Volume 4, Issue 2, Winter 2001

Learning to "Yo!": Synchronicity and Rhythm in the Creation of a Public Sphere
Dale Cyphert

"Can you run a wheelbarrow?" That question began an impromptu job interview, reported to me in a recent study of rhetorical practices in a predominately oral work community. The phrase struck me as odd, at once affable and affected. By the end of the project, though, I had recognized wheelbarrow handling as a legitimate gauge of rhetorical competence, a precursor to the creation of rhetorical community, and an activity of potential rhetorical importance in the management of that community’s work. As it turns out, running a wheelbarrow can be a complex exercise that reflects the rhythm of a job site. The ability of a person to engage in that rhythm and thus to synchronize sufficiently with the group to engage in rhetorical behavior, can be judged by a worker’s ability to "run a wheelbarrow."

From the literate perspective of the Modernist West, it has been easy to ignore the physicality of communal decision-making. Rhythmic aspects of discourse have been treated as an element of style, and incidents of synchronicity serve as an entrée for context or genre studies, but rhetoric is firmly centered in the realm of reasoned discourse. In oral communities, however, rhythmic, synchronized behavior remains a preferred method of decision making in the daily work of communal existence. In such cultures, synchrony of movement creates the sense of community that is necessary for any rhetorical action to take place, and an individual’s synchrony with the rhythm of the group determines his or her ability to influence its action.

On this jobsite, the centrality of the rhythmic vocalizations and synchronized behavior highlighted their rhetorical potential. Synchronous cooperative action was not an embellishment of reasoned discourse; it functioned directly to guide the community’s action. This community’s issues—its politics and government—involved the material decisions of communal labor. The problems to be solved are familiar: What should the group do next? How should resources be allocated? Who will be in charge? The timeframe is short, however; decisions must be made as wet concrete pours from a truck. Important decisions that serve to define and maintain a public sphere—the literate or figurative space in which communal decision making takes place—must be made on the fly. Who is authorized to influence the action of others? How should proposed actions be compared? Evaluated? Selected? What form of communication is properly used to influence the actions of others?

An understanding of rhetorical action as beginning with a responsiveness to a rhetorical exigency (Bitzer "Rhetorical Situation") pervades the contemporary understanding of rhetorical action (Benoit), but presumes Western norms of what is discussable and how best to discuss. The scope of rhetoric has been somewhat arbitrarily limited to "verbal discourse." This rests on two arguments: (1) A broader conceptualization threatens to encompass "practically all interhuman activity" (Bryant 408), and (2) language has proven the best means to achieve the "informed judgment" that is presumed the highest form of decision making (417).

Yet, those presumptions are themselves the product of the West’s rhetorical culture. Starting with Bitzer’s more "primitive" conceptualization of a rhetorical situation as the pragmatic effort to "produce action or change the world," (4) the full range of human behavior might well be considered potentially rhetorical. The proper question, from a cross-cultural perspective, is not how is discourse used to achieve reasoned judgment, but rather, how does a community behave in order to chose and produce collaborative action? In this community, working with wet concrete in the hot sun, the elite, educated rhetoric of ideas, analysis and talk is exchanged for one of action, analogy and physical coordination.

Rhythmic Elements of Discursive Rhetoric

Literate rhetorical culture has devalued physicality in general and synchronized physicality in particular. Even though music and dance were integral to the development of a civic being in the earliest moments of rhetorical art, the embodied physicality of communication has since been devalued, ignored and extinguished in favor of cerebral reasoning and interaction (Haynes; Macke; McKerrow). Rhetorical theory has reflected the concerns, values and presumptions of Western culture and philosophy, which has privileged the linear, sequenced, abstract, analytical "masculine" left brain over the imagic, synchronous, holistic gestalts of the "feminine" right brain (Shlain). Perhaps more significantly, theory has accepted the Cartesian duality of mind and body, predicating our understanding of human interaction on demonstrably false assumptions about human cognition (Lakoff and Johnson).

