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1433 articlesJune 2005
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Abstract
Reviews 299 son seul guide pour l'étude de la dispositio, et que pour Yelocutio ce sera le seul Hermogène, dont il n'avait pas encore parlé. Laissons ici le fait que ces deux décisions seraient vraiment difficiles à justifier d'un point de vue historique (Du Tronchet se souvient-il encore de Fabri? connaît-il déjà Hermogène?). Le choix de Fabri conduit à des platitudes du côté de la dispositio: nous n'avons pas besoin de lui pour apprendre qu'une lettre a un début, un milieu et une fin, même rebaptisés respectivement «cause», «intention» et «conséquence»; et Vaillancourt ne relève pas que, chez Fabri, la «conséquence», qui est la conclusion du syllogisme, peut se trouver ailleurs qu'à la fin, ce qui est tout l'intérêt de ce vocabulaire. Quant à Hermogène, si ce choix permet de bien plus fines remarques sur Yelocutio, on reste parfois sceptique: caractériser les lettres de Pasquier par la deinotès est ne pas savoir ce que désigne celleci —Pasquier n'est pas «habile» comme Démosthène au seul motif qu'il sait s'adapter à ses correspondants. De façon plus générale, la difficulté fondamentale réside dans l'image de la rhétorique qu'ont les deux ouvrages. Comme de nombreux littéraires aujourd'hui, seiziémistes ou non, leur culture rhétorique se limite à Yelocutio et, dans une moindre mesure, à Yethos. Inversement, ils ne sont pas à l'aise avec la dispositio ou avec les passions, ni même avec l'argumentation ou logos (que Vaillancourt réduit aux exempta et autres autorités). Pour la dispositio, seul La Charité ose deux analyses de lettre complète, d'ailleurs stimulantes (p. 101-106), et pour les passions Vaillancourt appelle amitié (avec renvoi à Aristote, Rhétorique, II, 4) ce qui à l'évidence relève de la gratia (p. 294, «je ne veux en rien estre ingrat...» = Aristote, II, 7). Plus fondamentalement encore, tous deux voient dans l'épistolaire le lieu où il y aura le moins de rhétorique, ce mot même ayant sous leur plume le sens trop convenu de formalismes obligés. La lettre «familière» serait, enfin, un espace de sincérité dénué de toute «rhétorique»: l'extrême du sermo déconstruit, face à l'extrême de Yoratio ou discours construit. Avec un tel présupposé, que démentent constamment et l'époque et les corpus étudiés, il n'est pas pour surprendre qu'on arrive mal à dégager du typologique réutilisable. Redisons pour finir combien ces difficultés mêmes sont instructives, car elles renvoient le lecteur de Rhetorica à une des questions fondatrices de cette revue: jusqu'où peut-on appliquer la rhétorique ancienne à des textes qui a priori en étaient informés de part en part? Francis Goyet Université Stendhal, Grenoble James P. Zappen, The Rebirth of Dialogue: Bakhtin, Socrates, and the Rhetorical Tradition (Albany: SUNY Press, 2004), viii + 229 pp. In the roughly twenty years of scholarship on Bakhtin and rhetorical studies, Rebirth ofDialogue stands as the first and only book-length discussion 300 RHETORICA of dialogue as it informs both the early Socratic dialogues and the work of Mikhail Bakhtin. That rhetorician and Bakhtin scholar Jim Zappen would undertake the project is not surprising, for Bakhtin himself provides the impetus for the comparative study, citing the Socratic dialogue as a protonovelistic genre. Zappen does not, however, simply construct a series of correspondences between the two thinkers' perspectives on dialogue; rather, he examines the Socratic in terms of the Bakhtinian, noting the points at which a Bakhtinian reading of the early dialogues extends and enriches our understanding of them as "testing and contesting and creating" innovative ideas during a tumultuous fifth century bce (32). The opening chapter situates the central question of the relationship be tween rhetoric and dialogue within twentieth-century rhetorical and philo sophical studies. It also presents a central premise of the argument: the early Socratic dialogues illustrate a significant and complex cultural tension between the arete ("excellence" born of birth, status, and courage) of the Homeric tradition and a newer...
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Kenneth Burke’s important 1934 essay “My Approach to Communism” is often read as “a commitment to Communism” celebrating the movement. A typescript (recently discovered in the Kenneth Burke Papers) of a speech given by Burke in January, 1934 invites a reconsideration of “My Approach.” The speech, delivered to the New York John Reed Club, is concerned with finding a solution to America’s contemporary economic and social derangements and is more committed to this search and the desired effects of social change than any specific political system or party. Resituating “My Approach to Communism” as a revised and abridged version of this speech encourages a re-reading of the essay as an extended critique of capitalism and an argument for social conditions that foster cultural stability for art’s sake.
