Studying rhetoric in non-Western contexts is complicated by rhetoric's sedimented cultural history in the West. Analysis of different approaches in anthropology and the discipline of rhetoric itself show that a multi-pronged approach is necessary to study rhetoric, including analysis of texts in context, consideration of the rhetorical competence of speakers, and careful attention to the power dynamics in a given situation. Using the collection and analysis of Aymara texts as an example of this new approach, this dissertation argues that considering rhetoric as a phenomenon of language use that occurs across genres when competent speakers attempt to achieve social or personal ends through language best helps to capture texts that will yield fruitful rhetorical analyses. It is argued further that the methodology developed in the ethnography of speaking for the analysis of communicative events addresses many of the shortcomings in working with texts in languages other than one's own.

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Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 36-38).

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Our “terministic screens,” learned attitudes and assumptions that screen what we see, render much data invisible and thus hinder the study of South Asian rhetorics. I hypothesized that by using two terms central to the Vedic worldview—Ṛta and levels of speech theory—as a terministic key, a touchstone, I could better identify and study Vedic rhetoric on its own terms and understand its modes and methods. This study finds that together these terms give insight into the Vedic paradigm as a whole. Chapter two explores these terms, noting that beyond audible speech and silent speech-in-thought theorized in Western rhetoric, Vedic empirical study finds two deeper levels: Paṣyantī, sensing an idea as a gestalt, and Parā, the transcendental source of speech, and includes methods for using the full range and power of speech, an embodied literacy. String theory of quantum physics echoes the Vedic cosmology of speech and its power, and illustrates the principle that drives the Vedic rhetorical modes and methods, which the next chapters explore: chapter three, the nondiscursive rhetorics of mantra, chapter four, the didactic rhetorics of dance and of the guru-disciple dynamic, and chapter five, collaborative debate toward truth, and cosmic citizenship in the governing assembly. All are driven not by persuasion but attunement with Ṛta—Truth/all the laws of nature/Brahman—an eloquence that embodies cosmic harmony. Being vs. seeming, truth vs. truthiness: Could an alternate approach to current practice advance our understanding and teaching of rhetoric and raise the level of our civic discourse?

This study suggests, through a rhetorical analysis of the role of orators and oration in Ralph Ellison's <em>Invisible Man</em> and N. Scott Momaday's <em>House Made of Dawn</em>, that literature can be a valuable resource for the study of comparative and contrastive rhetoric; conversely, it also demonstrates that a knowledge of culturally-specific rhetorical and narrative practices is important for understanding ethnic-American novels and their social significance. Written during periods of intense racial upheaval in the United States, <em>Invisible Man</em> and <em>House Made of Dawn</em> are, to use a term coined by George Kennedy, metarhetorics: works that explore, from cross-cultural and intercultural perspectives, the ends and means of rhetoric and the ways in which rhetoric is linked to the formation of individual, ethnic, and national identities. This exploration is undertaken through the diegetic rhetoric of the novels, the depiction of rhetorical practice within their fictional worlds. Ellison's young orator, who vacillates between accommodationist, communist, and African American vernacular rhetorics, and Momaday's alienated protagonist, who is healed through the postcolonial rhetoric of a Peyotist street preacher and the ritual rhetoric of a displaced Navajo chanter, both illustrate how the recovery of traditional rhetorical practices is an integral part of cultural empowerment. The interaction of culturally-specific systems of rhetoric is also embodied in the extradiegetic rhetoric of the novels, the means by which the novels themselves influence their readers. Central to the novels' own rhetorical effectiveness is their authors' strategic appropriation of modernist techniques, which allowed the works to negotiate multiple literary traditions or social contexts, to penetrate and transform the American canon, and to accommodate and affect readers from a broad range of cultural backgrounds.

This study suggests, through a rhetorical analysis of the role of orators and oration in Ralph Ellison's <em>Invisible Man</em> and N. Scott Momaday's <em>House Made of Dawn</em>, that literature can be a valuable resource for the study of comparative and contrastive rhetoric; conversely, it also demonstrates that a knowledge of culturally-specific rhetorical and narrative practices is important for understanding ethnic-American novels and their social significance. Written during periods of intense racial upheaval in the United States, <em>Invisible Man</em> and <em>House Made of Dawn</em> are, to use a term coined by George Kennedy, metarhetorics: works that explore, from cross-cultural and intercultural perspectives, the ends and means of rhetoric and the ways in which rhetoric is linked to the formation of individual, ethnic, and national identities. This exploration is undertaken through the diegetic rhetoric of the novels, the depiction of rhetorical practice within their fictional worlds. Ellison's young orator, who vacillates between accommodationist, communist, and African American vernacular rhetorics, and Momaday's alienated protagonist, who is healed through the postcolonial rhetoric of a Peyotist street preacher and the ritual rhetoric of a displaced Navajo chanter, both illustrate how the recovery of traditional rhetorical practices is an integral part of cultural empowerment. The interaction of culturally-specific systems of rhetoric is also embodied in the extradiegetic rhetoric of the novels, the means by which the novels themselves influence their readers. Central to the novels' own rhetorical effectiveness is their authors' strategic appropriation of modernist techniques, which allowed the works to negotiate multiple literary traditions or social contexts, to penetrate and transform the American canon, and to accommodate and affect readers from a broad range of cultural backgrounds.

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