Splendor and Misery: Semiotics and the End of Rhetoric

Author(s): Don Paul Abbott

Source: Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Summer, 2006), pp.
303-323
Published by: University of California Press
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Don Paul Abbott

Splendor and Misery: Semiotics and the

End of Rhetoric

Abstract: Beginning with Roland Barthes' "The Old Rhetoric: an

aide-m?moire" (1964-65), semioticians have shown a remarkable

interest in the of rhetoric. Writers like Barthes, Tzevtan

history
Todorov, G?rard Genette, and Paul Ricoeur have offered accounts

of rhetoric's that concluded with rhetoric's demise

past invariably
and its replacement with semiotics. These writers portray
typically
rhetoric's as one of a brief rise followed a very
history by long
decline, a says Todorov, of and misery." This
pattern, "splendor
essay examines the semioticians' of rhetoric's demise as
predictions
well as semiotics' to claim elements of rhetoric as its own.
attempt
The essay concludes by considering the present state of semiotics'
to rhetoric as a of and human
aspiration supersede theory language
affairs.

n the
Proceedings of the First Congress of the International
Association for Semiotic Studies held in Milan in 1974,
Seymour Chatman asks if "there is a modern science or
group of sciences that deals with the subject matter of ancient rhetoric
... or has that matter become so fragmented over the centuries that
there is no virtue, other than a purely antiquarian one, in trying
to reunite its elements under some single rubric like 'rhetoric' or a
more modern term" "In other words," continues Chatman,
sounding
"shall we to transform rhetoric as such into a science ... or shall
try
we be content, in a
merely historical way, to trace its breakdown and
into a variety of fields... Does rhetoric have to be reassem
absorption
bled, like Israel, or shall we let its descendants remain in diaspora"1

1
"Rhetoric and Semiotics," in A Semiotic Landscape, ed., Seymour Chatman, Um
berto Eco, and Jean-Marie Klinkenberg (The Hague: Mouton, 1979), 103-12 (p. 103).

Rhetorica, Vol. XXIV, Issue 3, pp. 303-323, ISSN 0734-8584, electronic ISSN 1533
8541. ?2006 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights re
served. Please direct all requests for permission to or reproduce article
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content through the University of California Press's Rights and Permissions website,
atwww.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.
303
304 RHETORICA

Chatman is asking "whether rhetoric should be a modern discipline"

or "will the very use of the name confuse modern discussions with
undesirable overtones?"2
antique
Chatman himself argues that alterations and adaptations are
pointless, and thus the only productive course is to search for al
ternatives. The alternatives to rhetoric, as it happens, are the many
varieties of semiotics. Chatman concludes that "the chief utility of
the study of rhetoric to the semiotician is historical, that there is little
current value in the models of the ancient discipline, but that some
a great deal, can be from the kinds
thing, perhaps gained considering
of problems with which it has struggled and some of the distinctions
it has uncovered, though almost all of these have to be reinterpreted
in modern ways."3 Chatman is typical of many semioticians who
relegate rhetoric to little more than limited historical relevance. In
deed, a remarkable number of semioticians preface their works with
a history of rhetoric. These surveys usually begin with the emergence
of rhetoric in ancient Greece and proceed into the nineteenth century
when rhetoric finally expires. Conveniently enough, the expiration
of rhetoric is followed by the discovery of semiotics in the early twen
tieth century by Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce.
This is as it should be, because for many a semiotician, semiotics sim
ply supersedes rhetoric, incorporating anything of value that was to
be found in the rhetorical estate and relegating the rest to footnotes.
As a discipline semiotics displays an interesting ambivalence to
history. It is self-consciously new, undiscovered before the nineteenth
century, and yet to demonstrate this newness semiotics must demon
strate its superiority over older disciplines. Semiotics, as the science
of signs, is also broad in scope; it potentially encompasses all human
activity. Given this great breadth, it is natural that earlier thinkers,
including rhetoricians, would have inadvertently and unknowingly
touched upon semiotic concerns. Thus semiotics is a new
discipline
with a
long history, and rhetoric necessarily figures directly into this
history. The intent of this essay, therefore, is to examine the relation
ship between semiotics and rhetoric, paying particular attention to
the semiotician's historical accounts which detail rhetoric's demise.

2"Rhetoric and Semiotics," 102-103.

3
"Rhetoric and Semiotics," 112. Chatman's if not toward
skepticism, hostility,
rhetoric is remarkable that for many years he in the Rhetoric
considering taught
Department at the University of California, Berkeley.
Splendor and Misery 305

The semiotician's history of rhetoric

The majority of semioticians who proclaim rhetoric's demise

are followers of Saussure rather than Pierce, writers, that is, in the
French rather than the Anglo-American tradition. Perhaps because
Pierce designated as a branch of his system of semeiosis what he
called "speculative rhetoric," Peircians have been more reluctant to
dismiss rhetoric from the semiotic pantheon.4 Thus this essay is con
cerned primarily with thinkers like Roland Barthes, Tzevtan Todorov,
G?rard Genette, Paul Ricoeur and Group Mu.5 All five offer historical
accounts which, in varying degrees of detail, recount rhetoric's de
cline and each declares, with varying degrees of certainty, rhetoric's
final collapse.
Perhaps the earliest of the semiotic histories of rhetoric is pre
sented by Roland Barthes in "The Old Rhetoric: an aide-m?moire."
Barthes' account was first presented in a seminar in 1964-65, then
published in Communication, and finally as the first chapter in L'aven
ture s?miologique (1985).6 Barthes explains that when he wrote "The
Old Rhetoric" no such survey was available in France: "This is
the manual I should have liked to find ready-made when I be
gan to inquire into the death of Rhetoric."7 Barthes avoids refer
ences and citations in part because he is from memory. Such
writing
an effort is not difficult, says Barthes, because "it deals
especially
with a common is inadequately
place learning: Rhetoric known,
yet knowledge of it implies no task of erudition; hence anyone

4For discussion of the place of rhetoric in Peirce's work see John R. Lyne,
"Rhetoric and Semiotic in C. S. Peirce," Quarterly Journal of Speech (1980): 155-168
and James Jakob Liszka, A General Introduction to the Semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), chap. 4, "Universal Rhetoric," 78-108.

