Global Rhetorical Traditions

The interdisciplinary field of rhetorical studies has grown increasingly aware that the arts of speech, persuasion, and language use go far beyond the sources that used to represent the foundation as recently as a few decades ago. While exciting work continues to be done on the rhetorical traditions of Greece and Rome, more and more scholars are teaching and writing on rhetoric in its other forms outside of the western tradition. Global Rhetorical Traditions represents a pivotal moment in this evolving movement toward more global and international readings of what rhetoric is or what it could be. Serving as the first comprehensive textbook that features both commentary and primary sources, it is aptly positioned as a counterpart to Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg’s important text, The Rhetorical Tradition. While I cannot see many teachers using both of these texts—both are significant in size—this placing of international or global traditions of rhetoric on a parity with a popular book presenting the western tradition is significant. The textbook edited by Hui Wu and Tarez Samra Graban has a reasonable cost and an impressive scope. It can easily be used to teach courses that challenge and expand what and who we include in the rhetorical canon. It leverages a range of contemporary scholars from rhetorical studies to create a research-intensive textbook that will stimulate the scholars who teach with it and the students who use it. The design of Global Rhetorical Traditions is useful for teachers who want to design and implement courses in global, “non-western,” or international rhetoric. My attempt at putting labels on the sort of course this book fits reveals the tensions at the heart of this project in global rhetoric. “Rhetoric” has been long tethered to its Greek concepts, debates, and terms of art. Applying the term and its conceptual baggage to other traditions both offers the potential to build valuable bridges to other lines of thought that ethnocentrism and disciplinary habits might blind us to and risks missing the insights and unique aspects of those traditions. In the general introduction to the book, Graban clearly lays out the choices made by the editors to recover traditions and treatises as rhetorical that we have missed in the West, even if those traditions do not use “rhetoric” or a clear equivalent term. The volume aims to build bridges and create meaningful points of contact, so such a synthetic approach is justified. Graban’s introduction also shows the emphasis on cultural and linguistic sensitivity that the volume will prioritize when curating and commenting on its myriad primary sources. All are translated into English, but the editors and the individual commentators make a point of showing the presence of nuance and complexity in the original texts. Drawing on Jerry Won Lee’s notion of “semioscape,” the introduction honestly reckons with the challenges and choices of organizing such a volume. The book is largely divided by regions, an organization scheme that has its usefulness. Still, Graban notes that this should not occlude the hybrid and globalized nature of many of these traditions (especially in the recent past). One quickly gets the sense that researching and teaching in global or comparative rhetorics makes one acutely sensitive to the choices one must make. I have felt this in my own research and teaching in this area. How does one structure a course, or an article for that matter, without trivializing or oversimplifying traditions and long-standing (and evolving) cultures?