jim chapter

Asian Rhetoric

The differences (while, hopefully, not asserting a dualism) between European and Asian rhetorics is not so much a difference in style or goal as much as a distinction in histories and worldviews. Rhetoric is, at base, a means of ordering an understanding the world. however, those orderings and understanadings are constrained by the dominate historical, scientific or cultural understandings of the time/place in which they originate that for the sake of this chapter will be termed 'rhetorical worldviews'. So while 'debate', as it is presented to Americans via 'presidential debates', as an example of rhetoric, may appear to be a logical expression of rhetoric or argument to American citizens that is only because of the dominance of rhetorical worldview that sees argument as something that occurs between two fueding individuals to assess the validity of their claims - a dialectical view of argumemt that dates back to Socrates and while that rhetorical worldview is dominate in much of the United States and Europe it is certainly not the only one and others could very easily see the 'one-on-one' competitive debate structure of 'presidential' debates as non-sensical (but that is only because of a differing rhetorical worldview).
In fact, if one considers the historical interactions between European and Asian rhetorics and rhetoricians their resposnes to eachother have been ones of misunderstanding and nativism. Alfred Forke, one of the earliers, cross-cultural rhetoricians in 1901, assessed Asian rhetoric as underdeveloped arugin that the Asian "mind has...never developed a complete system of logic" (5) and thus Asian argument and rhetoric appeard to him as it did to Robert Kaplan sixty years later as "not linear [instead] turning and turning in widening gyre"(795). These criticisms, however, clearly presume an ethnocentric view of the methods and goals of rhetoric: one in which argument is linear and procedes in a logical progression to termal claims of truth. This stems from a particular rhetorical worldview established by Socrates and Greek society.

Ideological Distinctions

The Greek view or the world and thus argumentation, which gave birth to the Romantic and Slavic views on the subject subscribes to a “two world theory”. This theory posits that there is a “permanent real world that stands behind appearance” or the world that we interact with on a day to day basis. This is perhaps most explicitly advocated by Plato who saw an important distinction between “the world of forms and the pseudo-reality of the sensual world”. This ideal was then transmuted by Romantic and Slavic cultures into the distinction between heaven and earth. What was important about this distinction, for Plato concerning rhetoric, is that deductive reason (and the dialectic argument structure) was “a human faculty independent of experience that can discover the essence of things” or the world of forms.
As you might extrapolate from such a view Plato, following, Socrates saw context or the relationship of individual people and things to the world around them as counter to approaching or understanding the ‘real world’ or the ‘truth’. In fact the contextual elements of arguments or ideals should be eliminated at the conclusion of a rational discussion or debate. It is upon this central ideal of Greek rhetoric that perhaps draws the clearest distinction between American and Asian rhetoric. Asian rhetoric stems not from Socratic and Greek view of rather but was rather ‘founded’ by Tzu and Daoist rhetorical worldview. Such a worldview rejects the ‘one world’ view o the Greeks and instead espouses a “one world view” that posits one ‘world’ and it alone constitutes reality. In such a view there is no independent agent, that functions like the forms of a God, to order life. There is only a “risking and a falling, emerging and collapsing, [a] moving…this movement [however] is not cyclical in the sense of reversibility and replication but rather a continuing spiral”. This ‘one world’ view has a particularly potent effect on the ‘self’ which, for the Greeks, was a seemingly ahistorical and acontextual being that while it could act differently but the underlying ‘subject’ or self would be the same rational being.
That fundamental conception preconditioned Western views of rhetoric as context free. Aristotle, for example, saw rhetorical action as taking place through three distinct entities: rhetor, message and audience. The rhetor could, Aristotle, suggested “apply reason to diving the underlying aspects of the context and then fashion texts that produce desired audience responses”. Doaist rhetoricians, however, had a distinct conception of the ‘self’ and, therefer distinct conception of rhetoric. The individual, for the Daoist, has no ‘unique essence’. The individual is determined and defined in their relationship to everything else. An individual could be, for example, ‘the person that lives next to the butcher’, ‘the father of Qi’ or ‘the son of Wu’ (each of those individuals are, themselves, a intersection of other relations). Thus the ‘text’ or the message is not a product of the rhetor but rather a product of the context (‘the text is a product of the context’(Comes 5), so the saying goes). The message, in this rhetorical worldview, is a response to a pre-existing situation (the mind of the rhetor, the historical circumstances and the predisposition of the audience)(Comes 6). These differences in rhetorical worldview manifest themselves, perhaps most explicitly, in two of the rhetorical practice of Asian and Middle Eastern cultures.

Rhetorical Practices

Induction v Deduction – As you may recall from the third chapter in this text, the ideal of the Greek/Socratic rhetorical tradition was a deductive logic and attempt to deduce something new about an instance of something due to the logical category to which it belongs. Such a rhetorical move however functions only to remove context and is thus antithetical to a Daoist rhetorical worldview. So instead of deduction Asian rhetoricians often adopt an inductive rhetorical strategy in which one “provides a series of concrete examples to make a point but may neither state the point nor relate the examples to each other…[and] does not blurt out the main idea but rather builds it up to it by discussing ideas which are related to the main point but will not be discussed” (Peters Online). This is contrast to, as Deborah Bosley explains, “the North American requirement for keeping to the point”(15). This “preference for [when Western scholars call] digression”(15), however, when placed understood from the Daoist world view would best be understood as providing adequate context for decisions. Carolyn Boiarsky, in Technical Communications Quarterly, provides businesses with a warning of an example of this inductive rhetorical strategy that might appear odd to North American businesspeople. In it she describes an interaction in which a North American business is asking for a recommendation of third business partner to do business with and while they were expecting direct answer (what they would deem ‘on point’) but instead received the following response (with the names of businesses replaced) : “We have been cooperating with company A for three years," "We found Company X a reasonable one," or "We consider Company C a good partner." Such a statement provided the means for another to made a decision on their own by providing them information (the means for an inductive argument) but did not appear to advocate one over the other.