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Rhetorical Education in America, edited by Cheryl Glenn, Margaret M. Lyday, and Wendy B. Sharer. Tuscaloosa: University Alabama Press, 2004. 245 + xvi pp. Rhetorical Landscapes in America: Variations on a Theme from Kenneth Burke, by Gregory Clark. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004. 181 pp. Gorgias: Sophist and Artist, by Scott Consigny. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001. 242 pp.
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Abstract “Survival Stories” examines the Chicana sterilization abuse case Madrigal v. Quilligan by taking up four historiographic approaches— three are recognized in feminist rhetorical scholarship; the fourth offers a methodological strategy to the field. Through this process, this essay makes several contributions to rhetorical study. It presents an example of Chicana feminist rhetoric and an inroad to this rhetorical tradition. It contextualizes the arguments made by the women in Madrigal v. Quilligan and exposes the strategies used by the judge to dismiss their claims. Finally, this essay proposes a historiographic practice that presses the limits of the rhetorical situation and investigates how these Chicanas’ rhetorics survived.
April 2005
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This article draws on the principles of linguistic theorist Mikhail Bakhtin to analyze and explain discursive diversity in organizational Web pages. Organizational Web sites must typically appeal to multiple audiences, a condition that often results in different discourses being juxtaposed within the same interface. To analyze and explain the effects of such juxtapositions, this article adapts to the Web the principles that Bakhtin developed to conceptualize discursive diversity in the novel, in particular his concept of dialogism. To illustrate their efficacy, the article applies these principles to analyze a pair of government Web sites about forests, the forest industry, and the environment. Whereas the homepages of the two sites project divergent approaches to the discourses of their diverse audiences, a dialogic analysis of the new site's deeper levels reveals how the government's discursive strategy appears to favor one audience at the expense of others. Drawing on this case study, this article discusses how an approach informed by Bakhtin's principles can illuminate our analysis of organizational Web discourse.
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Bronislaw Malinowski introduces influential ideas of context to rhetoric when he rejects texts and etymology to argue that meaning is determined by tangible, embodied circumstances. I turn to ancient texts and Kenneth Burke's reading of Malinowski to argue that we order—and are ordered by—rhetorical contexts that are composed of hierarchical designs, oppositional ideas, and material bodies.
March 2005
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Abstract This article challenges the common assumption that Chaim Perelman's concept of the universal audience ought to be thought of primarily as a rational standard for argumentation. I argue instead that it has more interesting implications for political critique than for practical reason and that it can be used to draw attention to how social constructions of universality circulate in various contexts of symbolic production. To extend the reach of Perelman's insight, I relate it to four concepts in critical theory and suggest ways that the universal audience might be reconfigured as an instrument for politically conscious rhetorical criticism.
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Abstract Chaim Perelman's concept of presence is extended and enriched by applying it to a historical museum exhibit that commemorated a watershed of Austrian history, the Anschluss of 1938. To understand the argumentative effect of presence in this exhibit, new rhetorical categories are deployed: foreground and background, space, and time. These are managed in the interest of an ideological position: to free the Austrian conscience and consciousness from the burden of memory created by the disproportionate participation of Austrians in the Holocaust. Finally, a basic problem with presence is addressed: its apparent incompatibility with any form of rational argumentation.
January 2005
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Abstract A case study of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, can inform nineteenth-century North American rhetorical history by exposing the interplay of rhetorical theory and practice in an educational setting during the antebellum period. Evidence of this interplay emerges in the subject matter of students' quarterly exhibition and commencement orations and of their literary society presentations from 1823 to 1845. When considered as a curricular whole, this evidence suggests a symbiotic relationship between the primarily moralistic and belletristic discourse favored by the college's curriculum and the more broadly civic judicial and deliberative discourse favored by its literary societies.
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“I Leapt over the Wall and They Made Me President”: Historical Context, Rhetorical Agency and the Amazing Career Of Lech Walesa ↗
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Abstract The rise of Lech Walesa from shipyard electrician to leader of “Solidarity,” international icon of freedom, and first president of democratic Poland was closely bound up with rhetoric. Walesa's idiosyncratic verbal style galvanized the masses and successfully confronted communist propaganda. The revolution of the workers on the Baltic coast was to a large extent a revolution in language. Walesa was also a skilled negotiator. As president, however, he was a controversial figure; his conception of democracy as a continuing war of words is widely credited with spelling the end of the idealistic “Solidarity” era. Today, allegations remain that Walesa was an agent provocateur and that the Polish revolution may have been a provocation that got out of hand. Some allege that Walesa's myth was a creation of Western media, a function of people's desires, and an accident of the historical moment. While there is no proof that any of these allegations are true and the documentary record reveals Walesa's undeniable rhetorical prowess and political talent, his case provides material for reflection on the relationship between history, rhetoric, and political agency.
