the r word

As a student studying rhetoric at the graduate level for the last two and a half years, I had always felt uncomfortable when people asked me, “so, what is rhetoric anyway?” It wasn’t like I didn’t have an answer or general definition of rhetoric, but my conceptualization of rhetoric felt fragmented, ungrounded even. Having never taken a history of rhetoric course, I acquired my working definition of rhetoric from teaching composition courses and taking rhetoric-related courses (composition studies, multimedia theory, online identity, etc). Similarly, I was uncomfortable with writing the word rhetoric in papers. I swapped out words all the time: discourse, composing, literacy, communication, meaning-making, writing. I felt like rhetoric had an immense amount of baggage attributed to it—baggage that I had never examined in historical detail.

After this course, I still feel like rhetoric has baggage. What complex concept/practice doesn’t? But, for me, it’s this long-standing theory building (and disrupting) that makes rhetoric so malleable, interesting, and important.

I’ll be using the word more often now—baggage and all.

My takeaways:

1. Avoid paralysis. Find your niche, mention its limitations, then work with it.

When I think back on the course’s progression—studying the Greco-Roman canon then moving into theory that disrupts the canon—I feel a sense of paralysis. (I’m thinking specifically about the Octalog discussions here.) How can we move forward? Do we work within the system of rhetoric whose traditions stem back 2,500-plus years? Or do we disrupt the system, asking critical questions about the practices that get privileged? Do we seek to contextualize rhetoric based on the social, economic, political, temporal, etc. factors that affect how we communicate/who gets to communicate?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

It’s easy to get bogged down in such questions. And for good reason—they’re extremely important. If we think of rhetoric as the art of “shaping content” (Covino and Joliffe), these questions should remain central to our study. However, I want to be mindful that all projects will likely have holes, aspects that are vulnerable to critique. Importantly, I want to be extremely attentive to issues of power, access, and agency. I want those issues to be central to my work. I don’t want, however, to be paralyzed from studying how discourse is working (or has worked) in particular contexts. In essence, I think it’s more useful to work within and react against the “canon” than avoid it altogether.

Although this take-away deals more with research and scholarship, I see it as playing out in the classroom, too. Is it oversimplified to offer students an Aristotelian definition of rhetoric? Maybe. I think, though, that we have to start somewhere…and then continually complicate definitions, assumptions, and implications.

2. Public rhetoric: can it be done in the classroom?

Public rhetoric has been an interest of mine since our readings of 19^th-century rhetoric (Grimke, Douglass, Wells, etc.). Their aim to effect some sort of social change reminded me of the important work rhetoric does. These rhetors show how issues of power are always embedded in rhetorical situations. For me, studying these rhetors augmented my understanding of rhetoric and my ability to teach it. Discussing the public sphere—where rhetoric has its roots (the polis)—seems like an essential way to teach rhetoric.

As we moved on throughout the semester, though, readings questioned the extent to which public rhetoric can be practiced within the confines of the classroom (I’m thinking here: Powell; Crowley; Foucault; and Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel).

Although I think agency is always negotiated based on various constraints of a discourse community, I’ve found that discussing rhetoric in terms of reaching a real public to be productive. Moreover, students who have aims to publish their work in public venues, I have found, are often more successful in their writing.  Also, in their reflections for inquiry 4, my students were much more successful at discussing audience considerations than the previous inquiries. They noted that publishing their videos on YouTube gave them greater awareness of their rhetorical purpose.

As an endnote, I’d like to mention my confidence in teaching composition has been improved by taking this course. And now that we’re nearing the course’s end, I can’t wait to make some changes to my 111.

 

 

 

Working from Plurality: Mao’s Hybrid Rhetoric

In his Reading Chinese Fortune Cookie: The Making of Chinese American Rhetoric, LuMing Mao attempts to theorize, describe, and practice Chinese American rhetoric—what he calls a hybrid, a third space, a rhetorical borderland, a rhetoric of becoming. In his project, Mao works to describe and to (somewhat) demystify the ideologies, assumptions, and values that undergird two rhetorics:  Chinese (most notably, Ancient Confucian rhetoric) and European American. (It should be noted that Mao notes—embraces even—the ambiguities that exist in the making of this rhetoric; as such, he doesn’t claim to nor does he want to comprehensively demystify Chinese American rhetoric.) In doing this, he aims to show how practitioners of Chinese American rhetoric can invent from both traditions. In his fifth chapter (my favorite!), Mao ultimately shows how this rhetoric can be used to effect social change.

