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March 1997

  1. Encouraging civic participation among first‐year writing students; or, why composition class should be more like a bowling team
    Abstract

    Last summer, I wrote a letter to editor of my local newspaper and coauthored a response to George Will's now-infamous assault on college writing instructional Big deal? Yes. And here's why: Like many composition instructors, I've been preoccupied for some time with what S. Michael Halloran once called the need for a revival of public discourse (246) and what 1995 Conference on College Composition and Communication called literacies, technologies, responsibilities. My response to these preoccupations has always been passive: I figured that I could best promote responsible practice of public literacies by enhancing my students' awareness of-and thus, I thought, their stake in-public issues. Unsure of whether I was actually accomplishing this, though, I decided to investigate whether there were indeed connections between students' classroom-initiated participation in literate behavior (e.g., writing, reading, and talking about issues) and their self-initiated participation in civic behavior, such as voting and writing letters to editor. To do so, I looked closely at several current issues-type writing textbooks and selected one that appeared to share my goals; I designed an attitudinal survey and a sequence of assignments; and I assembled a file of student writing samples. I'll discuss results of my study in more detail later in this essay, but for now, let me suggest that writing-about-issues texts that I examined (including America Now, one I eventually chose) do not particularly encourage students' participation in world beyond classroom, and may unwittingly repress it. And while this came as a great surprise to me, my students seemed aware of profound difference between writing about issues in class and acting on them (in writing or otherwise) outside of class. For example, in response to some end-of-semester assessment questions about America Now, one young woman, Laura G., wrote, Well, I'm not going to go join [G]reenpeace or storm White House or anything but, yes, reading some of these chapters really did [a]ffect my thinking. . . . Reading these articles caused me to speak out at times when I would have normally remained silent. I don't want to underestimate move from silence to speaking out, but I

    doi:10.1080/07350199709359225
  2. The composition course and public discourse: The case of Adams Sherman Hill, popular culture, and cultural inoculation
    Abstract

    American intellectuals and educators are dismayed by crisis in public discourse. With Jurgen Habermas and others, they worry over of public sphere and a degeneration in rational-critical debate. Cultural critics often contrast contemporary public discourse with what seems to be America's golden age of public discussion: nineteenth-century America, before culture industry or late capitalism, before professionalism, before TV, before mass media or multimedia.1 The usual suspect is modern communications technologies, specifically TV. According to Neil Postman, we should deeply lament the decline of Age of Typography and ascendancy of Age of Television (8). Televisual media, he argues, has eroded public's span and shriveled its capacity for rational thought. Looking to Lincoln-Douglas debates, he maintains that Americans' verbal facility and attention span would obviously have been extraordinary by current standards (45). The citizenry has declined, he argues, because citizens watch TV and no longer read: almost every scholar . . . has concluded that process [of reading] encourages rationality, while televisual logic short-circuits rational thought in favor of slogans, images, mere stories-in short, entertainment.2 The late Christopher Lasch, in The Revolt of Elites, blames not only television for making argument a lost art but also undemocratic leanings of intellectuals and academics. How far we have fallen, he argues, from Golden Years of nineteenth century, when serious public argument was practiced by both citizenry and media. In those days newspapers (Lasch singles out Horace Greeley's New York Tribune) were journals of opinion in which reader expected to find a definite point of view, together with unrelenting criticism of opposing points of view (163). The beginning of decline (the nadir of which he hopes we are presently experiencing) began in progressive era, when intellectual leaders preached 'scientific management' of public affairs.... They forged links between government and university so as to assure a steady supply of experts and expert knowledge. But they had little use for public debate (167). Academics and

    doi:10.1080/07350199709359220
  3. The classical tradition: Rhetoric and oratory: A public address given by Harry Caplan, Cornell University Goldwin Smith Professor Of Classical Languages And Literature (1941–67), at the third annual California State University, Hayward Conference In Rhetorical Criticism May 11, 1968
    Abstract

    (1997). The classical tradition: Rhetoric and oratory. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 7-38.

    doi:10.1080/02773949709391091
  4. Review: Reclaiming the Public Sphere
    Abstract

    Preview this article: Review: Reclaiming the Public Sphere, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/59/3/collegeenglish3626-1.gif

    doi:10.58680/ce19973626
  5. Reclaiming the Public Sphere
    doi:10.2307/378383

February 1997

  1. Moderation, Religion, and Public Discourse: The Rhetoric of Occasional Conformity in England, 1697-1711
    Abstract

    Abstract: This paper analyzes the rhetoric of the eighteenthcentury English debate over occasional conformity in order to develop a better understanding of how persuasive appeals to moderation were used in this particular case. This debate is noteworthy because it reveais how the eighteenth-century veneration of moderation was influeneed by the seventeenth-century Protestant reading of the New Testament. This understanding of moderation led to some of the first arguments suggesting a need for separation of church and state. Further, this example extends our theoretical understanding of moderate rhetoric when we observe its use as a justification for social change.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1997.15.1.53
  2. Sir Walter Raleigh's Speech from the Scaffold: A Translation of the 1619 Dutch Edition, and Comparison with English Texts.
    Abstract

    Research Article| February 01 1997 Sir Walter Raleigh's Speech from the Scaffold: A Translation of the 1619 Dutch Edition, and Comparison with English Texts. John Parker and Carol A. Johnson, Sir Walter Raleigh's Speech from the Scaffold: A Translation of the 1619 Dutch Edition, and Comparison with English Texts (Minneapolis, MN: Associates of the James Ford Bell Library, 1995), ii + 79 pp. J. Vernon Jensen J. Vernon Jensen Department of Speech Communications, 9 Pleasant St. S.E., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1997) 15 (1): 112–114. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1997.15.1.112 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation J. Vernon Jensen; Sir Walter Raleigh's Speech from the Scaffold: A Translation of the 1619 Dutch Edition, and Comparison with English Texts.. Rhetorica 1 February 1997; 15 (1): 112–114. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1997.15.1.112 Download citation file: Ris (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 ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1997, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1997 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1997.15.1.112