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Research Article| January 01 2005 Kenneth Burke, John Dewey, and the Pursuit of the Public Paul Stob Paul Stob Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Philosophy & Rhetoric (2005) 38 (3): 226–247. https://doi.org/10.2307/40238218 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Paul Stob; Kenneth Burke, John Dewey, and the Pursuit of the Public. Philosophy & Rhetoric 1 January 2005; 38 (3): 226–247. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/40238218 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 CollectivePenn State University PressPhilosophy & Rhetoric Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2005 The Pennsylvania State University2005The Pennsylvania State University Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.
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Many scholars have argued that rhetorical theory and pedagogy should return to the neo‐classical and agonistic theory and pedagogy of the antebellum era. The ability of proslavery ideology to dominate political and rhetorical practice, however, troubles any easy equation between that pedagogy and practice. This article argues that agonism was hindered by the rhetoric of the improbable cause, a tragic metanarrative of novels like Nick of the Woods, which served as a defense of slavery and slaveocracy, without even mentioning the word, through reinforcing a foundation for that system. This view served to rationalize a system that had a dreamy, noble, and tragic ethos that was actually protected and supported by a brutal practicality; left out is something in the middle, the practical but principled argument about long‐term politics.
December 2004
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In this essay, I analyze Kenneth Burke’s Cold War pedagogy and explore the ways it connects to (and complicates) Paulo Freire’s conception of praxis. I argue that Burke’s theory and practice adds a rhetorical nuance to critical reflection and then envision how his 1955 educational concerns gain significance for teachers and scholars today who, like Burke, live in a time “when war is always threatening.”
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Using Burkean theory, I claim that Malcolm X brilliantly exposed the rhetoric and epistemology of whiteness as he rejected the African American jeremiad—a dominant form of African American oratory for more than 150 years. Whiteness theory served as the basis for Malcolm X’s alternative literacy, which raises important questions that literacy theorists have yet to consider.
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In this essay, I analyze Kenneth Burke's Cold War pedagogy and explore the ways it connects to (and complicates) Paulo Freire's conception of praxis. I argue that Burke's theory and practice adds a rhetorical nuance to critical reflection and then envision how his 1955 educational concerns gain significance for teachers and scholars today who, like Burke, live in a time when war is always threatening.:'
October 2004
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My article traces the development, chronicles the impact, and explains the essence of Herbert Spencer's “The Philosophy of Style” (1852). Spencer's essay has had a significant influence on stylistics, especially in scientific and technical communication. Although in our generation Spencer's contribution to stylistics is not widely remembered, it ought to be. His single essay on this subject was seminal to modern theories about effective communication, not because it introduced new knowledge but because it was such a rhetorically astute synthesis of stylistic lore, designed to connect traditional rhetorical theory with 19th-century ideas about science, technology, and evolution. It was also influential because it was part of Spencer's grand “synthetic philosophy,” a prodigious body of books and essays that made him one of the most prominent thinkers of his time. Spencer's “Philosophy of Style” carried the day, and many following decades, with its description of the human mind as a symbol-processing machine, with its description of cognitive and affective dimensions of communication, and with its scientifically considered distillation of the fundamental components of effective style. We should read Spencer's essay and understand its impact not so much because we expect it to teach us new things about good style, but precisely because: 1) it's at the root of some very important concepts now familiar to us; 2) it synthesizes these concepts so impressively; 3) we can use it heuristically as we continue thinking about style; and 4) it provides a compact, accessible touchstone for exploring—with students, clients, and colleagues—the techniques of effective style for scientific and technical communication.
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" One little fellow named Ecology": Ecological Rhetoric in Kenneth Burke's Attitudes toward History ↗
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While it has become increasingly commonplace to claim Kenneth Burke as a proto-ecocritic, the question of how his thinking and criticism was influenced by the science of ecology has not been addressed. This article places Attitudes toward History, the work in which Burke first mentions ecology by name, back within ecological conversations of the mid 1930s and argues not only that the science of ecology was fairly well known to Burke and his contemporaries but that ecological rhetoric saturates Attitudes toward History; in particular, it underlies Burke's critique of efficiency and his idea of the "comic frame."