I saw Mao’s text as attempting to negotiate a question Mao poses near the end of the book: “how can we represent Chinese face, indirectness, and personhood in a discourse whose undergirding ideology espouses something very different, and whose discursive authority is almost being challenged by such representations?”

Early in his book, Mao reveals that he doesn’t like taking a cynical approach. This, I think, is one of the most refreshing aspects of his book. He constantly—even in moments of despair—seeks to work toward a rhetoric that disrupts dualistic thinking. He writes, “if I can echo Anzaldua…the future belongs to us border residents straddling two or more cultures, to those of us who learn to cultivate and speak out our in-between subject positions, and who learn to practice the discourse of hybridity through the making of Chinese American rhetoric and/or other ethnic rhetorics” (150). In doing a textual analysis of the Chinese American rhetors who are speak out against a racist comment published in a Cincinnati newspaper, Mao shows how this hybrid rhetoric works to effect social change. Here, where I might pause and wonder if the public apology really does anything to alleviate historical racism, Mao presses his readers (specifically, his fellow border residents) to “not get bogged down by such history, but to use it to lay claim to the present, and to reclaim our agency and our identity…” (142). This approach is sometimes so absent in scholarly work—it was pleasant to see it here.

After reading the book, I do have to wonder about Mao’s intended audience. Perhaps it’s a varied audience—scholars and students of rhetoric, those interested in comparative rhetorics, and those interested in multiculturalism.  And at times, to be sure, Mao directly addresses those who practice Chinese American rhetoric—in Mao’s words, his “fellow border residents.” I think that’s a worthy and admirable approach for scholarship (almost like community literacy projects). Moreover, Mao incorporates discussions of pedagogy and classroom experience, community protest rhetoric, theory, and practice. But I do wonder: who does the project reach? Is it a book that the Chinese American community can use?

In asking this question, I come to yet another question: In doing a project like this, is it necessary/useful to do extended outreach efforts? To offer your findings in multiple venues (i.e. community meetings, presentations, etc.)? For example, Mao mentions becoming a participant in the Chinese American Council’s effort to respond to the racist comments made by Elkington. In becoming a participant and a researcher, is it appropriate to discuss rhetorical strategies with members of the group? What are the implications of doing so? If, as a researcher you decide to discuss these strategies, should you disclose this information in the write up of the research? (I’m not suggesting Mao did this. But I’m just thinking in hypotheticals.)

Useful Concepts

Clustering. Throughout his book, Mao mentions the concept of clustering, of putting words in clusters to help explain and compare different rhetorics.

Togetherness-in-difference. “Rhetoric that seeks not uniqueness-qua-coherence from withing, but complexity, heterogeneity, and ambiguity from both within and without—from a space where different rhetorical practices meet, clash, and grapple with each other, and where their encounters are always inflected with highly asymmetrical relations of power” (29).

Mao, LuMing. Reading Chinese Fortune Cookie: The Making of Chinese American Rhetoric.  Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2006. Print.

A Long Note on Online Courses & Some Digital Rhetoric Takeaways

Before I comment on the great discussion we had for our digital rhetoric class, I want to briefly reflect upon my previous experience with online courses.

As an undergraduate, I enrolled in, to my memory, three fully online courses—Math Appreciation, Modern Russian History, and an upper-level sociology course. (Interestingly, about 80 percent of the Sociology Department’s courses were taught online. I was a sociology major for a hot minute.) All of the courses made use of the university’s course management system—which changed from WebCT to Blackboard about halfway through my undergraduate career. All the courses were set up the same way: we had weekly discussion board responses due (usually a reading response), quizzes, and papers due. The Math Appreciation was by far the most organized online course I took. The instructor, who genuinely seemed like she wanted to teach an online class, took great care to organize the course in neat modules before the class began. We had objectives and learning outcomes, with a clearly organized path to get there. As for the other two classes, I felt they were not nearly as organized—the schedule was updated weekly instead of carved out before hand. The instructors didn’t seem to have a great rapport with students. In many ways, both courses were messy and frustrating. That’s not to say I didn’t learn anything, though. Looking back, I realize I have retained more from my Modern Russia class than the other two. (Maybe it’s because I was more interested in the material?) Perhaps what would have worked a little better is a middle ground approach: organized but not so much that it feels automated and impersonal. (This gets me thinking about student agency in online courses. In what ways can online courses allow for expanded degrees of agency? Do they limit agency in some ways?)

