The Basic Aims of Discourse - Center for Digital Humanities

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§beBasicAimsof Discourses
JAMES E. KINNEAVY
for whom it is intended. It is the intent
as embodied in the discourse, the intent
MOST OF US MAKE IMPLICIT ASSUMP- of the work, as traditional philosophy
TIONS about the aims of discourse when
called it. Is the work intended to delight
we loosely distinguish expository writing or to persuade or to inform or to demonfrom literature or creative writing, and, strate the logical proof of a position?
no doubt, there is some validity to the These would be typical aims.
The determination of the basic aims
distinction. Many college composition
textbooks often assume a similar distinc- of discourse and some working agreetion and address themselves to the pro- ment in this area among rhetoricians
vince of expository writing. But it may would be a landmark in the field of
be that this simple distinction is too sim- composition. For it is to the achievement
ple and that other aims of discourse of these aims that all our efforts as teachought to be given some consideration. ers of composition are directed.
Yet a classification of diverse aims! of
It is this question which I would like to
discourse must not be interpreted as the
investigate in this paper.
First, at least one working definition. establishing of a set of iron-clad cateI am concerned with complete discourse, gories which do not overlap. Such an
not individual sentences or even para- exercise must be looked upon as any
graphs. It is often impossible to deter- scientific exercise-an abstraction from
mine the aim of an individual sentence certain aspects! of reality in order to
or paragraph without its full context. focus attention on and carefully analyze
The same sentence or even paragraph in the characteristics of some feature of
another context may have a very differ- reality in a scientific vacuum, as it were.
ent aim. "Discourse" here means the full The scientist who is attempting to formutext, oral or written, delivered at a speci- late the law of gravity isolates the gravific time and place or delivered at several tational forces from air resistance, from
instances. A discourse may be a single surface variations, from electric attracsentence, "Fire," screamed from a hotel tion, etc., and hopefully postulates a
window, or a joke, or a sonnet, or a principle of gravity. The re-insertion into
three-hour talk, or a tragedy, or Toyn- real situations wherein wind, surface
bee's twelve volumes of A Study of His- variations, electricity and other forces
tory. Sometimes the determination of intervene comes later. Similarly, an attext is difficult: a conversation may trail tempt to formulate the nature of inforoff into another one; a novel like Sanc- mation, as such, must operate in a distuary may pick up years later in course vacuum which momentarily abRequiem for a Nun; there are trilogies stracts from the fact that information can
in drama and novel, etc.; but usually the be used in propaganda or be a comdetermination of text is a fairly simple ponent of a literary discourse. In actual
matter.
practice such pure discourses as informaaim
of
is
discourse
meant
the
tion devoid of persuasion, or persuasion
By
effect that the discourse is oriented to devoid of information, or literature withachieve in the average listener or reader out some personal expression, and so
INTRODUCTION
297
298
COLLEGE COMPOSITIONAND COMMUNICATION
forth, are almost non-existent or as rare
as the laboratory concept of gravitation.
But that does not destroy the validity of
the classifications.
THE DETERMINATION OF THE
AIMS OF DISCOURSE
SOME
NEGATIVE
AND
SOME
EXTERNAL
NORMS
There are some useful cautions about
determination of aims made in literary
theory by W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe
Beardsley which can be extended to discourse theory. It is dangerous in literature (and even more in persuasion) to
assume that what the author says he is
trying to do is actually what the work
really accomplishes. To determine the
aim by author intent is to run the risk
of the "intentional fallacy." A parallel
danger is to assume that the reaction of
a given reader is an accurate indication
of purpose. This fallacy has been termed
the "affective fallacy" by Wimsatt and
Beardsley.' The stated intentions of the
author and the reactions of a given reader are useful markers that can point to
significant evidence in the discourse itself, as the linguist Michael Riffaterre
points out;2 for this reason they should
not be disregarded. Similarly, many authors advise us to take into account the
cultural conventions of the genre employed; anthropologists like Malinowski
warn of the importance of the immediate
historical context; McLuhan emphasizes
the significance of the medium used;
Kenneth Burke writes a whole book on
the influence of the semantic range, the
grammar he calls it, of the motivational
field; and even the grammatical choices
offered by the language can restrict and
1 For the treatment of both fallacies, see W.
K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, The Verbal
Icon (Lexington, Kentucky, 1965), pp. 3-18,
21-39.