Within contemporary theory, rhythm and synchrony play a support role to the content of linguistic discourse. That hierarchy is not inherent to rhetorical systems; Aristotle claimed delivery held "the greatest importance," ahead of proofs and style, and listed volume, harmony, and rhythm as its components (Aristotle 1403b). Later scholars defined and catalogued the rhythmic figures of speech, although they remained separate from discussions of message content. The effect of rhythm has never been denied, but the contemporary study of rhetoric reflects a developmental presumption that finds individual voice, intellectual argument and rational ethics to be more mature or intelligent aspects of human communication. The primitive importance of rhythm is explained as a memory device or as a means to enrapture the aural audience (Havelock; Ong). Its aesthetic value remains as merely the vestigial trace of an earlier rhetoric, no longer important in the more highly civilized rhetorics of good reasons.

Several recent critics have investigated the rhythmic elements of rhetoric, prompted by the obvious importance of rhythmic rhetorical forms in contemporary culture. Medhurst and Benson, for example, examine the use of rhythmic montage in the social documentary film, The City. Rhythmic changes in content, music and editing are used to support the film’s rhetorical point and Medhurst and Benson conclude that "rhythmic forms both appeal to and reveal the innate psychological processes of the human animal, providing universal rhetorical tools for those artists sufficiently skilled in their employment" (464). Musical artifacts have been similarly studied, extending the notion of rhetoricity from the lyrics of music to the emotional impact of its structure and tonal qualities.

Still, rhythmicity is often dismissed as an appeal to only the lower psychological processes. Rap music, for instance, celebrates its African lineage with the repetitive rhythms that Western music avoids and is branded "non-musical" for its lack of melody and harmony (Walser 209). Similarly, the rhythmic cadence of eloquent oratory has never been denied, and the power of musical rhythmicity in contemporary "Black Baptist rhetoric" is acknowledged (Weitzel; Wilson). Nevertheless, success of the rhythmic elements are ascribed to the "credibility" they develop in the oral subculture of their audience (Walser 253) or their success in cueing the participation of a culturally sensitive audience (Keith and Whittenberger-Keith). Rhythm can obviously support the rhetorical logic of a discourse, but a hierarchy of appeals remains. Dispassionate reason characterizes the best rhetoric of political and social discourse; rhythmic cadences characterize the more primitive rhetorics of oral cultures and religious experience.

Rhythm might be secondary, but it is at least acknowledged as an element of rhetorical discourse. Synchrony, on the other hand, plays virtually no role in Western rhetorical theory. Coordinated physical behavior has been implicated in a variety of social phenomena (Bernieri et al.) and is theorized as a major component of interpersonal rapport (Bandler and Grinder; Hall Dance; Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal). As with much research in nonverbal and interpersonal communication, the implications have not been incorporated into an understanding of rhetorical communication. Although communal decision making obviously included both interpersonal conversations and nonverbal components, these are typically perceived as distinct areas of study without any inherent interrelationship to rhetorical discourse.

Rhythmic Prerequisites to Rhetorical Behavior

A larger investigation of rhetorical forms demonstrated that an oral community frames its public sphere within collectivist social norms, prefers global cognitive processes for decision-making, and relies on non-linguistic methods of communication (see Cyphert, "Dance"; Cyphert "Pleasure" ). I thus approached this event with a presumption that literate rhetorical systems are not inherently superior to oral systems, and socially-cohesive, holistic, nonverbal behaviors cannot be dismissed as arhetorical social interaction. Instead, my aim was to observe such behaviors carefully in order to describe the normative framework for rhetorical interaction. The ongoing behaviors of a cement crew were video- and audio-taped in an effort to observe the parameters of their own collective problem solving, discarding any assumption that a lack of "essay-text literacy" implied a lack of rhetorical behavior.

The crew was to pour the floor of a basement, which is typically done after the house above is framed, roofed and sided, but before any stairs are built. This basement presented an unusually awkward situation. It had only two windows, set across one corner of the basement. The concrete truck’s chute was positioned through one, leaving the other as an egress for the crew.

