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July 1996

  1. Do Adults Change their Minds after Reading Persuasive Text?
    Abstract

    To change the mind of a reader, authors compose written persuasion according to a set of rhetorical features. This article describes the features of persuasive texts and reviews research results to explore whether adults indeed change their minds after reading persuasion. Toulmin's (1958) model of argument and Aristotle's model of persuasive content characterize the structure and content of well-written persuasion. Research in social psychology and text comprehension shows that adults typically build a case for their own prereading belief rather than process a persuasive text mindfully, weigh evidence, and change their beliefs. An important contract between author and reader is typically broken. Research on designing text to disabuse students of scientific misconceptions points to text features that authors could use to encourage readers to read persuasion mindfully.

    doi:10.1177/0741088396013003001

June 1996

  1. Reviews
    Abstract

    Norms of Rhetorical Culture by Thomas B. Farrell. New Haven and London: Yale UP 1993; x + 374pp. Hermogenes On Issues; Strategies of Argument in Later Greek Rhetoric, by Malcolm Heath, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1995; pp. ix + 274. The Rhetoric of Politics in the English Revolution, 1642–1660, by Elizabeth Skerpan. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992; 264 pages. The Rhetoric of Courtship: Courting and Courtliness in Elizabethan Language and Literature; by Catherine Bates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992; 236 pages. Philosophy, Rhetoric, Literary Criticism: (Inter)views edited Gary A. Olson, with a foreword by Clifford Geertz. Carbondale: Southern Illinois U P, 1994. 250 pp. Understanding Scientific Prose ed. Jack Selzer. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1993; 388 pp. Learning from the Histories of Rhetoric: Essays in Honor of Winifred Bryan Horner, ed. Theresa Enos. Southern Illinois UP; 1993; 200 pp. Greek Rhetoric Before Aristotle, by Richard Enos. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1993. 159 pages.

    doi:10.1080/02773949609391074

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
  2. Form as Argument in Cicero's Speeches: A Study of Dilemma
    doi:10.1525/rh.1996.14.2.234
  3. Aristotle's Voice, Our Ears
    doi:10.2307/358799
  4. Review: Aristotle’s Voice, Our Ears
    Abstract

    Power, Genre, and Technology Deborah H. Holdstein This Is Not an Essay Carolyn R. Miller Notes on Postmodern Double Agency and the Arts of Lurking James J. Sosnoski

    doi:10.58680/ccc19968704

April 1996

  1. Effective Litigative Writing
    Abstract

    This review of the relationship of law and art in the litigative context explores ways in which the methodologies of the novelist and other artists can be invoked by the lawyer in structuring and developing a case and presenting it to a court. To the litigators who transcend the form books and stereotypes and see their cases with a fresh eye, neither the law nor the facts are fixed in stone but rather created to meet the deepest realities of the case within the context of our most fundamental values and beliefs. Litigators, by the way they define and project the issues, can affect, even determine, what law and facts are legally relevant and dispositive. They must devise and write the story that threads the client's way out of the labyrinth. Mastery of the formal requirements of litigative writing is only a necessary first step. Freewriting; Hemingwayesque choice of words and syntax; harnessing the symbolic, often hidden, power of language; achieving the dramatic potential of case presentation—all these and more from the creative artist's repertoire empower litigators to win their cases. Resort is made not only to the applicable statutory, regulatory, and case law but also to the processes of the like of Cezanne, Conrad, Hemingway, Tolstoy, Joyce, Aristotle, and Faulkner.

    doi:10.1177/1050651996010002002

March 1996

  1. What if Aristotle took sophists seriously? New readings in Aristotle's<i>rhetoric</i>
    Abstract

    New research into the pre-Socratic arts of discourse (technai log6n) has not only enriched our understanding but also increased our respect for the work that the great pre-Socratic thinkers did.1 In this paper I want to encourage a rereading of the texts of Plato and Aristotle with the results of this research in mind. If scholars would accept that Plato and Aristotle, at least some of the time, reflected an understanding and respect for the work of the sophists and rhetors similar to the one now emerging, the result might well be a new, fruitful, and richer reading of the texts of Plato and Aristotle. I believe that as a result, both Plato and Aristotle would emerge as more rhetorical and nuanced than they have been previously thought to be. This seems a strange expectation. First, it is well known that Aristotle, for example, seldom seems to allude to particular individuals who were sophists with anything but scorn. Certainly, when he uses the word sophist as a general term, it is used in a pejorative sense for the besetting vices of philosophy and philosophers: self-promotion through speech and victory at any cost in speech. Such usage is itself a reflection on those who claim the name as a serious description of their work.

