed keywords

EID: 0040623353     PISSN: 00335630     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00335630109384348     Document Type: Article

References (96)

1. W.M. Parrish, "Implications of Gestalt Psychology," The Quarterly Journal of Speech 14 (1928): 8.
2. Louise A. Karon, "Presence in The New Rhetoric," Philosophy and Rhetoric 9 (1976): 98.
3. Karon, "Presence" 98.
4. th ed. (Dubuque: Kendall Hunt, 1989): 405-6. Smith's otherwise exemplary Rhetoric and Human Consciousness: A History mentions presence not at all. Craig R. Smith, Rhetoric and Human Consciousness: A History (Prospect Heights: Waveland, 1998).
5. th ed. (Dubuque: Kendall Hunt, 1989): 405-6. Smith's otherwise exemplary Rhetoric and Human Consciousness: A History mentions presence not at all. Craig R. Smith, Rhetoric and Human Consciousness: A History (Prospect Heights: Waveland, 1998).
6. th ed. (Dubuque: Kendall Hunt, 1989): 405-6. Smith's otherwise exemplary Rhetoric and Human Consciousness: A History mentions presence not at all. Craig R. Smith, Rhetoric and Human Consciousness: A History (Prospect Heights: Waveland, 1998).
7. Chaim Perelman and Lucy Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, trans. John Wilkenson and Purcell Weaver (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969): 119.
8. Wilhelm Dilthey, Der Aufbau der Gestchichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften quoted in Rüdiger Safranski, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil, trans. Ewald Osers (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1998): 51.
9. See Bernard J. Baars, A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988).
10. Barry Smith and David Woodruff Smith "Introduction," The Cambridge Companion to Husserl eds. Barry Smith and David Woodruff Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995): 8-9. See also the brief but helpful treatment of phenomenology offered by Edmund Husserl in The Phenomenology of Time-Consciousness trans. James S. Churchill (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1964): 21-27.
11. Barry Smith and David Woodruff Smith "Introduction," The Cambridge Companion to Husserl eds. Barry Smith and David Woodruff Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995): 8-9. See also the brief but helpful treatment of phenomenology offered by Edmund Husserl in The Phenomenology of Time-Consciousness trans. James S. Churchill (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1964): 21-27.
12. Perelman virtually equates presence with conscious awareness. See Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric 118-119.
13. Smith and Smith "Introduction," The Cambridge Companion to Husserl 9.
14. Smith and Smith "Introduction," The Cambridge Companion to Husserl 9.
15. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric 116. See also pages 96 and 118 for Perelman's comment that presence is "essential."
16. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric 115.
17. Chaim Perelman, The Realm of Rhetoric, trans. William Kluback (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame P, 1982): 36-7.
18. Quoted by Perelman, The Realm of Rhetoric 36-7.
19. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, 117.
20. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, 116.
21. Perelman, The Realm of Rhetoric 39.
22. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, 118, quoting Stephen Spender.
23. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, 118.
24. See, for example, Perelman's description of "the foreground of the hearer's consciousness" and his visual description that "the elements left out are [not] entirely ignored, but they are pushed into the background" (emphasis added). Note also that the ox could be seen, while the sheep could not See Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, 142.
25. Paul Feyerabend, Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction Versus the Richness of Being ed. Bert Terpstra (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999).
26. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, 142, quoted in Karon, "Presence in The New Rhetoric," 96.
27. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, 142, quoted in Karon, "Presence in The New Rhetoric," 96.
28. th ed. eds. James L. Goodwin, Goodwin F. Berquist and William E. Coleman (Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt, 1989): 405.
29. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, 118.
30. Joseph Jastrow, Fact and Fable in Psychology (Freeport: Books for Libraries P, 1971).
31. Edgar Rubin, "Figure and Ground" in Readings in Perception eds. David C. Beardslee and Michael Werheimer (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1958): 194-203.
32. See also E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton: Bollingen, 1989), particularly Gombrich's discussion of the interpretation of Rorschach inkblots on page 105.