This crew’s pours typically require at least five workers. Two individuals work either end of the "rod", a 2x4 that is pulled across the forms to level the concrete, and a "puddler" pushes the "mud" into place in front of them with a flat rake. As soon as a section of concrete is poured, a fourth person begins to "float" the surface, smoothing it with a flat-bottomed weight. Finally, a person must "work the chute," directing the concrete into the forms where the puddlers stand. The finish is a final step, but one that can wait, if necessary, until one of the other jobs is completed. On this job, the chute coming through the corner window could not be moved to the forms, so mud needed to be wheelbarrowed and at least six crew members would eventually be needed, although the constricted area meant just one person might be able to rod significant portions of the job.

As the concrete truck arrived, only four crew members were present on the jobsite. They arranged themselves as best they could by combining the chute handler’s and wheelbarrower’s duties. One laborer called for the truck driver to release a chuteful of concrete, directed it into his wheelbarrow, took the wheelbarrow to the far corner where the pour would begin, and returned to set his wheelbarrow down and repeat the process. Nothing was said to me, an observer with a video camera who had been on the job site for about a week. The crew members complained among themselves, however, about the absent crew members and the significantly slower pace of the job that would result from being shorthanded. Recognizing the predicament of the wheelbarrow-running laborer, I climbed into the basement and offered to run the chute. As I did so, however, I recognized a significant issue of job competence: I couldn’t "Yo!" The laborer had not been merely delivering mud to the puddler. He also functioned as the chute handler normally would, proactively directing concrete to the spot it would be needed next, timing and directing the dump so that the right amount of material would land where the puddlers could support the rhythmically coordinated pull of the rodders. Further, a second laborer still had not arrived and the single wheelbarrower could barely keep up with the rest of the crew. Ideally, a well-timed signal could speed up the wheelbarrowing process considerably. Because the mud took a few seconds to slide down the chute, the truck driver could be signaled to release a load before the wheelbarrow was in position to receive it. The driver of the cement truck, who could see neither the wheelbarrow nor the pour from his position outside the basement, could be told to release a load before the wheelbarrow was in place, and signaled to stop when the right amount of mud was still on its way down the chute.

As I positioned myself next to the chute, I recognized both the significance of a simple, "Yo!" and my incompetence in the context of the crew’s decision-making process. My chute responsibility included attention to both the subtly shifting needs of the puddlers and the wheelbarrow’s progress so that I could signal the driver. Ideally, the laborer could work at a run, stopping his wheelbarrow for only the fraction of a second it took to set the load and adjust his muscles to the sudden weight. My inexperience meant I could not competently monitor the concrete pour, predict the wheelbarrower’s movements, or decide how much concrete would be needed in the next load. I sensed that signaling the driver involved far more decision-making responsibility than I was ready to handle, and I begged the laborer to continue to signal the truck driver.

I took over the chute, reaching high with a wooden paddle to pull the load quickly down the chute and hold back any residue until the wheelbarrow was in place again. After only a few rounds, I found myself reaching upward, anticipating the mud, in response to the labor’s, "Yo!" I realized the audible signal had not been merely a communication of information between the laborer and the truck driver, but also functioned as a cue for the rest of the crew as we set our muscles and began our motions. We quickly settled into a rhythmic harmony, the beat of the laborer’s signal coordinating each individual’s actions and decisions into the collaborative action of a concrete pour. An assertive, "Yo!" directed everyone in the group to coordinate their various measurements, adjustments, and actions. A single individual set the rhythm of the job to allow everyone to make quick, effective decisions and maintain maximum efficiency of the pour.

So, the Western rhetorical critic might ask: What is the exigence? Where is the text? What was the rhetorical exchange? Where is the political significance? In the absence of conscious choices, analysis of possible courses of action, or verbal debates, the rhetoricity of this crew’s action can be invisible to Western theorists. Taken as an example of a "primitive" rhetorical situation, however, the completion of the pour clearly required an ability for the workers to "harmonize their behavior" with each other (Bitzer "Rhetorical"). As an outsider on this work crew, I was struck by the enormity of what has been taken as a given of the rhetorical situation. It is not a simple matter for groups of people to engage in cries, language or completed speech acts in an effort to harmonize their behavior.