January 1997

  1. Moderation, Religion, and Public Discourse: The Rhetoric of Occasional Conformity in England, 1697–1711
    Abstract

    This paper analyzes the rhetoric of the eighteenth- century English debate over occasional conformity in order to develop a better understanding of how persuasive appeals to moderation were used in this particular case. This debate is noteworthy because it reveals how the eighteenth-century veneration of moderation was influenced by the seventeenth-century Protestant reading of the New Testament. This understanding of moderation led to some of the first arguments suggesting a need for separation of church and state. Further, this example extends our theoretical understanding of moderate rhetoric when we observe its use as a justification for social change.

    doi:10.1353/rht.1997.0029
  2. Heteroglossia, polyphony, andthe federalist papers
    Abstract

    I n last few decades historians have devoted significant attention to language used by political actors during American revolution and founding. The ground-breaking work of Bailyn, Pocock, and Wood established importance of language as a motivating force, conceptual filter, and constitutive process.' The concept of ideology as a paradigm or organizing conceptual framework figured prominently in these early studies. Initially, (re)discovery of situated language led to recovery of a republican ideology at core of early American political imagination.2 The claims of republican historiography were, of course, contested by other historians who located alternative ideological frameworks such as liberalism or protestant Calvinism in language of early American politics.3 More recent historical scholarship challenges the assumption that there is but one language-one exclusive or even hegemonic paradigm-that characterizes political discourse of a particular place or moment in time.4 Historians of political discourse (including rhetorical critics and public address scholars) now face challenge of studying interaction of, and interrelationship between, multiple ideologies, idioms, or languages in early American public culture. This recent interest exhibited by historians in language of revolutionary and founding period is part of a broader in historiography and humanities scholarship generally.5 Part of this turn has involved problematizing status of language and historical documents or texts. Whereas pre-turn scholarship commonly approached language as a transparent medium for transmitting ideas and treated text as an unproblematic vessel that transported idea, first, to an historically proximate audience, and then, to succeeding generations, post-turn scholarship (in rhetoric, history, literary studies, etc.) explores cognitive and constitutive capacity (and limits or incapacity) of linguistic representation as well as internal and external dynamics of discursive text. This shift in attitude regarding language and text generates a particular dilemma that I term problem of contested text.6 Put simply, certain texts (most notably in philosophy and sciences, but in political realm as well) seem to resist linguistic turn. These texts invite and/or demand, their defenders inform us, a pious, respectful reading. Texts of this sort, opponents (mainly on right) of linguistic turn commonly argue, have escaped perishable or ephemeral fate that awaits vast majority of discursive products because they contain and transmit timeless truths or universally valid principles and must, therefore, be read in a manner that acknowledges and respects this achievement. Contested texts challenge critics and historians to

    doi:10.1080/02773949709391086
  3. Reviews
    Abstract

    Sophistical Rhetoric in Classical Greece by John Poulakos. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1995, pp. xiv + 220. Prisoner of History: Aspasia of Miletus and Her Biographical Tradition by Madeleine M. Henry. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995; 201 pp. Reclaiming Rhetorica: Women in the Rhetorical Tradition edited by Andrea A. Lunsford. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995; xiv; 354. Political Rhetoric, Power, and Renaissance Women eds. Carole Levin and Patricia A. Sullivan. Albany: SUNY Press. 1995. 293 pp. Allegories of America: Narratives, Metaphysics, Politics, by Frederich Michael Dolan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994, 232 pp. The Past as Future by Jürgen Habermas (Interviewed by Michael Haller); edited and translated by Max Pensky. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1994; xxvi; 185pp.

    doi:10.1080/02773949709391089

December 1996

  1. Contesting Cultural Rhetorics: Public Discourse and Education, 1890-1900
    Abstract

    Examines American discourse on education and what it reveals about our values as a society.

    doi:10.2307/358614
  2. Propaganda
    doi:10.2307/358611

November 1996

  1. “Discordant Consensus”: Old and New Rhetoric at Trinity College, Dublin
    Abstract

    Abstract: The teaching and practice of rhetoric at Trinity College, Dublin, in the eighteenth century have been little discussed in the literature. This article describes the curriculum and pedagogy related to the old and “new rhetoric” of the Scottish enlightenment as disclosed by documents in the archives of Trinity College Library; the published lectures of two Erasmus Smith Professors of Oratory and History, John Lawson and Thomas Leland; and the lectures of Thomas Sheridan on elocution. Minutes of the student historical clubs in which debates and harangues are preserved illustrate the interests of the students, their techniques of debate, and the demonstrative exhortations of their officers. The student orations chronicle the gradual absorption of the principles of the new rhetoric at the College.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1996.14.4.383

September 1996

  1. How bad science stays that way: Brain sex, demarcation, and the status of truth in the rhetoric of science
    Abstract

    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

    doi:10.1080/02773949609391080

August 1996

  1. Before the Beginnings of “Poetry” and “Rhetoric”: Hesiod on Eloquence
    Abstract

    Abstract: Traditional histories of rhetoric assume that the practical oratory of lawcourts and political assemblies is the “primary,” original form of rhetoric in its “preconceptual” or predisciplinary origins in archaic Greece. Hesiod's “Hymn to the Muses,” however, presents both prince and bard as practicing an art of psychagogic suasion, and presents the prince's discursive power as dependent on, and derived from, the paradigms of eloquence and wisdom embodied in the epideictic/poetic discourse of the bard: epideictic is the “primary” form of “rhetoric” in Hesiod's world. Hesiod's account agrees with what is known about the discursive practices of oral/traditional societies worldwide.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1996.14.3.243