5Other names be added to this list. Certainly writers discuss
might many
rhetoric from what be called a semiotic However, I am
might perspective. specifically
concerned with those writers who trace rhetoric's demise and attribute
historically
that demise at least in part to the of speech. Thus Paul de Man is absent
figures
because in "Semiology and Rhetoric," Diacritics (Fall 1973): 27-33, he does not offer
an extended historical of rhetoric's decline in the manner of those cited
analysis
above. However, de Man does share with other semioticians the view that rhetoric is
"the study of tropes and of figures" (28). Jacques Derrida, in "White also
Mythology,"
deals with some of the issues addressed in this paper: "White Mythology: Metaphor
in the Text of Philosophy," New Literary History 6 (1974): 5-76, especially "The Flowers
of Rhetoric: The Heliotrope," 46-60.
6R. Barthes, The Semiotic Challenge, trans. R. Howard (New York: Hill and Wang,
1988).
7Semiotic Challenge, 11.
306 RHETORICA

can readily avail himself of the bibliographic references which are

here."8
lacking
Barthes' point of departure is "to confront the new semiotics of
writing with the classical practice of literary language, which for
centuries was known as rhetoric."9 The word "old" "does not mean
there is a new rhetoric today; rather old rhetoric is set in opposition
to that new which may not yet have come into being; the world is
full of old rhetoric."10 Rhetoric, says Barthes, is a "metalan
incredibly
guage" which was "prevalent in theWest from the fifth century bc to
the nineteenth century ad." This "metalanguage" was "a veritable
empire, greater and more tenacious than any political empire in its
dimensions and duration ... Rhetoric in the West for two
prevailed
and a half millennia, from Gorgias to Napoleon III ... it has taken
three centuries to die; and it is not dead for sure even now."11 Rhetoric
was particularly influential in education and its history can be seen in
the rise and fall of rhetoric in the curriculum: "Rhetoric is triumphant:
it rules over instruction. Rhetoric ismoribund: limited to this sector,
it falls gradually into intellectual discredit."12 The reason for this dis
credit is the "promotion of a new value, evidence (of facts, of ideas,
of sentiments), which is self-sufficient and does without language
(or imagines it does so)."13 Barthes says that "this 'evidence' takes,
from the sixteenth century on, three directions: a personal evidence
(in Protestantism), a rational evidence (in Cartesianism), a sensory
evidence (in Empiricism)."14 Thus rhetoric died, but "to say in a cate
gorical way that Rhetoric is dead would mean we could specify what
it."15
replaced
Like Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov also a semiotician's sur
presents
vey of rhetoric in Theories of the Symbol.16 Todorov, too, classifies the
entire history of rhetoric into two periods which he calls "Splendor
and Misery." The period of "splendor" extends from rhetoric's be
ginnings in ancient Greece to Cicero, whom Todorov calls the "last of

8Semiotic Challenge, 12.

9Semiotic Challenge, 11.
10Semiotic Challenge, 11.
11
Semiotic Challenge, 15.
12Semiotic Challenge, 43.
13Semiotic Challenge, 43.
14Semiotic Challenge, 43.
15Semiotic Challenge, 45.
16T. Todorov, Theories of the Symbol, trans. C. Porter (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1982); French original, Th?ories du symbole (Paris 1977).
Splendor and Misery 307

the ancients and first of the moderns."17 Todorov then sees a period of
"misery" emerging from the crisis of the Roman Republic. After the
collapse of the Republic rhetoric passes from instrumental to orna
mental, from functional to beautiful.18 This second period is rather
long, to say the least, extending from Quintilian in the first century
to Pierre Fontanier in the nineteenth. Rhetoric, says Todorov, "is a
in which such shortcuts are and even
discipline possible legitimate,
so slow is its evolution."19 This second period is not a happy one for
rhetoric: "Between Quintilian and Fontanier, fortune does not smile
on one single rhetorician?and this longest period in the history of
rhetoric?lasting nearly 1800 years?turns out to be ... a period of
slow decadence and degradation, suffocation and bad conscience."20
Of course, says Todorov, "history indeed does not stop with Fontanier
...
only the history of rhetoric stops there."21 Rhetoric, says Todorov,
did not survive the nineteenth century, "but, before it disappeared, it
a final effort more than any that had
produced?through powerful
gone before it, as if to try to stave off imminent extinction?a body of
reflections whose quality is unmatched."22
This "swan song" of rhetoric began early in the eighteenth
century, with Des Tropes (1730) of C?sar Chesneau Dumarsais and
ended, a century or so later, with the work of Pierre Fontanier,
whom Todorov regards as "the last rhetorician."23 While Fontanier
might not have been, in Todorov's estimation, the one to kill off
rhetoric, his work represents the culmination of rhetoric's degen
eration. Fontanier's Dumarsais, created a of
predecessor, catalogue
tropes that proved to be a popular, influential, and enduring work.24

17Theories of the Symbol, 65.

18Todorov is here repeating the common claim that rhetoric suffered a decline
after the collapse of the Roman Republic. For an alternative view see Jeffrey Walker,
Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), especially
part II, "'Rhetoric' in Later Antiquity: A Short Revisionist History," 45-135. Walker
argues that "although there certainly were changes in the sociopolitical conditions
and rhetorical practices, there was no 'decline of rhetoric' in any meaningful sense
either in the Hellenistic or the Roman (ix).
period"
l9Theoriesof the Symbol, 69.
^Theories of the Symbol, 70.
21Theories of the Symbol, 79.
22Theories of the Symbol, 84.
23Des Tropes ou des diff?rents sens. Tigure et vingt autres articles de VEncyclop?die, suivis
de L'Abr?g? des Tropes de l'abb? Ducros, ed. Fran?oise Douay-Soublin (Paris: Flammarion,
1988).
24For editions and abridgements of Des Tropes, see "Oeuvres de Dumarsais" in
Des Tropes, ed. Douay-Soublin, 413-14. An assessment of Dumarsais' in
place early
308 RHETORICA

