Toward A Sound Methodology for Comparative Rhetoric with Aymara as a Case Study

Abstract

Studying rhetoric in non-Western contexts is complicated by rhetoric's sedimented cultural history in the West. Analysis of different approaches in anthropology and the discipline of rhetoric itself show that a multi-pronged approach is necessary to study rhetoric, including analysis of texts in context, consideration of the rhetorical competence of speakers, and careful attention to the power dynamics in a given situation. Using the collection and analysis of Aymara texts as an example of this new approach, this dissertation argues that considering rhetoric as a phenomenon of language use that occurs across genres when competent speakers attempt to achieve social or personal ends through language best helps to capture texts that will yield fruitful rhetorical analyses. It is argued further that the methodology developed in the ethnography of speaking for the analysis of communicative events addresses many of the shortcomings in working with texts in languages other than one's own.