Yeah, Well What About Invention!?

The 1971 Report of the speech Communication Association’s Committee on the Nature of Rhetorical Invention gets mentioned a few times by LeFevre in the Introduction to Invention as a Social Act. Not only do I find it inspiring that invention is considered in this text as a social act, but I more generally appreciate that invention is being considered at all. The 1971 Report, like a lot of similar documents, was essentially an attempt to champion invention as a means for refuting the claim that rhetoric deals with nothing other than appearances. Like that report, LeFevre seems to be arguing that within the canon of invention lies the concern with wisdom and knowledge that rhetorical studies have been accused of neglecting ever since Socrates embarrassed the sophists in Plato’s dialogues.

An article in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, by Kneupper and Anderson (1980) is rather representative of rhetoricians’ self-conscious concern with invention. They argue that a renewed interest in invention is crucial for reuniting wisdom and eloquence. In examining rhetorical history, the writers explain how rhetoric’s divorce from philosophy and its own division between invention and expression have resulted in an inordinate amount of attention in communication classrooms being paid to style or elocution. The same may be true of composition classrooms, however, these writers, as well as myself, have little firsthand knowledge of the use of rhetoric in that context.

On a final note, I think that LeFevre chose wisely when she introduced this topic by contrasting the opposing views of invention as either a search/discovery or the creation of something new. Granted, it seems that the latter view will be favored throughout the book. However, by calling upon Aristotle’s often repeated definition of rhetoric (the search for the available means of persuasion), LeFevre reminds us that historically, invention exists at the very heart of rhetorical studies.