Cognitive rhetoric

Cognitive Rhetoric refers to an approach to rhetoric

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...

, composition

Composition studies

Composition Studies is the professional field of writing research and instruction, focusing especially on writing at the college level in the United States...

and pedagogy

Pedagogy

Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....

as well as a method for language and literary studies drawing from, or contributing to, cognitive science

Cognitive science

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...

History

Following the cognitive revolution

Cognitive revolution

The cognitive revolution is the name for an intellectual movement in the 1950s that began what are known collectively as the cognitive sciences. It began in the modern context of greater interdisciplinary communication and research...

, cognitive linguists, computer scientists, and cognitive psychologists have borrowed terms from rhetorical and literary criticism

Literary criticism

Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...

. Specifically, metaphor

Metaphor

A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...

is a fundamental concept throughout cognitive science

Cognitive science

, particularly for cognitive linguistic models in which meaning-making is dependent on metaphor production and comprehension.

Computer scientists and philosophers of mind draw on literary studies for terms like “scripts”, “stories”, “stream of consciousness”

Stream of consciousness (psychology)

Stream of consciousness refers to the flow of thoughts in the conscious mind. The full range of thoughts that one can be aware of can form the content of this stream, not just verbal thoughts...

, “multiple drafts”, and “Joycean machine”. Cognitive psychologists have researched literary and rhetorical topics such as “reader response” and “deixis

Deixis

In linguistics, deixis refers to the phenomenon wherein understanding the meaning of certain words and phrases in an utterance requires contextual information. Words are deictic if their semantic meaning is fixed but their denotational meaning varies depending on time and/or place...

” in narrative fiction, and transmission of poetry in oral traditions.

Composition

Rhetoric is a term often used in reference to composition studies

Composition studies

Composition Studies is the professional field of writing research and instruction, focusing especially on writing at the college level in the United States...

and pedagogy, a tradition that dates back to Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

. The emergence of Rhetoric as a teachable craft (techne) links rhetoric and composition pedagogy, notably in the tradition of Sophism

Sophism

Sophism in the modern definition is a specious argument used for deceiving someone. In ancient Greece, sophists were a category of teachers who specialized in using the tools of philosophy and rhetoric for the purpose of teaching aretê — excellence, or virtue — predominantly to young statesmen and...

. Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

collected Sophist handbooks on rhetoric and critiqued them in Synagoge Techne (fourth century BCE).

In Ancient Rome, the Greek Rhetorical tradition was absorbed and became vital to education, as rhetoric was valued in a highly political society with an advanced system of law, where speaking well was crucial to winning favor, alliances, and legal rulings.

Cognitive Rhetoricians focusing on composition (such as Linda Flower

Linda Flower

Linda Flower is a composition theorist. She is best known for her emphasis on cognitive rhetoric, but has more recently published in the field of service learning. Flower currently serves Carnegie Mellon University as a professor of rhetoric.-Independent works:*"Cognition, Context, and Theory...

and John Hayes) draw from the paradigm, methods, and terms of cognitive science to build a pedagogy of composition, where writing is an instance of everyday problem-solving processes.

James A. Berlin

James A. Berlin

James A. Berlin was a theorist in the field of composition studies whose work typically takes historical and rhetorical perspectives. A Marxist philosophy also informs his scholarship. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in Victorian literature in 1975...

has argued that by focusing on professional composition and communications and ignoring ideology, social-cognitive rhetoric--which maps structures of the mind onto structures of language and the interpersonal world--lends itself to use as a tool for training workers in corporate capitalism

Corporate capitalism

Corporate capitalism is a term used in social science and economics to describe a capitalist marketplace characterized by the dominance of hierarchical, bureaucratic corporations, which are legally required to pursue profit....

. Berlin contrasts Social-Cognitive Rhetoric with Social-Epistemic Rhetoric, which makes ideology the core issue of composition pedagogy.

Language and Literary Studies

Cognitive Rhetoric offers a new way of looking at properties of literature from the perspective of cognitive science. It is interdisciplinary in character and committed to data and methods that produce falsifiable theory. Rhetoric also offers a store of stylistic devices observed for their effect on audiences, providing a rich index with distinguished examples available to researchers in cognitive neuropsychology and cognitive science.

For Mark Turner

Mark Turner (cognitive scientist)

Mark Turner is a cognitive scientist, linguist, and author. He is Institute Professor and Professor of Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University, where he was for two years Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences...