June 1996

  1. The most significant passage on rhetoric in the works of Francis bacon
    Abstract

    Sean Patrick O'Rourke: Introduction On Saturday, November 20, 1993, five historians of rhetoric presented papers on the question, What is the most significant passage on rhetoric in the works of Francis Bacon? The American Society for the History of Rhetoric sponsored the panel, which was part of the Speech Communication Association's 79th annual meeting held in Miami Beach, Florida. Bacon's views on the nature and scope of rhetoric have become increasingly important. As a philosopher, historian, politician, advocate, scientist, and essayist, Bacon was well aware of the cultural uses of rhetoric, and he showed particular concern for the place of rhetoric in liberal education. Moreover, he systematized and promoted his ideas in a forceful, eloquent way. As a result, despite the judgment of many that Bacon made no original contributions to science and offered little that was pivotal in the history of jurisprudence or politics, Bacon has been a central figure in intellectual history. Certainly that remains true today. Bacon's thought is deeply relevant to the ongoing work in the rhetoric of science, his influence as a prose stylist has important implications for those concerned with the essay, and his stature and authority in the field of law make his writings a preface to the contemporary debates on the rhetoric of law. For reasons that will soon become obvious, the papers provoked a lively and enthusiastic discussion when they were presented in Miami. They are presented here in the hope that they will prove equally provocative to the readers of RSQ.

    doi:10.1080/02773949609391073

May 1996

  1. Ideology as the Ethos of the Nation State
    Abstract

    Abstract: Ideology can be considered the ethos of the modern, liberal, democratic, capitalist nation state. Working from the descriptions of political ethos in Aristotle's Rhetoric, Tapies, and Politics, the differences from and similarities to post-Renaissance political structures underline the modern insistence on ways to stabilise the representation of the group in power, giving it its veil of authority, as well as ways to stabilise the description or definition of the individual within the nation. Looking at a number of contemporary commentaries from both political theory and cultural studies, the essay elaborates the rhetoric necessary to constitute ideology as the ethos of the nation state, and goes on to detail some of the constraints on the individual who, in gaining access to power, becomes subject to that state. The rhetoric of ideology provides not only an ethos for the character of the group in power, but also a set of guidelines for establishing a spedfic responsive state in the audience, an ethics of pathos. Its ethos is a strategy that imposes a strategy. The circularity of this ethos marks many of the analyses undertaken by current theory, and it has only recently been challenged by, among others, feminist historians of rhetoric. The discussion moves to a point where it asks: given that multinational and transnational corporations now share with the nation state the regularisation of capitalist exploitation, is ideology effective as a political rhetoric any more? Who is the wife of the nation state? And, what is the ethos of the multinational?

    doi:10.1525/rh.1996.14.2.197

January 1996

  1. Habermas,philosophes, and Puritans: Rationality and exclusion in the dialectical public sphere
    doi:10.1080/02773949609391059

November 1995

  1. Cicero and the Rhetoric of Imperialism: Putting the Politics Back into Political Rhetoric
    Abstract

    Abstract: This paper examines Cicero's relation to Roman imperialism by focusing primarily upon his speech in behalf of Pompey's special command against Mithradates (Pro lege Manilia, 66 BC) and his speech in favor of extending Caesar's command in Gaul (De provinciis consularibus, 56 BC). These two moments in which Cicero contributed substantially to the empowerment of the two great imperialist generais who destroyed the Republic suggest the need to reassess versions of Cicero's career which see film primarily in terms of domestic Roman politics and cast him as the heroic, would-be savior of the Republic. Applying a Marxist reading particularly indebted to Pierre Macherey, I try to explore the internal contradictions of the texts as pointers to the contradictions of late Republican society, contradictions which constitute the very conditions of possibility for Cicero's political participation.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1995.13.4.359

September 1995

  1. A rhetoric of contact: Tecumseh and the native American confederacy
    Abstract

    In August of 1810, the great Shawnee leader Tecumseh met William Henry Harrison, then governor of the territory of Indiana, at the governor's mansion in Vincennes, Indiana.1 The two leaders came together to discuss a disagreement about a recently signed treaty that would give to the United States a large tract of Native American land in central Indiana. Accounts of this first face-to-face meeting between these two important men abound, and several versions of a text of the speech delivered by Tecumseh have come down to us. These accounts and texts contain many inconsistencies, but they all agree that Tecumseh steadfastly refused to accept the new treaty. Claiming that he was speaking for all the tribes, Tecumseh is reported to have said, This land that was sold and the goods that were given for it were only done by a few (Klinck 71). He went on to predict dire consequences should the whites occupy the land that he claimed was improperly sold to them. It was an important moment in Tecumseh's efforts to unite Native Americans in opposition to white expansionism. The meeting is perhaps most famous for the dramatic way in which it ended. At one point after having finished a two-hour speech against the treaty, Tecumseh apparently became furious with Winnemac, a Potawatomie leader who had signed the treaty. As Tecumseh assailed Winnemac in the Potawatomie tongue, Winnemac became alarmed and began to prepare his flintlock pistol, whereupon many of the white spectators reached for their weapons. Harrison rose from his seat and, facing Tecumseh, drew his sword, and at the same moment Tecumseh's warriors drew their weapons as they advanced to Tecumseh's side. Accounts of the incident often highlight this image of these two leaders, one white, one Native American, facing each other with weapons at the ready, and undoubtedly the embellishments of the scene have spawned much of the folklore surrounding the great conflict between Harrison and Tecumseh that would continue over the next two years.2 But this meeting was important for other, less obvious reasons. The meeting underscores the vital role that public discourse played in the conflicts between Native Americans and white Americans as the latter pushed westward into traditional Native American lands. More important, the extant texts from this meeting and other key meetings in Tecumseh's efforts to establish a pan

