Rogerian Rhetoric: Ethical Growth through Alternative Forms of Argumentation
by Doug Brent. An excerpt from Teaching Argument in the Composition Course, p297- The ideal rhetorical situation as described by Plato involves an audience that, like his hero Socrates, is "not less happy to be refuted than to refute" (Gorgias 17). Alas, this attitude is rare among real, vulnerable human beings who are not characters in a Platonic dialogue. -298 The therapist, in Rogers' view, is not a healer, but rather a facilitator of healing. -298 Rogerian rhetoric as recreated by Young, Becker and Pike is aimed at those situation in which more confrontational techniques are most apt to fail: that is, in highly emotional situations in which opposing sides fail to establish even provisional grounds for discussion. -299 As a form of arrangement, Rogerian rhetoric may not always be appropriate; if communicative bridges are already in place, it may not be necessary to build them, and in some forms of triadic communication it may be desirable to udnerline only one's own point of view. -307 [Discussing feminist objections to this] The problem, as lamb puts it, is that Rogerian rhetoric feels "feminine rather than feminist" (17). -308 [This rhetoric doesn't seem tied to the concept of female empowerment. Perhaps it is addressed at helping males with a typical male shortcoming.] [The next objection is to a presumption about language under Rogerian rhetoric] As developed by Young, Becker, and Pike under the influence of General Semantics (by way of Anatol Rappaport's studies in conflict resolution). Rogerian rhetoric insists on a nonevaluative, neutral language of pure description that modern language theory, even without reference to feminist insights, rejects as impossible (Brent "Reassessment"). -309 To deal with the second problem, "neutral" language must be valued not as a pure good in itself, but in a dialectical relationship with emotional language and the connection with self that emotion entails. -310
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