Longinus' 5 Steps

Longinus’ On the Sublime shows how a discourse, in a text book style, can be made sublime, “a kind of eminence or excellence of discourse” (Longinus, 347). The question I have is can there be perfect discourses within an imperfect language/can an orator really communicate with their audience perfectly?

Longinus gives steps to achieve such sublime discourse in his essay, with five steps:

i.                    The power to achieve great thoughts

ii.                  Strong and inspired emotion

iii.                Noble diction

iv.                Dignified and elevated word-arrangement  
v.         Competence in speaking is assumed as a common foundation for all five; nothing is possible without it (Longinus, 350)  

Longinus suggests, “real sublimity contains much food for reflection, is difficult or rather impossible to resist, and makes a strong and indefectible impression on the memory” (Longinus, 350). If an orator is to achieve this “real sublimity” then there must be a way to communicate with their audience to some extent. However, Longinus is not concerned with communication. Rather, he is more concerned with presentation in his five steps to obtain sublimity.  

Let me break down the steps and take a closer look at how Longinus does not achieve real communication/meaning, which should be the object of a sublime discourse.

The power to achieve great thoughts
Thoughts do not obtain meaning for a hearer and as communicated by John Locke in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, “[when] we talk to ourselves, any words will serve the turn. For since sounds are voluntary and indifferent signs of any ideas, a man may use what words he pleases to signify his own ideas to himself” (Locke, 817), meaning that a word can obtain one idea to one person because it is just a sound. However, it is hard to convey that word in its exact meaning to that person to another group of people for them to understand. The orator comes to the point to translate their ideas into words or certain texts to capture that idea.

Strong and Inspired Emotion
Emotion is something that can only be displayed through the use of certain words, but as Longinus is talking about an orator, he is not just being heard, but is seen too; meaning there are interesting uses of signs that can be achieved by the audience through the facial emotions of the orator (I know Longinus is discussing composing a speech, but this is an interesting idea). If we take a look back at McCloud’s Understanding Comics we see that he says, “the more cartoony a face is, for instance, the more people it could be said to describe” (McCloud, 31), what I am suggesting is that basic emotions that are revealed in the face can for the audience display meanings that they could connect with. We have all been angry, happy and sad; interestingly enough certain emotions can be universally connected to be many people:

These emotions are said to be communicated universally. So if the orator expresses these emotions the audience maybe able to find a similar kind of emotion evoked from them by watching and hearing the orator.

Noble Diction
The choice of words is very important to communicate something to people. Longinus actually seems to suggest that, “words will be great if thoughts are weighty” (Longinus, 351). This is hard to believe if we are focusing on communicating. The orator has to sift through words that can convey the weighty thoughts and these weighty thoughts are more or less probably philosophical thoughts which says Locke, “the chief end of language is communication being to be understood, words serve not well for that end, neither in civil or philosophical discourse, when any word does not excite in the hearer the same idea which it stands for in the mind of the speaker” (Locke, 817), this of course is assuming that these “weighty thoughts” are actually philosophical or I would assume words that produce “food for reflection”. The orator has a chore of communicating with their audience if they want diction that is not just noble, but offers clear communication.

Finally, Dignified and elevated word-arrangement  
Grammatically speaking is something that is most necessary in communicating. What I mean by that is when forming words they have to be in an order that a person will understand. This is a simple idea and (I would hope) a key step for any orator writing or speaking their speech. To dignify a word order I would assume it to have it in a place that might strike a chord with the hearer, or have an emotional impact with the audience. I would assume that this arrangement of words should develop an image in the hearers mind because that maybe the most effective way to move the audience.

So, we have found that Longinus may not have been as interested in creating a good form of communication rather an effective way to write a speech (well, duh). However, to communicate an idea whether the motive is to move an audience to feel certain kinds of emotions, which I believe Longinus is trying to delve further in than that, one must need to communicate their ideas. These steps maybe good first steps for an orator, but to look at text in its imperfections it is easy to find that it is much harder to create a sublime speech that actually fully communicates to its audience a true and defined meaning.

Locke, John. “From An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.” The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, Second Edition. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 814-827.

Longinus. “From On the Sublime.” The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, Second Edition. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 344-358.

McCloud, Scott. “The Vocabulary of Comics.” In Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Collins, 1994. 24-45.

Seven Universal Facial Expressions of Emotion http://dragonscanbebeaten.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/seven-universal-facial-expressions-of-emotion/