Modern Rhetoric and Bakhtin

In reading the introduction to the piece, the authors of our textbook state that early into the 20^th century, rhetoric had fallen into relative obscurity, that modern rhetoric at the time became overshadowed by modern sciences, since rhetoric was not as objective as those subjects. When you think about some of the events of the early 20^th century, this makes complete sense. In the early 20^th century, and especially during the industrial revolution, many people across the United States and the industrialized world were living in an age where emerging technologies that would be born out of the new sciences were being realized. At this point in our history, many people had fully embraced technology, science, and modernism in such a fashion that sought to leave patterns of thought that existed pre-industrial revolution behind.

                The authors of our textbook then state that it was not until later in the 20^th century that rhetoric became “rediscovered”. During this time period, may authors that wrote about rhetoric wrote about the subject from a “discovery” standpoint, and sought to find a place for rhetoric amongst the already-established sciences. Things like introductory level college writing courses sought to increase the prevalence of rhetorical writing. Gradually, rhetoric was slowly finding its way back into the mainstream as something between a recognized science and an art.

                Bakhtin, one of the promoters of rhetoric in the 20^th century, wrote several pieces on the subject. One of his pieces, “Marxism and the Philosophy of Language”, re-introduced rhetoric from a collective standpoint. In his dialogue about verbal speech, Bakhtin stated that any utterance that a person makes in a discussion on a subject is only a small part in a larger discourse about the topic. In addition to this concept, Bakhtin also re-introduces rhetoric as a stand-alone discipline, by defining is as a social construct that borrows from other disciplines such as psychology, but is unlike psychology because it is only interested in two subjects of psychology, instead of the entirety of the discipline.

                Another thing that Bakhtin wrote about was the meaning of language. Bakhtin stated that in language, the message was without meaning unless the message that was being conveyed had a theme. Without a theme, the communication would be useless. Bakhtin insisted that communication boiled down to an exchange of commonly understood themes. Bakhtin then went on to state that true understanding arises out of dialogue.