Gnothi Seauton

Gnothi Seauton: Know Thyself

In Tuesday’s class I argued that perhaps one of the most important and authentic things you can do as a rhetorician is to know your own stance, your own positions and biases, when you approach a rhetorical situation; whether you are advancing a claim, analyzing an argument, or engaging another’s rhetorical act, awareness of your own unique ‘recipe’ of assumptions—those that likely inform your values, positions, ideology, and perhaps identity—greatly influences your approach. Equally important: attempting to understand the complexity of assumptions that inform the claim of the ‘other.’ This led us to a discussion of what Stephen Toulmin appropriately termed ‘grounding,’ the assumptions that inform and/or contextualize the argument.

In order for an argument to function well it is important that all members of the exchange share the assumptions, related to the argument, of the one who advances the claim (the claimant). When the audience or interlocutor does not share the assumptions that inform the claim, the effectiveness of the argument is compromised; such a case requires a rhetorical strategy that addresses and acknowledges such difference. In analysis, then, it is useful to know your own biases and preferences in order to suspend them—if necessary—in order to assume the ethos of the claimant and assess the validity of the argument from within its contextual frame. If the argument proves valid from within the given contextual framework, then you may address the complexity of the argument with greater purpose and clarity, demonstrating the ways in which the argument fails when challenged by alternate or competing contexts or assumptions if those contexts are germane to the argument.

It is important, then, in evaluating a rhetorical act to attempt to understand not just the claim and support, not just the logical relationship that exists between the claim and the support (that which warrants the connection—i.e. the ‘warrant’ in Toulmin’s terms), but also all that implicitly informs the argument, as all of these elements, working together, effect the validity of an argument.

Bottom line: as an analyst or as an interlocutor, as a claimant or as a member of an audience, you are a part of the rhetorical dynamic. To ‘know thyself,’ is to cultivate awareness about your assumptions and to acknowledge that what grounds your position(s) factors in to your rhetorical engagement with others.