And in graduate school, I took a technical communication course titled, “Writing in the Workplace.” The course activities were done through a wiki. We had scheduled readings and responses, peer workshops, papers, and class presentations (done through screencasting services). I think this was the best online course I ever had. It was rigorous, organized, and used the affordances of web-based education. However, it was difficult to build an online community. I didn’t feel connected to anyone in the course (I did outside the course, as friends and I sometimes discussed the course in face-to-face conversations.)

So, looking back on my experiences, I would say the following things work well in an online course:

• Organized, planned out schedule
• Diverse projects that make use of the affordances of web-based education tools
• A comfortable, communicative community
• A personal, flexible, and human approach (not a course that feels automated)

Based on the results of the Pew Research Report, online courses are here to stay. The question now becomes: how can we best facilitate learning?

TAKEAWAYS

As far as key takeaways from November 20^th’s class, here’s what I got:

1)   Due to distribution and circulation shifts, the composing process seems to be undergoing changes. Or at least it’s helping us think about the process a little differently.

2)   More explicit work needs to be done on memory. I think, as Jon mentioned on the forums, there exists some great work on memory. So, perhaps a piece like Jim’s—this time on memory—would be useful.

3)   Multimodal is a slippery concept. Are we talking about digital compositions like video, prezi maps, websites? Or does multimodal signify a more traditional concept of composing—gluing a picture to a piece of paper with words on it? Putting the word “digital” in front of multimodal doesn’t quite work either. I can write a traditional essay digitally. Is it necessary to define the term with every use?

4)   Teaching a technology—how to use it, showing what it can do—isn’t enough. Following Selber, as teachers of comp it’s important to grapple with rhetorical and critical concerns as well.

5)   Positioning public rhetoric in the classroom. This “takeaway” is more of a question mark for me. I don’t know how realistic it is to ask students to produce something to a public audience. But, as both Jim and Renea mentioned on the forums, perhaps it’s more useful to do less doubting (especially in the classroom) and more trying.

Digital Rhetoric & the Problem of Human Agency: A Blog of Many Questions

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about human agency. I think it’s actually been on my mind since our reading of Sharon Crowley. As we read in her Composition in the University, Crowley questions agency in the composition classroom, arguing that composition is a disciplining course that forms students to fit the norms of the university. Agency, for Crowley, is very limited for students—especially in the comp classroom. And then we read Foucault, the theorist whom Crowley frequently evokes. His discussion of how power functions by institutional normalizations likewise makes me question the limitations and possibilities agency. And then there’s literary theory. For what seems like the entire semester, we’ve been reading much critical theory that calls agency into question (for example, Althusser, Zizek, Spivak, among others).

So what is agency? Is it a myth? An ideology? Or are there varying levels or degrees of agency? And what can explorations of digital rhetoric/writing tell us about agency?

Agency is something Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel address in their 2012 The Available Means of Persuasion. In his discussion of posthumanism, Porter also brings up agency (although more implicitly) in his 2003 and 2009 Computers and Composition articles. In a similar vein to that of Carolyn Miller’s 2007 Rhetoric Society Quarterly article, in this blog post I’d like to explore what digital rhetoric (online communication practices) can tell us about agency. Although I’m not offering any new insights into discussions that exist in current scholarship, I’m growing increasingly interested in researching this further. Perhaps, then, this is a springboard for future inquiry.

