From Peirce’s Speculative Rhetoric to Educational Rhetoric

Abstract

Abstract My aim in this article is to examine ways of designing a new ‘educational rhetoric’ based on CS. Peirce’s speculative rhetoric, the ‘doctrine of the general conditions of the reference of Symbols and other Signs to the Interpretants which they aim to determine’ (CP 2.93). This analysis is based on a general idea that has been investigated by several educators, teachers and researchers mainly within the context of critical pedagogy and educational semiotics: school life is regulated by what may be called a classical dispositio, which is a certain way of organising speech in the classroom My analysis of dispositio is based on the ‘rhetorical turn’ that Colapietro sees in Peirce’s later semiotics and pragmaticism and defines as an integrated analysis of signs’ effects.This ‘rhetorical turn’ offers educators resources that allow them to rethink how students’ epistemological activity, understood as a series of semiosic events, leads them to develop new knowledge and modes of conduct. In this paper, I ...