First, it was the rhythm of the "Yo!" that synchronized the group’s action. The job involved an endless series of decisions to make and problems to solve; most of them could be made with the aural knowledge of when the concrete-laden wheelbarrow had left the chute. Second, my ability to produce a reliable rhythm would qualify me not only to signal the group with necessary information, but also to take on a leadership role as I determined when to "Yo!" and thus when to fill the wheelbarrow and send another load of concrete to the puddlers. I failed to find within myself the knowledge, self-efficacy, and confidence that would allow me to fully participate in the rhetorical aspects of this group’s engagement with its environment. I was uninformed, out of synch, and thus rhetorically incompetent.

In contrast, the competent laborer’s "Hip! Haugh! Yip!" kept the group in synchrony, the job well-organized, and his own rhetorical status intact. The discourse does not, however, lend itself to close textual analysis. I toyed with the idea of noting the rhythmic pattern, but the specifics of the rhythm on this particular job seemed to hold no great significance. While fruitful work has been done with micro-analysis of job motions (for example Hutchins and Klausen; Weick and Roberts), such a critique here seemed analogous to a neo-Aristotelian treatise on the discourse of mundane rhetoric: a detailed description of rhetorical behavior that would provide no new insights into the community’s rhetorical processes.

The element of the rhetorical situation that struck me was my own sense of "rhythm apprehension" as I struggled to find my voice in the community of the concrete crew. Although I could see the pattern of actions, and presumably could have made the vocalization, I recognized that setting the group’s rhythm could not be done by a neophyte. As the newest member, I would typically have taken the puddling job. I could now see why: that position placed a new person in the middle of the job, able to observe both the rodders and the coming wheelbarrow load and begin to internalize the rhythms of the job. Although my size (small) and wardrobe (lacking concrete boots) required that I run the chute, I didn’t know how to vocalize a signal that could guide the community. I deferred to my social elder to provide the signals and pondered what it would take to learn to "Yo!"

Learning to "Yo!"

Given the obvious emotional and practical importance of rhythmic, synchronized action to guide the group’s problem solving, my next step was to make theoretical sense of the behavior. These elements might be under-theorized in the assertive Western paradigm, but even a brief survey of rhythmic and synchronous human activity confirms that "something" happens in groups where the two occur. Pattern and rhythm have long been recognized as a basis for meaningfulness for individual cognition (Gregg; Neisser) and considerable research is now being done on circadian rhythms, menstrual coordination and social synchronization.1,2

Probably the earliest observations of rhythmic action involved the dances of early social groups. Community dancing, defined when "an indefinite number of individuals start to move their muscles rhythmically, establish a regular beat, and continue doing so for long enough to arouse euphoric excitement shared by all participants," occurs only among humans (McNeill 13). Musical vocalizations have been considered the precursor to language (Clynes; Donald), and rhythmic coordination might have acted in a similar way to build the emotional bonds that allowed the development of social behavior (McNeill 27-31). Sustained community dancing at festival occasions is nearly universal in small, independent communities. Positive emotions are heightened and participants and observers alike develop a sense of well-being, even a euphoric state of mind. Anthropologists have noted the activity tends to bind a community more firmly together and facilitate later cooperative efforts (37).

Neurophysiologist Walter Freemen describes dance as the "biotechnology of group formation" (129). In the lengthy community dances of preliterate societies, exhaustion creates an abrupt dissolution of intentional structures, triggered by the release of mediating neurohormones. The neurochemical result is a state of malleability, during which neural connections are subject to reorganization, with the potential to coordinate belief structures with the salient environment and facilitate social behavior (127). Similar states occur in response to the neurochemical floods that occur during orgasmic sexual reproduction and childbirth, as well as the highly traumatic situations of warfare, torture, and disaster. In most of these situations, the resulting emotional and social bonds are well recognized, but they tend to involve individuals or small groups. Only in ecstatic communal dancing does an entire community coordinate limbic neuroactivity patterns, the cognitive basis for goal-directed behavior (72-73). The history of rhythmic and synchronous movement in religious activities is far too large to summarize here, but the ability of muscular activity to induce ecstatic trances and create social bonds has been exploited by virtually every religious tradition. Similarly, the emotional and physical results have been used to enhance military efforts. The enthusiasm and spontaneity of individual inspiration was harnessed in favor of social order in a tradition of cadenced march, close order drill, and ritualistic ceremonial display.