    doi:10.1080/07350199509389052

August 1995

  1. Quintilian and the Rhetorical Revolution of the Middle Ages
    Abstract

    Abstract: It is often asserted nowadays that the medieval period “fragmented” the classical rhetorical inheritance, while the Renaissance restored it to its former coherence. The story of the assimilation in the Middle Ages and Renaissance of Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory is examined here in order to demonstrate the problems inherent in such a position. It is argued that the full utilization of the text of Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory in the Renaissance, along with the discrediting of the Ad Herennium (as a work of Cicero) that is associated with the name of Raffaello Regio in the last decade of the fifteenth century, are not the instances of the “recovery” of antiquity and supersession of “medieval philology” that they are often thought to be. Instead the opposite seems to be the case. The philological “recovery” of Quintilian led away from the incorporation of the Institutes into contemporary rhetorical practice and towards philology for its own sake. This, together with the bitter professional jealousies among the Italian schoolmen of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, led, almost “accidentally” as it were, to a “sundering” of the “whole” that the Middle Ages had put together out of rhetorical fragments from antiquity. The medieval period, less concerned with philological niceties than with the practical utility of good advice from the past, constructed a new kind of rhetorical text from an amalgam of old texts: the Ad Herennium commentary, made up of the text of the Ad Herennium, explanations, summaries, and discussions from the medieval schoolroom, and portions of Boethius' De differentiis topicis, Quintilian's Institutes, and other classical sources. This serviceable “unity” the Renaissance “sundered” by (a) discrediting the Ad Herennium as an authoritative Ciceronian text, and (b) placing the Institutes far beyond the practical capabilities of contemporary rhetorical training courses by restoring it to its original length (vis-à-vis the abridgements and assimilations of the medieval period). In this process of turning the classical texts into icons, the Renaissance scholars were predictably unable to re-create the kaleidoscopic, one-thousand-year reality of rhetorical attitudes and texts in antiquity, from the fragments that the Middle Ages had used to build up their new form of integrated text. Much had been lost, but what had been gained?

    doi:10.1525/rh.1995.13.3.231
  2. Quintilian and Rousseau: Oratory and Education
    Abstract

    Abstract: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the enemy of books and civilized learning, might seem poles apart from Quintilian, who was so popular in France in the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, although there are only small traces of direct contact between the author of Émile and the Institutio, comparison between the two works is illuminating. Both are large-scale educational treatises embodying a vision of humanity. The important common ground between them concerns the importance of early childhood, a certain moral idealism, and the prfrence for a manly form of speech. Significant divergences begin to appear in relation to three major areas of concern: citizenship and the public life, the relation of words to things, and the question of acting, imagination, and fiction. Je ne me lasse point de le redire: mettez toutes les leçons des jeunes gens en actions plustôt qu'en discours; qu'ils n'apprennent rien dans les livres de ce que l'expérience peut leur enseigner. Quel extravagant projet de les exercer à parler sans sujet de rien dire, de croire leur faire sentir sur les bancs d'un collège l'énergie du langage des passions, et toute la force de l'art de persuader sans intérêt de rien persuader à personne! Tous les préceptes de la rhétorique ne semblent qu'un pur verbiage à quiconque n'en sent pas l'usage pour son profit. Qu'importe à un Ecolier comment s'y prit Annibal pour déterminer ses soldats à passer les Alpes? (I never tire of repeating it: put ail your tessons for young people into actions, not speeches; let them learn nothing from books which they could learn from experience. What an insane idea to exercise them in speaking when they have nothing to speak about, to believe one can make them feel on their school benches the language of the passions and ail the force of the art of persuasion, when they have no interest in persuading anybody! All the precepts of rhetoric are pure verbiage to anyone who cannot see what use they are to him. What does it matter to a schoolboy how Hannibal set about persuading his soldiers to cross the Alps?)

    doi:10.1525/rh.1995.13.3.301

May 1995

  1. Oratorical Culture in Nineteenth-Century America: Transformations in the Theory and Practice of Rhetoric
    Abstract

    Gregory Clark S. Michael Halloran bring together nine essays that explore change in both the theory the practice of rhetoric in the nineteenth-century United States. In their introductory essay, Clark Halloran argue that at the beginning of the nineteenth century, rhetoric encompassed a neoclassical oratorical culture in which speakers articulated common values to establish consensual moral authority that directed community thought action. As the century progressed, however, moral authority shifted from the civic realm to the professional, thus expanding participation in the community as it fragmented the community itself. Clark Halloran argue that this shift was a transformation in which rhetoric was reconceived to meet changing cultural needs. Part I examines the theories practices of rhetoric that dominated at the beginning of the century. essays in this section include Edward Everett Neoclassical Oratory in Genteel America by Ronald F. Reid, The Oratorical Poetic of Timothy Dwight by Gregory Clark, The Sermon as Public Discourse: Austin Phelps the Conservative Homiletic Tradition in Nineteenth-Century America by Russel Hirst, of Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century America by P. Joy Rouse. Part 2 examines rhetorical changes in the culture that developed during that century. essays include The Popularization of Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric: Elocution the Private Learner by Nan Johnson, Rhetorical Power in the Victorian Parlor: Godey s Lady s Book and the Gendering of Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric by Nicole Tonkovich, Jane Addams the Social of Democracy by Catherine Peaden, The Divergence of Purpose Practice on the Chatauqua: Keith Vawter s Self-Defense by Frederick J. Antczak Edith Siemers, The of Picturesque Scenery: A Nineteenth-Century Epideictic by S. Michael Halloran.

    doi:10.2307/358439

March 1995

  1. The feminization of rhetoric and composition studies?1
    Abstract

    Last year, I was invited to speak at a conference whose theme was the feminization of composition.2 This topic coincided with another discussion I had been following in our journals: the emergence of Rhetoric and Composition as a scholarly field. In preparing my talk, I began to raise several questions like: What is meant by feminization in these discussions? Can we assume that composition is feminized? Are the discourses on disciplinary formation and on feminization already woven together? If not, should they be? This essay explores these questions, making distinctions and telling stories that offer an alternative perspective. Let me begin with the feminization of composition. My rereading of many of these discussions3 leads me to conclude that their statements about feminization apply largely to composition instruction, not to Rhetoric and Composition as a scholarly field.4 The two reasons generally advanced are the numerical predominance of women and the nature of composition pedagogy. Accounts agree that women do most of the teaching of writing from the university level to elementary school as either full- or part-time instructors. Many descriptions of recent pedagogies maintain that instructional practices, particularly of expressive and critical pedagogies, are marks of feminization because they are collaborative, student centered, and nurturing. A few, however, dissent. Susan Jarratt and Evelyn Ashton-Jones, for example, problematize collaboration as a desirable feminine pedagogy. Lil Brannon contends that the expressivists and people like Giroux, Shor, Freire, and Rose are reinscribing patriarchy by invoking masculine heroic narratives of conquest as traditional male Romantic heroes who, like the rugged individual in the Dead Poet's Society, work against all odds to make a difference. Some historical accounts of nineteenth-century composition position it as feminized in contrast to rhetorical instruction and the emerging professionalization of English Studies. Robert Connors argues that the demise of agonistic rhetorical instruction in persuasive public discourse, which he contends had largely characterized male education up through 1850, was related to the entrance of significant numbers of women into higher education in the nineteenth century. These women were excluded from taking oral rhetoric and assigned to a more appropriate course called composition. He

