Whether they use the term or not, rhetoricians have been known to approach the concept of incommensurability with some reluctance. This reluctance has manifested itself in a variety of ways from Gr...

The subject of Phaedra Pezzullo's book, Toxic Tourism, concerns the use of the toxic tour as a performative re-definition of tours and tourism. The book examines the ways in which environmental jus...

(2006). A Review of: “Invention and Method: Two Rhetorical Treatises from the Hermogenic Corpus, translated with introductions and notes by George A. Kennedy.”. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 105-108.

At the beginning of the long and contentious discussion with Callicles that makes up the second half of Plato's Gorgias, Socrates tells his fellow Athenian how delighted he is to find a worthy inte...

Asian rhetoric has drawn much attention in American academia over the last three decades. Still, studies of Asian rhetorical traditions were often initiated from a “deficiency” model, in which the ...

Robert Ivie is well known to readers of this journal for his work on the rhetoric of war. Nurtured in the context of the discourse of the Cold War and its downward spiral into the pointless maelstr...

The publication of this edition of Blair's Lectures makes an important text in the history of rhetoric, long out of print, again available to scholars and students at a reasonable price ($75; $35 p...

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. This emphasis on pedagogy is consistent with the consensus formed at the 2003 Alliance of Rhetoric Societies Conference held in Evanston, Illinois, summed up in Jeffrey Walker's statement there, “What makes rhetoric rhetoric is its teaching tradition.” For more on this position, see the essays in the Summer 2004 (volume 34, issue 3) issue of Rhetoric Society Quarterly, especially Gerard A. Hauser's Hauser , Gerard A. “Teaching Rhetoric: Or Why Rhetoric Isn't Just Another Kind of Philosophy or Literary Criticism.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 34 ( 2004 ): 39 – 53 . [CSA] [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar] “Teaching Rhetoric: Or Why Rhetoric Isn't Just Another Kind of Philosophy or Literary Criticism.”

T here is a long-standing tension between the community and rheto ricians of with regard to the status of truth and the objectivity of knowledge. While neither the community nor the community of rhetorical scholars can be said to be monolithic in their views, the scientific view ascribes objective, permanent, and universal status to the facts produced by scientists, whereas the view supported by many rhetoricians describes facts as products of social conditions, and therefore marked by inter-subjectivity, transience, and situational delimitations. The classical account thus sees facts as discovered, whereas the sophistic rhetorical account portrays them as constructed (e.g., Fuller; Gaonkar; Gusfield; Latour; Latour and Woolgar; Lessl; Nelson, Megill, and McCloskey; Taylor, Defining Science).' As a variety of scholars have suggested, this bifurcation of views can be resolved into a unified perspective that accounts for the major arguments advanced by those supporting each of the classical orientations (Bambrough; Bernstein; Laudan, Explaining Success). It is possible, in other words, to see facts as both objective and situated-both faithful to material realities and responsive to social conditions (Howe and Lyne). From this unified perspective, scientists can make errors either because their contact with asocial material realities are flawed (e.g., cold fusion) or because there are flaws in their application of the linguistic and social codes that convey the character and meaning of the contact they have made with material realities. This essay explores the persistence of bad science of the latter sort by reporting and interpreting an interaction between scientists and a rhetorician, one that occurred when I sent a letter to the journal Science responding to a publication on brain sex research by Gur et al. (Sex Differences), which appeared in that journal. I was later interviewed by a reporter for a major newspaper with regard to my letter and the Gur research. The texts for this study therefore include the Gur research article, my letter, a reply to my letter by the authors of the Gur article, the two reviews of my letter solicited by the editor of Science, and the journalistic account of my letter and the scientists' publications. This essay interprets the response of these scientists and the integration of their work into the public sphere through theories of demarcation. It suggests that bad science, at least that which supports an ideology that is hegemonic in the social sphere,2 is maintained by a complex relationship beRSQ: Rhetoric Society Quarterly 83 Volume 26, Number 4 Fall 1996

Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age, ed. Theresa Enos. Garland: New York and London, 1996; xxiv; 803. Audience and Rhetoric: An Archeological Composition of the Discourse Community by James E. Porter. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice‐Hall, 1992; 6 +185 pages. Writing the Speech by William E. Wiethoff. Greenwood, Indiana: The Educational Video Group, 1994; xi; 217.

The Law of the Other: The Mixed Jury and Changing Conceptions of Citizenship, Law, and Knowledge by Marianne Constable. New Practices of Inquiry. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1994; 192 pp. Reinterpreting Property by Margaret Jane Radin. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993; 265 pp.

Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication: Cognition/Culture/Power. Carol Berkenkotter and Thomas N. Huckin. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1995. Academic Literacy and the Nature of Expertise: Reading, Writing, and Knowing in Academic Philosophy. Cheryl Geisler. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994. Constructing Experience. Charles Bazerman. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994.

Abstract Aeschines and Athenian Politics by Edward M. Harris. New York: Oxford U P, 1995. Pp. x + 233. The Presidency and the Rhetoric of Foreign Crisis by Denise M. Bostdorff. Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 1994. Preface vii, 306 pp. The Fate of Eloquence in the Age of Hume by Adam Potkay. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1994; pp. 253. Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire by Peter Brown. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992. 182 pages. Composition in Context: Essays in Honor of Donald C. Stewart. ed. W. Ross Winterowd and Vincent Gillespie. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois U P, 1994; xxxi; 266.

Consolatory Rhetoric: Grief, Symbol and Ritual in the Greco‐Roman Era by Donovan J. Ochs. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1993; xiv + 130pp. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students by Sharon Crowley. New York: Macmillan, 1994. 364 pages; glossary; time‐line of important moments in Greek and Roman rhetoric; bibliography; index. Landmark Essays on Kenneth Burke. Edited by Barry Brummett. Davis, CA: Hermagoras P, 1993; xix; 290 pp. Ramon Hull's New Rhetoric: Text and Translation of Llull's Rethorica Nova. Ed. and Trans. Mark D. Johnson. Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1994; 1; 109. Thinking Through Theory: Vygotskian Perspectives on the Teaching of Writing by James Thomas Zebroski. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook P, 1994. 334 pages. A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth‐Century England, by Steven Shapin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1994. Pp. 483.

In ancient Greece, a was, literally, a leader of the people. The meaning of the term has changed considerably since then, however, and a today is regarded as someone who appeals to greed, fear, and hatred (Safire 163), a politician who achieves or holds power stirring up the feelings of his audience and leading them [sic] to action despite the considerations which weigh against (Scruton 115). If demagogue is a modem day devil term, then its usage will be accompanied by the degree of subjectivity which is a hallmark of such words and phrases in modern society. In short, the label demagogue is often used as a weapon by one group to another (Clark 423). This is especially true in American politics, where the term has been used as an attack word as far back as 1808 (Safire 163). This subjectivity may help to explain the wide variety of persons who have been, at one time or another, labeled as demagogues. Some members of this less-than-elite group are obvious and noncontroversial candidates: Senator Joseph McCarthy (Fisher; Luthin; Baskerville), Huey Long (Gaske; Luthin; Bormann; although exception to this label for Long is taken by Williams), George Wallace (Johannesen), Adolf Hitler (Blackbourn; Fishman), Louis Farrakhan (Rosenblatt), and such well-known Nineteenth Century figures as Kearney (Lomas, Dennis Kearney), Pitchfork Ben Tillman (Clark), and William Jennings Bryant (Tulis). Other public figures who have been nominated for the list are more obscure, including Ma and Pa Ferguson (Luthin; Herman), Gerald K. Smith (Sitton), and Henry Harmon Spalding (Thompson), while others would seem, at first glance, to be unlikely candidates: Jimmy Carter (Will), Jesse Jackson (Drew), Andrew Johnson (Tulis), and Senator Joseph Biden (Barnes). In attempting to understand what is nominally called demagoguery, however, two important distinctions should be made. The first involves demagoguery and rhetoric. Although demagogues use rhetoric (as noted above), and although demagogic rhetoric has certain identifiable characteristics (as will be discussed below), it does not necessarily follow that a speaker who uses demagogic rhetoric on a particular occasion is thus properly to be considered a demagogue. As Luthin notes, there exists a bit of demagoguery in the most lofty of statesmen. . (355). Thus, a would be correctly defined as one who habitually uses the hallmarks of demagoguery to be discussed later in this review of literature. A second important distinction should be made, this one concerning the difference between what is nominally called demagoguery and nominally called agitation. The distinction has often been blurred in practice; for many, all agitators are demagogues, and vice versa (Lomas, The Agitator 18). Put simply, an agitator is someone who seeks to effect social change through rhetoric. The term often has a negative connotation because the status quo is usually resistant to change and thus wary of those who urge it (McEdwards 36). Although the agitator may resort to demagoguery, agitative rhetoric is not, in itself, demagogic (Lomas, The Agitator 19).

