Graduation Year
2012
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.A.
Degree Granting Department
English
Major Professor
Meredith W. Zoetewey, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Carl Herndl, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Marc C. Santos, Ph.D.
Keywords
empathy, Levinas, mirror neuron, neurosciences, philosophy, rhetoric
Abstract
This piece makes the claim that rhetoric is first philosophy--before philosophy, epistemology, ontology, or any other field--or that rhetoric is, at the least, on equal footing as these fields because:
empathy--and thusly the impulse for communication--is physiologically hardwired into humans; special distinctions between human and animal are largely artificial constructions, as is evidenced by neurosciences; "hard" science, in the form of neurosciences, is providing entrance points & opportunities for rhetoric to raise its status within the academy; and said neurosciences, in addition to empathy studies, have shown strong evidence supporting linguistic and evolutionary links between humans and other species, thereby supporting a "preoriginary rhetoricity," in Diane Davis's terms. Davis's Inessential Solidarity... serves as a stepping stone for this piece in the sense that the ethical relation as derived from the work of Levinas, originary rhetoricity, and rhetorics of the saying or of the address require the utmost attention for rhetorical scholars right now. I show how neuroscience research might help Davis's project--in which she is far from alone--move forward by providing connections between rhetoric and current neuroscience work.
Scholar Commons Citation
Honnold, Jeffrey L., "Toward a Working Theory of Neurorhetorics" (2012). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/4077