September 2004
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Abstract Between August of 1939 and February of 1942 Kenneth Burke maintained a vigorous correspondence with John Crowe Ransom, the editor of the Kenyon Review. The conversation between the two men delved repeatedly into the intersections of rhetoric and epistemology, and took as its point of departure an influential essay written by Burke and published by Ransom: “Four Master Tropes.” In this article, I contextualize “Four Master Tropes” against the author‐editor conversation in order to clarify the Burkean relationship between rhetoric and knowledge. I argue that Burke understands rhetoric as a core epistemological practice operative in every discovery of “truth.”
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Rhetorical theory in Yale's graduate schools in the late nineteenth century: The example of William C. Robinson's<i>Forensic Oratory</i> ↗
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Abstract Although conventional views about nineteenth‐century rhetoric highlight a shift from oratory to composition and from classical rhetoric with origins in Cicero and Quintilian to a "new" rhetoric with origins in Campbell, Blair, and Whately (with an attendant loss of scholarship and quality), William C. Robinson's Forensic Oratory (1893) can be grouped with a growing number of works that complicate such views. Robinson continues to emphasize oratory and to derive his theory from Cicero and Quintilian, using a complex of ideas called "uniformitarianism" to justify his direct appropriation of classical ideas. The resulting rhetoric lacks neither responsible scholarship nor high quality.
August 2004
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Bridging Methodological Gaps: Instructional and Institutional Effects of Tracking in Two English Classes ↗
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Quantitative analyses using CLASS 3.0 software and qualitative discourse analyses were conducted of the instructional and institutional effects of tracking in high- and low-track American literature classes taught by the same teacher, a participant in a national study of the effects of dialogic classroom discourse patterns on student achievement. The quantitative analyses of class activities and discourse patterns revealed somewhat different amounts and kinds of dialogic discourse in the two classes, but could not account for much of the difference in achievement between the two groups. A more detailed qualitative analysis of teacher interviews and classroom discourse, using discourse analysis to look at both how the classroom discourse positioned students vis-à-vis course content, and how students in the two tracks were characterized by the teacher, showed how instruction was influenced by the teacher’s cultural models of students’ institutional identities. The teacher’s identification with the high-track students aided her in enacting a curriculum that was more academically challenging and more coherent, both intertextually and culturally. These analyses suggest that institutional and instructional effects of tracking are inextricably interwoven where the teacher’s conceptions of students’ needs and abilities constrain the level of instruction and the coherence of the curriculum.
July 2004
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Abstract Preparing students for civic engagement requires new knowledge about the uses of documents for advocacy and social change. Substantial social change results from repeated rather than from single rhetorical acts. Reconsideration of the rhetorical canon of delivery suggests expanding the concept beyond its present connection to publication (visual design, medium) to a rhetorical situation comprehensively defined. Delivery may take place over time and embrace a web of activities including field work, updates, and interconnections with other publications.
June 2004
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Reviews 301 Quintilian and the Law: The Art of Persuasion in Law and Politics, ed. Olga Tellegen-Couperus (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003). While there is some evidence (pp. 1, 191) that the title of this book reflects its original scope (and that of the conference that underlies it), its actual contents range much more widely around the central figure of Quintilian. Many papers are entirely concerned with the history and analysis of rhetorical theory. Nonetheless, the papers concerning law are the most coherent group and, by and large, the most ambitiously argued. After making a few general observations on the whole volume and briefly treating the contents of the twenty-five individual papers, I will turn primarily to two questions regarding the utility of the Institutio Oratoria for lawyers which make up the most sustained topics of discussion. The essays collected here were written by scholars from diverse fields (law, classics, rhetoric, literary theory, comparative literature) and of diverse, mostly European, nationalities (Spain and Holland are particularly well represented). All papers have been rendered into what is for the most part very readable English. Also, despite their origin in a conference in 2001, most of the papers come equipped with the kind of scholarly apparatus one expects in a written work. Nearly all the papers treat a single book (or smaller segment of the text) as their subject, with a few verging on being running commentaries. Jorge Fernández Lopez studies sources of authority, both for texts and for persons. Serena Querzoli views Q.'s education project in the context of concrete evidence for contemporary educational practice. Tomás Albaladejo develops a theoretically informed analysis of the three genera of oratory, tying them to communicative function more than "occasion" (narrowly defined). Olivia Robinson investigates the opportunities and pitfalls of using Q. as a source for Roman law. Ida Mastrorosa argues Q.'s text is substantively shaped by his court-room experience. Giovanni Rossi discusses the reception of classical rhetoric by (mostly) seventeenth century Venetian lawyers (this piece has the least to do with Q. specifically). Belén Saiz Noeda treats the theory of proof within and