In her article, Miller succinctly categorizes the historical and current theoretical treatment of agency: “Traditional rhetoric presupposes—even celebrates—agency, as the power of the rhetor, of invention, of eloquence itself;poststructuralist rhetoric debunks agency as ‘ideology’…or ‘ontotheology…’” (142). Ultimately, Miller argues that agency should be reconsidered as a performance that “is generated through a process of mutual attribution between rhetor and audience” and that agency is “property of the rhetorical event, not of agents” (137).  Drawing upon work in other fields, Miller argues that agency is a “necessary illusion”.  However, locating agency as attribution, Miller argues that critical theory’s fixation on agency has been misplaced. “We should be concerned less about empowering subaltern subjects and more about enabling and encouraging attributions of agency to them by those with whom they interact—and accepting such attributions from them” (153, emphasis Miller’s). The process of attribution, Miller argues, is a human endeavor that involves moral judgments and human acknowledgment.  Not a earth-shattering conclusion, but, importantly, it’s one made possible by theorizing the potentialities of digital technologies.

Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel place their discussion of agency with that of karios, describing the negotiation of each as “struggle.” They write, “our understanding of kairos and agency, then, references the ‘struggle’ of the prepared rhetor within complex and multifaceted contexts that are simultaneously material, discursive, social, cultural, and historical. This struggle calls for the prepared rhetor to be kairotically inventive” (11).

So, what does this say about agency? Can there really be such a thing as a “prepared” rhetor? A little later in the book, Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel revisit this problematic of agency. Similar to Miller, they recount two dominant views of agency: one, a naïve belief in autonomy and free will; and two, a postructualist account that claims all subjects are hailed by ideology and determined by discourse (103). Then, the spend time discussing a third, nascent view of agency by explaining Bruno Latour’s work. Explaining how nonhuman and human actors work in a complex network of contextual situations, Latour contends that morality cannot be accounted for by either of the two aforementioned views of agency. Summing up Latour, Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel write, “what works is something different from either individual will or discursive pressure: a network of human and nonhuman agents” (104). By recalling more work on Actor Network Theory, Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel state agency “exceeds the subject” and is “distributed across complex networks of human and nonhuman actors, including people, discourses, and technologies (106). However, they argue that agency doesn’t fully “evaporate,” as rhetors can still prepare, plan, choreograph, and anticipate how their rhetoric may be accepted, interpreted, used and (possibly) re-used. Thus, by education and practice, a rhetor can be kairotically “prepared” for the complexities of composing in varied discourses and media.

This is a lot to take in. It’s a position that seems to directly challenge much of the poststructualist theory I’ve encountered in literary theory and the postmodern readings we’ve had in 733. By turning our classroom efforts to public rhetoric, are we better able to allow students to have a greater sense of agency? Is that ever possible?

In short, I’m interested by the ways in which digital rhetoric can allow for re-theorization. For example, do theories of agency still hold up? What needs more attention? For me, asking these questions makes it exciting to do work in digital rhetoric.

Miller, C. (2007). What can automation tell us about agency? Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 37, 137-157.

Sheridan, D., Ridolfo, J., and Michel, A. (2012). The available means of persuasion: Mapping a theory and pedagogy of multimodal public rhetoric. Anderson, SC: Parlor Press.

Crossed Words/Crossed Worlds

A few weeks after I arrived in Oxford, I had a conversation with a colleague from the literature department about differences between our respective fields of study. Although it’s difficult for me to recalls specifics about the conversation, one thing sticks out: I was told Gloria Anzaldúa doesn’t belong in rhetoric, that we have no business studying her work. Having not read her, I didn’t have much to say. I remembered seeing her name in the Rhetorical Tradition and I had read the Andrea Lunsford interview from a composition studies anthology, but I hadn’t read her work on its own. So, I just kind of said “alright” and moved on…

I think I would have some things to say now, especially given Damian Baca’s treatment of her rhetorical theory.

Most importantly, I think I would challenge my friend to think differently about rhetoric. As Baca notes in his chapter, Anzaldúa can’t be seen as working solely within the tradition of Western (Greco-Roman) rhetoric.  She’s also working against it, which may help writing teachers/scholars to think differently about rhetoric. Rhetoric—that seemingly mystical thing we study—is so steeped in traditional European views of rhetoric that, like my colleague expressed, it’s difficult to see a figure like Anzaldúa working within the purview of rhetoric. Baca argues, “Writing departments, from their colonial origin, have long promoted an education embedded in European traditions. Consequently, the accumulation of knowledge about rhetoric is aligned with the linear narrative of Western history” (128). (This is such a brilliant insight. It seems so obvious, but it’s something that I don’t think is discussed much – especially in casual conversations about rhetoric.)

