The "Ideograph": A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology

Citation
McGee, Calvin. "The 'Ideograph': A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology." Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, edited by John Louis Lucaites, Celeste Michelle Condit, and Sally Caudill, The Guilford Press, 1997, pp. 425-440.

Summary
McGee points to Burke's preference, in 1950, for the "the notion 'philosophy of myth' to explain the phenomenon of 'public' or 'mass consciousness' rather than the then-prevalent concept 'ideology'" as a conceptual split, in which Rhetoric's conception of ideology has atrophied and reduced it to something irrelevant to considerations of mass consciousness. But this has also led to unresolved problems in how Rhetoric has proceeded to do its work. "We are presented with a brute, undeniable phenomenon: Human beings in collectivity behave and think differently than human beings in isolation. The collectivity is said to 'have a mind of its own' distinct from the individual qua individual. [...] When one appears to 'think' and 'behave' collectively, therefore, one has been tricked, self-deluded, or manipulated into accepting the brute existence of such fantasies as 'public mind' or 'public opinion' or 'public philosophy.'" (425)

-Symbolists treat this "trick" as a voluntary agreement to perpetuate myth for the sake of communication; materialists treat the "trick" as an insidious lie that is forced on the community by the ruling class; Burke focuses on motive.

While both myth and ideology point towards a "fundamental falsity in the common metaphor which alleges the existence of a 'social organism," they have different attitudes towards it. Ideology "assumes that the exposure of falsity is a moral act" and considers it our moral responsibility to discard the false and approach the true. On the other hand, myth "is amoral because it is a purely poetic phenomenon, legitimized by rule of the poet's license, a 'suspension of disbelief.'" Symbolists, on the side of myth, argue for a "value-free approach to the object of study," denying that myth = lie. Materialists, on the side of ideology, see violence being done to a proletariat class. Yet there is still no contradiction, because "The Marxian asks how the 'givens' of a human environment impinge on the development of political consciousness; the symbolist asks how the human symbol-using, reality-creating potential impinges on material reality, ordering it normatively, 'mythically.'" (426)

McGee argues that myth and ideology should not be considered mutually exclusive alternatives, two ways of describing the same thing, but rather complements to each other. The materialists have neglected attention to the linguistic, while the symbolists have neglected attention to material phenomena that construct social reality. What is needed, he says, is:"A theoretical model which accounts for both 'ideology' and 'myth,' a model which neither denies human capacity to control 'power' through the manipulation of symbols nor begs Marx's essential questions regarding the influence of 'power' on creating and maintaining political consciousness. I will argue here that such a model must begin with the concept 'ideology' and proceed to link that notion directly with the interests of symbolism. (427)"A definition: '''"Ideology in practice is a political language, preserved in rhetorical documents, with the capacity to dictate decision and control public belief and behavior. Further, the political language which manifests ideology seems characterized by slogans, a vocabulary of 'ideographs' easily mistaken for the technical terminology of political philosophy. An analysis of ideographic usages in political rhetoric, I believe, reveals interpenetrating systems or 'structures' of public motives. Such structures appear to be 'diachronic' and 'synchronic' patterns of political consciousness which have the capacity both to control 'power' and to influence (if not determine) the shape and texture of each individual's 'reality.'"''' (427)

Hypothetical Characteristics of Ideographs
Ideographs are "the basic structural elements, the building blocks of ideology. [...] they signify and 'contain' a unique ideological commitment; further, they presumptuously suggest that each member of a community will see as a gestalt every complex nuance in them." (428)

-These are terms that are in ordinary usage, but may have particular resonances or meanings for people within a certain social or cultural group. For example, the phrases "rule of law" or "equality" - the ways in which those terms could be mobilized to support an ideology is what makes them ideographs. Even though ideographs are so specific, individual words or phrases, they can add up to or point towards an ideology because of how language works, shaping our experience of reality and that which can be thought. Burke talks about this, of course, but Black prefers to draw on Ortega's notion of the "etymological man," which he describes as "more careful and useful" than Burke's "symbol-using animal" and "logology." (429) (Evidence is mounting to confirm my growing suspicion that as much as Burke is helpful, he's also incredibly frustrating for his unwillingness to play with the same toys as everyone else, in the same ways)

Note that there can never be a "pure" concept of a thing, no way of getting outside the language and ideology that has shaped and enabled our thinking and communicating. We can never get at a "pure" understanding of equality, for example, one that is undiluted by our ideological commitments - though we can recognize how we are committed. Likewise, note that "Ideographs can not be used to establish or test truth, and vice versa; the truth, in metaphysical senses, is a consideration irrelevant to accurate characterizations of such ideographs..." (431)

The Analysis of Ideographs
Two dimensions to ideographs - diachronic (vertical) and synchronic (horizontal).

Vertically, this is the dimension of time - how an ideograph has been used to mean throughout history. As McGee describes, "Awareness of the way an ideographc can be meaningful now is controlled in large part by what it meant then." (432) Think of this as establishing precedent, what other ideographs has this one been linked to in the past and in what relationship. Call this kind of vertical ideographic structure a grammar.

Horizontally, this is the present moment - how an ideograph exists in relation to other ideographs in the present. Sometimes, people can try to create new links or relations between ideographs to posit new meanings, but this takes a lot of persuading. For example, Nixon trying to assert confidentiality in maintaining rule of law; two ideographs never before linked and that Nixon failed to prove should be linked in this situation. Call this kind of horizontal ideographic structure a rhetoric.

Ideological conflicts often arise over disputed meanings of terms, or rather, relations between terms - because ideographs don't stand on their own, but in relation to other ideographs that make up a web of ideology. So for example, "'equality' defined by 'access' alters the nature of 'liberty' from the relationship of 'equality' and 'liberty' thought to exist when 'equality' is defined as 'being educated.'" (434) Ideographs find meaning in their relationship to others.

As a recap, "In the terms of this argument, two recognizable 'ideologies' exist in any specific culture at one 'moment.' One 'ideology' is a grammar,' a historically-defined diachronic structure of ideograph meanigs expanding and contracting from the birth of the society to its 'present.' Another 'ideology' is a 'rhetoric,' a situationally-defined synchronic structure of ideograph clusters constantly reorganizing itself to accommodate specific circumstances while maintaining its fundamental consonance and unity." (434) And we can't truly separate the two axes, since they bear on each other.

Conclusion
Project of linking rhetoric and ideology without poetic metaphors that the likes of Dewey and Burke got caught up in. "The importance of symbolist constructs is their focus on media of consciousness, on the discourse that articulates and propagates common beliefs."

"A complete description of an ideology, I have suggested, will consist of
 * 1) the isolation of a society's ideographs,
 * 2) the exposure and analysis of the diachronic structure of every ideograph, and
 * 3) characterization of synchronic relationships among all the ideographs in a particular context.

General Notes
Such an elegant concept! It seems odd to think that rhetoric and ideology have not always been linked, since these days they are considered practically intertwined.

Does McGee's description of ideographs in relation to each other necessarily lead us down a deconstructive path? Just as words always point to more/other words, do ideographs do a similar thing? This deconstructive implication, plus the positioning of rhetorical criticism as an exposer of ideologies' structures, suggests to me that this is still very much within the traditional model of critique. What does the ideograph have to offer post-criticism - if anything?