Book Reviews

thinking about language and culture in ancient Greece also seems to have been encouraged by awareness of difference from others, seen for example in Herodotus’s Histories, and in the facility of Greek for forming abstract nouns, whereas speculation about language and abstract thinking were somewhat slower to develop in other literate ancient cultures where these factors were less present. (p. 78) This is despite an avowed desire not to impose western notions of rhetoric on, but rather to modify them in the light of, an understanding of other cultures. A particular ‘new world order’ tendentiousness is strikingly apparent in the following excerpt, where the author is elaborating on the forms of rhetoric developed in ancient Chinese society and their continuing relevance in contemporary politics. He states: Marxism in China took up many features of traditional Chinese rhetoric. The growth of Western-style capitalism in recent years may, however, over time do more than political revolutions have done to alter the assumptions and expectations on which communication is based and bring to China some features more characteristic of Western rhetoric, such as tolerance of public debate, than has been native to Chinese thought. (p. 165) A summary of the arguments in the book can be found by reading the introductory and concluding chapters. The introduction asks questions as to the validity of the Aristotelian division of discourse into judicial, deliberative and epideictic rhetoric, the validity of the five parts of rhetoric and the validity of the steps of arrangement in other cultural traditions, and the conclusion answers them. This reader-friendliness is however marred by the author’s tendency to close an argument abruptly by naturalizing the issue. For example: The closest non-Western analogy to the parts of rhetoric that I have found is the statement of the Indian political theorist Kautilya, that the necessary qualities of a writ are arrangement, relevancy (which includes invention), completeness, sweetness, dignity, and lucidity, but Kautilya and other non-Western writers on rhetoric view composition as organic not a series of separate steps. (p. 220) 186 BOOK REVIEWS Language and Literature 1999 8(2) After another sentence on the artificiality but nonetheless effectiveness of the ‘parts’ of rhetoric, this discussion is ended by: ‘The existence of elements of invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery in animal communication suggests that they are all natural parts of rhetoric’ (p. 220). Abrupt closure and sometimes cursoriness give a sense of frustration, especially when a topic that has been opened up is one where a comparative perspective might prove invaluable. Such an example occurs when, in a discussion on the importance of binary thinking in the western tradition beginning with early Greek philosophy, the author mentions that ‘yang’ and ‘yin’ in Chinese thought are complementaries, not opposites, and that Mencius’s doctrine of multiple definitions is a Chinese example of a different form of reasoning. This discussion is suddenly ended by a judgmental assertion: ‘Western thinking, beginning with the Greeks, has tended to polarize truth and fiction, good and bad, body and soul, conservative and liberal, and other such concepts, for the sake of clarity but often unnecessarily’ (p. 206). Part of the problem might stem from the tensions inherent in the notion that this book is an introduction. It has all the organizational hallmarks of an introductory textbook, concluding sections to all the chapters which recapitulate the main arguments and supplementary bibliographies for further reading around the theme of each chapter, but it is essentially an introduction to a new topic, indeed two new topics, an evolutionary perspective on rhetoric and a general theory of rhetoric which will encompass a comparative perspective. These ‘two’ books also jostle uncomfortably with each other. The evolutionary argument seems plausible up until the development of human communication but the comparative perspective thereafter suffers from the naturalization set up by the evolutionary argument. The evolutionary argument would seem to suggest some affinity with cognitive linguistics, and for example Turner’s (1991) notion of ‘cognitive rhetoric’, but this potentially fruitful discussion is not entered into, and to the extent that metaphor and metonymy are mentioned, it is within the traditional framework as Aristotelian tropes. However, this is to hypothesize a development of the ‘first’ book. The actual book is not, as introductory textbooks usually are, an introduction to an established body of knowledge, it is rather opening up new topics based on a wide range of already established bodies of knowledge. As such, it is perhaps not surprising that as a renowned classics scholar the author projects his authority from the ground on which he stands firmest. Apart from the uniqueness of artistic judicial rhetoric to the western tradition, other conclusions reached are that the notions of epideictic rhetoric and ethos need to be modified if they are to describe rhetoric in general, that forms of ‘sophistry’ tend to appear in all societies in times of crisis, that traditional rhetoric does not encompass magic, notably one of Malinowski’s fourfold uses of language, and that rhetoric serves generally a conservative function. This last, I think, is the crux of the problem with the book. On the one hand it bolsters the evolutionary basis of rhetoric in self-preservation, but it also supports the naturalization of the particular forms of rhetorical performance valued by the elites of any culture. This is an effect of power, an important dimension in contemporary critical debates, but one which is missing in this book. That said, it can nonetheless act as a useful reference guide to the rhetorical preferences of the elites in the socio-cultural contexts it mentions, and therefore to continuing sources of power amid increasing variability in rhetorical practices. In the British context, where rhetoric is rarely taught as a body of knowledge as in the North American context, this reference function in the context of studies in cross-cultural communication is more likely. BOOK REVIEWS 187 Language and Literature 1999 8(2)