So, yes, under the traditional heading of “rhetoric” it may be difficult to locate Anzaldúa as a theorist of that tradition. However, as Baca notes, this difficulty stems from a longstanding definition and tradition of rhetoric—one that has a Greek and Roman ancestry. Conceiving of Anzaldúa as someone worthy of rhetorical study, though, works to dismantle this near-monolithic conceptualization of rhetoric.  It shows how dominant (i.e. the tradition) pedagogical views of rhetoric might fall short in explaining the complex discursive practices of American rhetoric.

I see Anzaldua herself as both a rhetor and writing theorist. Her powerful account makes use of the theory she posits. Using Anzaldua’s words, it meshes cultures, it kneads language varieties, and it mixes identities.  Fluid.

Anzaldúa herself has something to say about a poetics and rhetoric divide. “In the ethno-poetics and performance of the shaman, my people, the Indians, did not split the artistic from the functional, the sacred from the secular, art from everyday life” (1592). Although she’s referring to her ancestry here, it seems like she’s suggesting the classic split between rhetoric and poetics is not a Mesoamerican phenomenon, that there’s a powerful—almost mystical—link between the two.

Also, as evidenced by her interview with Andrea Lunsford, she thought herself as a theorist of writing and composition.

In the end, I almost feel like trying parse Anzaldúa into one field or another does her work a disservice. Like the complex borders along which she lived and worked, Anzaldúa works both within and outside “traditions.” Isolating her work—trying to make it one thing over another—misses the point altogether.

Anzaldúa: Borders, cultures, and identities

First — a personal reaction.

As a person born and raised in the mountains of southern New Mexico, Anzaldúa’s Borderlands resonated with me. Throughout reading Anzaldúa, there were several times I felt an emotional (an almost bodily) response to her writing. From her rich description of food (its smell, texture, color), to her portrayal of Southwest geography and architecture, Anzaldúa takes me back home. And that’s been nice this week.

Now — on to the text.

Language, self-identification, and identity

A striking discussion in Anzaldúa is her description of how she self-identified. Her identification is a verbal one, defined upon how she spoke using varying Englishes/Spanishes/Spanglishes. But it is also a political and cultural one, shifting when she felt either vulnerable or comfortable. Her use of language is, in essence, contextual.

She provides a rather long list of the various languages she—and others along Bordertowns—speak. I found two things interesting in this discussion. First, how language variations exist from region to region — even if the regions are close in distance. “With Chicanas from Nuevo Mexico or Arizona,” Anzaldúa writes,“I will speak Chicano Spanish a little, but often they don’t understand what I’m saying…Often it is only with another Chicana tejana that I can talk freely” (1587). Her discussion about how and when she uses language seems to have important implications for those who are interesting in studying how discourse forms identity. It highlights how language can correspond to a cultural and political identity.

In reading this, I was reminded me of the most recent gubernatorial race in New Mexico. The race involved two candidates: Susana Martinez, the republican candidate who was born in Texas but lived in New Mexico for her adult life, and Diane Denish, the democrat candidate who was born and raised in New Mexico. During the election season, Denish released an attack ad that referred to Martinez as a tejana. Following this ad, Martinez released her own (can be seen here) wherein Martinez reaffirmed her connection to New Mexico. The point here is that the way one self-identifies has much deeper implications than mere geography. The politics of growing up along the border still exist today.

I also found Anzaldúa’s discussion of a “rebellion” language, what she calls Pachuco, to be important. Anzaldúa writes Pachuco “is a language of rebellion, both against standard Spanish and Standard English. It is a secret language. Adults of the culture and outsiders cannot understand it. It is made up of slang words from both English and Spanish” (1587). This seems to tell a lot about people who grow up and live their lives on borders—spatial, cultural, linguistic.  How does such a language come about?  How does standardized language disenfranchise? What happens if linguistic identity can’t fit into a neat category?

This discussion—of how language use is tied to identity—has been rather absent in our readings this semester.