according to Q., especially with respect to the use of topoi. Andrew Lewis clarifies a usually under-translated phrase at 5.13.7 by reference to the facts of legal procedure. Maria Silvana Celentano demonstrates the value of self-exemplification in book 6. Jeroen Bons and Robert Taylor Lane translate and analyze IO 6.2 from a philosophical point of view. Richard A. Katula discusses the means of exploiting emotion in venues (ancient and modern) in which that practice is normatively disfavored. José-Domingo Rodríguez Martín investigates the relative weight of oratory (especially pathos) and law in the Roman courtroom. (Katula's piece is to some extent "how to"; Rodríguez Martin's is relatively more historical.) David Pujante's discussion of status theory shows that dispositio is not just an afterthought to inventio, but is itself constitutive of interpretation. Maarten Henket advocates the use of Quintilianic strategies to bring more predictability to judicial law-making. Jan Willem Tellegen reinterprets the 302 RHETORICA casua Curiana by reevaluating the Quintilianic evidence. Francisco ChicoRico analyzes the virtues of style and their hidden connections to the other operations of rhetoric. The editor offers two contributions of her own. In one she offers a compelling rereading of a quoted sententia (8.5.19) by consideration of the legal context. In the other she gives a similarly constructed interpretation of a troubled passage at 9.2.65-6. Barend van Heusden gives a cognitive semantic account of the notion of figured discourse. James J. Murphy explains Q.'s plan for adult education. Sanne Taekema focuses more specifically on the motives behind Q.'s choice of canon, by way of a comparison with the goals of the modern Law and Literature movement. Peter Wiilfing gives an account of ancient and modern gestural culture. Esperanza Osaba tries to reconstruct the circumstance ofjudicial appeal alluded to at 11.1.76. Vincenzo Scarano Ussani shows how the Quintilianic perfect orator is fitted to the circumstances of the contemporary (i.e. imperial) community Willem Witteveen argues that Q.'s deep rhetoric...
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Abstract One of the primary discussions at last fall's meeting of the Alliance of Rhetoric Societies addressed the question, “How ought we to understand the concept of rhetorical agency?” Several developments are worthy of note. First, although concern with agency began as a rear guard action against the post‐modern critique, the discussion appears to have shifted to more productive investigations into the consciousness and conditions of agency. Second, a growing number of scholars acknowledge that rhetoric as an interpretive theory describes a variety of rhetorical positions, some with more and some with less rhetorical agency. Rhetoric still faces the issue, however, of incorporating this knowledge into rhetoric's mission as a productive art.
May 2004
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Preview this article: REVIEW: The Terministic Screen: Rhetorical Perspectives on Film, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/tetyc/31/4/teachingenglishinthetwo-yearcollege3033-1.gif
April 2004
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Learning about the meaning of key terms in argument can involve several valuable classroom activities that are based not on casual work in dictionary-skimming but that are founded in classical rhetorical theory. These classroom activities allow students to learn the importance of "first steps" in creating sound, effective, and responsible arguments.
March 2004
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Access to Affordances, Development of Situation Models, and Identification of Procedural Text Problems ↗
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This experiment tested the effect of access to an object's affordances on the development of an accurate situation model of procedural texts. The 40 participants read two sets of instructions while either doing the task or only reading the text. They then rated each sentence in terms of its difficulty and the type(s) of problem(s) it had (if any), and told how they would fix the problem(s). As predicted, participants who did the task tended to notice improperly ordered sentences, whereas those who only read the text (without seeing the device) tended to focus on grammatical problems. The results were consistent with the indexical hypothesis of Glenberg and Robertson (Glenberg, 1999).
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The rhetorical and poetic imaginations of Kenneth Burke The Humane Particulars: The Collected Letters of William Carlos Williams and Kenneth Burke by James H. East. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003. 288 + xxxvii pp. The Rhetorical Imagination of Kenneth Burke by Ross Wolin. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001. 256 + xiii pp. George Campbell: Rhetoric in the Age of Enlightenment by Arthur E. Walzer. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. 175 + vii pp. Rhetoric on the Margins of Modernity: Vico, Condillac, and Monboddo by Catherine L. Hobbs. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002. 211 + vii pp. Imagining Rhetoric: Composing Women of the Early United States by Janet Carey Eldred and Peter Mortensen. Pittsburgh Series in Composition, Literacy, and Culture. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002. 279
February 2004
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AbstractDuring the rise and growth of the Greek art of oratory in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. the development of open and systematic techniques for awakening and encouraging a sense of pity can be observed both in rhetoric proper (the ten Attic orators) and in associated literary genres influenced by rhetoric (Historiography and Tragedy). These are classified—most notably by reference to the writings of Plato and Aristotle—in the light of rhetorical theory and significant examples are provided. Three techniques are investigated: (1.) the direct use of instances of pity, without elaboration, (2.) the development of axioms concerning the nature of pity, and (3.) systematic approaches to the awakening of pity.