    doi:10.1080/07350199509359187

November 1994

  1. Representations: Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory
    Abstract

    Research Article| November 01 1994 Representations: Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory Arm Vasaly, Representations: Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1993), xii + 301 pp. Christopher P. Craig Christopher P. Craig Department of Classics, 710 McClung Tower, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-0471, USA. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1994) 12 (4): 455–456. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1994.12.4.455 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Christopher P. Craig; Representations: Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory. Rhetorica 1 November 1994; 12 (4): 455–456. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1994.12.4.455 Download citation file: Ris (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 ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1994, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1994 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1994.12.4.455

September 1994

  1. The dynamics of disaster: A three‐dimensional view of documentation in a tightly regulated industry
    Abstract

    Although effective public policy depends upon accurate post‐accident reports and investigations, accident reports in a large government agency reflect a linear, sequential model of cause and effect that fails to account for the multidimensional nature of accidents in tightly coupled technologies. As a result, unions, agencies, and operators engage in fiercely contested public debates over responsibility and authority when disasters occur. In proposing a three‐dimensional model of accident analysis (both visual and verbal), this article illustrates how underlying models of causality influence the structure of technical reports and the nature of the argument over responsibility and authority in largescale technological disasters.

    doi:10.1080/10572259409364579

August 1994

  1. Things, Thoughts, and Actions: The Problem of Language in Late Eighteenth-Century British Rhetorical Theory
    Abstract

    Research Article| August 01 1994 Things, Thoughts, and Actions: The Problem of Language in Late Eighteenth-Century British Rhetorical Theory H. Lewis Ulman, Things, Thoughts, and Actions: The Problem of Language in Late Eighteenth-Century British Rhetorical Theory (Cartiondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994), 240 pp. Barbara Warnick Barbara Warnick Department of Speech Communication, DL-15, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1994) 12 (3): 351–353. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1994.12.3.351 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Barbara Warnick; Things, Thoughts, and Actions: The Problem of Language in Late Eighteenth-Century British Rhetorical Theory. Rhetorica 1 August 1994; 12 (3): 351–353. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1994.12.3.351 Download citation file: Ris (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 ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1994, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1994 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1994.12.3.351

March 1993

  1. Rhetoric, eloquence, and oratory in eighteenth‐century American periodicals: An annotated bibliography
    doi:10.1080/02773949309390990
  2. The rhetoric of belles lettres: The political context of the eighteenth‐century transition from classical to modern cultural studies
    Abstract

    Classical practitioners of the art of rhetoric such as Demosthenes have long been a familiar part of the rhetorical tradition, but subsequent periods have generally been confined to the history of rhetorical theory, with little attention paid to political rhetoric or public discourse. We need to develop a more rhetorical perspective on the history of rhetoric to encompass rhetoric's dual nature as an intellectual discipline and a practical political art. Such a perspective would focus on the domain between the learned culture and the public experience, the domain where rhetorical theories are applied to discursive practices to formalize who can speak, how controversial issues are to be argued, and what political purposes such arguments serve. The eighteenth century is a dynamic period in the history of rhetoric precisely because the domain between the educated world and the public sphere was transformed by the expansion of the reading public.' Rhetoricians such as Hugh Blair were the first professors to lecture on modern culture because they taught students who came from the provinces of the English reading public.2 General histories of college English studies tend to ignore eighteenth-century rhetoricians in the assumption that the study of English is more or less synonymous with the study of literature (see Baldick, Graff, McMurty, and Palmer).3 We need more rhetorically oriented histories of modem cultural studies, not just because literature specialists have tacitly accepted the erasure of rhetoric from such studies, but also because the formation of disciplinary knowledge is a rhetorical process, and the domain of rhetoric is where disciplines set themselves off from related discourses and public audiences. Rhetoricians first introduced English into the university curriculum in the middle of the eighteenth century in Scotland, America, and elsewhere in the cultural provinces. All of the figures whom Howell has categorized as New rhetoricians came from outside the centers of English education, while Oxford and Cambridge

    doi:10.1080/02773949309390983

February 1993

  1. Three Levels of Style in Augustine of Hippo and Gregory of Nazianzus
    Abstract

    Abstract: In Book 4 of De doctrina Christiana St. Augustine suggests that the three levels of style in Christian oratory should reflect the level of emotional impact on the audience, which would result in frequent variation through the course of the speech. Augustine's literary theory seems to be in complete agreement with contemporary oratorical practice, not only Latin, in the West, but Greek too—witness St. Gregory of Nazianzus, whose Oration 42, The Last Farewell,is used as an example in this article. Finally, a comparison between Augustine's views and those of some later Greek rhetoricians suggests that he may have been influenced as much by their ideas as by his acknowledged source and predecessor, Cicero.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1993.11.1.1
  2. Funeral Oratory and the Cultural Ideals of Italian Humanism
    Abstract

    Research Article| February 01 1993 Funeral Oratory and the Cultural Ideals of Italian Humanism John M. McManamon, S.J., Funeral Oratory and the Cultural Ideals of Italian Humanism (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), xiv + 343 pp. John Ward John Ward Department of History, Sydney University, Sydney NSW 2006, Australia Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1993) 11 (1): 89–91. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1993.11.1.89 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation John Ward; Funeral Oratory and the Cultural Ideals of Italian Humanism. Rhetorica 1 February 1993; 11 (1): 89–91. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1993.11.1.89 Download citation file: Ris (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 ContentRhetorica Search Copyright 1993, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1993 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1993.11.1.89
  3. Reviews
    Abstract

