Balder: I had asked what you mean by "more broadly construed." Can you say more about that? I don't think the main thrust of my argument in my previous post hinged on the assertion of a pristine acategorical state, but on forms of practice and experience which are not primarily spectative, rational-analytic and/or linguistic.
I'm thinking I may be misunderstanding you, or vice versa, because I don't have an objection to the idea that rhetoric can be poetic, or have similar "effects" as poetry. My point is that language or rhetoric alone cannot enact all modes of understanding available to human beings, even if language and rhetoric may 'infect' or inform the concomitant understanding that arises when we follow these various other (non-linguistic) injunctions. Enactive cognition, as embodied, requires the involvement of the body in various exploratory modes, and this body-input cannot be reduced to linguistic input, nor can linguistic input entirely stand in for these other modes of intelligence and engagement. (I don't imagine you would object to this, but I am emphasizing it because of how you appear to be reading my earlier expressions of reservation or qualification about the 'scope' of the power of rhetoric or rational-analytic cognition).
theurj: Let's review what I've said so far. Language more broadly construed is communication; it doesn't have to be words or involve human analytical conception. It is merely the way a suobject affects another, reaches across its porous boundary, enters into it. We might say that it is the 'space between' suobjects, itself an suobject, Edwards' media holons. All of which, as Bryant says, depends on each suobjects capacity to affect and be affected, which has to do with its endo-structure. The latter of which can and does change, often if not always due to those linguistic (construed as communicative) exchanges.
Rhetoric is a linguistic (given the broader definition above) tool to affect par excellence. Its persuasive usage opens another suobject, broadens its endo-structure, expands it exo-relations. We usually associate it with words which require an analytical conceptual apparatus. So I'm saying let's expand that definition to include the above, as well as words and conceptual apparatus.
I'm also saying that words and conceptual apparatus are themselves based in these earlier, less emergent, forms of communication. Embodied suobject-environment communication (Slot's pre-conceptual spatial cognition, for example) per Lakoff is the very basis of later analytical-conceptual communication. And metaphor is the means of translating the latter into the former within any given suobject's endo-structure. Metaphor isn't the final human result of analytical concept but is itself the mediating structure between the basic categorical structures and later concepts.
So we might say that this kind of metaphorical rhetoric is involved as a communicative medium within suobjects and between suobjects. And rhetoric itself as a metaphorical medium places it in a broader category than just human concept per above. We might say it accomplishes a/crosscorporeal trans(en)action (as so defined above), i.e., it is a means of contacting the strange stranger both within and without. I'd agree a neologism is needed for the broader construal, hence some of the suggestions.
So, even a meditative state, which might unwind back down to a pre-conceptual (in part) awareness, is still engaged in an embodied, metaphorical translation to do so. That is, it must involve rhetoric (more broadly construed) as medium to experience these earlier basic structures which more directly contact us with the world as it is, almost but never fully, providing space (-time) for our withdrawn mystery.
Given the above, maybe mhetaoric? It indicates the meta in metaphor, but includes the h which cross-connects it to the rh in rhetoric. Plus it has tao in it, this connecting it to a previous word indicative of a connection to the world. And it has the diphthong ao, itself a connective between vowel sounds. The word is itself an a/crossporeal trans(en)action. Perhaps pronounced ma-het-ow-ric?
Let's take human body language for example. There is no doubt that a lot of communication is going on between humans non-verbally. It even became popular some time back to understand it, with numerous books on the topic. Hence the embodied metaphor of calling it language.
ReplyDeleteI also know from dance that a great deal is communicated between partners. Then there is the language the dancers communicate to the audience through their movements, and there is little doubt that this is also language. It is not at all a stretch to call it such. So I'm not stretching that much more in my suggestions.