    doi:10.1080/07350199609389063
  2. Review essays
    Abstract

    Alan W. France. Composition As a Cultural Practice. Westport, CN: Bergin and Garvey, 1994. 171 pages. Mark Wiley, Barbara Gleason, and Louise Wetherbee Phelps, editors. Composition in Four Keys: An Inquiry into the Field. Mountain Valley, California: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1995. 608 pages. A. L. Becker. Beyond Translation: Essays in Modern Philology. University of Michigan Press, 1995. 431 + ix pages. Sherrie L. Grandin. Romancing Rhetorics: Social Expressivist Perspectives on the Teaching of Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Heinemann, 1995. 166 pages. Mike Rose. Possible Lives. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995. 454 pages. $24.95. Richard McKeon. On Knowing—The Natural Sciences. Compiled by David B. Owen. Edited by David B. Owen and Zahava K. McKeon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. 405 pages. $65.00 hardcover, $17.95 paper. Jasper Neel. Aristotle's Voice: Rhetoric, Theory and Writing in America. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. 259 pages. $24.95.

    doi:10.1080/07350199609389074
  3. <i>Aristotle's Voice: Rhetoric, Theory, and Writing in America</i>by Jasper Neel
    Abstract

    Aristotle's Voice: Rhetoric, Theory, and Writing in America by Jasper Neel. Southern Illinois U P: Carbondale, 1994. 225 pp.

    doi:10.1080/02773949609391067

January 1996

  1. Book reviews
    Abstract

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

    doi:10.1080/02773949609391061

November 1995

  1. A fallacy of aristotle's about ends
    doi:10.1007/bf00737774
  2. 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

October 1995

  1. Transmuting Common Substances
    Abstract

    This study explores the relationship between forensic, deliberative, and epideictic modes of rhetoric in the cold fusion controversy. The purpose of this exploration is threefold: (a) to show the interactions between these three modes of rhetoric more comprehensively than they have been shown in previous case studies of scientific controversies; (b) to examine the ways in which all three modes have shaped the emerging scientific consensus and, further, through a close analysis of key experimental reports, to reveal how forensic rhetoric in the cold fusion controversy has come to occupy pride of place; and (c) to suggest how the events in this controversy support Robert Sanders's contention that rhetorical practices interact with scientific practices to allow diverse researchers to arrive at constructive agreements—not merely political ones—on both research findings and ways to resolve competing interpretations.

    doi:10.1177/1050651995009004001
  2. Sophistical Rhetoric in Classical Greece
    Abstract

    This title provides an introduction to the rhetorical tradition of sophistical dialectics in antiquity.In Sophistical Rhetoric in Classical Greece, John Poulakos offers a new conceptualization of sophistry, explaining its direction and shape as well as the reasons why Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle found it objectionable. Poulakos argues that a proper understanding of sophistical rhetoric requires a grasp of three cultural dynamics of the fifth century B.C.: the logic of circumstances, the ethic of competition, and the aesthetic of exhibition. Traced to such phenomena as everyday practices, athletic contests, and dramatic performances, these dynamics set the stage for the role of sophistical rhetoric in Hellenic culture and explain why sophistry has traditionally been understood as inconsistent, agonistic, and ostentatious.In his discussion of ancient responses to sophistical rhetoric, Poulakos observes that Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle found sophistry morally reprehensible, politically useless, and theoretically incoherent. At the same time, they produced their own version of rhetoric that advocated ethical integrity, political unification, and theoretical coherence. Poulakos explains that these responses and alternative versions were motivated by a search for solutions to such historical problems as moral uncertainty, political instability, and social disorder. Poulakos concludes that sophistical rhetoric was as necessary in its day as its Platonic, Isocratean, and Aristotelian counterparts were in theirs.