Barthes says that "for the eighteenth century, the most famous treatise
(and moreover the most intelligent) is that of Dumarsais."25 Fontanier,
as Dumarsais' successor, used the latter's Tropes as a point of depar
ture for his own works. Thus Fontanier's first work was Les Tropes
de Dumarsais, avec un commentaire raisonn? (1818) followed by Manuel
classique pour Vetude des tropes (1821) and Trait? general des figures du
discours autres que les tropes (1827).26 The latter work, like Dumarsais'
Tropes, became a standard textbook on rhetoric in France.
Todorov, who earlier praised the efforts of Dumarsais, Fontanier,
and others as "reflections of unmatched quality,"27 concludes his re
view of their work by asserting that every page, taken by itself, reeks
of mediocrity. We are dealing with an elderly gentleman (rhetoric): he
never dares to stray very far from the ideal of his youth (exemplified

by Cicero and Quintilian?although they were elderly gentlemen

themselves, in their way); he does not notice the transformations
of the world around him (Fontanier came after Romanticism, in its
German manifestation at least). And yet there is something splendid
about this old age; the old man has forgotten nothing of the two
thousand-year history of his life. Better still, in a debate animated
by many voices, notions, definitions, and relations are refined and
crystallized as never before. Here then is the paradox: this sequence
of lusterless pages, when taken as a whole, a
produces dazzling
impression indeed.28
The eighteenth century witnessed the culmination of rhetoric's
second crisis in which, "at a single stroke" rhetoric was "acquitted,
liberated, and put to death."29 So rhetoric has died again, a bit earlier
than in Barthes' account, and for a different reason. For Todorov the
cause of rhetoric's ultimate death is romanticism: romanticism "sup

European rhetoric is offered by Jean-Paul Sermain, "Le code du

eighteenth-century
bon gout (1725-1750)," in Marc Fumaroli, ed., Histoire de la rh?torique dans l'Europe
moderne 1450-1950 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999), 879-943, esp. 926
36.
25The Semiotic Challenge, 45.
26For a modem edition of Fontanier's works see Les
figures du discours, ed. G?rard
Genette (Paris: Flammarion, 1968). Genette's introduction contains a useful discussion
of Fontanier's treatise. See also Ariette Michel, "Romantisme, literature et
rh?torique,"
in Fumaroli, Histoire de la rh?torique, 1042-44. A comprehensive survey of rhetoric in

nineteenth-century France is presented by Fran?oise Douay-Soublin, "La rh?torique

en France au XIXe si?cle ? travers ses et ses institutions: restauration,
pratiques
renaissance, remise en cause," in Fumaroli, Histoire de la rh?torique, 1071-1214.
27Theories of the Symbol, 84.
28
Theories of the Symbol, 87.
29
Theories of the Symbol, 79.
Splendor
and Misery 309

pressed the necessity for regimenting discourse, since now anyone,

by drawing upon personal inspiration, without technique or rules,
can produce admirable works of art. Thought is no longer divorced?
or even
distinguished?from expression; there is no longer, in aword,
any need for rhetoric."30 Todorov asks the question posed by many
of rhetoric's critics: why did rhetoric, an untenable system, some
how survive for nearly two millennia? His answer is that rhetoric
was the product of a repressive society which regimented discourse.
Todorov finds rhetoric's persistence so inexplicable that he dismisses
it as something akin to a cultural "mental illness."31
For Todorov, then, the history of rhetoric is one of "splendor and
misery" much as Barthes before him characterized the same history
as "triumphant and moribund." Other semioticians share much of
Barthes' and Todorov's view of the history of rhetoric and typically
differ from the histories just recounted only in the level of detail. Thus
in his Figures of Literary Discourse G?rard Genette offers what he calls a
"cavalier account" of rhetoric's history, which he admits would need
to supplemented by an "immense historical investigation" along the
lines of the one already sketched by Barthes.32 Like Todorov and
Barthes before him, Genette appears to believe that little of use
survived the "great shipwreck of rhetoric."33 Genette, too, features
Dumarsais and Fontanier as the key figures in the "later stages"
of rhetoric's decline. Genette acknowledges Fontanier's "taxonomic
intelligence" and calls him "the Linnaeus of rhetoric."34 For Genette,
rhetoric's career has been a "historical course of a discipline that has
witnessed, over the centuries, the gradual contraction of its field of
... from Corax to our own the of rhetoric has
competence day, history
been that of a generalized restriction."35 For Genette, this "generalized
restriction" is a movement from rhetoric, classically conceived, to a
of figures, to a of tropes, to a final "valorization" of
theory theory
metaphor as the surviving heir of the rhetorical tradition.
Like Barthes, Todorov, and especially Genette, Paul Ricoeur sees
rhetoric as having followed a course of gradual decline from its clas
sical origins to its present moribund state. In The Rule ofMetaphor,

^Theories of the Symbol, 80.

31Theories of the Symbol, 79.
trans. A. Sheridan (New York: Columbia
32Tigures of Literary Discourse, University
Press, 1982), 104.
114.
33Figures of Literary Discourse,
^G?rard Genette, "Introduction: La rh?torique des figures," in Fontanier, Les

figures du discourse, cited in n. 26 above, p. 13.

35Figures of Literary Discourse, 103-104.

310 RHETORICA

Ricoeur offers an account of rhetoric's career that concludes with its

"dying days."36 One cause of rhetoric's death was its reduction to
"parts," that is, the figures. Ricoeur decries the taxonomic tendency
of rhetoric, as exemplified by the lists of figures, largely because
these taxonomies are, in his view, "static." The more crucial
prob
lem is that the taxonomies contributed to rhetoric's "severing" itself
from argument. Ricoeur recognizes that Greek rhetoric was "broader,
more dramatic, than a theory of figures."37 After all, says Ricoeur, be
fore taxonomy there was Aristotle's Rhetoric, and, moreover, "before
rhetoric was futile, itwas dangerous."38
Rhetoric's from dangerous
decline to merely futile is in large
part attributed, yet again, to Fontanier.39 When he turns to Fontanier,
however, Ricoeur modifies his view that a chief cause of rhetoric's
decline is its reduction to the figures. Ricoeur dedicates the chapter on
rhetoric's decline to G?rard Genette because Genette argues that "the
progressive reduction of the domain of rhetoric" was its undoing.40
Ricoeur agrees with Genette that "since the Greeks, rhetoric dimin
ished bit by bit to a theory of style by cutting itself off from the two
parts that generated it, the theories of argumentation and of compo
sition. Then, in turn, the theory of style shrank to a classification
of figures of speech, and this to a theory of tropes."41 Although he
agrees with this analysis, Ricoeur does not regard the reduction to
tropology as the "decisive factor" in rhetoric's demise. The emphasis
on the reduction of rhetoric is not useful because "the problem is not
to restore the original domain of rhetoric?in any case this may be
beyond doing, for ineluctable cultural reasons?rather, it is to under
stand in a new way the very workings of tropes."42 For Ricoeur, then,
rhetoric's alleged reduction to a theory of tropes was less debilitating
to a
than rhetoric's inability develop theory of tropes that proved
useful.