Respect for Context and Relationships – This aspect of Asian and Middle Eastern rhetoric has been described in a number of different ways some positive and some negative so this section will attempt to introduce each of them in order to provide a multi-faceted explanation of the phenomenon. Because it is a complex rhetorical action try to think of each explanation as explaining a different aspect of it. It is, however, based in the Daoist worldview explicated above that attempts to recognize the relationship between individuals in a dialogue and the context that they are in as critical to any message or ‘text’ attempting to be conveyed.
This respect for context and relationships between arguers has been described by many Western scholars as an overriding attempt to ‘save face’ or ‘preserve harmony’ in argument – an ideal that is not well accepted in Socratic, Greek or truly American argumentation style that attempts to shock opponents into accepting an opposing view. In order to exemplify this aspect of Asian rhetoric Cherif Bassiouni relays the often told story of a wealthy Arab who wanted to help out a relative who had fallen on hard financial times. Instead of convincing him, as an American rhetorician might, by pointing out the hard facts of his financial situation made his aid appear as if it were a ‘favor’ saying ‘I have some money that I don’t have time to put into the bank. Could you keep it for me, say two months?”(Leroux 11). Such a statement allows both individuals in the argument to save face, not admit defeat and preserve harmony between the two. “On the other hand, in Greek and lower middle class Eastern European culture” such a rhetorical move would not be as applauded as “argument is considered to have positive social value, women as well as men are comfortable engaging in direct verbal confrontation”(Tannen 74).
Fukiko Minami, an Asian rhetorician, does not describe the practice in negative terms. He sees it as “developing trust prior to engaging” in argument. Boiasrsky also provides modern day business example of the respect for relationships and arguers from an Asian rhetorical standpoint. She explains that the motto for Asian negotiators is “first we make a friend. Second we make a contract” that is why form letters are often seen as inappropriate in business deals as is addressing a letter to “dear sir or madame” – individualization and care for personal context is critical. It is important, however, to recognize that the practice is more than simply ‘being kind’. North American businesspeople, for example, often see it such rhetorical strategy as ‘rude’ or ‘time-wasting’ as they are , according to Boiasrsky, when attempting “to discuss a technical problem that has developed with some equipment may spend the first few days sightseeing and sharing family pictures over a mean with the Chinese host”(247).


Middle Eastern Rhetoric
There is a famous Arabic proverb that goes kiratu al-takrar bi-ta lim al-himar which means “enough repetition will convince even a donkey”(Koch 48). That short saying gets to, perhaps, the heart of Middle Eastern rhetorical strategy of “repeating, rephrasing, clothing and re-clothing one’s request”(Koch 48) that has come to be known, in communication studies as “presentation”. ‘Presentation’ is, for Middle Eastern rhetoricians, the most effective means of persuasion.
The above saying, as most sayings do, simplify ‘presentation’ and ‘Middle Eastern Rhetoric’ to sheer repetition. A few examples of Arabic texts indicate that it is not route repetition but instead, for example, “the..use of lexical couplets like…aid and assistance or illusion and imagination…defines and delimits…destruction and demolish”(Koch 49-49). As you can see, it is not so much repetition as parallelism. This parallelism can also function at drive at a point, or what Koch calls, cumulative parallelism consider the following middle eastern text:

So it was natural that the nationalistic idea should arise and grow and become powerful
With great speed in the German lands after the misfortunes which came upon them
During those wars. And it was natural that ‘the belief in the German nation’ should
Spread in them and it was natural that this belief should compel the intellectuals of
Germany and her leaders to combat the regional tendencies…with all power and
zeal (Koch51).



It is written in such a way as to be more akin to poetry than prose (although recognizing the Western assumptiosn behind eve that distinction”.

A person who is so deeply convinced that God exists that he sees no possibility of doubt in the matter cannot attempt ot prove it to an agnostic. To do so would be paradoxical – the only thing a missionary can do is to present the truth, simply by saying it again, and again in his own words in the words of the Bible or other relevant texts.
Kennedy says “Christian preaching is not persuasion but prclaimation, and is based on authority and grace not on proof”


‘presentation is the dominate mode of argumentation in hierarchical society in which truths are not matters for individual decision. In a democracy, there is room for doubt about the thru ad thus for proof; in a more autocratic society there is not” Perelman (1969:164) “it would appear that certain linguistic structures are more suited to a society based on equality on individual initiative; ther would be mnroe suited to soceitesi with a hierarchi structure”
Nazi – “ideal sentence is the slogan – Ein Reich, ein Volk, Ein Fuhrer in which the three nouns suggest an order of the world and evoke acceptance of the structure laid out” 6

Ruled by calips who were not only secular rulers but also the leaders fo the faith 55 Koch

“Classical Arabic still retians the connotation which ti has a poetic koine of being more beautify and more significant” (Bateson 1967 80)

“the communication patters of many of the South Americans were…oral, contextual, concrete, personal and narrative, whereas communication patters of U.S. personnel were more written, acontextual, universal, abstract and analytical”