Title: Things, thoughts, words, and actions
Description: In this ingenious new study, H. Lewis Ulman examines the roles of language theory in eighteenth-century British rhetorics, linking those roles to philosophical issues informing twentieth-century rhetorical theory. In doing so, Ulman develops a general model of the "problem of language" for rhetorical theory, a model that transcends the impasse between realism and skepticism that marks both eighteenth- and twentieth-century rhetorical theory.

The nature of language was never more central to rhetorical theory than in the second half of the eighteenth century. Yet, until now, the articulation of theories of language and arts of rhetoric in eighteenth-century Britain has received little attention.

Ulman examines the role of grammar and theories of language in the formation of eighteenth-century rhetorical theory, investigating the significance of language theory for such key concerns of eighteenth-century rhetoric as verbal criticism, style, taste, and elocution.

His study highlights what he understands as the central motive of late eighteenth-century British rhetoricians - to construct for their particular cultural context philosophically rigorous accounts of verbal communication based on carefully articulated theories of thought and language.

Scholarly work from the 1950s through the early 1970s interpreted eighteenth-century British rhetoric in terms of contemporary debate over the epistemological nature of rhetoric, a debate that focused on principles of logic, patterns of argument, and theories of evidence. Debate in the 1980s and 1990s, however, has centered on theories of literacy, of the social requirements of language, and, more generally, of symbolic representation and inducement.

Ulman, however, engages the social context of eighteenth-century rhetoric very differently from earlier work by examining the relationship of language theory and arts of rhetoric to structures of social power.

He stresses the importance of the consideration of the articulation of language theory and arts of rhetoric in the eighteenth century because the problem of language for rhetoric is similarly structured in both the eighteenth and twentieth centuries and because the contemporary debate over the philosophical grounding of rhetoric can be traced to theoretical tensions in the eighteenth century.

In order to analyze the systematic relationships between theories of language and arts of rhetoric in eighteenth-century Britain, Ulman adopts as key terms Richard McKeon's four "places of invention and memory" - things, thoughts, words, and actions. These terms serve as a means of reading rhetorical history into rhetoric's future, proving that the historical interpretation of arts of rhetoric can be linked to contemporary theory building.

Toward this end, Ulman examines the different articulations of theories of language and arts of rhetoric in three eighteenth-century British rhetorical treatises: George Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric, Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, and Thomas Sheridan's Course of Lectures on Elocution.

He then identifies the continuities and discontinuities between the problem of language for eighteenth- and twentieth-century rhetorical theory and proposes a pluralistic stance toward the problem of language in rhetoric as an alternative to the theoretical standoff that currently characterizes the debate between realist and antirealist rhetorics. This book, indispensable to scholars in rhetoric and composition, will also be of interest to all eighteenth-century scholars.
Subjects: British Philosophy, English language, Language and languages, Philosophy, Rhetoric, Theory, Early works to 1800
Time periods: 18th century