(a prominent figure in Cognitive Rhetoric), narrative imaging is the fundamental instrument of everyday thought. Individuals organize experience in a constant narrative flow, starting with small spatial stories. Meaning is fundamentally parabolic (like a parable): two or more event shapes or conceptual spaces converge (blending) in the parabolic process, generating concepts with unique properties not found in either of the inputs. This process is everyday: anticipating that an object you are headed toward will make contact with you is a parable whereby you project a spatial viewpoint. Such narrative flow is a highly adaptive process, crucial for planning, evaluating, explaining, as well as recalling the past and imagining a future. Thus, literary processes have adaptive value prior to the emergence of linguistic capability (modular or continuous).

Key Terms

Cognitive instability
Conceptual blending
Conceptual blending
Conceptual Blending is a general theory of cognition. According to this theory, elements and vital relations from diverse scenarios are "blended" in a subconscious process known as Conceptual Blending, which is assumed to be ubiquitous to everyday thought and language...
Conceptual metaphor
Conceptual metaphor
In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another, for example, understanding quantity in terms of directionality . A conceptual domain can be any coherent organization of human experience...
Binding
Projection

Notable Researchers

Cognitive Rhetoric	Social-Cognitive	Social-Epistemtic	Cognitive Poetics
Reuven Tsur Reuven Tsur Reuven Tsur is professor emeritus of Hebrew literature and literary theory at Tel Aviv University. He was born in Nagyvárad, Transylvania and his mother tongue is Hungarian.- Scientific Contribution :... Mark Turner (cognitive scientist) Mark Turner (cognitive scientist) Mark Turner is a cognitive scientist, linguist, and author. He is Institute Professor and Professor of Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University, where he was for two years Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences... Todd Oakley George Lakoff George Lakoff George P. Lakoff is an American cognitive linguist and professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972... Ellen Spolsky Mark Johnson Mark Johnson (professor) Mark L. Johnson is Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. He is well-known for contributions to embodied philosophy, cognitive science and cognitive linguistics, some of which he has coauthored with George Lakoff such as... Raymond Gibbs	Linda Flower Linda Flower Linda Flower is a composition theorist. She is best known for her emphasis on cognitive rhetoric, but has more recently published in the field of service learning. Flower currently serves Carnegie Mellon University as a professor of rhetoric.-Independent works:"Cognition, Context, and Theory... John Hayes John Hayes John Hayes may refer to:In academia: John Hayes , British art historian and museum director, expert on GainsboroughIn entertainment:* John Hayes , American director of low-budget films...	James Berlin James A. Berlin James A. Berlin was a theorist in the field of composition studies whose work typically takes historical and rhetorical perspectives. A Marxist philosophy also informs his scholarship. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in Victorian literature in 1975...	Reuven Tsur Reuven Tsur Reuven Tsur is professor emeritus of Hebrew literature and literary theory at Tel Aviv University. He was born in Nagyvárad, Transylvania and his mother tongue is Hungarian.- Scientific Contribution :...

Fahnestock, Jeanne. “Rhetoric in the Age of Cognitive Science”. The Viability of Rhetoric. Graff, Richard. ed. New York: State University of New York Press, 2005.
Gibbs, Raymond. The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Lakoff, George. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Turner. More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Lakoff, George. “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor.” In Metaphor and Thought, 2nd ed. Ed. Andrew Ortony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Jackson, Tony. “Questioning Interdisciplinarity: Cognitive Science, Evolutionary Psychology, and Literary Criticism”. Poetics Today, 21: 319-47.
Jackson, Tony. “Issues and Problems in the Blending of Cognitive Science, Evolutionary Psychology, and Literary Study.” Poetics Today, 23.1 (2002) 161-179.
Johnson, Mark. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination and Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Oakley, Todd. "From Attention to Meaning: Explorations in Semiotics, Linguistics, and Rhetoric." European Semiotics Series, Volume 8. Lang Verlag, 2009.
Pinker, Stephen. Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language. New York: Basic Books, 1999.
Richardson, Alan. “Literature and the Cognitive Revolution: An Introduction.” Poetics Today, 23.1 (2002) 1-8.
Shen, Yeshayahu. “Cognitive Aspects of Metaphor”. Poetics Today, 13.4: 567-74.
Tomascello, Michael. “Language Is Not an Instinct.” Cognitive Development, 10 (1995): 131-56.
Turner, Mark. Death is the Mother of Beauty: Mind, Metaphor, and Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987
Turner, Mark. Reading Minds: The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.