Abstract This essay considers questions about civility raised in the discourse responding to the January 2011 shootings in Tucson, Arizona. Focusing on two sites of discord—the debate in the media and President Obama’s address at the memorial service for the victims—our analysis identifies two conceptions of civility and their corresponding assumptions about democracy and community, provides a critique of both conceptions, and offers a conceptual framework for rhetorical critics studying civility.

Abstract In this essay, we examine public responses to Jared Lee Loughner’s attempted assassination of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, focusing in particular on the rhetorical strategies employed by political conservatives. We argue that the most prominent conservative reactions either undermined the potential for reasoned debate and a cohesive narrative regarding the causes of the attack or, by emphasizing Loughner’s agency as an individual, deranged actor, painted the event in a way that failed to provide transformative redemption, foreclosed even the possibility of a rhetorically satisfying sense of justice, and preempted what could otherwise have been a rich, deliberative deployment of civility. We utilize Kenneth Burke’s dramatism in speculating about possible alternative interpretations of the situation, hopeful that such an analysis might offer both the public and the government more effective rhetorical resources for dealing with and even preventing such increasingly common tragedies. In particular, we advocate the use of a hybrid, tragicomic frame—a sort of Burkean Serenity Prayer in which we accept the things we cannot change while still finding the inspiration, strength, and wisdom to respond productively—alongside a multifaceted set of pentadic ratios to address the complex demands created by mental illness.

Abstract In 1950, William Faulkner delivered his “Speech Accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature.” The historic moment was one of high atomic anxiety as the unfriendly relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union intensified and the possibility of nuclear war and the end of humanity increased. Faulkner recognized the anxiety and, through his address, offered a language to help cope with the anxieties of the atomic age. This study examines how through the rhetorical strategies of kairos, decorum, and enactment, Faulkner recast humanism in an atomic age and presented the world with a way of living through atomic fear.

Abstract The years following the Mexican Revolution (1910–1917) witnessed energetic debate at all levels of Mexican society concerning the future of the nation. Utilizing the notion of “political fictions,” in this article I claim that a tension between two competing political fictions was laid bare and can usefully be examined through analysis of manifestos from this period. Building upon previous scholarship on this genre, I show how manifestos arose from institutional crisis and served as both the voice of the oppressed and as the bully pulpit of political elites in Mexico. I conclude by analyzing an artistic manifesto, the Comprimido Estridentista (1921), which is an early attempt to synthesize these two political fictions. Foreshadowing one of the central concerns of the postrevolutionary state, this unusual text attempts to institutionalize the promises of the Mexican Revolution.

Book Review| March 01 2014 Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion. By Jeanne Fahnestock. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011; pp. 464. $99.00 cloth; $39.95 paper. Andrew C. Hansen Andrew C. Hansen Trinity University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2014) 17 (1): 189–193. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.17.1.0189 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Andrew C. Hansen; Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 March 2014; 17 (1): 189–193. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.17.1.0189 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2014 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.2014 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

AbstractThe Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, offers a “spatial sermon” to convince visitors to reject the theory of evolution in favor of Young Earth Creationism, a literal reading of the biblical creation story. The museum combines strategies from the journalistic discussion of the debate with the form of a conversion narrative. The goal of this embodied conversion narrative is to convince visitors that the evidence for creationism and evolution is equivalent and insufficient for deciding the issue, and the only way to adjudicate the issue is to accept what the museum's creators believe to be the transparent wisdom of the Bible.

Abstract This study examines the case of the American philosopher John Dewey as rhetor and public intellectual in China in 1919–1921 to elucidate the lived rhetoric of pragmatism. In China, Dewey gave more than 200 lectures to large academic and general audiences on topics such as education, philosophy, and science. This lecturing activity represents a remarkable and complex rhetorical situation as it involves Dewey addressing an audience not familiar with his ideas and potentially open to persuasion. Using recently discovered lecture notes written by Dewey and translations from the Chinese interpretations of his lectures, I argue that his lectures evinced a pragmatist rhetorical style that attempted to reconstruct dominant habits of thought and communication among his Chinese audiences. In so doing, this study advances our understanding of Dewey as rhetor and the theoretical grounds of the pragmatist rhetoric of experience and synthetic conflict.

Abstract This essay recovers the emergence of teachers’ union rhetoric through an analysis of Margaret Haley’s address to the National Education Association convention of 1904. Entitled "Why Teachers Should Organize," Haley’s speech was the first call for a national effort to unionize U.S. classroom teachers. Promising not just material but also professional advancement, Haley broke new rhetorical ground in St. Louis by advocating unionism as a professional duty. Through a close reading of her argumentation, I contend that Haley positioned democracy at the center of teachers’ union rhetoric. To make unionism appealing for her audience of schoolteachers and administrators, Haley paired the democratic goals of progressivism with the democratic potential of labor. Appealing to the commitment to democracy shared by educators, progressives, and labor activists, Haley’s speech was the first to outline the union rhetoric that would transform public education over the course of the twentieth century.

