Epi...Epistayta...Episteemed...Oh Hayl.

After some intense Google searching, I've managed to not only come up with a rough working definition of what "epistemic" means, but also what each of its proposed uses mean. At least, I think I do.

Before I get too wrapped up in my newfound vocabulary, let me just dive in.  There are three uses of epistemic rhetoric, which is rhetoric related to knowledge.  According to Mr. Brummett, there are three reasons to use it.  To save myself the time (and potentially, the embarrassment) of trying to tie them all together in a nice, flowy package, I'm just going to list them.  Ready? Go!

1. Methodology
Basically, knowledge-based rhetoric can be used as a brute method to show people the truths in life.  While there's plenty of gray-area here, it seems to break down to this:  On the part of the listener, the epistemic bits can help them see the bare bones facts in any argument.  On the part of the speaker, using epistemic rhetoric can work to their advantage because of the effect it can elicit.

2. Sociology
Numero dos seems to work out most of the gray-area that I mentioned before.  Since rhetoric "leads to knowledge of social questions because it creates what there is to know in the social realm," it makes it easy to explain the ability of rhetoric to stand both in the more concrete realm that the first use encompasses, as well as the more hairy topics that are shoved into our sociological stratosphere.  Not every issue is going to have an absolute truth, and by using socially founded observations, arguments can still be made effectively using rhetoric epistemically.

3. Ontology
Last but not least, we have what is by far the loftiest of rhetorical goals.  I won't lie, I had to see what exactly ontology was, and the definition that I liked was "the branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being."  The general argument that Brummett was making was that nothing can truly exist without our rhetorical abilities to make it so.  


As a final thought, I'd like to remind you, dear reader, that all of these are just my interpretations, and they should never, ever, ever be considered accurate. I've done my level best, but that doesn't come with a guarantee.