    On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, Aristotle, translated, with introduction, notes, and appendixes by George A. Kennedy Janet M. Atwill Rhetoric and Irony: Western Literacy and Western Lies, C. Jan Swearingen Beth Daniell Composition and Resistance, C. Mark Hurlbert and Michael Blitz Alice Calderonello Written Language Disorders: Theory into Practice, Ann M. Bain, Laura Lyons Bailet, and Louisa Cook Moates Patricia J. McAlexander Faking It: A Look into the Mind of a Creative Learner, Christopher M. Lee and Rosemary F. Jackson Patricia J. McAlexander Reading and Writing the Self Autobiography in Education and the Curriculum, Robert J. Graham Lynn Z. Bloom Textbooks In Focus: Advanced Writing Rethinking Writing, Peshe C. Kuriloff Evelyn Ashton-Jones About Writing: A Rhetoric for Advanced Writers, Kristin R. Woolever Evelyn Ashton-Jones Process, Form, and Substance: A Rhetoric for Advanced Writers, Richard M. Coe Evelyn Ashton-Jones Beginning Writing Groups Daniel Sheridan

    doi:10.58680/ccc19938849
  4. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse
    Abstract

    Based on careful study of the Greek text and informed by the best modern scholarship, the second edition of this highly acclaimed translation offers the most faithful English version ever published of On Rhetoric. Updated in light of recent scholarship, the new edition features a revised introduction-with two new sections-and revised appendices that provide new and additional supplementary texts (relevant ancient works).

    doi:10.2307/358900

January 1993

  1. Demand modeling, new mode problems, and the $64 (sic) question: technological utopianism in America's race to develop high speed rail technology
    Abstract

    The author analyzes two reports describing a now abandoned MagLev (magnetic levitation) rail system that would have run from Ontario, California, to Las Vegas, Nevada. Unlike traditional technical reports, the Budd Company Transit Division's MagLev reports appeal to utopian visions of futuristic technologies that would solve America's social and economic problems of the 1980s. The writers of these reports employ economic and political rhetoric such as risk modeling, market projections, appeals to the American dream and new frontier mentality, as well as xenophobic Japan-bashing, and downplay technical constraints on rail corridors. An analysis of these reports reveals the ethical and rhetorical dilemmas that writers face when the companies they work for seek funding for untried and untested visionary designs.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>

    doi:10.1109/47.238055
  2. If you want to speak: imagination in speechmaking
    Abstract

    It is argued that speechmaking is an art, not a science, and requires action and imagination; the successful speaker participates in the speechmaking process as an active, artistic, imaginative agent. The article is intended to help free readers from the restraints of overly practical approaches to public speaking by promoting the involvement of the imagination in the speechmaking process at every point, from invention to delivery.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>

    doi:10.1109/47.259959
  3. A ?new rhetoric? for a ?new dialectic?: Prolegomena to a responsible public argument
    doi:10.1007/bf00710816
  4. Sense and Sensibility in Technical Documentation: How Feminist Interpretation Strategies can Save Lives in the Nation's Mines
    Abstract

    This article analyzes postaccident investigation reports from a feminist perspective to show (a) how the conventions of public discourse privilege the rational (male) objective voice and silence human suffering, (b) how the notion of expertise excludes women's experiential knowledge, (c) how the conventions of public discourse sanction the exclusion of alternative voices and thus perpetuate salient and silent power structures, and (d) how interpretation strategies that fail to consider unstated assumptions about gender, power, authority, and expertise seriously compromise the health, safety, and lives of miners—and in a broader sense—all of those who are dependent on technology for their personal safety.

    doi:10.1177/1050651993007001004
  5. Aristotle's Rhetoric, Hitler's Program, and the Ideological Problem of Praxis, Power, and Professional Discourse
    Abstract

    Technical-professional communication as praxis, or social action, is extended beyond skill or amoral art into the realm of phronesis, concerned with reasoning about ends rather than means. However, praxis and phronesis are sociologically constructed and, like social-epistemic rhetoric, ideologically defined in the political context by the ethic of expediency enabling deliberative rhetoric. Hitler's use of propaganda to construct praxis and define phronesis in Nazi Germany is examined in terms of the rational but open-ended nature of Aristotle's political-ethical thought, and the implications for our understanding of Aristotelian praxis is discussed. Finally, the failure of professional discourse surrounding the siting of a low-level nuclear waste facility to create a persuasive reality and yet ideologically construct praxis is examined, raising questions concerning the possibility of a deliberative technical rhetoric in U.S. democracy.

    doi:10.1177/1050651993007001003
  6. A selected annotated bibliography on collaboration in technical communication
    Abstract

    Over the past decade researchers, instructors, and people in industry and academia have begun to understand the value of teaching people how to collaborate. This selected annotated bibliography compiles some of the theories and research on collaboration from disciplines such as small group management, composition, scientific and technical communication, computer science, speech communication, and rhetoric. It also includes relevant sources from the popular press.

    doi:10.1080/10572259309364527

December 1992

  1. Rereading the Sophists: Classical Rhetoric Refigured
    Abstract

    This book is a critically informed challenge to the traditional histories of rhetoric to the current emphasis on Aristotle Plato as the most significant classical voices in rhetoric. In it, Susan C. Jarratt argues that the first sophistsa diverse group of traveling intellectuals in the fifth century B.C.should be given a more prominent place in the study of rhetoric composition. Rereading the ancient sophists, she creates a new lens through which to see contemporary social issues, including the orality/literacy debate, feminist writing, deconstruction, writing pedagogy.The sophists pleasure in the play of language, their focus on historical contin-gency, the centrality of their teaching for democratic practice were sufficiently threatening to their successors Plato Aristotle that both sought to bury the sophists under philosophical theories of language. The censure of Plato Aris-totle set a pattern for historical views of the sophists for centuries. Following Hegel Nietzsche, Jarratt breaks the pattern, finding in the sophists a more progressive charter for teachers scholars of reading writing, as well as for those in the adjacent disciplines of literary criticism theory, education, speech communication, ancient history.In tracing the historical interpretations of sophistic rhetoric, Jarratt suggests that the sophists themselves provide the outlines of an alternative to history-writing as the discovery recounting of a set of stable facts. She sees sophistic use of narrative in argument as a challenge to a simple division between orality literacy, current discussions of which virtually ignore the sophists. Outlining similarities between ecriture feminine and sophistic style, Jarratt shows that contemporary feminisms have more in common with sophists than just a style; they share a rhetorical basis for deployment of theory in political action. In her final chapter, Jarratt takes issue with accounts of sophistic pedagogy focusing on technique the development of the individual. She argues that, despite its employment by powerful demagogues, sophistic pedagogy offers a resource for today s teachers interested in encouraging minority voices of resistance through language study as the practice of democracy.

