What are rhetorical stylistic considerations for speakers or writers to negotiate "distance...with regards to a question or a problem"? I'm grateful to Nick Turnbull at The University of Manchester, for neatly describing this perspective of rhetoric offered by Michel Meyer. [In Turnbull, Nick (2006) "Problematology and Contingency in the Social Sciences; (2017) "Political Rhetoric and its Relationship to Context: a new theory of the rhetorical situation, the rhetorical and the political"]
One example is mentioned in my book chapter, "Reform Advocacy of Michael Kirby." Link at: Chapter Reform Advocacy of Michael Kirby
Associate Justice Scalia of the United States Supreme Court was politely but firmly invited to probe a broader view of originalism as long ago as 2010 when he visited Australia – by The Hon Michael Kirby AC, CMG, international human rights jurist and former justice of the High Court of Australia (1996-2009).
It appears the current propagators of originalism must rely on some willful blindness to conveniently overlook the recorded suggestions from the Founders of the United States that the Constitution would need to be interpreted, adjusted, or changed to accommodate unforeseen or unforeseeable circumstances.
This is just one of the ways that Kirby imaginatively uses language to invite openness to new understandings.
Other thoughts?
Bendaoud Nadif: Thank you for your suggestions and recommendation.
my comment is upon a first glance, hence it's provisional:
1. you seem to touch on too many issues in a single remark, which is as I see simply an invitation to read your paper on Kirby. Which we'll do hopefully.
2. Rhetoric is a vast field. Too vast to be reduced to an 'attitude to problems (cognitive, verbal, stylistic, legal, political....)'. The proposed notion seems to me also pretty at a considerable distance itself from what it traditionally taken as the content of the discipline: (description of) those aspects of language that are amenable to individual variation as a means of improvement, hence as only very broadly predictable under any understanding of language as a collective tool. Hence, rhetoric has been traditionally viewed as art, not science, or only a classificatory/taxonomic mechanism. And the most important part is in the section named 'progymnasmata' - exercises.
3. I produced one biggish study on the notion of diplomatic ambiguity. In one of the sections I emphasized one key point: to describe an ambiguity (i.e. a pattern of language open to several, prima facie equally plausible interpretations) one needs at least four non-ambiguities. Hence, broadly and very generally speaking, we need to have many fixed meanings to identify some unclear, or slippery, or idiosyncratic....ones. And therefore, I am very oppposed to the postmodernist/poststructuralist 'plays with meanings', and views on humanistic disciplines that aim to problematize everything.
4. This has a direct bearing on the issue of legal interpretation. If the notion of a constitution should make sense, then it should be read under a single comprehensive and to all applicable meaning. Of course , it can be contested, but only under a specific circumstance, in relation to a particular problem, and for a plausible reason. In other words, every constitution must be read as prescribed broadly by the Heydon Case - as a reasonable cure to some social ill, metaphorically speaking.
5. Language is a social tool, useful to our bodies immensely, and endowing us with the first skeleton of ethical measures or standards. I think we need to preserve, not dismantle or unravel, those.
At a granular level, initial interest is stylistic features for suggesting distance/proximity between author/speaker and reader/listener on a question or problem. Thanks to Bendaoud Nadif and Pehar Drazen for suggesting oxymoron, hyperbole and the progymnasmata to explore.
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