2"Criteria for Style Analysis," in Essays on
the Language of Literature,eds. Seymour Chat-
man and Samuel R. Levin (Boston, Massachusetts, 1967), pp. 419 ff.
modify the aim, as Sapir and Whorf caution us. All of these, external to the discourse, are nonetheless weighty determinants of aim and are so many arguments against the mythical autonomy of
the text.
INTERNAL
NORMS OF AIM
Among the writers who have sought
to establish the aims of discourse by
norms internal to the discourse there is
considerable variation in the kind of
norm singled out. Yet there is a surprising measure of agreement among the
analysts on so fundamental an issue. In
Figure I, I have attempted to show some
of these various approaches, together
with the principle of division and the
resulting classifications of aims of discourse. The parallel classifications of the
various systems are indicated in the horizontal rows. All of the authorities whom
I have analyzed could not be presented
on a single page, so I have only indicated
typical representatives of various approaches.
The eldest and most persistent approach in western civilization is that beginning in Plato, codified by Aristotle,
continued by the medieval Arab philosophers Averroes and Avicenna, Aquinas
and Albertus Magnus, and passed on to
modern times by the classical tradition
and some comparative philologists, like
Joshua Whatmough. Aristotle and
Aquinas distinguish a scientific use of
language achieving certainty, a dialectical use of language operating in the
area of probability, a rhetorical or persuasive use of language based on seeming probability, and a poetic use of language incorporating a rigid but internal
probability. The principle of division is
obviously a scale of diminishing probability.3
3For a historical survey of this school, see J.
Craig LaDriere, "Rhetoric and 'Merely Verbal'
Art," in English Institute Essays, 1948, ed. D.
A. Robertson (New York, 1949), pp. 123-153.
Figure 1
A COMPARISON OF SOME SYSTEMS OF AIMS OF DISCOURSE
SCHOOL
Aristotle
and Aquinas
PRINCIPLE Level of
OF
Probability
DIVISION
Scientific
-certain
Morris
Miller
Behavioral
Reactions of
Animals to
Stimuli
Socio-Psych.
Motives for
Communications
Grammar
(Kinds of
Sentences)
Faculty Addressed to
Informative
-to increase
uniformity of
information
Informative
-declarative
Communicative (thoughts
to be believed)
Valuative
Opinion
-to increase
uniformity of
opinions
Questioning
-interrogative
Pragmatic
-practical
use by
Sophists
Incitive
Status Change Imperative
-imperative
Promotive
(actions to
be accomplished)
Mythological
-expressive
of aspirations
Systemic
Emotive
Suggestive
(emotions
to be
aroused)
Cassirer
Historical
Sequence in
Greece
Metaphysical Informative
-representative of the
world
Dialectical
-probable
Rhetorical
-seemingly
probable
Russell
Reichenbach
Poetic
-internally
probable
Expressive
(Of emotion)
-exclamatory
Interjectional
300
Ernst Cassirer, examining the historical sequence of Greek views on the functions of language, sees first a mythological view of language as a medium for
expressing the aspirations of early Greek
society. This partially (though not at all
totally) corresponds to Aristotle's poetic
function. This was followed by a period
in which it was felt by the philosophers
that language was admirably suited to
mirror or represent the universe. This
metaphysical period, as he calls it, corresponds to Aristotle's scientific use of
language. The practical or pragmatic
use of language by the sophists and
rhetoricians came next. Finally, Democritus pointed to a basic and initial
interjectional or emotive use of language
-to which Aristotle has no direct
parallel.4
In the next column of Figure I, C. W.
Morris, the semiotician, bases his aims
of discourse on a behavioral analysis of
how animals react to stimuli. The animal
first informs itself of the features of its
environment, then evaluates the seemingly useful features, then responds to
these as incitive "stimuli," and finally
systematizes his signs in order to achieve
the purpose for which he engaged in
this expressive activity. There is a rough
approximation here to Aristotle's scientific, dialectic, and rhetorical functions.