33. C. James Goodwin, A History of Modern Psychology (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1999): 263.
34. David Katz, Gestalt Psychology: Its Nature and Significance (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press Publishers, 1950): 47.
35. For a particularly clear treatment of this idea, see Leonard C. Hawes, "Toward a Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Communication," Communication Quarterly 25 (1977): 30-41. In particular see pages 36 and 37 where Hawes discusses the phenomenological move in which "nouns are transformed into 'verbs' and are explicated as such." Hawes Toward 37.
36. For a particularly clear treatment of this idea, see Leonard C. Hawes, "Toward a Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Communication," Communication Quarterly 25 (1977): 30-41. In particular see pages 36 and 37 where Hawes discusses the phenomenological move in which "nouns are transformed into 'verbs' and are explicated as such." Hawes Toward 37.
37. I am appropriating the term used by Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception, xvii and 30, though the notion of orthogonal rotation is obviously not his.
38. M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge, 1998).
39. This notion is related to but distinct from the notion of n-dimensional semantic space offered in Charles E. Osgood, George J. Suci, and Percy H. Tannenbaum, The Measurement of Meaning (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1967). The dimensions posed by these authors are dimensions of affect or evaluation-they bear no intrinsic relation to semantic dimensions in the way we mean.
40. See Jastrow, Facts and Fable in Psychology and Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations 194. Our thanks to Stephen Toulmin for his clarification of this figure's origin.
41. See Jastrow, Facts and Fable in Psychology and Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations 194. Our thanks to Stephen Toulmin for his clarification of this figure's origin.
42. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations 194.
43. Sustained here is less a reference to work done by the text and more to the sociological conventions of interpretation operating in a given community of interpreters. For the clearest explication of this position see Stanley Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (Durham: Duke UP, 1989): 163-311. See also Stanley Fish, Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999).
44. Sustained here is less a reference to work done by the text and more to the sociological conventions of interpretation operating in a given community of interpreters. For the clearest explication of this position see Stanley Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (Durham: Duke UP, 1989): 163-311. See also Stanley Fish, Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999).
45. Richard A. Lanham, The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993): 63. Lanham also uses the synonym "oscillation" to describe the "rocking motion between" two interpretations. In his case Lanham focuses on the distinction between looking "at" a particular medium of expression or "through" that medium to the content expressed. For the equivalency of this distinction to the vase-face image, simply concentrate on the image first as a face, and then as ink on a page depicting a face. The inability to see both at once is identical. Lanham argues that the AT/THROUGH distinction is central to a wide number of fields including law, business, and architecture. See The Electronic Word 71-72. Lanham's analysis, unfortunately, is limited to semantic ambiguity in two dimensions.
46. Richard A. Lanham, The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993): 63. Lanham also uses the synonym "oscillation" to describe the "rocking motion between" two interpretations. In his case Lanham focuses on the distinction between looking "at" a particular medium of expression or "through" that medium to the content expressed. For the equivalency of this distinction to the vase-face image, simply concentrate on the image first as a face, and then as ink on a page depicting a face. The inability to see both at once is identical. Lanham argues that the AT/THROUGH distinction is central to a wide number of fields including law, business, and architecture. See The Electronic Word 71-72. Lanham's analysis, unfortunately, is limited to semantic ambiguity in two dimensions.
47. See Fish cite 37 above.
48. Sergio Sinay, Gestalt for Beginners (New York: Writers and Readers Publishing, 1997): 7.
49. Goodwin, A History of Modern Psychology, 262-3.
50. Perelman, The Realm of Rhetoric, 36.
51. rd ed (New York: New Directions Publishing, 1966): 1.
52. Empson, Seven Types, 1.
53. For the sense of habit I am using here see William James, The Principles of Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1981): 109-131. See also Stanley Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (Durham, Duke UP, 1992), particularly Fish's discussion of professionalism, 163-311.
54. For the sense of habit I am using here see William James, The Principles of Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1981): 109-131. See also Stanley Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (Durham, Duke UP, 1992), particularly Fish's discussion of professionalism, 163-311.