The history of modern warfare documents the supremacy of well-drilled troops. Well-conditioned troops were more effective, of course. In addition, coordinated action allowed the efficient use of such advances as the phalanx, triremes, and massed pikemen. The army that could march quickly and accurately could be moved on the battle field with greater precision. Military historian William McNeill argues, however, that the real value of cadenced military drill lay in the potential for social bonding. He credits the superiority of European armies to the psychological effects of incessant drill, introduced by Maurice of Orange in the 1590s.Not only were the troops more effective in battle, but "it became safe to arm even the poorest classes, pay them a pittance, and still expect and secure obedience" (3). As European culture changed radically from agrarian to urban, literate, commercialization, "prolonged drill allowed soldiers, recruited from the fringes…of society…to create a new, artificial primary community among themselves" (131). Even though close-order drill lost its practical battlefield utility in the 1840s, it remains an important element in developing the emotional bonds of military esprit de corps.3

Physical cultivation, and synchronized gymnastics or calisthenics in particular, have played a similar role in the development of civic and organizational responsibility across a wide swath of cultures, from the stylized routines of French court dance and Asian martial arts, to the gymnastics clubs of the Turners and the morning calisthenics of Japanese salarymen and the Red army. Militarism and political authoritarianism have come to be associated with organized, government sponsored physical synchrony, but remains an integral part of the bonding rituals in modern sports (McNeill 149). Stadium crowds do "The Wave," exhilarated by their own collective action when the pulse is full and sustained. A high point of the opening ceremonies at the 1998 Nagano Olympics was the "stunning synchronicity" of choirs performing Beethoven on five continents, and the contest closed with the ancient rhythms of Japanese taiko drummers (CBS SportsLine).

Rhythm enhances communal life on a more practical basis as well, coordinating and enhancing the work of groups with chants and songs. For each individual, rhythmic motions serve to "train" the nervous system, coordinating the motor systems for optimal performance (Southard and Blake). From ancient stone movers to the gandy dancers of railroad work gangs, rhythm not only made the work more palatable, but also allowed workers to engage in a sustained effort far longer than could be otherwise maintained. By the early 1900s industrial managers had discovered the value of supplying musical accompaniment to enhance factory productivity (McNeill 51), and contemporary construction workers argue that a jobsite without a blaring boom box is not only less pleasant but also less productive.

In sum, the rhythmic coordination of muscular activity not only increases the potential for coordinated action, but produces concomitant neurochemical responses in the individuals involved. Positive emotional responses and cohesiveness ensue, as does the possibility for the coordination of mental belief structures. The existence of these physical and mental states has not gone unnoticed by Western theorists, but has been relegated to the domain of arhetorical social behavior. In an accommodative, oral community, however, the institution of synchronized, rhythmicity functions to coordinate social decisions. From the traditional dances of "primitive" cultures to the rhythmic, "Yo!" of an American laborer, non-discursive physical interactions replace talk as the preferred method of reaching consensus (Bernstein and Henderson; Hall Beyond; Heath; Triandis).

Rhythmic Creation of Rhetorical Community

Once we have stepped outside the literate, Western, discursive limits of rhetoricity, the importance of signaling for concrete expands to include physical, emotional and neurochemical elements that create community, organize cooperative physical work and influence the behavior of others. The rhetorical situation called for a "Yo!" to be sure, but the very possibility of an intersubjectively recognized exigence required a history of synchronized rhythmic interaction as well.

The rhythm and synchrony of embodied human cooperation have been ignored in the dualism of Western philosophy, but no rhetorical action can take place until a group of humans has constituted itself as a community of action. A primary rhetorical function is the constitution of a rhetorically viable audience (Charland), and an exigence must be intersubjectively determined to be rhetorically meaningful (Benoit). The process of creating a rhetorical audience does not begin in the mind, however, as a response to reasoned discourse. A preliminary step is embodied in the shared physicality of human co-existence, creating a sense of community as a necessary foundation for the creation of a public sphere.