Morris' systemic has some affinity with
the expressive function of the others on
the chart.5
George Miller, a communication
theorist, establishes his distinctions on
the socio-psychological motives for the
communications which are revealed in
the discourse. The informative use of
language attempts to increase uniformity
of fact and information in the community; the opinion use of language attempts
to increase uniformity of the probable in
4See Ernst Cassirer,An Essay on Man (New
Haven, 1944), pp. 109 ff.
5See C. W. Morris,Signs, Language and Behavior (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1946),
pp. 95 ff.
the society; the status change use of language is oriented to improve one's societal position; and the emotive use is
oriented to individual satisfaction in an
expressive use of language. The similarities to the preceding systems are
fairly obvious.6
In an interesting chapter on "The
Uses of Language" in Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits, Bertrand
Russell takes issue with the dominant
logical positivist view of a simple dichotomy of referential and emotive uses of
language and distinguishes the informative, the questioning, the promotive and
the emotional uses of language. These
correspond quite naturally to the kinds
of rhetorical sentences in the language:
declarative, interrogative, imperative,
and exclamatory. These image quite
closely Miller's, Morris' and Aristotle's
categories, though the principle of division is different in each.7
Hans Reichenbach, a logical positivist, in a brief introduction to his book
on symbolic logic, differentiates functions of language by the faculty appealed to in the discourse. He therefore
distinguishes a communicative use emphasizing thoughts to be believed by the
intellect, from a promotive use directed
to actions to be accomplished, from a
suggestive use oriented to emotions to
be aroused.8
Both Reichenbach and Richards take
the logical positivist position as their
springboard. Richards emphasizes the
kind of reference found in the discourse.
In his various books, Richards suggests
various categories of discourse. I have
followed here the distinctions to be
found in How to Read a Page and
Principles of Literary Criticism rather
6See George A. Miller, Language and Communications (New York, 1951), p. 253.
7 See Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge,
Its Scope and Limits (New York, 1948), pp.
58 ff.
8 See Hans Reichenbach,Introductionto Symbolic Logic (New York, 1947), pp. 17 ff.
THE BASIC AIMS OF DISCOURSE
than some of his other works. Discourses
exist in a continuum with decreasing
referential and increasing emotive affirmations. Pure reference discourse is
scientific, pure emotive discourse is
poetic. Any appreciable mixture of the
two is rhetoric. Further subdivisions of
the mixed area (rhetoric) are generally
useless.9
The equating of poetry with emotive
discourse in Richards is a common phenomenon among these classificatory systems-a fact the figure illustrates. Sometimes poetry is subsumed under emotive,
sometimes poetry is equated to the emotive (as in Richards). Sometimes there is
no provision for one or the other-thus
Aristotle makes no room for expressive
discourse as such, though emotion is important for his concept of catharsis in
poetry and in the whole second book of
his Rhetoric.
The last column of the figure distinguishes aims by the focus on the component of the communication process
which is stressed in a given discourse.
At one time I thought that this principle
of classification was original with me,
but I later found that Karl Biihler, a
German psychologist, had used it in
depth in the 1930's and that Roman
Jakobson, acknowledging Biihler as his
source, had also used it to classify aims
of discourse in the early 1960's. The
beginnings of this norm can be found in
Aristotle who calls science language directed to things and rhetoric language
directed to persons. Alan Gardiner, the
linguist, had also suggested this principle
of classification in the 1950's.10
This principle can be seen illustrated
in Figure 2. If one represents the components of the communication process as
9See I. A. Richards, How to Read a Page
(London, 1943), p. 100; and Principles of Literary Criticism (London, 1925), p. 261.
0 See Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics and
Poetics," in Essays on the Language of Literature, eds. Seymour Chapman and Samuel R.
Levin (Boston, 1967), pp. 299 ff.