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This essay responds to the problem that sociocultural literacy research has failed to adequately theorize individual literacy learners as moral agents with the capacity to produce harm or good to themselves and others. Building from the rhetorical construct of dialogism, this inquiry explores how the early ethical thought of Mikhail Bakhtin can contribute an “ethics of answerability” to sociocultural literacy studies.
January 2004
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From <i>Vita contemplativa to vitaactiva</i> : Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's Rhetorical Turn ↗
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Abstract Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's Traité de Vargumentation: la nouvelle rhétorique marked a revolution in twentieth-century rhetorical theory. In this essay, we trace Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's turn from logical positivism and the accepted belief that reason's domain was the vita contemplativa to rhetoric and its use as a reason designed for the vita activa. Our effort to tell the story of their rhetorical turn, which took place between 1944 and 1950, is informed by an account of the context in which they considered questions of reason, responsibility, and action in the wake of World War II.
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Abstract This essay contributes to the growing body of historical research on Kenneth Burke by considering his work as a drug researcher for the Bureau of Social Hygiene in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The research he conducted under the watch of his conservative boss, Colonel Arthur Woods, reveals a resistant worker who effectively became hooked on the question of bodies and habits even as he at times explicitly rejected the aims and methods of his boss. Burke's rearticulations of efficiency and piety help show how the Bureau offered new vantages on the body, effectively broadening his critical compass.
2004
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Our heritage] stretches back... to Athens, where in a bus y marketplace a tutor called Socrates set up the same kind of shop: open to all comers , no fees charged , offering, on whatever subject a visitor might propose, a continuous dialectic that is, finally, its own end. -Stephen North, "The Idea of a Writing Center" Recent explorations of writing center research encapsulate the often -conflicting professional demands we face as administrators. On the one hand, we acknowledge the need for research to improve our understanding of the past narratives, present effects and future possibilities of writing center work. On the other hand, our individual identifications and disciplinary ethos often rely on the notion of a writing center director whose priorities include, as Harvey Kail writes, "teaching, service, service, service, and then research-on our service" (28). Added to this already-overburdened schedule is the privileging of place in writing center studies; if each center is uniquely shaped by its context, as the common argument goes, what kinds of research can speak across these myriad locations, moving beyond what Jeanette Harris has termed the "this -is -what -we -do -at -my-writing-center" genre? ("Review" 663). In other words, both our individual professional lives and the scholarship of our field are marked by our attempts to reconcile our identification as a highly communal professional group with our allegiance to the primacy of individual context.
December 2003
October 2003
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Abstract This article explores the writing of archaeologists to argue that the metaphor of context-as-rhetorical-situation may understate the power that context has to shape scientific discourse. The author offers instead the metaphor of context-as-active-agent in the rhetorical situation—one that sometimes reifies values that are dangerous to the archaeologists' belief systems. As scholars of technical writing, we must develop a greater understanding of the subtle but powerful influences that context wields on the writing we read and help to produce.
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This article argues that fact sheets produced by environmental activists in response to proposed nuclear waste repositories constitute a new genre of scientific rhetoric. By analyzing the rhetorical features of these texts, including the simultaneous reliance on and distrust of scientific evidence, this article demonstrates how effective environmental activists' texts can be, in spite of the constraints and pressures of their rhetorical situation.
September 2003
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This essay brings to light a previously untranslated Latin medieval rhetorical treatise from Castile and León—Juan Gil de Zamora’s letter writing manual <i>Dictaminis Epithalamium</i>, or <i>The Marriaga Song of Letter-Writing</i> (c. 1277). Juan Gil (c. 1240-c. 1318) was among the first writers in Castile and León to compose a rhetorical treatise on the technical elements of composition. I outline the theoretical and technical elements of Juan Gil s <i>ars dictaminis</i>. Following an explication of his theory, I historicize the <i>Dictaminis Epithalamium</i> within the western European rhetorical tradition and within the established dictaminal genre. I argue that Juan Gil develops a new rhetoric for letter writing—one incorporating innovations as well as compilations of ideas from the Italian and French schools of letter-writing.