    doi:10.2307/358732

September 1995

  1. Review Essays
    Abstract

    Eugene Garver. Aristotle's Rhetoric: An Art of Character. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994. xii + 325 pages. Helen Fox. Listening to the World: Cultural Issues in Academic Writing. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1994. xxi +161 pages. W. Ross Winterowd. A Teacher's Introduction to Composition in the Rhetorical Tradition. Urbana: NCTE, 1994. 130 pages. Marcello Pera. Discourses of Science. Translated by Clarissa Botsford. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. 250 pages. Pera, Marcello, and William R. Shea, eds. Persuading Science: The Art of Scientific Rhetoric. Canton, MA: Science History, 1991. Perelman, Chaïm, and L. Olbrechts‐Tyteca. The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation. Trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1969. Planck, Max. Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers. Trans. F. Gaynor. London: Williams and Norgate, 1950. Simons, Herbert, ed. The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990. Haig Bosmajian, Metaphor and Reason in Judicial Opinions. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1992. Fredric G. Gale, Political Literacy: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Possibility of Justice. Interruptions: Border Testimony(ies) and Critical Discoursed). Albany: State U of New York P, 1994. Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns, eds. The Rhetoric of Law. Amherst Series in Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought 4. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1994.

    doi:10.1080/07350199509389060

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 as Ancient Thinker
    Abstract

    Abstract: This essay presents Quintilian as representative of the ancient categories of thought, in contrast to the medieval-modem one which emerged in the generations of Anselm and Abelard. Quintilian works in the first place with an exhaustive dualism of words and res: res span both what is outside the mind and what is taken into the mind, so that for him there is no medieval-modern trichotomy of words, meanings, and things. In the second place, for Quintilian the primary function of the mind is to take the outside world into itself, while in the medieval-modern context the primary function of mind is to make up meanings by which to think about things outside the mind.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1995.13.3.219
  3. Quintilian in Czech Philological Thought
    Abstract

    Abstract: Czech humanism drew its ideal of the active citizen who is both eloquent and virtuous from Quintilian, who exercised a significant influence in Czech culture. This paper traces the outlines of that influence, beginning with Hus and Comenius and extending through the Enlightenment to the Prague linguistic circle of the twentieth century.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1995.13.3.337
  4. 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
  5. Goethe und Quintilian. Von den “jugendlichen Konzeptionen” zur “Weltliteratur”
    Abstract

    Research Article| August 01 1995 Goethe und Quintilian. Von den “jugendlichen Konzeptionen” zur “Weltliteratur” Helmut Schanze Helmut Schanze Laurentiusstr. 69, D 52072 Aachen, DeutschIand. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1995) 13 (3): 323–336. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1995.13.3.323 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 Helmut Schanze; Goethe und Quintilian. Von den “jugendlichen Konzeptionen” zur “Weltliteratur”. Rhetorica 1 August 1995; 13 (3): 323–336. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1995.13.3.323 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 1995, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1995 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1995.13.3.323

May 1995

  1. Sons and Fathers in the <i>Major Declamations</i> Ascribed to Quintilian
    Abstract

    Abstract: A major focus of the school themes in the collections of Roman declamations knowrn as controversiae (practice court cases) is the period of a young man's adolescence, and especially his relationship with his father during this period. In part this can be explained because teachers in the private schools of rhetoric selected themes that naturally appealed to their students—male adolescents in their mid and late teens. This focus is especially notable in the Major Declamations, and since they are the only full examples of controversiae,the phenomenon can most easily be explored in reference to this werk. In its nineteen declamations youths are generally portrayed sympathetically, in contrast to their fathers who are often cruel and harsh. Relations between the two are generally very strained. The themes were popular because they reflected the reality of growing up in a paternally dominated society where fathers had absolute power(even of life and death) over their sons. These declamations therefore had a cathartic effect and escapist value fer Roman teenaged boys,who could vent or explore in legitimate and acceptable ways their repressed, pent-up, and often hostile feelings toward their fathers. The declamations therefore provide an important resource, when used judiciously, for associating social history with the history of rhetoric.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1995.13.2.179
  2. The Concept of Nature and Human Nature in Quintilian's Psychology and Theory of Instruction
    Abstract

    Abstract: Abstract: Nature is a highly tendentious Word and was already so in the time of Quintilian. Since the Stoic ideal was "to live according to Nature," the concept can be invoked persuasively in every phase of education. But Nature had other regular functions in rhetoric: to demarcate innate talent from acquired skill (Natura vs. Ars); to distinguish reality, the outside world, from verbal imitation; and to privilege preferred patterns of argumentation. These competing uses lead to inconsistencies, especially in presenting the relationship between Nature and imitation. The purpose of this paper is to detect these contradictions and illustrate the assumptions that underlie them in Quintilian's tieatment of invention, organization, and expression.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1995.13.2.125
  3. 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