Barthes, Todorov, Genette, and Ricoeur all offer accounts of

rhetoric's history that culminate in rhetoric's demise sometime in
the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. While these crit
ics differ on the precise cause of death, all (with the exception of

36
P. Ricoeur, The Rule ofMetaphor, trans. R. Czerny (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1977), 28.
37Rule ofMetaphor, 12.
38Rule ofMetaphor, 10-11.
39Rule ofMetaphor, 48-51.
40Rule ofMetaphor, 44.
41Rule ofMetaphor, 45.
42
Rule ofMetaphor, 45.
Splendor and Misery 311

Todorov) regard the reduction of rhetoric to the figures and tropes

as an important contributing cause. This consensus is one of the most
obvious features of all these histories: they all decry the tropologi
cal impulse and yet all are fascinated by the figures. They present
histories in which the figures play a prominent role and, despite
rhetoric's demise, they agree that the figures have survived. This, in
turn, presents one of the incongruities of these histories: how can
rhetoric have died, if the greatest portion of its "body" has continued
to live While they often decry the concentration on the figures, all
appear to want the figures to be prominent in the discipline that
succeeds rhetoric.

Group Mu

Despite the pronouncements of Barthes, Todorov, Genette, and

Ricoeur that rhetoric is dead, these semioticians do not seem quite
certain that it is buried. As Barthes notes, for rhetoric to be truly
dead, there must be something to replace it. The obvious choice to
replace rhetoric is, of course, semiotics. But neither Barthes nor the
others offer a clear vision of just how, or inwhat ways, semiotics will
rhetoric.
replace
The task of integrating rhetoric into semiotics was undertaken
most fully by six scholars at the University of Liege calling themselves
Group Mu.43 Their work, Rh?torique g?n?rale (1970), remains probably
the most ambitious attempt to fashion a rhetoric in accord with
semiotic principles. Despite the title, the work is not, as many have
noted, "a general rhetoric"; rather it is a work primarily about the
figures. As Group Mu's translators explain: "the book is mostly a
study of rhetorical tropes and figures, what classical rhetoric called
elocutio. It attempts to set forth the basic principles by which all figures
of language and thought are derived and can be explained." The
translators conclude that "this study represents the first time that the
complex variety of figures has been systematically and coherently
derived; moreover, the method adopted here brings elocutio into
the range of modern linguistics."44 Thus unlike Barthes, Todorov,

43The six authors that "we have

chosen as our the first letter of
explain symbol
the Greek word the most of metaboles."
designating prestigious Group Mu (J.Dubois,
F. Edeline, J.-M. Klinkenberg, P. Minguet, F. Pire, H. Trinon), A General Rhetoric, trans.
P. Burell and E. Slotkin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), xix.
44A General Rhetoric, "Translators' Preface," xiv.
 312 RHETORICA

and the others, Group Mu does not simply proclaim the end of
rhetoric, they propose a for the "old" rhetoric.
specific replacement
An examination, therefore, of their attempt to bring "'elocutio into
the range of modern a test of the
linguistics" provides singular
significance of the "semiotic challenge" to rhetoric.
Despite the translators' claims for the novelty of Group Mu's
project, A General Rhetoric's figurative and taxonomic emphasis in
vites comparisons with the elocutio of classical rhetoric. Perhaps
mindful of their apparent similarity with the rhetorical tradition,
Group Mu, like Barthes and Todorov, emphasize the historical dis
continuity between their approach and that of traditional rhetori
cians. At least in France, says Group Mu, "rhetoric was dead in
if not in So dead was rhetoric that a dozen or so
thought practice."45
years before the publication of A General Rhetoric "anyone claiming
that rhetoric would again become a major would have
discipline
been laughed at."46 This is because rhetoric was "never a very coher
ent discipline"; historically it degenerated into a "sclerotic tradition"
which eventually "gave up the ghost."47 But Group Mu believes that
rhetoric, despite its unfortunate decline, deserves resuscitation by
semioticians. After all, as the translators note, rhetoric was once "an

important and respected discipline."48 At the time Group Mu began

to conceive of A General Rhetoric, the discipline of rhetoric was show
at least some signs of its former vitality. "Today," says Group
ing
Mu, "rhetoric appears not only as a science of the future but also a
timely science within the scope of structuralism, new criticism, and
semiology."49

Group Mu credits the revival of rhetoric to Barthes and Todorov,

as well as Roman Jacobson and Chaim Perelman. But despite the re
emergence of rhetoric within a structuralist and semiotic context,
Group Mu makes it clear that they would not restore all of the
rhetorical tradition: "no one thinks seriously of bringing her back
with all the old debris. We must avoid the bric-a-brac." Group Mu
agrees with Genette's claim that "classical rhetoricians had 'amania
for naming/" In Group Mu's view the "endless nomenclatures" of
the figures, while perhaps not "the underlying cause," has been "the
evident sign of rhetoric's demise."50 Group Mu concedes that despite

45A General Rhetoric, 1.

46A General Rhetoric, 1.
47
A General Rhetoric, 4, 5.
48A General Rhetoric, "Translator's Preface," xiii.
49
A General Rhetoric, 1.
50
A General Rhetoric, 2.
 Splendor and Misery 313

