Brummett - Three Meanings of Epistemic Rhetoric
Summary
Brummett's essay called Three Meanings of Epistemic Rhetoric starts by defining why is rhetoric epistemic, "Asserts a relationship between knowledge and discourse (1)." Barry Brummett divided the essay in three, therefore epistemic rhetoric has three different meanings, " 1.Of what one means by truth, 2. the relation hip between rhetoric and other human activity, and 3. of the status of rhetoric as a discipline (1)." Brummett says that he wants to describe the different meanings of epistemic rhetoric and in order to do so he will base on writing publications. Brummet first started describing the methodological system; he described in here rhetoric as, "Rhetoric is means to the discovery of truth, a conduit to knowledge (1)." Then he explains were rhetoric leads, "leads people to realize the truth about an objective and unitary reality (1)." He affirms in this , "There is only one reality and only one truth can describe the way things are (1)." Brummett changed and started talking about the second system called sociological and he said, "In this view, whether rhetoric properly leads to the discovery of all truth is problematic This position avoids knotty problems of the role of rhetoric in science, mathematics, etc., by focusing on the role of rhetoric in social issues (3)." Then ha talks about a last system which is ontological, and it says, "Rhetoric creates all of what there is to
know. Discourse does not merely discover truth or make it effective. Discourse creates realities rather than truths about realities. Furthermore, no reality that humans experience exits apart from human values, perceptions, and meanings (4)." Brummett concluded like this, "These disagreements are misplaced because they fail to understand the different meanings of “rhetoric is epistemic. Confusion is likely to result when adherents of one meaning assume that second-level arguments of a scholar using a different meaning flow from one’s own first level assumptions (5,6)." |
Synthesis
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