Discourse is the movement of the mind toward one consideration by means of another consideration for the sake of understanding something. Discourse is not an activity that is somehow merely academic or something only for intellectuals or even only for people who are considered thoughtful; discourse is the ordinary activity of a human mind when it is moving toward understanding. The most general and powerful instrument of discourse is the expression of thought in language, that is, in sentences and words. Therefore, to become our best at discourse we must learn how to use language well, and to use an instrument well we must understand that instrument. (Note that this does not mean that discourse is exclusively linguistic; the point is rather that the chief instrument of discourse is language itself.)
To study discourse we must begin by studying language
This is the central truth around which this whole account is built. Let us articulate it as clearly as possible:
- Discourse is the movement of the mind from one consideration to another for the sake of understanding something.
- The most general and powerful instrument for discourse is the expression of thought in language.
- To get better at discourse, we must know how to use language well.
- To use an instrument in the best way, the instrument itself must be understood.
Words and Thoughts
We examine our words in two ways: how our words can be adequate to what we are thinking, i.e. to our thoughts, and how our words can be adequate to the things we are thinking about. We put order into our thoughts by putting order into our words. So we must study words in general: how words have meanings, what meaning is, what kinds of words there are, and how words relate to particular languages.
The Classical Trivium
The classical name for the arts that perfect our use of this instrument is the trivium; in Latin, “trivium” means a place where three roads meet. In the classical, medieval and early modern worlds, the studies of these three, language, reasoning, and persuasion, made up the trivium; and it is these arts that lay out for us now (as they did for students in the past) the foundations of how we come to express ourselves, to show that something is true, and to persuade others of that truth, foundations on which all other disciplines are built.
This course uses the traditional names for a good reason: those names are more precise and carry fewer additions to their sense than the more common modern ones. Grammar concerns correctness of expression; logic concerns how terms relate to one another; and rhetoric concerns how speech can persuade a hearer to assent to a truth. In this introduction we take them up one at a time, briefly.
The beginning is grammar, the art of significant speech. Logic uses words and statements made up of words; but it is grammar that determines how correctly to use those words. Rhetoric seeks to persuade a hearer of a truth, and there is no persuasion if nothing has been said.
The trivium, as the place where three roads meet, is discourse itself.
Now, let us consider discourse itself in a little more depth. The elements of discourse are the things that we know, that is, the most basic things that form an act of discourse are truths already known. This is because discourse is the mind's movement from one thing we know to something else we come to know. But every thing we know and every thing we come to know consists of terms related together in some way, propositions that affirm or deny one thing of something else.
So, how do terms relate to words and to things? These questions are what we turn to next.
Continue to Words, Concepts, and Things.