301
a triangle composed of an encoder (writer or speaker), a decoder (reader or
listener), a signal (the linguistic product), and a reality (that part of the
universe to which the linguistic product
refers), then a focus on one of these
tends to produce a specific kind of discourse. Discourse dominated by subject
matter (reality talked about) is called
referential discourse. There are three
kinds of referential discourse: exploratory, informative, and scientific. These
correspond to elements in the first and
second rows across Figure I. Here, however, it seems important to distinguish
the merely informative kind of writing
(such as news stories in journalism, simple encyclopedia or textbook presentations) from the strictly scientific, though
few authorities make the distinction.
Aristotle, for example, has no theory of
information, though he has one of science. And Miller has provision for informative, though he has no specific provision for the scientific. And it is equally
important to distinguish a kind of discourse which asks a question (exploratory, dialectical, interrogative in some
formulations) from discourse which answers it (informative) and proves the
answer (scientific). Yet all three of these
kinds of discourse are subject-matter or
reference dominated. Examples of all
three are given in Figure 2. These subdistinctions of reference discourse are
my own and differ somewhat from
Jakobson's.
Secondly, as Biihler, Jakobson and
Aristotle point out, discourse which focusses on eliciting a specific reaction
from the decoder and is dominated by
this request for reaction emerges! as persuasion or rhetoric. In this use, the encoder may purposely disguise his own
personality and purposely distort the picture of reality which language can paint
in order to get the decoder to do something or believe something (as in dishonest advertising or some political
propaganda). These distortions are not
Figure 2
THE BASIC PURPOSES OF COMPOSITION
I
I
I
r--"'
--
-JLAl
JX
I
I
I
EXPRESSIVE
REFERENTIAL
LITERARY
Examples:
Examples:
Examples:
Of Individual
Conversation
Journals
Diaries
Gripe sessions
Prayer
Of Social
Minority protests
Manifestoes
Declarations of independence
Contracts
Constitutions of clubs
Myth
Utopia plans
Religious credos
Exploratory
Dialogues
Seminars
A tentative definition of ...
Proposing a solution to problems
Diagnosis
Scientific
Proving a point by arguing from
accepted premises
Proving a point by generalizing
from particulars
A combination of both
Informative:
News articles
Reports
Summaries
Non-technical encyclopedia
articles
Textbooks
Short Story
Lyric
Short Narrative
Limerick
Ballad, Folk Song
Drama
TV Show
Movie
Joke
THE BASIC AIMS OF DISCOURSE
essential to persuasion, however. What
is essential is that encoder, reality, and
language itself all become instrumental
to the achievement of some practical
effect in the decoder. Obvious examples
of such aims of discourse are given in
the last column of Figure 2.
Thirdly, when the language product
is dominated by the clear design of the
writer or speaker to discharge his emotions or achieve his own individuality
or embody his personal or group aspirations in a discourse, then the discourse
tends to be expressive. The expressor or
encoder here dominates the communication process. Sometimes in such uses the
decoder and the referential components
even become negligible-as with curse
words uttered in private. But often such
uses carry strong sub-components of information and persuasion, as in the
Declaration of Independence. Some examples of such uses are given in the
first column of the figure we have, been
analyzing.
Finally, the product or text or work
itself may be the focus of the process as
an object worthy of being appreciated in
its own right. Such appreciation gives
pleasure to the beholder. In this use of
language, language calls attention to itself, to its own structures, not as references to reality or as expressions of personal aspirations or as instruments of
persuasion, but as structures worthy of
contemplation in their own right. Of
course, reference, author personality,
and persuasion may and usually are involved. But they are not rigidly relevant
as primary foci. Indeed the reality may
be fictional or very distorted; the author
may be hidden under dramatic projections; and the persuasions involved may
be quite trivial on occasion. This last use
of language is called literature. It appears in such varied forms as the, pun,
the salacious joke, the sonnet, the novel,
the TV drama, the epic, etc.
If a comparison may be drawn, it
could be said that language is like a
303
windowpane. I may throw bricks at it to
vent my feelings about something; I may
use a chunk of it to chase away an
intruder; I may use it to mirror or explore reality; and I may use a stainedglass window to call attention to itself as
an object of beauty. Windows, like language, can be used expressively, persuasively, referentially, and esthetically.