55. Erving Goffman, Forms of Talk (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1981): 251.
56. Adapted from Ray Jackendoff, Consciousness and the Computational Mind (Cambridge: MIT P, 1994): 115-116.
57. Jackendoff, 115-116.
58. Andrew Ellis and Geoffrey Beattie, The Psychology of Language and Communication (New York: Guilford, 1986): 66.
59. Ellis and Beattie, 66.
60. Ellis and Beattie, 66.
61. Anonymous, "Who's on First," The Complete Armchair Book of Baseball ed. John Thorn, (New York, Galahad Books, 1985): 24-25.
62. In fact, though beyond the scope of the current essay, the limitation seems likely to be neurophysiological. See Bernard J. Baars, A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988) for a discussion of the neurophysiological basis of the limitation.
63. Ray Jackendoff, Patterns in the Mind: Language and Human Nature (New York, Basic Books, 1994): 194.
64. I am obviously indebted here to Edmund Husserl, in particular his Phenomenology of Time Consciousness (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1964). Also helpful was Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, trans. Theodore Kisiel (Bloomington, 1985: Indiana University Press) and Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, trans. F.L. Pogson (New York: Macmillan, 1910) particularly Bergson's notion of duration.
65. I am obviously indebted here to Edmund Husserl, in particular his Phenomenology of Time Consciousness (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1964). Also helpful was Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, trans. Theodore Kisiel (Bloomington, 1985: Indiana University Press) and Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, trans. F.L. Pogson (New York: Macmillan, 1910) particularly Bergson's notion of duration.
66. I am obviously indebted here to Edmund Husserl, in particular his Phenomenology of Time Consciousness (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1964). Also helpful was Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, trans. Theodore Kisiel (Bloomington, 1985: Indiana University Press) and Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, trans. F.L. Pogson (New York: Macmillan, 1910) particularly Bergson's notion of duration.
67. What Husserl would later call protentions and retentions. See Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology of Time Consciousness (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1964).
68. Merleau-Ponty described this mixed and intricate three-fold structure of the present thus, "do not run from a central I, but from my perceptual field itself, so to speak, which draws along in its wake its own horizon of retentions, and bites into the future with its protentions." See Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception 416.
69. Augustine, The Confessions, trans. Rex Warner (New York: Mentor, 1963): 282. For other translations see Book 11, Chapter 28.
70. rd Psalm, King James Translation.
71. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric 142.
72. See Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form (Berkeley: U of California P, 1973) xviii.
73. Particularly helpful for the notion of the semantic shape is Andrew Delbanco, The Real American Dream (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999): 6.
74. See Paul Feyerabend, Conquest of Abundance, particularly page 113 where Feyerabend argues "Having become a habit, the [interpretive] devices are not noticed as separate constitutive entities."
75. Burke, POLF 9.
76. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception 421.
77. Lanham, Handlist 127.
78. Northrop Frye, The Koine of Myth: Myth as a Universally Intelligible Language, Myth and Metaphor: Selected Essays 1974-1988, ed. Robert D. Denham (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1990): 6.
79. Feyerabend, Conquest of Abundance 113.
80. Feyerabend, Conquest of Abundance 27 citing Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 1350-1450 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971).
81. Feyerabend, Conquest of Abundance 27 citing Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 1350-1450 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971).
82. Feyerabend, Conquest of Abundance, 39.
83. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, xvi-xvii.
84. Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1973): 29.
85. White, Metahistory 30.
86. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric 117.
87. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric 116.
88. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric 118.
89. Chaim Perelman, The Realm of Rhetoric 36-7.
90. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric 119.
91. Perelman, The New Rhetoric 115.
92. See Wolfgang Köhler, "Gestalt Psychology Today," in Mary Henle (Ed.) Documents of Gestalt Psychology (Berkeley: U of California Press, 1961) 1-15.
93. Gombrich, 374.
94. Perelman, New Rhetoric 172.
95. th ed. (Dubuque: Kendall Hunt, 1989): 406.
96. Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire (Chicago, U of Chicago P, 1992) 144.