Mestiza consciousness

Anzaldúaworks to describe mestiza consciousness near the end of the RT excerpt.  She calls mestiza a consciousness of the Borderlands (1597)—one that is torn between multiple identities. “La mestiza,” she writes, “undergoes a struggle of flesh, a struggle of borders, an inner war” (1597). She then goes on to state the new mestiza “copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity” (1598). And finally: “the work of mestiza consciousness is to break down the subject-object duality that keeps her a prisoner and to show in the flesh and through the images in her work how duality is transcended. The answer to the problem between the white race and the colored, between males and females, lies in healing the split that originates in the very foundation of our lives, our culture, our languages, our thoughts”  (1598).

There’s a real power and sense of hope in Anzaldúa’s work. Whereas most critical theory usually points to a rather bleak future, Anzaldúa shows that there’s power in mestiza consciousness. “Soy un amasamiento,” Anzaldúa writes, “I am an act of kneading, of uniting and joining that not only has produced both a creature of darkness and creature of light, but also a creature that questions the definition of light and dark and gives them new meaning” (1599). Key words in this section seem to be kneading, blending, clashing, linking.

Started using “we” instead of “I”—it must be postmodern week

Notes on Foucault

After being thrown into the world of literary theory this semester, Foucault seemed to be much clearer than times I had read him in past. I think this might be the case for a couple of reasons. Mainly, I think this is because he seems to be targeting an aspect of rhetoric (discourse) that had not garnered much theoretical attention prior—the role of institutional power. Second, he seems to be in conversation—though he doesn’t explicitly cite them—with many of the critical theorists/philosophers that came before him (i.e. Lacan and Marx) Finally, paired with Kenneth Burke, all other theory seems somewhat clear. : )

Foucault definitely makes me feel less in control than I’d like to think I am. Whereas other theorists might ask, “why do we write/speak?” or even “how do we write/speak?”, Foucault seems to be asking a more critical question: “what social, political, institutional conditions allow for writing/speaking?” He writes in his The Order of Discourse, “in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized, and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to ward off its powers and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its ponderous, formidable materiality” (1461).  He then goes on to discuss systems of exclusion, which work to privilege some forms of discourse and revoke others. Using the example of the “madman’s speech,” Foucault discusses how our modern institutional system—through its systems of specialization (i.e. a doctor becoming a doctor)—defines discourse (around 1462).  I was struck by a passage on 1463. Foucault writes:

This will to truth, like the other systems of exclusion, rests on an institutional support: it is both reinforced and renewed by whole strata of practices, such as pedagogy, of course; and the system of books, publishing, libraries; learned societies in the past and laboratories now. But it is also renewed, no doubt more profoundly by the way in which knowledge is put to work, valorize, distributed, and in a sense attributed, in a society.

This seems to, in such succinct language, define Foucault’s central thesis. It shows the overarching system of power in place, and that communication—especially in formalized institutions—is much more complex than speaker-receiver.

Notes on Burke

In doing my research on Frederick Douglass this past weekend, I repeatedly observed scholars discussing Douglass’s oratory style by using Burke’s theories. He likes to describe, elaborate, and play out how rhetoric works in varying situations, by varying ideologies. In a way, then, he almost reminded me of Aristotle—or one of the ancient theorists. He definitely tries to systematize things, albeit in a more flexible way. After reading him this week (I’ve never him before), I’m not surprised to have seen so many scholars turn to him for explanations about how Douglass’s rhetoric functioned.

It seems like all three pieces in the Rhetorical Tradition help build upon one another to help explain what Burke means. For example, in A Grammar of Motives, Burke lists a series of propositions corresponding to the pentad he sets up at the beginning of the book. They are as follows:

For the feature of scene, the corresponding philosophic terminology is materialism.

For the featuring of agent, the corresponding terminology is idealism.

For the featuring of agency, the corresponding terminology is pragmatism.

For the featuring of purpose, the corresponding terminology is mysticism.

For the featuring of act, the corresponding terminology is realism.

These are helpful in their own right—each proposition helps explain how certain philosophical camps might privilege one aspect of rhetoric over another. But we also get a little more lucidity when we turn to Language as Symbolic Action, wherein Burke explains “terministic screens.” By turning to the color filter metaphor—“different photographs of the same object”—Burke maintains that due to people’s theoretical and philosophical background, there are multiple ways to “read” or interpret nature or objects. This helps, I think, to elucidate Grammar of Motives.