April 1995

  1. The Report for Decision Making
    Abstract

    The report for decision making shares some common ground with the proposal, the report of scientific experiment, and even the persuasive essay, yet these genres differ. Recognizing these differences is necessary for effective inquiry, pedagogy, and decision making. The genres are means of solving different types of problems: practical, empirical, and theoretical. They serve different aims: action, demonstration, and conviction. The proposal, like the report, may solve practical problems, but the proposal advocates, whereas the report inquires. These genres all embody assumptions about problem solving and inquiry in their forms. Applying the problem-solving goals and methods of the proposal, experimental report, or essay to the report for decision making compromises the quality of the inquiry and of the resulting decision. Complex problems for decision making require a rhetorical method of inquiry based on Aristotle's special topics. The report genre reflects the invention heuristics and analysis in its form.

    doi:10.1177/1050651995009002002

March 1995

  1. Sophistic ethics in the technical writing classroom: Teaching<i>nomos,</i>deliberation, and action
    Abstract

    Drawing on arguments by Carolyn Miller, Steven Katz, and others, this essay claims that teaching ethics is particularly important to technical writing. Next, the essay outlines a classical, sophistic approach to ethics based on the theories and pedagogies of Protagoras, Gorgias, and Isocrates. This sophistic approach emphasizes the Greek concept of nomos, internal and external deliberation, and responsible action or articulation. The final section of the essay discusses possible problems and pedagogical applications of sophistic ethics in the contemporary technical writing classroom.

    doi:10.1080/10572259509364596
  2. Review essays
    Abstract

    Richard A. Lanham. The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. xv + 285 pp. $22.50 (cloth). Also available as a Chicago Expanded Book. 2 high‐density Macintosh disks. $29.95. Edward Schiappa, ed. Landmark Essays on Classical Greek Rhetoric. Landmark Essays Volume Three. Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1994. xiv + 256 pages. $15.95 paper. Michael G. Moran, ed. Eighteenth‐Century British and American Rhetorics and Rhetoricians: Critical Studies and Sources. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1994. 318 pages. Barry Brummett, ed. Landmark Essays on Kenneth Burke. Davis: Hermagoras Press, 1993. xix + 290 pages. $15.95. Geoffrey A. Cross. Collaboration and Conflict: A Contextual Exploration of Group Writing and Positive Emphasis. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1994. 182 pages. $18.50 paper. Alice Glarden Brand and Richard L. Graves, eds. Presence of Mind: Writing and the Domain Beyond the Cognitive. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Boynton/Cook Publishers, 1994.

    doi:10.1080/07350199509359200
  3. Expert testimony, “regular people,” and public values: Arguing common sense at a death penalty trial
    Abstract

    Rhetoric's primary business has always been articulation of public knowledge and public values.1 Because making of knowledge in public realm incorporates intersecting discourses of many specialized communities, it frequently necessitates translation of expert discourse into a vernacular accessible to nonexpert decision makers. Indeed, Aristotle makes it clear in both Rhetoric and Topics that one of important uses of rhetorical art is forwarding of arguments in popular terms (34). This process of transforming into language that guides human affairs has been described by Charles Bazerman and James Paradis a conversion of the hieratic discourse of expertise into the demotic discourse of everyday practice (8). A prototype of this transformation becomes available for scrutiny in presentation of expert testimony to a jury, a process that involves accommodating knowledge claims and discourse practices of a specialized community to both formal procedures of a courtroom and lay understanding of jurors. Juries are empaneled to enact values of a larger public by deciding whether and to what degree a set of evidence matches legal definitions of criminal behavior or civil liability. By deciding guilt or innocence and determining appropriate penalties, they fulfill public function of rhetoric that Bitzer describes: to establish correct judgments in practical and humane affairs by examining contested versions of truth (68). To play this role, Gail Stygall has observed, jurors become socialized as temporary members of