Eloquence in an Electronic Age: The Transformation of Political Speechmaking. Kathleen Hall Jamieson. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Reviewed by Martin J. Medhurst. T. S. Eliot and the Philosophy of Criticism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. 236 pp. Reviewed by Warren Rubel. The Sophists. Harold Barrett, Novato, CA: Chandler and Sharp Publishers, 1981. 85+ix pp. Reviewed by William Benoit Electric Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing. Michael Heim. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1987.305 pp. Reviewed by Ronald A. Sudol. Thoreau's Comments on the Art of Writing, Richard Dillman, editor. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987. Reviewed by J. L. Campbell. Rhetoric in the Classical Tradition, Winifred Bryan Horner. New York: St. Martin's, 1988. Reviewed by James Leonard. Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis, by Robert N. Proctor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988. Reviewed by Allen Harris. Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science, Charles Bazerman. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 332 pages. Reviewed by David S. Kaufer.

Michael Paul Rogin, "Ronald Reagan,”; the Movie and Other Episodes in Political Demonology (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987), 366pp. Jeffrey K. Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 209pp. Gerald Graff. Professing Literature: An Institutional History. University of Chicago Press, 1987. viii+315 pp. $24.95. Joseph Vining, The Authoritative and the Authoritarian, University of Chicago Press, 1986. In Search of Justice: The Indiana Tradition in Speech Communication. Richard J. Jensen and John C. Hammerback (editors). Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 1987. 311 Pp. Greek Rhetorical Origins of Christian Faith: An Inquiry. James L. Kinneavy. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Pp. ix + 186. Literary Patronage in Greece and Rome. Barbara K. Gold. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1987. Pp. xii + 267. Introduction to Rhetorical Theory. Gerard A. Hauser. New York: Harper and Row, 1986. The Variables of Composition: Process and Product in a Business Setting. Glen J. Broadhead and Richard C. Freed. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986. 169 Pp.

Redefining “the classical tradition”; in a new writing textbook Winifred Bryan Homer, Rhetoric in the Classical Tradition, New York: St. Martin's, 1988.

Odd Man Out: A Biography of Lord Soper of Kingsway, by William Purcell. Oxford: A. R. Mowbray & Co., 1983. 196 pages. Power and Communication, by Andrew King. Waveland Press, Inc., 1987. Writing Instruction in Nineteenth Century American Colleges, by James A. Berlin. Southern Illinois University, 1984. Rhetoric and Reality; Writing Instruction In American Colleges, 1900–1985. James Berlin. Southern Illinois University Press, 1987

Paul D. Erickson. Reagan Speaks; The Making of an American Myth. New York: New York University Press, 1985. 172pp. $16.95. Walter H. Beale. A Pragmatic Theory of Rhetoric. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987. 186pp.

Fighting for Life; Contest, Sexuality and Consciousness. Walter J. Ong. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1981. The Muse Learns to Write; Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present. Eric A. Havelock. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986. Pp. 144.

An Early Commentary on the “Poetria Nova”; of Geoffrey of Vinsauf. Marjorie Curry Woods, ed. New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1986. Pp. Ixvi + 505. Studying Writing: Linguistic Approaches. Charles R. Cooper and Sydney Greenbaum, eds. (Written Communication Annual, Vol. 1.) Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Rhetoric and Praxis: The Contribution of Classical Rhetoric to Practical Reasoning. Edited by Jean Dietz Moss. Washington, D.C.: Catholic U of America P, 1986, Pp. xi + 172.

Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article. Howard S. Becker with a chapter by Pamela Richards. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1986. pp. xii + 180. A War of Words: Chicano Protest in the 1960s and 1970s. John C. Hammerback, Richard J. Jensen and Jose Angel Gutierrez. Westport, Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press, 1985. Words and Values: Some Leading Words and Where They Lead Us. Peggy Rosenthal. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984; pp. i‐xii + 29S. Rhetorical Stances in Modern Literature: Allegories of Love and Death. Lynette Hunter. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984.

The Force of Fantasy: Restoring the American Dream. Ernest Bormann. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985, 279 pp. Thought and Character: The Rhetoric of Democratic Education. Frederick J. Antczak. Iowa State University Press, 1985. A Rhetoric of Argument. Jeanne Fahnestock and Marie Secor. New York: Random House, 1982.

New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism. By George A. Kennedy. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1984. Figures of Literary Discourse. By Gérard Genette. Trans. Alan Sheridan. Intro. Marie‐Rose Logan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

Figures of Speech: 60 Ways to Turn a Phrase. By Arthur Quinn. Peregrine Books, 1982. Packaging the Presidency: A History and Criticism of Presidential Campaign Advertising. By Kathleen Hall Jamieson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. 505 pp. Rhetorical Traditions and the Teaching of Writing. By C. H. Knoblauch and Lil Brannon. Boynton/Cook, 1984. The Singer of Tales. By Albert B. Lord. New York: Rtheneum, 1976. Originally published by Harvard University Press as Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, 24 (1960). Greek Declamation. D. A. Russell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. pp. vii + 41. $29.50

Verbal Style and the Presidency: A Computer‐Based Analysis. By Roderick P. Hart. Orlando, Florida: Academic Press, Inc., 1984. The Present State of Scholarship in Historical and Contemporary Rhetoric. Winifred Bryan Horner, Editor. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1983. Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse. Ed. Robert J. Connors, Lisa S. Ede, and Andrea A. Lunsford. Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizxng of the Word. By Walter J. Ong, S. J. London and New York: Methuen, 1982.

