Modern and Postmodern Rhetoric

"It was in the context of Bertand Russell's analytic philosophy, its distrust of language, and its reliance on logic that Stephen Toulmin developed his theory of argument." (p. 1195)

In modern and postmodern rhetoric, we began to see more of things we'd seen earlier, just more developed. Back in ancient rhetoric, the Sophists believed that there was a constructed truth. There was no inherent truth, but just one that was constructed by society to be "right." The Sophists didn't believe that there was a divine, spiritual, or universal truth. Also during the period of ancient rhetoric, there was an emphasis on speech and language. Literacy was more based on status during these times, and became important as a status and educational tool.

Moving to modern and postmodern times, language finally became skeptical. The Sophists, if still around now, would say that we have constructed language just like we constructed truth. Language directly correlates with meaning (according to some). Therefore, if we have constructed the language, we have certainly constructed the words and meanings. In other words, logic is constructed.

By using a source I researched for one of our papers, I found this quote by French linguist Ferndinand de Sausssure:

"It assumes that ready-made ideas exist before words…; it does not tell us whether a name is vocal or psychological in nature…; finally, it lets us assume that the linking of a name and a thing is a very simple operation – an assumption that is anything but true. But this rather naïve approach can bring us near the truth by showing us that linguistic unit is a double entity, one formed by the associating of two terms.”

I like the psychological approach to language. Being a double major in psychology, I like to find connections between the two subjects. Here, it is easy to see. As interacting human beings, we find ways to associate certain terms with certain meanings. But do they actually inherently mean that? Not necessarily.

Look at how different words have changed, just over the past 10 years. Words such as "gay" and "retarded" don't have their same meanings. They are now negative words that simply mean "dumb" or "stupid." (i.e. That's so gay!).

Also from a psychological standpoint, we tend to also classify meaning by looking at the what the word DOES NOT mean. Jacques Derrida called this "differance." The "differance" (he was French) was what the word meant in comparison to what it didn't mean. For example, the good was not evil. But evil was not good. There was almost a circular logic to what something meant and what something didn't mean. Interestingly, it was a fallacious system for classifying meaning or logic. Both logos and fallacies derived from Aristotle's ancient rhetoric.