    doi:10.1080/07350199509359194

February 1995

  1. From Themistius to al-Farabi: Platonic Political Philosophy and Aristotle's Rhetoric in the East
    Abstract

    Abstract: Aristotie's Rhetoric appears to have had little influence on rhetorical theory in Greek or Latin during late antiquity or the early Middle Ages, but it was closely studied by some Islamic philosophers, notably al-Farabi. Behind al-Farabi's interest in Aristotle's Rhetoric lay his adoption of Plato's doctrine of the philosopher-king, Whitch had an eloquent exponent in late antiquity in the philosopher-orator Themistius. An allusion to the Rhetoric in an oration of Themistius suggests that al-Farabi's assessment of the Rhetoric also had roots in late antiquity, possibly in circles around Themistius. The content of the Syriac Rhetoric of Antony of Tagrit confirms the likelihood that in thèse matters, as in many others, the Syrians were the intermediaries between Greek late antiquity and the classical renaissance in Islam.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1995.13.1.17

January 1995

  1. Ethos: character and ethics in technical writing
    Abstract

    Technical writing tries to be "objective" and "audience-oriented", but it neglects an element of persuasion known in ancient rhetoric as "ethos". This concept translates from the Greek as "character", but that English word does not convey the concept's richness; nor does the Latin "persona", a term sometimes used to describe the narrative voice in technical prose. "Ethos" is the root of "ethics", which tends to objectify values and choices, alienating them from the people making them. In this paper, I suggest that an understanding of "ethos" in all its richness can help writers of technical prose to produce work that, in relation to traditionally "objective" prose, is both more readable and more ethical.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

    doi:10.1109/47.406725
  2. "Professional communication" and the "odor of mendacity": the persistent suspicion that skilful writing is successful lying
    Abstract

    From the time that rhetoric first differentiated itself from philosophy there has been a widespread belief that the craft of rhetoric is, to a considerable extent, the art of deception with impunity. As early as Plato's Gorgias dialogue and as recently as a proposed rule from the Food and Drug Administration, one finds those who argue that even the skills of technical and scientific communication are, in effect, artful forms of misrepresentation. These critics indict not only those who sell and apologize-easy targets-but also those those avowed purpose is merely to make messages clearer. Can it be true that all forms of communication skill, even those that enhance clarity and precision, are merely elegant forms of lying? Does the word "rhetoric" deserve its tainted historical connotation? Or, even worse, is writing itself an inherently self-serving (i.e. misleading) way of adapting to one's environment?.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

    doi:10.1109/47.406731
  3. Deliberative rhetoric and forensic stasis: Reconsidering the scope and function of an ancient rhetorical heuristic in the aftermath of the Thomas/Hill controversy
    Abstract

    (1995). Deliberative rhetoric and forensic stasis: Reconsidering the scope and function of an ancient rhetorical heuristic in the aftermath of the Thomas/Hill controversy. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 25, No. 1-4, pp. 223-230.

    doi:10.1080/02773949509391045
  4. Isocrates’ <i>techne</i> and rhetorical pedagogy
    doi:10.1080/02773949509391038
  5. Disciplinary Politics and the Institutionalization of the Generic Triad in Classical Rhetoric
    Abstract

    Richards characterized in 1936 as dreariest and least profitable part of the waste that the unfortunate travel through in Freshman English (3) to pluralistic, multidimensional, architectonic discipline in our time. Theresa Enos and Stuart C. Brown in their introduction to Defining the New Rhetorics point out, for instance, that nothing short of the collective effort of multitude of perspectives would enable an encompassing view of and its place in the (vii). And as John Bender and David E. Wellbery observe in The Ends of Rhetoric, contemporary rhetorical inquiry occurs in an matrix that touches on all major academic fields (viii); as result, it has gained an irreducibly multidisciplinary character (38). Less talked about, yet equally important to putting contemporary redefinition of the classical art in perspective, is the fact that the transformation takes place not so much in congenial interdisciplinary matrix as in what Bakhtin terms verbal-ideological world-a world where the centrifugal and the centripetal forces carry on their uninterrupted work alongside each other (272), the ideal of interdisciplinarity inevitably comes into conflict with the imperatives of disciplinary politics, and the enthusiasm to open up is always conditioned by an urge to close down. Thus in responding to rhetoric becoming the central paradigmatic, epistemic activity, Derrida speaks out in Journal of Advanced Composition interview against what he calls rhetoricism or a way of giving all the power, thinking that everything depends on rhetoric. Rhetoric, he maintains, should stay within its traditional limits of verbality, formality, figures of speech (15).