SOME CONCLUSIONS ABOUT AIMS
OF DISCOURSE
I have not included in Figure I many
of the other approaches to aims of discourse, most of which are fairly symmetrical to those given here. These
would include the several groups interested in the functions of language at its
origin (was: it imitative of reality, the
bow-wow theory, was it a utilitarian
rhetorical tool, the yo-he-ho theory, was
it an expressive emotional theory, the
ah-ah, pooh-pooh theory, or did language begin in play and poetry, the
ding-dong theory). These theories, like
the child function theories, do parallel
the four functions arrived at. Some
anthropologists, like Malinowski and
Doob, have examined primitive societies
and isolated the functions of language
found there (they do not find a literary
or play use, I might add, though LeviStrauss did). Nor have I mentioned the
semanticists; Hayakawa's four uses of
language also parallel the model
sketched here. The uses of language,
established by the Nebraska high school
composition program and drawn heavily
from the ordinary language philosophers, also closely parallel these distinctions.
The important lesson to be drawn
from this almost fearful symmetry is that
no composition program can afford to
neglect any of these basic aims of discourse. There have been periods in the
history of the teaching of composition,
whether in the elementary or secondary
or college level, when one or the other
304
has been unduly prominent and others
slighted or entirely neglected. The results have usually been educationally
disastrous. In speech departments where
persuasion was, for too long a time, too
prominent, two cancerous effects have
often followed: first, expository or
reference discourse is assimilated into
and made equivalent to persuasion and
Aristotelian rhetorical proofs are extended to all discourse; secondly, even
literature is reduced to persuasion, and
some modern theories of oral interpretation now speak of the oral interpreter's
function as one of coercing the audience
into a dcesiredemotional attitude. At the
elementary and secondary school during
the Deweyite progressive period, the reduction of all language to self-expression
destroyed alike any objective scientific or
literary norms:. At the college level, in
English departments during the period
immediately preceding the present, the
restriction of composition to expository
writing and the reading of literary texts
has had two equally dangerous consequences. First, the neglect of expressionism, as a reaction to progressive education, has stifled self-expression in the
student and partially, at least, is a cause
of the unorthodox and extreme forms of
deviant self-expression now indulged in
by college students on many campuses
today. Secondly, the neglect of persuasion has often caused persuasion to be
assimilated and absorbed into literature
in many cases. Expressionism has often
been similarly absorbed so that literature
has become prostituted to propaganda or
the most weird forms of formless selfexpression. In philosophy, with the logical positivists, interested solely in scientific statements, the ignoring of other uses
of discourse has caused all of them to be
lumped into the general category of nonsensical or meaningless. None of these
situations is healthy. It is to the good of
each of the aims of discourse to be studied in conjunction with the others.
The reason for this is to be seen in the
various principles of classification used
in the establishing of the aims!by various
writers. Scientific discourse is generally
different in its logic, its level of probability, from the other aims of discourse.
In fact, each aim of discourse has its
own logic, its own kind of references, its
own communication framework, itsi own
patterns of organization, and its own
stylistic norms. Sometimes these logics
and stylistic principles even contradict
each other. Overlaps, certainly occur but
the ultimate conflation and confusion of
any of the, aims of discourse with any
other is pedagogically disastrous.
The study of these distinct aims of
discourses is only a continuation of the
basic liberal arts tradition. That tradition, coalesced into the trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic or dialectic, simply meant the study of literature, the
study of persuasion, and the study of
scientific and exploratory discourse.
When the English departments presided
over the dissolution of the liberal arts
tradition in the early 1900's by exiling
persuasion to speech departments and
by exiling logic to philosophy departments, only literature (grammar) remained and literature, as such, had
never been the only basis of the liberal
arts. My plea is simply for a preservation
of the liberal arts tradition with composition as the foundation stone.
College of Education
University of Texas, Austin

The Basic Aims of Discourse - Center for Digital Humanities

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