Trinity as Trope: The Relational Turn in Communication Studies

Previous “systems” of rhetoric, which have arisen as responses to felt needs, emphasize an individualist paradigm whereas the contemporary system, responding to current impulses, tends toward a relational paradigm. The “Trinity” is proposed here as a trope that both prefigures this relational and dialogical turn in communication studies and suggests the ethical ends toward which communication praxis should aim. In particular, the Trinitarian thought of Chiara Lubich offers a unique perspective on the relational current in communication studies, especially its links of ontology with praxis, relational being with communication, and kenosis with perichoresis. Douglas Ehninger’s groundbreaking synthesis of historic patterns in communication studies, which appeared in Philosophy and Rhetoric in 1968, recognizes common characteristics of rhetorical inquiries arising out of felt needs within three respective eras. Ehninger calls rhetorical investigations that participate in a common response to needs of these given periods “systems of rhetoric.” Implicit in each of these “systems” is a philosophy of being: for the period that Ehninger names “Classical,” persons are rational beings; for the “Enlightenment Period,” persons are cognitive beings; and for the Modern Period, persons are social beings. Three loci of inquiry correspond with Ehninger’s three systems and attendant philosophies. For Classic rhetorical theory, the syllogism could locate much of rhetorical investigation. For the Enlightenment Period, the mind or thought could be viewed as the central site of exploration. And for the Modern Period, the society takes central spot. Almost prophetically, in characterizing the Modern Period as “sociological” in its concern with human relations and social cohesion,1 Ehninger anticipates a fourth period that is the subject of this essay. We are now removed more than 40 years from the period at which Ehninger’s review stops. An updating or extension of the Modern Period profile into what can be called the Contemporary Period thus seems warranted. Modern theories that Ehninger described in his article continue to exert influence today, yet substantial new theories have taken their place alongside the feted rhetorical ideas advanced during the middle to late part of the twentieth century. This essay will focus on one significant development in