The rhetor is never an individual acting alone, but always a potential participant in a rhetorical community. He or she cannot simply respond to the exigence, but must make a competent bid for participation within a community that more or less agrees on the characteristics and importance of the exigence. The community must sufficiently share a perception of the factual conditions of the situation as well as some level of agreement with respect to the possible and appropriate responsiveness of the audience (Bitzer "Functional"; Smith and Lybarger). Community membership and exigence are both intersubjectively created, and theory must consider the process by which actors acknowledge each other as members of the community; no rhetorical theory is complete until it can account for them as sufficient and necessary prerequisites of a viable public sphere. 

Based on the growing understanding of physical synchrony, a first principle might be that membership in any rhetorical community is at its essence, physically and neurochemically defined. The importance of linguistic and visual cues to determine individual membership in a clan or tribe is well known in the West, but presumed to be based on primitive impulses that must be overcome in order to establish a more "civilized" discourse community. The literature suggests, instead, that those primitive impulses are the consequence of a fundamental process of conspecial recognition. The information humans can use to quickly categorize individuals is not merely aural, visual or semantic. We are also sensitive to each other’s pheromones, odors, electro-magnetic fields and rhythms.

In high risk contexts where decision-making must be fast and reliable, successful groups are characterized by high levels of trust and wordless physical coordination (Hutchins and Klausen; Weick and Roberts). In some organizations, as with this concrete crew, long term familial and social relationships are cultivated in order to maximize the group’s cohesiveness (Applebaum; Dyer; Spragins). Research into the psychology of motion and gesture suggests that the advantage is not due merely to familiarity or social bonds. Individuals across cultures judge each other’s motions as measures of intelligence (Brebner; Sheridan), reproductive health (Pennisi "Imperfect"; Pennisi "Not Simply"), and competence (Birdwhistell). Motions that are recognized as familiar, normal within the community, and able to be accomplished by the observer are cues that the other being is "enough like me" to engage in coordinated action.

Significantly, rhythmic and synchronized motions play a special role in the development of human identity. During the second year, social-cognitive competence undergoes a dramatic leap as children engage in "synchronic imitation," a pre-verbal form of communication. The child moves from a primary consciousness, which represents reality as a three-dimensional whole, toward a secondary representational consciousness of the counterfactual. The past, the future, hypothetical situations and self-awareness are all part of this "propositional" reality. Synchronic imitation is characterized by reciprocity, which the developing child recognizes and finds pleasurable. The child develops self-awareness through the process of synchronizing her motion with others around her (Asendorph, Warkentin and Baudonniere). During the same period, the child learns to control and modify self-paced rhythms. The ability to synchronize with the simplest rhythmic pattern begins at about three years, a learning process that is assisted by watching a moving visual target, as when a child imitates the rhythmic motions of community members (Kumai and Sugai). Cognitive development is firmly embodied in the physical structures of the body (Lakoff and Johnson), and any distinction between mindful reasoning and the rhythms of the body is largely arbitrary. Western science has yet to investigate the phenomenon that anthropologist Edward Hall described as a "complex hierarchies of interlocking rhythms," which dominate individuals as they exist within dyads, groups, organizations and cultures (153 Dance). The close association of both rhythm and synchronicity with the senses of individual and social identity might not yet be well understood, but an interrelationship with any social behaviors, including rhetorical behaviors, can be assumed.

Achieving Rhetorical Competence

When rhetorical action is envisioned as any process by which a community decides to act, rhetorical competence involves whatever criteria that community uses to invite or allow an individual to participate. The West’s liberal education is designed "to develop language, judgment and moral citizenship" and the "function of rhetoric" has remained "man's preparation of himself for his duties in a society" (Nichols 182). Contrast the rigorous academic preparation needed for membership in the American business/political community with initiation into the rhythmic, coordinated physicality of a construction site, a fishing village or a factory floor. Education in oral cultures "is largely a matter of constantly immersing the young in enchanting patterns of sound until their minds resonate to them, until they become in tune with the institutions of their culture," and the learning state characterized by "heightened emotion" and knowledge that is "felt" rather than consciously communicated (Egan 185).