    doi:10.2307/358656

November 1992

  1. The Limits of Narrative: Truth Aspiring Discourse in the Bible
    Abstract

    Research Article| November 01 1992 The Limits of Narrative: Truth Aspiring Discourse in the Bible Allen Scult Allen Scult Dept. of Speech Communication, Drake University, 206 Medbury Hall, Des Moines, lowa 50311-4505. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1992) 10 (4): 345–365. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1992.10.4.345 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Allen Scult; The Limits of Narrative: Truth Aspiring Discourse in the Bible. Rhetorica 1 November 1992; 10 (4): 345–365. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1992.10.4.345 Download citation file: Ris (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 ContentRhetorica Search Copyright 1992, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1992 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1992.10.4.345

September 1992

  1. Review essays
    Abstract

    George A. Kennedy, trans. Aristotle: On Rhetoric (subtitled A Theory of Civic Discourse). Oxford University Press, 1991. 335 + xiii pages. The Importance of George A. Kennedy's Aristotle: On Rhetoric Kennedy's Aristotle: On Rhetoric as a Pedagogical Tool Kennedy's Rhetoric as a Contribution to Rhetorical Theory Kennedy's Aristotle: on Rhetoric as a Work of Translation∗ James J. Murphy, ed. A Short History of Writing Instruction: From Ancient Greece to Twentieth‐Century America. Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1990. 241 + v pages. Teaching the History of Writing Instruction Thomas Miller. The Selected Writings of John Witherspoon. Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. 318 + viii pages. Patricia Harkin and John Schilb, eds. Contending with Words: Composition and Rhetoric in the Postmodern Age. New York: Modern Language Association, 1991. iv + 242 pages. Sandra Stotsky, ed. Connecting Civic Education and Language Education: The Contemporary Challenge. New York: Teachers College Press of Columbia University, 1991. Janis Forman, ed. New Visions of Collaborative Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers, 1992. 200 pages. $23.50.

    doi:10.1080/07350199209388999
  2. Discourses of separation: The relation between rhetoric and poetics in the work of Hoyt Hudson and Herbert Wichelns
    Abstract

    In his 1925 article Literary Criticism of Oratory, Herbert Wichelns, a scholar of rhetoric at Cornell, observed that, with respect to literary study, oratory had become either an outcast or a poor (181). Oratory's falling out of favor indicated to Wichelns that perceptions of discourse had been radically transformed. Intimating what the change might consist of, he wrote, [i]nvolved in it is some shift in the conception of oratory or of literature, or of both; nor can these conceptions have changed except in response to the of which oratory, as well as literature, is part (181). Scholars writing after Wichelns have frequently reported on the ill fate of oratory-and, more broadly, of rhetoric as the practice and study of some kinds of written as well as oral discourse-in American colleges. How had colleges by 1925 come to demote rhetoric to a position beneath literary critical study and literary works of fiction, drama, and poetry? As Wichelns suggested, rhetoric and literature shared some life, and our elaboration of their common history and context can help us account for rhetoric's condition. Some scholars have argued that the study and status of rhetoric in the college curriculum diminished as a strong interest in literature emerged (e.g., Stewart 119-21; Connors, Ede, and Lunsford 5-7; Halloran 176). Exploring the role of the belletristic tradition in rhetoric and of representative individuals such as C. S. Baldwin and the men who held the position of Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard, the work of these scholars offers insight into the interrelations among rhetoric and literature during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Historians neither of English nor of speech as academic disciplines, however, have traced the relation between rhetoric and literature as it was construed by scholars who were active during this time. The concomitant rise of literary study and fall of rhetoric suggest that historical perceptions of the relation between literary and rhetorical discourse figure in the story of rhetoric's demise. Part of what we might call the life of rhetoric and of literature is the relation that members of the profession perceived between them. As with contemporary discussions on the issue in such texts as Jane Tompkins' Reader in History and Steven Mailloux's Rhetorical Power, we might guess that turn-of-the-century scholars posited rela-

    doi:10.1080/07350199209388991

June 1992

  1. Reviews
    Abstract

    (Inter)views: Cross‐Disciplinary Perspectives on Rhetoric and Literacy edited by Gary A. Olson and Irene Gale, with an introduction by David Bleich.Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. 269 pp. Rhetorical Questions: Studies of Public Discourse by Edwin Black. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992; 209 pp. $24.95 cloth. An Introduction to Composition Studies,> edited by Erika Lindemann and Gary Tate. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Pp. 189. Methods and Methodology in Composition Research ed. Gesa Kirsch and Patricia A. Sullivan. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois U P, 1992; ix+354. John Donne and the Rhetorics of Renaissance Discourse by James S. Baumlin.Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991; 333 pages. Richard McKeon: A Study by George Kimball Plochmann.Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1990; vi + 260pp. The Selected Writings of John Witherspoon ed. By Thomas Miller. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1990. 318.

    doi:10.1080/02773949209390963

May 1992

  1. Parliamentary Oratory in Medieval Aragon
    Abstract

    Research Article| May 01 1992 Parliamentary Oratory in Medieval Aragon Mark D. Johnston Mark D. Johnston 219 East Harrison Street, lowa City, lowa 52240. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1992) 10 (2): 99–117. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1992.10.2.99 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Mark D. Johnston; Parliamentary Oratory in Medieval Aragon. Rhetorica 1 May 1992; 10 (2): 99–117. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1992.10.2.99 Download citation file: Ris (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 ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1992, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1992 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1992.10.2.99

