Cherwitz and Hikins’ Relationality

I appreciate the common language and relevancy of Cherwitz and Hikins’ Rhetorical Perspectivism as it allowed me to form a few connections between the words and modern day examples. The second postulate, relationality, discussed a concept that is similar to the idea of comparison. According to Cherwitz and Hikins’ text, “the world is comprised of many particulars, each a member of a context of particulars, and each deceiving its nature from that context. Each particular exhibits various characters which themselves emerge wholly as a function of the relations in which the particular stands to other members of its context” (252).

Cherwitz and Hikins use the example of a tree to illustrate their point. “The tree,” they write, “may exhibit characteristics green or brown, tall or short, rough-barked or smooth-barked, alive, dead, dormant, healthy or diseased, depending upon the relationships between and among its various parts and the context of particulars in which it, as a whole, stands (its relationships to the things around it)” (252). The authors use a simple example from which readers can then make examples of their own. For example, let’s look at the National Football League (NFL): I know the Atlanta Falcons (6-0-0) are good, because their competitor and fellow National Football Conference (NFC) South member, the Carolina Panthers (1-5-0), are bad. Without the existence and continued presence of the Falcons, perhaps the Panthers wouldn’t seem so bad. If it were uncommon for teams to uphold a perfect season, would a loosing season be a sign of struggle? If these teams or “characters” weren’t “‘arranged’ in a certain way,” (that is, within the same division of the NFC), they wouldn’t stand in this particular relationship and perhaps wouldn’t be compared in the same extent to which they are now.

Other examples using opposites are: big/small, ugly/pretty, close/far, deep/shallow, etc. A 6-5″ basketball player is big compared to a dwarf/little person, but when he’s put in a room with a sumo wrestler, he’s not so big anymore. The four-mile walk up the mountain might not seem far, but when you discover after walking four miles that you’re not at the top just yet and that another four miles remain, that distant might then seem far. It’s the same distance as before, but now it seems longer because you’re comparing it to the four you’ve already walked (and you thought those four miles would be it). A 3-foot level in a pool is shallow for a 6-5″ man and deep for a 1-5″ child; the water depth never changed, but the people in relationship to it did.

I wonder if any of what Cherwitz and Hikins discuss here with relationality could be applied to feelings or emotions. Without happiness, would we know what sadness was like? Without dullness or boredom, would we welcome excitement? Would we know love without hate? The authors write: “It should be clear that relationality is advanced not as a description of the nature of objects of the universe, but as an explanation of how those objects…come to possess the natures they have” (252). Granted here they use the word “objects,” but could this same statement still be applied to feelings? We’re still comparing one thing to another, illuminating the relationship that exists, so is this similar? Just a thought.  

Sources:

Cherwitz, Richard and James Hikins. “Rhetorical Perspectivism.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 69 (1983): 249-266.