    doi:10.2307/378347
  6. Disciplinary Politics and the Institutionalizationof the Generic Traid in Classical Rhetoric
    Abstract

    Preview this article: Disciplinary Politics and the Institutionalizationof the Generic Traid in Classical Rhetoric, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/57/1/collegeenglish9146-1.gif

    doi:10.58680/ce19959146

December 1994

  1. In Defense of Humor
    Abstract

    hat's happened to American humor lately would be funny if it weren't so serious. Potshots have been fired at it from highest levels of government and academe; it's been unjustly accused, mangled beyond recognition, and in some cases outlawed. A recent potshot came from Harvey I. Saferstein, president of California Bar Association, after a gunman opened fire in offices of a law firm, killing eight people before shooting himself-and leaving a letter that railed against lawyers and others involved in a failed real estate deal. In response, Saferstein called a news conference to denounce lawyer jokes. Mean-spirited jokes about lawyers could lead to more violence like massacre, he warned, according to an Associated Press story dated July 6, 1993; such jokes could be the straw that breaks camel's back for a fringe person; Americans should stop lawyer-bashing... that sometimes can incite violence and aggression toward lawyers. Saferstein's plea was undoubtedly well intentioned, and he joins a long line of protesters who are tired of being butt of jokes. However, point he missed is that humor flourishes only when there's a moderate level of tension between groups. If tension becomes too high, then humor won't suffice, which is what Cicero observed two thousand years ago when he said that people want criminals attacked with more forceful weapons than ridicule. The man who shot up law offices was feeling a much greater level of tension than that felt by people who tell lawyer jokes. And although it's risky to guess about someone else's innermost thoughts, one could conceivably argue that if, over years since man's business dealings went awry, he had been able to relieve his tensions through laughter-even laughter at his lawyers' expense-he might not have resorted to violence.

    doi:10.2307/378770

November 1994

  1. Towards a Theory of Vivid Description as Practiced in Cicero's Verrine Oration
    Abstract

    Abstract: Ancient Roman rhetoricians do not offer a systematic theory of vivid description in their rhetorical treatises, perhaps because it was treated at the early stages of a student's education and because it may be produced in various ways to achieve various purposes. After examining the references to vivid description scattered throughout ancient rhetorical treatises in discussions of style, amplification, narration, and proof, as well as Cicero's use of the tectinique in the Verrine orations, I suggest precepts which may have guided the means by and ends for which vivid descriptions are produced.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1994.12.4.355

September 1994

  1. Nietzsche's reading of the sophists
    Abstract

    Until recently, scholars have tended to credit two nineteenth-century thinkers, G. F. Hegel and George Grote, for initiating the modem rehabilitation of the sophists.2 But in the past several years, an increasing number of scholars have begun to draw inspiration from the writings of another nineteenth-century figure, Friedrich Nietzsche. Among those taking this Nietzschean turn, Mario Untersteiner utilizes Nietzsche's conception of the tragic in his account of Gorgias's epistemology (101-205), a reading Eric White supplements with Nietzsche's notion of the (38). Victor Vitanza, characterizing Nietzsche as a dionysian Sophist, draws from Nietzsche's tropological model of language to illuminate the sophists' own rhetoric (Sub/Versions 112; Notes 131); and David Roochnik contends that Nietzsche's critique of reason illuminates the sophists' own misology (Tragedy 50, 155, 162). In the sphere of ethics, E. R. Dodds maintains that Nietzsche's immoralism is similar to the egoism of Gorgias's student Callicles (387-91), and Daniel Shaw contends that Nietzsche's critique of morality iterates the sophists' notion that moral valuations remain matters of opinion (339). Concerning methodology, John Poulakos argues that Nietzsche's genealogical approach is most suited for interpreting the sophists (Interpreting 219-21); and Susan Jarratt credits Nietzsche's method as authorizing her own re-reading of the sophists (xix). But whereas they have drawn on a variety of Nietzsche's ideas and interpretive strategies to advance what Jacqueline dc Romilly characterizes as a Nietzschean interpretation of the sophists (Sophists xi), none of these scholars has systematically examined Nietzsche's own quite specific and extensive writings about the sophists. The untoward result is that we possess a variety of Nietzschean readings of the sophists that tend to silence Nietzsche's own distinctive voice. This tendency to overlook Nietzsche's own specific remarks about the sophists is quite understandable, for Nietzsche never wrote a systematic treatise on the sophists and instead discussed them in a rather fragmentary manner in a variety of texts over a period of almost two decades. Further, with the exception of three quite brief passages-in Human, All-Too-Human 221, Dawn 168, and the Ancients, Twilight of the Idols 2-Nietzsche did not publish any of his remarks about the sophists, confining his discussions to his 1872-1873 lecture notes in the history of Greek rhetoric (Description of Ancient Rhetoric and