The Tactical Uses of Passion: An Essay on Power, Reason, and Reality, By F. G. Bailey. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1983, 277 pp.

Rhetoric Revalued Brian Vickers, Editor. Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies. 1982. The Seven Liberal Arts in the Middle Ages. David L. Wagner, Editor. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. Philosophical Style: An Anthology About the Writing and Reading of Philosophy. Berel Lang. Editor, Chicago: Nelson‐Hall, 1980. Pp. xiii + 546. The Incredulous Reader: Literature and the Function of Disbelief. By Clayton Koelb. Ithaca. Cornell University Press, 1984, 240 pp. Evaluating College Writing Programs. By Stephen P. Witte and Lester Faigley. Published for the Conference on College Composition and Communication. Carbondale and Edwardsville. Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983

On Literacy: The Politics of the Word from Homer to the Age of Rock. By Robert Pattison (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982, 246 pp.). Revising: New Essays for Teachers of Writing. Ronald A. Sudol, Editor. (Urbana, IL: ERICINCTE, 1982.) ON METAPHOR. Sheldon Sachs, editor. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979)

Abstract Aristotle on Political Reasoning: A Commentary on the “Rhetoric.” Larry Arnhart. DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1981, pp. ix + 230. Cloth: $18.00.

Review: Argument texts and audience REASONS AND ARGUMENTS, By Gerald M. Nosich (Belmont. CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1982) ARGUMENTATION AND DEBATE: PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONS, By James Edward Sayer (Sherman Oaks. CA: Alfred Publishing Co., 1980) BETTER REASONING: TECHNIQUES FOR HANDLING ARGUMENT, EVIDENCE, AND ABSTRACTION, By Larry Wright (New York: Holt. Rinehart and Winston, 1982) INTERPRETATIVE CONVENTIONS: THE READER IN THE STUDY OF AMERICAN FICTION, by Steven Mailloux. Cornell University Press, 1982.

FOUR WORLDS OF WRITING, By Janice M. Lauer, Gene Montague, Andrea Lunsford, and Janet Emig (New York: Harper and Row, 1981, xvii + 423 pp.) REINVENTING THE RHETORICAL TRADITION, ed. Aviva Freedman and Ian Pringle (Conway, Arkansas: L & S Books, for the Canadian Council of Teachers of English, 1980, 197 pp.) UNDERSTANDING PERSUASION. By Raymond S. Ross and Mark G. Ross (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice‐Hall, 1981, xii+228 pp.)

Business and Technical Writing: An Annotated Bibliography of Books 1880–1980 Gerald J. Aired, Diana C. Reep, and Mohan R. Limaye with the assistance of Michael A. Mikolajczak. London and Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1981. Philosophers on Rhetoric: Traditional and Emerging Views. Donald G. Douglas, ed. Skokie, Illinois: National Textbook Company, 1973. Four Worlds of Writing. Janice M. Lauer, Gene Montague, Andrea Lunsford, Janet Emig. New York: Harper and Row, 1981. Pp. xvii and 423.

Aristotle, Rhetoric I: A Commentary. William M. A. Grimaldi, S. J. New York: Fordham University Press, 1980, pp. viii + 362. $45.00. In the Arresting Eye: The Rhetoric of Imagism. John T. Gage. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1981. Pp. 183. Human Communication Theory: The History of a Paradigm. Nancy Harper. Rochelle Park, N.J.: Hayden, 1979. Pg. 320. The Writer's Work, Guide to Effective Composition. Dean Memering and Prank O'Hare. New Jersey: Prentice‐Hall, 1980. Pp. 474.

Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth—Century England. Nancy F. Partner. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1977. Pp. 289. $18.00. Rhetoric, Philosophy, and Literature; An Exploration. Edited by Don M. Burks. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1978. Pp. xiii + 115. $7.50. Basic Writing: Essays for Teachers, Researchers, Administrators. L. N. Kasden and D. R. Hoeber, editors. Urbana, Illinois: NCTE Publication, 1980. Pp. 185. Justice, Law, and Argument: Essays on Moral and Legal Reasoning. Chaim Perelman. Dordrecht and Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1980. Pp. xiii & 181. Introduction by Harold J. Berman. Homer and the Oral Tradition. G. S. Kirk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Pp. viii & 223.