Noboru SATO
I obtained my doctrate at the University of Tokyo in 2006. Since then, I have been teaching at several Japanese Universities. From 2008 to 09, I worked as research fellow at the Department of Classics, King's College London with the help of Canon Foundation Europe Research Fellowship. From 2009 to 2012, I worked at the University of Tokyo as assistant professor. In October of 2012, I started working at Kobe University as associate professor.
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In his sturdy book, A Rhetoric of Motives, Kenneth Burke argues that a fundamental purpose of rhetoric is identification: a speaker gives signs to the audience, mainly through language, indicating that his “properties” are the same or similar to those of the audience, thereby affirming a community with the audience and forging proximity. This is what Burke calls “consubstantiality” – the sharing of substance between two individuals – a process that ends in persuasion. Rhetoric also has the capacity to generate division or prolong hostility, persuading the audience by setting up people, matters or ideas as antithetical to the listeners. Rhetoric, in other words, creates a community: a conscious, psychological attachment to a group and the belief that this group has shared interests that are, in turn, at odds with those of other groups that may be constructed or implied by the speaker. Psychological and social studies indicate that the activation of group attitudes and identities and inter-group relations – in-group solidarity and out-group hostility – have a huge effect on the behaviours and attitudes in target audiences (e.g. Miller et al. 1981; Conover 1984; Lau 1989; Huddy 2003).
The techniques of unity and division in respect to rhetoric have been widely studied in classical scholarship, but only in a fragmentary way: there is no single, systematic and comprehensive study of these techniques. This gives scope for further research since there are several open questions: what forms does the rhetoric of identification take in Greek and Roman prose and poetry? What do these forms tell us about the speaker’s purpose, and how does he exploit them to the best rhetorical effect? What sources do we have about the reaction of the audience? How much difference does the nature of the speeches – forensic, deliberative and epideictic – make in the exploitation of the rhetoric of community and division?
Topics may include, but are not limited to considerations of:
a. language;
b. emotions;
c. performance;
d. memory;
e. humour theory;
f. gender-based approaches;
g. religion;
h. narrative, argumentation, ēthopoiia and other techniques that reinforce affiliation/ disaffiliation to groups.