March 1992

  1. A Postcard from the Edge of MLA
    Abstract

    My purpose today is to frame, quite briefly, the somewhat different critical assumptions found in literacy and communication studies and then to illustrate the latter perspective with a discussion of rhetoric and the media. Before doing so, however, I want to express my deep appreciation for having been asked to address you today. We are cousins, you and I, for we share a common ancestry. A bit under eighty years ago, seventeen stalwart professors of public speaking walked out of the third annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of English (which was itself formed in reaction to the MLA) and fashioned what would later become the main professional organization in Communication Studies in the United States. They did so because they felt that rhetoric done orally had a unique character, that that character manifested itself in distinctive conceptual and behavioral ways, and that it took a special pedagogy to tease spoken eloquence out of college sophomores. I mention these historical matters not in the spirit of academic chauvinism but because these facts made a difference in the professional options available to me. Nevertheless, I confess a certain ambivalence when realizing that this intrepid band of dissidents, aided and abetted by the rise of the electronic media, can now claim great-grandparentage to some 200,000 Communication majors in US college and universities today. These students dwarf by a factor of two the current number of English majors, a fact that might dismay some of you but a fact that has gladdened the hearts of both linebackers and Miss Virginia contestants for decades. Being neither a linebacker nor a raving beauty as an undergraduate, I studied English. I did so until I became a college senior, at which time I faced decisions about graduate study. I was not as wise as many twenty-year-olds, but I was wise enough to know that studying English had become an affaire de coeur with me.

    doi:10.1080/07350199209388979

September 1991

  1. Lord Monboddo's “letter on rhetorick”: Defense of Aristotle
    Abstract

    James Burnett, Lord Monboddo (1714-1799) enjoyed considerable recognition as a Scottish advocate and judge; however, a passion for the ancient Greeks occupied much of his attention and contributed to his lasting reputation as a man of letters. It is likely that his initial exposure to the Greek philosophers was under the tutelage of Dr. Francis Skene, a classical scholar who worked early in his career as Burnett's private tutor and then became a professor of philosophy at Marischal College where Burnett was a student. Burnett found ancient doctrines to be appealing because of their attention to first principles and he remained a devoted advocate of Greek thinking throughout his life.' Monboddo's views on the ancients and their significance for the Scottish Enlightenment are best preserved in two lengthy works. Origin and Progress of Language (1774-92) consists of six volumes and is best known to students of composition, rhetoric, and criticism for its defense of Greek literary style in general; its efforts to apply ancient doctrines of style, logic and composition to the needs of the Scottish Enlightenment; and its praise of Aristotle in particular as the philosopher who bridged the gulf separating the sophists and Plato. Ancient Metaphysics (1779-99), also six volumes, was Monboddo's second contribution to the world of letters and further proclaimed his admiration for the Greeks and his distaste for alternative schools of thought that had become popular among his contemporaries.2 By the latter years of the Eighteenth Century, Aristotle and other Greek rhetors were largely ignored by British rhetorical theorists. Even among those exponents of a classical doctrine early in the century, including John Ward (A System of Oratory, 1759) and John Holmes (The Art of Rhetoric Made Easy, 1755), it was the Roman model of rhetoric, organized around Cicero's officia that was popular. By mid-century, even Roman doctrine had been obscured by the rhetorics, reflecting new assumptions and organizing doctrine along three new lines. The psychological school, most clearly illustrated by George Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776), was influenced by Baconian and Lockean thinking. These theorists, using the Baconian empirical method, explored relationships between thought and expression, creating an array of new terms to account for mental processes that govern rhetorical acts.3

    doi:10.1080/02773949109390931

August 1991

  1. Ramist Concepts of Testimony, Judicial Analogies, and the Puritan Conversion Narrative
    Abstract

    Research Article| August 01 1991 Ramist Concepts of Testimony, Judicial Analogies, and the Puritan Conversion Narrative John Charles Adams John Charles Adams Speech Communication Department, College of Visual and Performing Arts, 400 Sims Hall V, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York 13244-1230. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1991) 9 (3): 251–268. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1991.9.3.251 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation John Charles Adams; Ramist Concepts of Testimony, Judicial Analogies, and the Puritan Conversion Narrative. Rhetorica 1 August 1991; 9 (3): 251–268. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1991.9.3.251 Download citation file: Ris (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 ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1991, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1991 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1991.9.3.251

June 1991

  1. Reviews
    Abstract

    Oral and Written Communication: Historical Approaches. Edited by Richard Leo Enos. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990. Pp.vi + 264. Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Newly Translated, with Introduction, Notes and Appendices by George Kennedy. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991, xvi + 335 pp. Writing Biology: Texts in the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge by Greg Meyers. Madison: Wisconsin UP, 1990. Ethics in Human Communication by Richard L. Johannesen. 3rd Edition. Waveland Press, 1990. Voices of the Mind: A Sociocultural Approach to Mediated Action by James V. Wertsch. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1991. 147 pp. + references and name and subject index. Thomas Henry Huxley: Communicating for Science by J. Vernon Jensen. Newark: University of Delaware, 1991. Pp. 253. The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry. Edited by Herbert W. Simons. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Pp. xii + 388.

    doi:10.1080/02773949109390927

March 1991

  1. Reviews
    Abstract

    A Short History of Writing Instruction from Ancient Greece to Twentieth‐Century America. Edited by James J. Murphy. Davis: Hermagoras Press, 1990; pp. i‐iv + 241. The Origins of Rhetoric in Ancient Greece by Thomas Cole. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1991; pp. xiv +191. Deeds Done in Words: Presidential Rhetoric and the Genres of Governance by Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990; pp. ix + 275. Democratic Eloquence: The Fight Over Popular Speech in Nineteenth‐Century America by Kenneth Cmiel. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1990; pp. 351. Presidential Debates: The Challenge of Creating an Informed Electorate by Kathleen Hall Jamieson and David S. Birdsell. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988; pp. x + 264. Rhetoric and the New Testament by Burton L. Mack. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990; pp. 110.

    doi:10.1080/02773949109390916