Membership in such a group is not based on the ability to support and defend good reasons, or on ideological conformity with the group’s aims. Instead, membership comes with time spent in the community, bred into the bones through the physical rhythms and emotional bonds of participation. Such membership need not left to chance. The planners of the French Revolution were "acutely aware of the power of dance" and encouraged demonstrations of fraternity around Liberty trees (McNeill 60), the Nuremberg rallies were carefully planned and staged, and subordinated cultures maintain themselves with folk dance festivals, powwows and stepping clubs. Human communities necessarily judge themselves intact and ready to act by their own sense of a common rhythm, and individuals will judge their own rhetorical competence in terms of their ability to synchronize themselves to the group. The signals are perceived and used below the threshold of consciousness, and their neurochemical effect are not negated by an overlay of dispassionate thought or reasoned discourse.

Implications for Theory

Any discussion of the theoretical and critical implications might begin with the obvious differences across cultures. Socially binding muscular activities are not particularly popular in the strongly individualistic American culture. Folk dancing, marching bands and choral bands have adherents, but retain an unpopular flavor. Meanwhile, Africa and Latin America embrace enthusiastic, muscular religions, and mass movement in unison flourishes in China, Korea and Japan (McNeill 151). The simple conclusion is that collectivist rhetorical forms are common where physical synchrony is valued, but that finding begs the question. Scholars have already demonstrated that Asian rhetoric and African rhetoric do exist, 4 and that they are different from Western forms (Asante; Garrett "Pathos"; Garrett "Wit"). The more significant questions for a global age involve a more careful investigation of the effects of physical sensitivity on the character of rhetorical behavior. Non-Western rhetorics have placed more value on social consensus and the holistic, non-discursive influence of physical interaction. It does not follow, however, that human beings in the West are any less influenced by rhythm and synchronicity. All we can presume is that our assumptions regarding the superiority of discursive over non-discursive forms of influence are arbitrary and culture-bound.

The first step toward an understanding of non-discursive rhetoricity is probably recognition that the definition of rhetoric as "symbolic inducement" is a value judgment rather than a theoretical premise. The power of physical persuasion has been recognized and used throughout the history of Western rhetoric, but defined as an activity unsuitable for the realm of civil decision making. As their city-states came under the rule of bureaucrats and the academic intelligentsia, the Greeks relegated the Dionysian orgies to the lower classes. Plato banished music and the poets, anxious to free reason from the uncontrollable passions of the body and the enchantments of social harmony (Havelock). 

Not until the twentieth century did rhetorical studies look seriously at the rhetoricity of propaganda, the visual arts, and political theater. As critics attempt to move the boundaries of rhetoricity, theorists defend their culture’s norms, insisting that such behaviors have no place in the public sphere. Obviously, the argument is circular: rhetoric is defined as those modes of behavior that are used in the public sphere, and the public sphere is defined as the space in which "proper" rhetorical forms are used. Feminist rhetorical theorists, in particular, have protested the hegemony of the Western political sphere and called for a notion of rhetoric that encompasses discourse previously consigned to the "private" sphere outside the boundaries of political and social power (Foss and Griffin; Griffin). Rather than educate the Other in the forms of Western rhetoric, theorists are asked "come to terms with rhetoric in places not currently included within the province of an administrative rhetoric" that has defined the West’s political system (McKerrow 317). One of those rhetorics includes those activities of rhythmic, synchronized behavior that leads to social solidarity and concerted action. In spite of their "mindless" lack of "reason" such events seem to display, they remain a process by which human communities decide to act.

Our bodies are adapted/designed to judge each other’s mood, emotions, intents and desires with a flood of visual, olfactory, aural and chemical cues. The careful argumentation of Western discourse is useful when the facts of our environment are in question, but attention to our rhythmic selves seems more likely to take advantage of the community’s collective wisdom, expertise and moral character. We have limited our understanding of rhetoric to only those symbolic elements that can be captured in the conscious, rational spaces of our minds. The evidence suggests "large and complex human societies, in all probability, cannot long maintain themselves without such kinesthetic undergirding" (McNeill 152). We cannot ignore, discard or condemn the physical and cognitive process by which human beings form and maintain community, or discount the importance of rhythm and synchronized behavior, not merely as a stylistic addition to discourse, but as necessary elements for the recognition of and response to a rhetorical situation.

This essay was originally presented at the annual convention of the American Communication Association, October 1999.

Works Cited

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