Things, Thoughts, Words, and Actions: The Problem of Language in Late Eighteenth-Century British Rhetorical Theory

Abstract

H. Lewis Ulman here examines the roles of theory in eighteenth-century British rhetorics, linking those roles to philosophical issues informing twentieth-century rhetorical theory. In doing so, Ulman develops a general model of the of language for rhetorical theory, a model that transcends the impasse between realism skepticism that marks both eighteenth- twentieth-century rhetorical theory.The nature of was never more central to rhetorical theory than in the second half of the eighteenth century. Yet, until now, the articulation of theories of the arts of rhetoric in eighteenth-century Britain has received little attention. Ulman examines the role of grammar theories of in the formation of eighteenth-century rhetorical theory, investigating the significance of theory for such key concerns of eighteenth-century rhetoric as verbal criticism, style, elocution. His study highlights what he understands as the central motive of late eighteenth-century British rhetoricians--to construct for their particular cultural context philosophically rigorous accounts of verbal communication based on carefully articulated theories of thought language.Toward this end, Ulman examines three eighteenth-century British rhetorical treatises: George Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric, Hugh Blair's on Rhetoric Belles Lettres, and Thomas Sheridan's Course of Lectures on Elocution. He then identifies the continuities discontinuities between the problem of for eighteenth- twentieth-century rhetorical theory proposes a pluralistic stance toward the problem of in rhetoric as an alternative to the theoretical standoff that currently characterizes the debate between realist antirealist rhetorics.