Contents
1 Rhetoric and Robotics 5
1.1 On the field of robotics . . . . 5
1.1.1 What is arobot? . . . . 5
1.1.2 Through the history of moving machines . . . . 6
1.2 The technique of rhetoric . . . . 12
1.2.1 Techne. . . . 12
1.2.2 The analogy between rhetoric and mechanics . . . . 13
1.2.3 Why ancient rhetoric and robotics? . . . . 16
2 Movement, Perception and Language 17 2.1 Cognitive approach . . . . 18
2.1.1 Language and money . . . . 18
2.1.2 A glimpse into the role of movement in humans’ perception of robots . . . . 18
2.1.3 Traces in natural language . . . . 21
2.2 Linguistic approach . . . . 25
2.2.1 Telling the world . . . . 25
2.2.2 An overview of the influence of language on cognition . . . . 26
2.2.3 The problem of ineffability, orHow movement resists linguis- tic coding . . . . 27
2.2.4 The function of enargeia, or How actions are made visible through language . . . . 33
2.3 Discussion on Movement, Perception and Language . . . . 35
3 Lexical ambiguity resolution in robotics 37 3.1 Lexical ambiguity resolution . . . . 38
3.1.1 Lexical access during sentence comprehension (David Swin- ney, 1979) . . . . 38
3.1.2 Lexical ambiguity in the context of robotics . . . . 39
3.2 Robotics’ wording . . . . 41
3.2.1 Robot dispositions: a series ofconfused notions . . . . 41
3.2.2 Robot actions : a sample of symbolic language (like in poetry) 42 3.2.3 Discussion on robot dispositions and actions, regarding lexical ambiguity resolution . . . . 47
3.3 Dealing with symbolic language and confused notions . . . . 48
3.3.1 Various common strategies . . . . 48
3.3.2 Among the rhetorical apparatus . . . . 52
3.3.3 So what? . . . . 53
iv Contents
4 Beyond the words: Rhetoric and Folk Epistemology 55
4.1 Rhetorical styles and Folk Epistemology . . . . 56
4.1.1 The notion ofstyle and the field offolk epistemology . . . . . 56
4.1.2 At one extreme of the spectrum: sensationalism . . . . 57
4.1.3 At the other extreme: neutrality . . . . 58
4.1.4 Consequences for robotics . . . . 60
4.2 Experimental rhetoric at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie (Paris, France) . . . . 61
4.2.1 A gathering of roboticists and reporters . . . . 61
4.2.2 Conduct of the experiment . . . . 62
4.2.3 Conception . . . . 63
4.2.4 Results . . . . 65
5 Conclusion and Perspectives 75 5.1 Conclusion . . . . 75
5.2 Perspectives . . . . 79
5.2.1 Through the eyes of the roboticists . . . . 79
5.2.2 Ekphrasis of moving machines: the case of the robot Cheetah (MIT) . . . . 80
A Profiles of the fictional candidates (exercise of suasoria) 83 A.1 Candidate 1: François Musia . . . . 83
A.2 Candidate 2: Juliette Langlois . . . . 84
A.3 Candidate 3: Patrick Schrurk . . . . 85
A.4 Candidate 4: Marise Kudo . . . . 86
B Productions: 3-minute speeches (exercise of suasoria) 89 B.1 Group 1: defenders of François Musia . . . . 89
B.2 Group 2: defenders of Juliette Langlois . . . . 91
B.3 Group 3: defenders of Patrick Schrurk . . . . 92
B.4 Group 4: defenders of Marise Kudo . . . . 93
B.5 Additional comments . . . . 94
Bibliography 97