    doi:10.1080/07350199409359172
  2. Reconsidering sophistic rhetoric in light of skeptical epistemology
    Abstract

    The latest rehabilitation of the sophists, begun by Hegel and carried out with increasing dedication during this century (see Crowley, Enos, Guthrie, Hunt, Jarratt, Kerferd, Poulakos, De Romilly, Schiappa, Untersteiner), has improved our understanding of rhetorical theory and history. Despite, and in some ways because of, the nebulous quality of what they have left us, the sophists have become important primarily because they predate Plato and Aristotle and thus would seem to offer at least a fragmentary glimpse of rhetoric prior to its hypostatization in the classical period. The traditional thinking is that Platonic and Aristotelian rhetorical theory disciplined the sophists' extravagant practices, substantiated their unsubstantiated claims, and transformed their dithyrambic, mythic, magical, poetic discourse into a logical, rational theory of argumentation. In other words, Plato and Aristotle transformed mythos into logos; thus they were the fathers of rhetoric insofar as rhetoric was a respectable techno for the production of reasonable discourse. The philosophers rejected sophistic rhetoric on the grounds that it had no philosophical foundations from which its principles could be logically derived and safely taught. Thus they set about constructing a sound, philosophically based rhetoric by linking it carefully to, while dividing it just as carefully from, absolute knowledge (episteme). In both the Platonic and the Aristotelian rhetorical schemes, episteme provides the limits of rhetoric. In the Platonic case, absolute knowledge is a prerequisite for the application of rhetorical lore-one must employ dialectic in the service of absolute truth before one may use rhetoric to disseminate the truth (Phaedrus 265-66). In the Aristotelian case, rhetorical lore must be based on the first principles of persuasion, but must be employed when knowable matters are discussed-the closer one gets to fundamental principles, the further one gets from enthymemes, and thus the further one gets from rhetoric in the direction of scientific knowledge (Freese 1359b). If knowledge provides the limits for rhetorical theory and practice, then, in Platonic and Aristotelian terms, without both knowledge and a theory of knowledge, systematic rhetoric is impossible. This is why they dismissed sophistic rhetoric on the grounds that it ha(d) no rational account to give of the nature of the various things which it offer(ed) (Gorgias 465) and that it presented not an but the results of an art (Forster 183b). Because

    doi:10.1080/07350199409359174
  3. Review essays
    Abstract

    Miriam Brody. Manly Writing: Gender, Rhetoric, and the Rise of Composition. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993. 247 pages. Carol J. Singley and S. Elizabeth Sweeney, eds. Anxious Power: Reading, Writing, and Ambivalence in Narratives by Women. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. xxvi + 400 pages. Gregory Clark and S. Michael Halloran, eds. Oratorical Culture in Nineteenth‐Century America: Transformations in the Theory and Practice of Rhetoric. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993.281 pages. Donovan J. Ochs. Consolatory Rhetoric: Grief, Symbol, and Ritual in the Greco‐Roman Era. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993. xiv + 130 pages. $29.95 cloth. Walter L. Reed. Dialogues of the Word: The Bible as Literature According to Bakhtin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. xvi + 223 pages. Barbara Warnick. The Sixth Canon: Belletristic Rhetorical Theory and Its French Antecedents. Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1993. 176 pages. John Frederick Reynolds, ed. Rhetorical Memory and Delivery: Classical Concepts for Contemporary Composition and Communication. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1993. xii + 170. $19.95 paper. Edward M. White. Teaching and Assessing Writing. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass Publishers, 1994. xxii + 331 pages. $34.95. Sharon Crowley. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. New York: Macmillan College Publishing Company, 1994. 365 pages. Victor Villanueva, Jr. Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1993. xviii + 150 pages.