Book Review| June 01 2012 Cogent Science in Context: The Science Wars, Argumentation Theory, and Habermas Cogent Science in Context: The Science Wars, Argumentation Theory, and Habermas. William Rehg. Joseph Rhodes Joseph Rhodes Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2012) 15 (2): 390–393. https://doi.org/10.2307/41940584 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Joseph Rhodes; Cogent Science in Context: The Science Wars, Argumentation Theory, and Habermas. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 June 2012; 15 (2): 390–393. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41940584 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2012 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2012 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Book Review| June 01 2012 An Exceptional Debate: The Championing of and Challenge to American Exceptionalism American Exceptionalisms: From Winthrop to Winfrey. Sylvia Söderlind and James Taylor Carson.The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. Andrew Bacevich.The Myth of American Exceptionalism. Geoffrey Hodgson.The New American Exceptionalism. Donald E. Pease.A Nation Like No Other: Why American Exceptionalism Matters. Newt Gingrich. Jason A. Edwards Jason A. Edwards Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2012) 15 (2): 351–367. https://doi.org/10.2307/41940576 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Jason A. Edwards; An Exceptional Debate: The Championing of and Challenge to American Exceptionalism. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 June 2012; 15 (2): 351–367. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41940576 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2012 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2012 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Book Review| June 01 2012 Satire and Dissent: Interventions in Contemporary Political Debate Satire and Dissent: Interventions in Contemporary Political Debate. Amber Day. Christopher J. Gilbert Christopher J. Gilbert Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2012) 15 (2): 378–381. https://doi.org/10.2307/41940580 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Christopher J. Gilbert; Satire and Dissent: Interventions in Contemporary Political Debate. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 June 2012; 15 (2): 378–381. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41940580 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2012 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2012 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract As Seattle’s mayor in 1926, Bertha Landes made history as the first woman elected to lead a large city in the United States. To respond to the complicated demands of female political leadership in the early twentieth century American West, Landes pragmatically appealed to expectations of both public men and domestic women by making arguments from both sameness and difference. Using a rhetoric of municipal housekeeping to justify her entrance into political office, Landes paradoxically asserted beliefs about the difference between men and women in leadership, while simultaneously suggesting her political service did not differ from a mans. Although her municipal housekeeping arguments essentialized women as moral and different, they also assisted her entrance into politics and attested to women’s suitability for political leadership. She simultaneously employed a rhetoric of Western masculinity and sameness that reified masculine conceptions of political leadership, and suggested that womens roles in the nation functioned similarly to mens roles, thus expanding the role of women in politics beyond exclusively municipal housekeepers. This analysis not only illustrates the use of sameness and difference arguments in elective office, but also how they oxymoronically functioned together.

Abstract In this essay I analyze the debate over Abraham Lincoln’s role in the emancipation of African American slaves. Speaking both to contemporary public memory and the evidence of history, I contend that when Lincoln discussed or wrote about emancipation between 1860 and 1863, his rhetoric exhibited a dialogic form that shifted responsibility from the president to congressional leaders and common citizens. I conclude that Lincoln’s dialogic rhetoric does not signal his opposition to emancipation but rather his deep belief that emancipation would become meaningful only after the considered deliberation and action of the American people.

Abstract This article examines the public controversy surrounding the National Park Services decision about how best to recognize the site of the nations first executive mansion—the Presidents House—in Philadelphias Independence National Historical Park. The first of the houses two presidential occupants, George Washington, kept nine slaves in the mansion while circumventing a Pennsylvania law that could have given the slaves their freedom. The National Park staff’s resistance to acknowledging Washingtons actions led to an ongoing and lengthy public debate that eventually resulted in the decision to build an installation that recognized all of the occupants of the house. Advocates for building such a site invoked two types of vernacular discourse—a counternarrative ("Liberty has been incompletely enacted") and a representative anecdote ("Excavating buried history")—that embraced the traditions of storytelling at Independence National Historical Park.

Abstract The September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center was an event that inaugurated a "War on Terror" This essay constitutes a productive rhetorical analysis and critique of the 2002 congressional debate over Iraq in an effort to open a metapolitics. Congressional debate is read as an intertextual extension of administration rhetoric pitting fear appeals lit up through a network imaginary against pragmatic policy questions. The reflexive rhetoric constituting a national policy debate at the federal level is discussed, and the outcomes of common cause and political cover are critiqued.

Abstract U.S. government agencies are collaborating with outside scholars to untangle disparate threads of knotty technoscientific issues, in part by integrating structured debating exercises into institutional decision-making processes such as intelligence assessment and public policy planning. These initiatives drive up demand for rhetoricians with skill and experience in what Protagoras called dissoi logoi—the practice of airing multiple sides of vexing questions for the purpose of stimulating critical thinking. In the contemporary milieu, dissoi logoi receives concrete expression in the tradition of intercollegiate switch-side debating, a form of structured argumentation categorized by some as a cultural technology with weighty ideological baggage. What exactly is that baggage, and how does it implicate plans to improve institutional decision making by drawing from rhetorical theory and expertise? Exploration of how switch-side debating meets demand-driven rhetoric of science not only sheds light on this question, but also contributes to the burgeoning scholarly literature on deliberative democracy, inform argumentation studies, and suggest new avenues of inquiry in rhetorical theory and practice.