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Abstract
Reviews Janice Schuetz, Episodes z/z the Rhetoric ofGovernment-Indian Relations. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002. ISBN 0-275-97613-0. xxii + 316 pages. Relations between the United States government and American Indian nations, tribes, or individuals, in all periods of U.S. history, are notoriously resistant to easy analysis or straightforward conclusions. For one thing, the written record is typically incomplete and often heavily biased, in both form and content, against Indian interests. For another, the U.S. academy has been slow to develop adequate research methodologies or innovative theoretical tools that promote scholarship that will be relevant not only to academics but also to Indian peoples themselves. The interdisciplinary fields of ethno-history and American Indian studies have made important strides in these directions over the past couple decades, but there is still a high level of disagreement over which approaches are most appropriate and productive. A carefully researched and specifically-situated rhetorical analysis of significant texts in the history of U.S.-Indian relations would add an important perspective. Unfortunately, Episodes in the Rhetoric of Government-Indian Relations by Janice Schuetz, Professor of Communication at the University of New Mexico, offers neither ground-breaking archival research nor innovative theory. The book's main appeal is its ambitious scope: each of the eleven chapters analyzes a different "episode" in U.S.-Indian relations, from the mid-nineteenth century through the late twentieth century. Moreover, like an introductory textbook to rhetorical theories, each case study employs a different method of analysis: the dramatistic theories of Kenneth Burke are applied to the Pugent Sound War of 1854-58: genre theory is applied to the so-called Sioux Uprising of 1862; speech act and political spectacle theory is applied to the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864; colonial discourse analysis is applied to the history of the Navajo Long Walk and Internment of 1846-68; Victor Turner's theories of ritual and redress are applied to Zuni Witch Cases of 1880-1900; and theories of lamentation are applied to the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. Given the range and diversity of cases, Schuetz's presentation and analysis of individual episodes is necessarily limited. Although the breadth of her reading in Indian history is impressive, it is also highly selective for any particular case and, in general, does not add new evidence or points of view. Furthermore, it is often unclear why individual theories were chosen for, and restricted to, particular cases. This is© The International Society for the History of Rhetoric, Rhetorica, Volume XXI, Number 4 (Autumn 2003). Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center St, Ste 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223, USA 309 310 RHETORICA especially troubling for colonial discourse analysis, which is given a cursory treatment in Chapter Four but could have been developed in more depth and usefully applied in all of the examples. The last point draws attention to the fact that Schuetz does not develop an overarching thesis for her study in her brief introduction, and offers no separate conclusion. It is thus never clear what might hold these eleven very different chapters together beyond their interest as examples of governmentIndian relations or as examples of the diversity of rhetorical theories. The individual chapters consist mainly of summaries of the relevant history for the particular case study; surprisingly, there is little actual analysis. The conclusions to the individual chapters will likely seem obvious both to scholars actively engaged in American Indian studies and to American Indian peoples who live in the aftermath and ongoing legacies of these histories. The explanatory, theoretical, and activist potential of rhetorical analysis for these cases is left largely untapped. Chadwick Allen Ohio State University Jeffrey M. Suderman, Orthodoxy and Enlightenment: George Campbell in the Eighteenth Century. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001. 293 pages. Readers of Rhetorica are not the audience Jeffrey Suderman targeted in writing Orthodoxy and Enlightenment: George Campbell in the Eighteenth Century. Suderman writes that he was motivated to undertake this study to correct the imbalance of Campbell's modern reputation—as the author of the Philosophy of Rhetoric—and his contemporary reputation, which rested more...
July 2003
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Abstract
Scientific and technical jargon—specialized vocabulary, usually Latinate—plays a vital role in scientific and technical communication. But its proper use continues to be a point of discussion because of our concern with audience adaptation, rhetorical exigence, rhetorical purpose, and ethics. We've focused on teaching students—and on convincing scientists, engineers, and other writers/speakers—to gear their specialized language to the recipients of their communication, to the occasion calling for their communication, to what they wish to accomplish through their communication, and to the ethical goals of safety, helpfulness, empowerment, and truth. These are exactly the sorts of things we should be doing. My contribution to this conversation is a reinforce ment and, I hope, an extension of the argument that we should also be teaching and convincing students and professionals: 1) to fully appreciate what makes jargon either good or bad; 2) to carefully distinguish jargon usage from other aspects of scientific and technical style; and 3) to recognize that in every context, even in communication among experts, jargon should be used judiciously—that is, in the most helpful, least taxing way.
