by distinguishing topoi, rhetorical devices, categories of speeches according to their purposes, etc. we describe what has worked in the past, what is invariant in structure, what is general, and thus preclude variability.  aristotle recognized that the object of rhetoric is what is changeable, variable, subject to influence.  but  his theory of language was one of making replicable distinctions, defining terms capable of accurate representations of a reality.  he thus separated the object of rhetoric from the language of rhetoric, recognizing variability in the former but defining, fixing, stabilizing the latter by authority.

dick, you say that rhetoricians would not agree.  you may be right.  however, this disagreement grows from the inability of rhetoricians to apply rhetoric to itself, to see themselves as players in a language game, as the stakeholders of a way of theorizing, as politicians on behalf of their perspective (and opposed to alternative political perspectives -- the perspectives they disagree with).

design needs to be able to reflect on its own practices, to continuously redesign itself.  if it can't it dies.

klaus krippendorff

At 09:56 PM 10/2/00 -0400, Richard Buchanan wrote:


Excerpts from mail: 2-Oct-100 Re: Design Knowledge ... by Klaus
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> rhetoric has nothing to say about the ingenuity needed to
> create new speeches but about what is invariant in and can be generalized
> to all speeches.

Rhetoricians would disagree.  The art of invention, based on topics or
topoi, is the cornerstone of rhetoric.  It is the art of discovering (or
inventing) what may be said in a given particular situation--i.e. in a
specific speech for a specific occasion.  Invention is regarded as the
first of the five arts of rhetoric and the subject of unending
discussion.  The literature is extensive and fascinating. 

The methods of creativity that are often discussed in design employ
topics as the device of art.  One example of many concerns Horst Rittel.
 Late in his life, students at Berkeley explained the art of rhetoric to
him--there is a strong rhetoric program at Berkeley--and he recognized
that the inventional devices in his own approach to design had an
uncanny resemblence to rhetorical topoi.

By the way, topoi are also the device of art in dialectic.  In contrast,
logic and grammar employ the device of categories.

Dick