A Note on Theory and Practice in Rhetorical Criticism

Ihe subject of theory and practice mandates attention to the "problem of mediation," to the intersections between thought and action, idea and will, conception and execution. One cannot deal cohesively with the relationship between theory and practice without focusing on the psychological process of criticism, on the critic's own motives, means and ends, on his relationships with his characteristic perspectives on the one hand, and with the critical object on the other. Hence, these observations concerning theory and practice in rhetorical criticism must be concerned at least as much with critics as with criticism.' It is commonsensical to hold that the character of a critique is shaped by its theoretical presuppositions. Virtually all the essays contiguous to this one demonstrate, in one way or another, how fateftil a theoretical commitment is to the activity of criticism. The burden in this essay, therefore, is not to document further that already well established connection. Instead, the intent is to explore a few of the implications attending two conceptions ofthe relationship between the practice of rhetorical criticism and riietoricat theory: a conception that fuses theory and practice, and a conception that divorces them. The linguist Kenneth Pike provided the textual basis of this exploration in an essay that was principally concerned with the descriptive reconstruction of obscure and remote language systems.^ His account of two standpoints — the etic and emic — for the description of behavior has proved to have been suggestive in fields other than linguistics, and it may also have a certain limited utility in rhetorical criticism as well. Pike wrote that "The etic viewpoint studies behavior as from outside of a particular system, and as an essential initial approach to an alien system. The emic viewpoint results from studying behavior as from inside the system."' It can be argued that there are perspectives on rhetorical criticisni that correspond rather exactly to the etic and emic approaches to the study of linguistic systems. These corresponding perspectives on criticism are, respectively, the theoretic or etic viewpoint, which ap^woaches a rhetorical transaction from outside of that transaction and interprets the transaction in ternis of a pre-existing theory; and the non-theoretic or nominalistic or emic viewpoint, which approaches a