its demise many of its old duties survived and were co-opted by the
field of "stylistics." Stylistics, unlike the old rhetoric, is not concerned
with learning to write or crafting a persuasive message, but rather
is intent upon discovering "how and why a text is a text."51 Thus the
study of rhetoric becomes an effort to discover For
literary meaning.
Group Mu "literature is first of all a use of It is, in
singular language.
fact, the theory of this usage that will constitute the first objective
of general, and perhaps generalizable, rhetoric."52 Thus rhetoric is,
not surprisingly, rooted in language. More specifically, rhetoric is "a
set of operations made on language necessarily dependent on certain
characteristics of language. We shall see that all rhetorical operations
rest on a fundamental property of linear discourse?that discourse
can be into smaller and smaller units."53
decomposed
In Group Mu's analysis these figures are, for the most part, the fa
miliar ones of classical rhetoric. The figures, or "metaboles" as
Group
Mu calls them, are classified into four different "fields": metaplasm,
metataxis, m?taseme, and metalogism. Metaplasms are figures that
act on sounds or graphic aspects of language. Metataxes are fig
ures that act on the structure of the sentence. Metasemes are figures
that replace one seme, or unit of meaning, with another. And, fi
nally, metalogisms are figures of thought that modify the logical
value of sentences. Each "metabole," or is also
figure, categorized
into one of four different linguistic operations: suppression, addi
tion, suppression-addition, and permutation. The various traditional
figures are classified within the intersections of these four fields and
four For includes and
operations. example, metaplasm aphaeresis
apocope; metataxis includes zeugma and parataxis; m?taseme in
cludes synecdoche and antonomasia; metalogism includes litotes and
hyperbole.
Up to this point in the analysis Group Mu has been content
to say that figures "act upon" or "modify" language in some way.
But if they are to meet their goal of rigorous linguistic analysis,
they recognize that they must go beyond such vague terms and
explain just how figures function.
To do so, Group Mu offers several
"operating concepts" including the crucial concept of "deviation."
Group Mu defines figures as alterations," or deviations,
"significant
from a linguistic norm: "the first stage of rhetoric consists in an
author's creating deviations, the second stage consists in a reader's

51A General Rhetoric, 96.

52A General Rhetoric, 7.
53A General Rhetoric, 25.
314 RHETORICA

deciphering them."54 Thus figures deviate from a norm, but not so

much that the reader is prevented from engaging in the interpretation
or "autocorrection" of the alteration.
The centrality of deviation in the figurative process requires that
Group Mu define the norm from which the figures deviate. That
norm, says Group Mu, is "degree zero." Group Mu defines degree
zero, not as a "colorless" or "neutral" in the manner of
language,
Barthes,55 but rather in terms of semes, the smallest possible units
of meaning. Thus "absolute degree zero ... would be a discourse re
duced to its essential semes ... that is, to the semes that we could
not suppress without at the same time depriving our discourse of
all signification."56 Such discourse is "univocal," that is, it lacks the
redundancy typical of most language. But absolute degree zero re
mains an ideal, whereas the norm from which rhetoric would de
viate is "practical degree zero": "utterance containing all the es
sential semes along with a number of contiguous semes reduced
a
to minimum as functions of the possibilities of the vocabulary."57
Degree zero is, admits Group Mu, "an often ungraspable norm"
which they themselves have difficulty defining. Degree zero is at
least partially defined by the reader's expectations as determined by
the interplay of language, culture, and context. Figures, by deviating
from this norm in often unpredictable ways invites interpretation
("autocorrection") on the part of the reader and it is this deviation
and interpretation that is at the heart of the figurative experience.
Group Mu, however, does not regard all deviation as rhetorical:
"in the rhetorical sense we shall understand deviation as the de
tected alteration of degree zero." Or, to put it another way, "we shall
agree to call rhetorical only those operations trying for poetic effect
... and found
especially in poetry, jokes, slang, and so on."58 Thus
rhetorical deviation requires intent, although figures can also occur
in the absence of intent. Rhetoric, then, as Group Mu defines it, is

54A General Rhetoric, 34.

55 vers and C. Smith
R. Barthes, Writing Degree Zero, trans. A. La (New York: Hill
and Wang, 1968). Despite the title of this work, Barthes discusses "degree zero" only
on pp. 4-5 and 76-78. For Barthes, in contrast to Group Mu, zero is not a
degree
norm but rather a deliberate an towards
linguistic technique: "attempt disengaging
which results in "a which is almost an ideal
literary language" style of absence
absence of style" (76-77).
56A General Rhetoric, 30.
57A General Rhetoric, 30.
58A General Rhetoric, 37.
 Splendor and Misery 315

"based on the double movement of the creation and reduction of

deviations."59
How successful was Group Mu at creating a new rhetoric in har
mony with semiotics? Even semioticians like Ricoeur appear unsure.
Writing about Group Mu's work Ricoeur says that "the new rhetoric
at first glance is nothing but a repetition of classical rhetoric, at least
that of tropes, only at a higher level of technicity. But this is just a
first impression. The new rhetoric is far from being a reformulation
of the theory of tropes in more formal terms; it proposes instead to
restore the entire breadth of the theory of figures."60 And perhaps
Ricoeur is correct, if one accepts his contention that rhetoric was ulti
mately reduced to the tropes, and thus largely ignored the figures
until these were revived by Group Mu. Yet Group Mu's identifica
tion of deviation as the foundation of the figures cannot but make the
link between Group Mu and classical rhetoric very clear. As Ricoeur
himself admits, "every one agrees in saying that figurative language
exists only if one can contrast it with another language that is not
figurative."61
Indeed, the agreement that figurative language is only meaning
ful when contrasted with the non-figurative spans the centuries. In
the Institutio oratoria Quintilian says a
commonly accepted meaning
of the term figure is "that which is poetically or altered
rhetorically
from the simple and obvious method of expression. Itwill then be
true to distinguish between the style which is devoid of figures ...
and that which is adorned with figures."62 Later rhetoricians would
follow Quintilian's definition of a figure as a "change in meaning
or language from the ordinary and simple form."63 Thus in the Re
naissance George Puttenham says: "Figurative Speech is a nouelty
of language euidently (and yet not absurdly) estranged frorri the or
dinarie habit and manner of our dayly talke and writing and figure it
selfe is a certain lively or good grace set upon words, speeches and
sentences to some purpose and not in vain, giving them ornament
or
efficacy by many manner of alterations in shape, in sounde, and
also in sense."64 Some two centuries later the ubiquitous Hugh Blair
maintains that figures of speech "always imply some departure from

59A General Rhetoric, 36.

60Rule ofMetaphor, cited above n. 36, p. 136.
6lRule ofMetaphor, 138.
62Institutio oratoria, 9.1.14 (trans. H. E. Butler).
63Institutio oratoria, 9.1.11.