June 2003
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Abstract
Gender and Rhetorical Space in American Life, 1866–1910 by Nan Johnson Carbondale: SIU Press, 2002. 220 pp. Rhetoric In The Middle Ages And Three Medieval Rhetorical Arts By James J. Murphy. Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance. 1974. “Foreword to the Reprint”; Jody Enders. Bibliography, not credited. MRTS Reprint Series, No. 4. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2001. xii + 399 pp. Three Medieval Rhetorical Arts by James J. Murphy. 1971. MRTS Reprint Series, No. 5. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2001. xxiii + 236 pp.
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Abstract
Abstract A Rhetoric of Motives is Kenneth Burke's only published work to consistently focus upon the subject of race. Although encouraged by the book's topic, this treatment was significantly shaped by Burke's friendship with African American novelist and critic, Ralph Ellison. Consequently, this essay offers one history of Burke's Rhetoric, drawing on both published work and unpublished correspondence between and concerning these two men. Based upon these materials, I isolate three texts as the central moments of the Burke/Ellison dialogue on race: Ellison's essay, “Richard Wright's Blues,”; Ellison's letter to Burke of November 23, 1945, and, finally. Burke's A Rhetoric of Motives.
April 2003
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Abstract
This study investigates the practice of presenting multiple supporting examples in parallel form. The elements of parallelism and its use in argument were first illustrated by Aristotle. Although real texts may depart from the ideal form for presenting multiple examples, rhetorical theory offers a rationale for minimal, parallel presentation. The form for presenting data can also influence the way it is observed and selected, as the case of the Linnaean template for species grouping illustrates. Parallel presentation is not limited to verbal phrasing. Arranging data in tables, typical in scientific discourse, satisfies the same requirements for minimal, equivalent presentation of evidence. Arranging representational or iconic images in rows or arrays is yet another mode for the parallel presentation of evidence, although this mode has a recent history. A cognitive rationale can perhaps explain the use of parallelism to present multiple supporting examples.
March 2003
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Abstract
Nicolaus Caussin’s Eloquentia sacrae et humaneae parellela (1619) forges a distinctly modern history of rhetoric that ties discourse to culture. What were the conditions that made this new history of rhetoric possible? Marc Fumaroli has argued that political exigency in Cardinal Richelieu’s France demanded a reconciliation of divergent religious and secular forms of eloquence that implicated, in turn, a newly “eclectic” history of rhetoric. But political exigency alone does not account for this nascent pluralism; we also need to look at the internal dynamics of rhetorical theory as it moved across literate cultures in Europe. With this goal in mind, I first demonstrate in this article how textbooks after the heady days of Protestant Reformation in Germany tried in vain to systematize the passions of art, friendship, and politics. Partially in response to this failure, I then argue, there emerged in France a new rhetoric sensitive to the historical contingency of passionate situations. My claim is not simply that rhetoric is bound to be temporal and situational, but more precisely that Caussin initiates historical rhetorics: the capacity to theorize how discourse is bound to culture in its plurality and historical contingency.
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Appealing to the “intelligent worker”: Rhetorical reconstitution and the influence of firsthand experience in the rhetoric of Leonora O'Reilly ↗
Abstract
Abstract This article examines the rhetoric of labor activist Leonora O'Reilly for the ways she reconstituted her audience through a second persona of “intelligent workers.”; By balancing concrete contextualization with abstract visions of a future democracy, O'Reilly established identification with her audience of young, uneducated, poor women while simultaneously encouraging them to become a group of outspoken agents capable of transforming their oppressive circumstances. This article also explores the ways firsthand experiences influenced the process of reconstitution. To recognize the influences of extra‐verbal phenomena does not downplay rhetoric's role in the creation of an audience but rather calls attention to the dialectical relationship between language and an extra‐discursive reality and encourages scholars to examine a number of factors which can precipitate, impede, or otherwise shape the process of reconstitution.
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What happened at the first American writers’ congress? Kenneth Burke's “revolutionary symbolism in America” ↗
Abstract
Abstract Burke's famous performance at the First American Writers’ Congress in 1935 should be understood in relation to its occasion. The Congress was held to enlist the services of writers in creating a broad Popular Front, or People's Front, to encourage social change, so Burke's recommendation that “the people”; ought to be substituted for “the worker”; in Communist Party symbolism—that “propaganda by inclusion”; ought to succeed “propaganda by exclusion “—was actually in moderate keeping with the Congress’ broad aim. Though his recommendation was resisted by some, Burke was actually not so much marginalized by the Congress as identified with its controversies.