64George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (Menston, England: Scolar Press,
1968), 132-33.
316 RHETORICA

simplicity of expression."65 Blair adds that "though Figures imply

a deviation from what may be reckoned the most simple form of
we are not thence to conclude, that they imply anything un
Speech,
common or unnatural. This is so far from being the case, that, on
many occasions, they are both the most natural, and the most com
mon method of uttering our sentiments. It is impossible to compose
any discourse without using them often; nay, there are few Sentences
of any length, inwhich some expression or other, that may be termed
a
figure, does not occur."66 By explaining the figures in terms of de
viation Group Mu follows a view well established in the long history
of rhetoric, according to which the figures are defined as departures,
alterations, and deviations from a norm.

Classification of the figures

Just as Group Mu accepts deviation as the operating principle

of the figures, it also organizes those figures in a manner that is
reminiscent of classical rhetoric. A consistent criticism of semioti
cians is that traditional rhetoric had been excessively concerned with
classification in general and with the organization of the figures in
particular. (This may seem a curious criticism in light of Peirce's
proposed 59,049 classes of signs).67 Barthes contends that ancient
rhetorical texts, "especially the post-Aristotelian ones, show an ob
session with classification (the very term of partitio in oratory is an
example): rhetoric openly offers itself as a classification (ofmaterials,
of rules, of parts, of genres, of styles)."68 Todorov puts it succinctly:
"The rhetoricians never cease to classify, but they classify badly."69
In response to these complaints Group Mu might have been
either to avoid classification or to establish a
expected altogether
taxonomic system at odds with the classical notions. Yet here, too,
Group Mu's approach reveals classical precedent. Winfried N?th,
noting Group Mu's four categories of fields and operations, observes

Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, ed. Harold F. Harding

65Hugh Blair, (Car
bondale: Southern Illinois
University Press), vol. 1, 272-73.
^Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles
Lettres, 273-74. Genette,
Perhaps anticipating
Todorov, and others, Blair recommends Dumarsais as "one of the most sensible and
instructive writers" on
figurative language (pp. 272-73, note).
67Jonathan Culler, The Pursuit of Signs, augmented ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2001), 23.
68Semiotic Challenge, cited above n. 6, p. 47.
69Theories of the Symbol, cited above n. 16, p. 107.
Splendor and Misery 317

that "Quintilian also set up four general categories of deviation (mu

tatio) which reappear with modification inmodern semiotic systems
of rhetorical figures."70 In Book 1 of the Institutio oratoria Quintilian
identifies four classes of solecisms: addition, omission, transposi
tion, and substitution. As N?th suggests, these four classes conform
closely to Group Mu's four "operations" of deviation: addition, sup
pression, permutation, and suppression-addition. Three of the four
categories of Quintilian and Group Mu share either similar or identi
cal labels. Even Group Mu's "suppression-addition," which at first
glance seems not to correspond to one of Quintilian's four categories,
is similar to his category "substitution." In "suppression-addition,"
Group Mu explains, "an element of one class is substituted for an
other class."71 These two four-part classifications are similar, but not
identical. Quintilian is discussing "solecisms" or errors in language,
which, he says, writers typically have dealt with in a fourfold divi
sion. Although solecisms are errors of it
language, Quintilian makes
clear that many figures closely resemble solecisms.72 While Quin
tilian is primarily talking about errors of language, Group Mu's
"operations" are to explain the deviations which produce
employed
virtually all the figures.73
While the fourfold divisions of Group Mu and Quintilian dif
fer significantly in scope, the categories nevertheless remain sim
ilar. For Quintilian and Group Mu, and countless rhetoricians in
between, have faced the need to organize the figures into categories

70
Winfried N?th, Handbook of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1990), 341. See Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 1.5.37-42.
71A General Rhetoric, cited above n. 43, p. 75. This statement refers to the operation
of suppression-addition within the "field" of "metataxes."
72Institutio oratoria, 1.5.40-41.
73In the twentieth century Roman Jakobson derived a system of tropes from

language "disturbance" aphasia. Jakobson and Morris Halle, Fundamentals of Language

(The Hague: Mouton, 1956), 76, claim that the varieties of aphasia "oscillate" between
two polar types: metaphor and metonymy. According to Jacobson and Halle "the

development of a discourse may take place along two different semantic lines: one

topic may lead to another either through their similarity or their contiguity."
through
That is, discourse develops either metaphorically of metonymically. Their reduction
of tropes to two archetypal forms was widely influential. The reduction of the tropes
to a few prototypical forms had been proposed at various times by rhetoricians. In
the early eighteenth century Giambatista Vico advocated four fundamental tropes:
metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. See Michael Mooney, Vico in the Tradition

of Rhetoric (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 79-80. In 1945 Kenneth

Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 503
17, proposed "Four Master Tropes." These were once
again metaphor, metonymy,
synecdoche, and Burke makes no mention of Vico).
irony (although
 318 RHETORICA

that render them more useful and understandable. If semioticians

have found these classificatory efforts frustratingly elusive, so, too,
have rhetoricians. Quintilian notes that in his own time there was
considerable disagreement among rhetoricians about the names of
the figures and the ways to classify them. After discussing tropes in
Book 8 of the Institutio he turns in Book 9 to the figures, and begins
by noting the similarity of these two concepts. "Many authors," he
says, "have considered figures identical with tropes, because whether
it be that the latter derive their name from having a certain form
or from the fact that they effect alterations in language ... it must
be admitted that both these features are found in figures as well."74
Quintilian says further that tropes and figures have "a general re
semblance" because "both involve a departure from the simple and
straightforward method of expression coupled with a certain rhetor
ical excellence."75 Although Quintilian synthesizes the classifications
offered by his predecessors, perhaps anticipating the semioticians, he
too reveals some impatience with the "quibbling" about the distinc
tion between tropes and figures. In discussing irony Quintilian notes
that some regard it as a trope and others as a figure and, he says, "I
am aware of the complicated and minute discussions to which it has
given rise," but "these artifices will produce exactly the same effect,
whether are styled tropes or lie not in
they figures, since their values
their names, but in their effect." He concludes that it is best "to adopt
the generally accepted terms and to understand the actual thing, by
whatever name it is called."76

THE HISTORICAL RECORD

All of the histories reviewed here share a common interpretation

of the history of rhetoric. Barthes, Todorov, Genette, Ricoeur, Group
Mu, all portray the history of rhetoric as a long period of decline
which culminates in rhetoric's "death." And yet all seem to suspect
that they have exaggerated that death. The semioticians' own ex
tensive accounts of rhetoric testify that rhetoric, in some form, did
indeed survive into the twentieth century. The argument that rhetoric
was from its favored in
displaced historically position European edu
cation is quite credible. But the claims go well beyond rhetoric's edu

749.1.2-3.
759.1.3-4.
769.1.7-10.
Splendor and Misery 319

cational displacement. The claim is that rhetoric is actually dead?or

at least terminally ill. All, too, share a general agreement about the
cause of rhetoric's death: the reduction of rhetoric to the figures.
But, here too, there is uncertainty. The figures, the cause of rhetoric's
demise, emerge as the most useful survivor of rhetoric's demise. In
deed, it seems reasonable to say that the semioticians are as obsessed
with the figures as are the rhetoricians whose works they dismiss.
Group Mu's work, a attempt to integrate rhetoric
self-proclaimed
with contemporary linguistics is, after all, a work of elocutio.77
The semioticians' fascination with the figures may perhaps be
partially explained by the fact that their histories are derived from
the particularities of the rhetorical tradition in France. Todorov, for
example, admits that his own analysis looks exclusively at the "last
centuries of rhetorical activity in France."78 Thus the prominence
of Dumarsais and Fontanier in French education may be expected to
have caused the semioticians to privilege the figures in their accounts.
Yet the course of rhetoric in France may not be entirely generalizable
to the history of rhetoric in general.
George Kennedy maintains that the work of Dumarsais "culmi
nated the tendency toward regarding rhetoric as the study of literary
devices of style, begun in France with Ramus." Kennedy contin
ues that "although Dumarsais' work was translated into English,
rhetoricians in Britain in the later eighteenth century, where oratory
had a significant role in public life, viewed rhetoric in something
closer to the classical sense, with a secondary application to literary
composition. The result has been a division between the European
understanding of rhetoric as primarily a matter of the use of tropes
and figures, taken up by teachers of English in Britain and Amer
ica, and an American tradition among teachers of speech viewing
rhetoric as civic discourse, derived from classical sources and other
eighteenth-century British rhetoricians."79
While national experiences may help explain semioticians' points
of view, the French tradition may not be as excessively figura
tive as these histories maintain. Indeed, Todorov concedes that
there is another tradition in France represented by Etienne Bonnet
de Condillac: "A rhetoric such as Condillac's grants an important

77It is interesting to note that Group Mu's more recent work has focused on visual
rhetoric and is far less dependent on classical rhetoric than is A General Rhetoric. See

Groupe Mu. Trait? du signe visuel: Pour une rh?torique de l'image (Paris: Seuil, 1992).
78Theories of the Symbol, cited above n. 16, p. 108.
79G. Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient
toModern Times, 2nd ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 276.
320 RHETORICA

place to the figures (or 'turns'), but does not eliminate all the rest
(that is, considerations regarding the construction of discourse in
general)."80 Similarly, Genette notes that his claim that rhetoric in
France is "above all a rhetoric of elocutio" has been challenged by
Anton Kib?di Varga's Rh?torique et literature. Varga's entire book, says
Genette, demonstrates "the interest shown by certain seventeenth
and eighteenth-century rhetoricians in the techniques of argument
and composition."81 Genette attributes the difference in interpreta
tion to "relative emphasis and proportion" given to various rhetori
cians. However, says Genette, that part of French rhetoric devoted
to elocutio, "even when itwas not the largest, was already at that time
the most vivid, the most original in relation to ancient models and
therefore the most
productive."82
Genette recognizes, as do others discussed here, that classical
rhetoric encompassed much more than the figures. But virtually all
argue, nevertheless, that the figures represent "the most productive"
part of the rhetorical tradition. Ricoeur acknowledges that Greek
rhetoric was "broader, more dramatic, than a of
theory figures."83
Barthes, in particular, shows great familiarity with the breadth of
classical rhetoric, describing in considerable detail what he calls "the
network," "the rhetorical machine," that is, the apparatus of the
ancient art.84 Barthes knows that elocutio is more than tropes: "The
arguments found and broadly distributed in the parts of discourse
remain to be 'put into words': this is the function of this third part
of the techne rhetorike known as lexis or elocutio, to which we are
accustomed to pejoratively reducing rhetoric because of the interest
the Moderns have taken in the figures of rhetoric, a part (but only
a part) of Elocutio."85 And yet when Group Mu offers an alternative to

that Todorov claim that

80Theories of the Symbol, 107. It should be noted does
Condillac is the sole representative of this tradition of "discourse in general" al
"he is linked to certain manifestations of rhetorical at the end of the
though thought
seventeenth century, most notably in the Logique ou l'art de penser, by Antoine Arnauld
and in the Rh?torique ou l'art de
and Pierre Nicole, parler by Bernard Lamy."
81Figures of Literary Discourse, cited above n. 32, p. 104, n. 7. See ?nton Kib?di

Varga, Rh?torique et literature. ?tudes de structures classiques (Paris: Didier, 1970).

82Figures of Literary Discourse, 104.
83Rule ofMetaphor, cited above n. 36, p. 12.
84Semiotic Challenge, cited above n. 6, pp. 51, 47.
85Semiotic Challenge, 83. It should be noted that not all semioticians analyze
classical rhetoric from a An alternative
exclusively figurative perspective. analysis
is presented Theories of the Sign in Classical Antiquity, trans. C.
by Giovanni Manetti,
Richardson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). Manetti maintains that
"the consideration of signs rests at the heart of inventio, that is, when must
proofs
Splendor and Misery 321

the obsolete classical rhetoric, that alternative looks remarkably like

classical rhetoric. A General Rhetoric is a work that fits readily into
the figurative tradition. The figures themselves are given the familiar
names of metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and the rest. Group
Mu departs from conventional terms with its "fields" of figures:
metaplasm, metataxis, m?taseme, and metalogism. (But even the
names of these fields have comfortingly familiar Greek roots). Indeed,
so similar is Group Mu's effort to traditional approaches that Barthes
calls it a "revalidation" of the old rhetoric.86
Sufficient time has passed since Barthes first issued the "semi
otic challenge" to permit an assessment of the semioticians' claims
for the fall of rhetoric and the rise of semiotics. Jonathan Culler, in
a new preface to The Pursuit of Signs, offers such an assessment of
the relationship between semiotics and literature. Culler observes
that when he wrote The Pursuit of Signs in 1981 "it seemed possible
that the idea of a general science of signs, a semiology or semiotics,
might revitalize the humanities and social sciences in general, not
just literary and cultural studies."87 He concludes that "the ambi
tious program of a science of signs did not succeed." He attributes
this failure to "the excessive ambition of semiotics: the attempt to
take all knowledge as its province may have been doomed from
the start, but it certainly made it harder for semiotics to succeed
in any particular area of endeavor. Wherever it ventured, it could
not help but seem an imperialistic interloper seeking to claim this
area for its vast putative empire."88 Culler notes that in A Theory of
Semiotics Umberto Eco "offered a list of concerns of the field that
is almost comical in its range and disorder: 'Zoosemiotics, olfac
tory signs, Tactile communication, Codes of taste, Paralinguistics,
Medical semiotics, Kinesics and proxemics, Musical codes, Formal
ized languages, Written languages, Unknown languages and se
cret codes, Natural languages, Visual communication, Systems of
objects, Plot structure, Text theory, Cultural codes, Aesthetic texts,
Mass communication, Rhetoric."'89 Eco himself admits that such an

be 'found' to convince the court of the guilt or innocence of the accused" (140). Thus
Mannetti concentrates his analysis of both Greek and Roman rhetoric on invention
and says very little about the figures. Although semiotics is usually defined as "the
science of signs," Manetti is one of the few semioticians explicitly to examine signs in
the context of classical rhetoric.
86The Semiotic Challenge, 46.
n. 67, p. x.
87Pursuit of Signs, cited above
88Pursuit of Signs, ix.
89Pursuit of Signs, ix.
 322 RHETORICA

"may give the impress of arrogant 'imperialism' on the part

agenda
of semioticians."90

This arrogance, combined with a grandiose design for subsuming

an immense array of the semi
disparate disciplines, probably made
oticians' program futile from the outset. Culler observes that "peo
ple affiliated with semiotics wrote interesting articles" on the topics
suggested by Eco, "but semiotics never became a sufficiently pow
erful presence in any one of these areas to make much headway."91
With regard to literary studies Culler concludes that "today itwould
be pointless to champion poetics as a central enterprise of semi
otics (since semiotics scarcely figures in the theoretical landscape
anymore)."92 Culler's conclusion about semiotics and poetics could
readily be applied to semiotics and rhetoric. In the last three decades
of the twentieth century the study of rhetoric defied the predictions
of the semioticians and continued the revival begun in the middle
of the century.93 Rhetoric, of course, has a very long history of surviv
ing attacks from formidable opponents. The uneasy relationship of
rhetoric and philosophy provides the most compelling example of
rhetoric's survival skills. Ricoeur observes that while "rhetoric is phi
losophy's oldest enemy and its oldest ally ... philosophy was never
in a position to destroy rhetoric or to absorb it."94 Like philosophy

90U. Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976), 6.

91
Pursuit of Signs, x.
92Pursuit of Signs, xiv. Of course, not everyone would agree with Culler's as
sessment. In the Encyclopedia of Semiotics, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), ix,
editor Paul Bouissac declares that "semiotics remains a credible for bridg
blueprint
ing the gaps between disciplines and across cultures, most likely because of its own
intellectual and pluridisciplinary as well as its remarkable
diversity history, capacity
for critical reflexivity." this encyclopedia includes an entry for the "Rhetoric
Although
of the Image," it does not include traditional rhetoric within the realm of semiotics. In
contrast, an earlier work, N?th's Handbook cited above n.
encyclopedic of Semiotics,
70, classifies rhetoric as a subdiscipline of "text semiotics," itself a major branch of the
field of semiotics.
93
the resurgence of interest in rhetoric in the late twentieth century re
Despite
ports of its death continue to appear. A relatively recent example is John Bender and
David Wellbery, eds., The Ends of Rhetoric (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990).
In the preface the editors present "The End of Rhetoric: A Historical Sketch" in which

they conclude that the classical rhetorical tradition "effectively ceased" (6). However,
that rhetoric has returned as called "rhetoricality," a
they contend something "gen
eralized rhetoric that penetrates to the deepest levels of human experience" (25). This
rhetoricality is apparent inmany modern including "Rhetoric and Modern
disciplines
Linguistics" (29-31). Their examples of rhetoricality in linguistics includes Group Mu,
in whose work "the inherited taxonomies of rhetorical are respected in their
theory
specificity," but "the displacement of tradition is nonetheless perceptible" (30).
94Rule ofMetaphor, cited above n. 36, pp. 10-11.
Splendor and Misery 323

before it, semiotics has made little progress in either destroying or

rhetoric.95
absorbing
While rhetoric can certainly take some solace in its resiliency, it
cannot afford complacency. Its critics are too many, too varied, and
too persistent to be ignored. Semiotics may have seen its theoretical
cachet diminished, but the critiques of Barthes, Todorov, Genette,
Ricoeur, and others retain their power. These writers were too eager
in their anticipation of rhetoric's demise and too obsessive about the
figures of speech. Nevertheless, their criticisms are often discomfort
ingly close to the mark. In particular, the frequently repeated claim
that rhetoric's reduction to the figures led to its decline warrants
consideration. It seems likely that a truncated rhetoric, deprived of
either elocutio or inventio, is vulnerable to its opponents' pr?dations.
Even semioticians recognize much of value in a complete theory of
rhetoric. Barthes admits to "the conviction that many of the features
of our literature, our instruction, of our institutions of language ...
would be illuminated or understood differently if we knew thor
... the rhetorical code which has to our
oughly given its language
culture." But, he concludes, "neither a nor an esthetic,
technique,
nor an ethic of Rhetoric are now For rhetoricians, then,
possible."96
the "semiotic challenge" is to prevent reducing "rhetoric to the rank
of a merely historical object"97 by continuing to validate rhetoric's
remarkable ability to illuminate the institutions of language.

95
Brian Vickers has charted many of the conflicts between rhetoric and philos

ophy in In Defence of Rhetoric (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), esp. "Territorial
versus Rhetoric," 148-213. Vickers does not include semiotics
Disputes: Philosophy
among the territorial disputants but he does take to task both Roman Jakobson and
Paul de Man for what he regards as their serious of the tropes
misunderstandings
(pp. 442-69).
96Semiotic Challenge, cited above n. 6, p. 92.
97
Semiotic Challenge, 93.