    doi:10.1080/07350199409359184
  4. Rethinking Plato's legacy: Neoplatonic readings of Plato's<i>sophist</i><sup>1</sup>
    doi:10.1080/07350199409359173
  5. Toward a pedagogy of the enthymeme: The roles of dialogue, intention, and function in shaping argument
    Abstract

    teach composition using an enthymematic approach. Or I might say, teach composition from the or the enthymeme. Unfortunately, the word enthymeme is more likely to alienate composition teachers than to attract their interest and attention, despite growing body of scholarship that positions the enthymeme at the very heart of the composing process. According to the viewpoint that emerges from this scholarship, enthymematic reasoning is fundamental to cognition and discourse, and hence to writing. If so, then talking about the enthymeme ought to be an essential and powerful way of talking about the composing process, and of it (Grimaldi, Gage, Green, Walker, Porter, Hood, Emmel, among others). Part of the difficulty of explaining what is meant by teaching enthymematically resides in the word enthymeme itself, which, unlike more familiar composition terminology (thesis, evidence, conclusion), lacks common and shared meaning, even recognition, for both students and teachers alike. As one of my students complained, couldn't even find it in the dictionary! Other students have been perturbed when their other teachers do not recognize the word. As means of understanding and discussing composition, the term enthymeme is still in the process of gaining definition and application-that is, of becoming grounded in composition theory, apart from the realms of formal logic and classical rhetorical theory. The age-old tendency to reduce the enthymeme to a truncated syllogism, or to mere figure of speech with little rhetorical potential beyond the moment of utterance, robs it of the fullness from which its pedagogical potential derives (see, for example, Conley's and Poster's surveys of ancient and modem interpretations of the enthymeme). Yet the enthymeme is not just logical paradigm (statement 1 is true because statement 2 is true) but also conceptualization of rich set of relationships with the potential of being expressed in multitude of ways, of which the enthymematic and syllogistic paradigms are only the most schematic and thesis-like. A successful essay is no less enthymematic for not being

    doi:10.1080/07350199409359178
  6. Gorgias's<i>encomium of Helen:</i>Violent rhetoric or radical feminism?<sup>1</sup>
    doi:10.1080/07350199409359175

August 1994

  1. A Rhetorical Ontology for Modern Science
    Abstract

    Abstract: In this paper I wish to ask whether philosophers have good grounds for elaborating rhetorics of science. By doing so they might seem to deny the distinction between the theoretical intellect and the practical intellect, which traditionally have reigned over scientific discourse and rhetorical discourse, respectively. I shall suggest that philosophers of rhetoric do indeed have a warrant for developing their rhetorics of science. We shall assume with Aristotle that we may distinguish the theoretical from the practical intellect by distinguishing objects which cannot be other than they are from objects which can be other than they are. What we shall find is that a stalwart of British empiricism, John Stuart Mill, develops a philosophy of science concerned with objects which can be other than they are. Mill thus provides us with an ontological justification for our new rhetorics of science.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1994.12.3.327
  2. Some Renaissance Polish Commentaries on Aristotle's Rhetoric and Hermogenes' On Ideas
    Abstract

    Absract: In the present manuscript collections of the Biblioteka Narodowa in Warsaw and the Biblioteka Jagiellońska in Kraków are two commentaries on Aristotle's Rhetoric and two on Hermogenes' On Ideas, all evidently composed in the early seventeenth century. This study briefly surveys their contents and organization and attempts to locate them in the cultural milieu of Renaissance Polish scholarship, an area of study almost totally ignored by American and Western European historians of rhetoric.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1994.12.3.265
  3. The rhetoric of Smith, Boswell and Johnson: Creating the modern icon
    Abstract

    When James Boswell first meets Samuel Johnson in London in 1763, Johnson has already written the Rambler (1750-52), the Dictionary (1755), and Rasselas (1759), and dominates the publishing marketplace. They become close friends, and, until Johnson's death in 1784, Boswell often records in his journals Johnson's conversations, documenting his Wisdom and Wit and describing Johnson's encounters with his contemporaries. After Johnson's death, Boswell augments his own collection of Johnsonian memorabilia by soliciting anecdotes and letters from many of Johnson's friends, accumulating a mass of material which he pieces together and publishes in 1791 as The Life of Johnson, perhaps the most powerful and controversial biography ever written. In this influential biography of Johnson's life, Boswell presents Johnson as the great sage and philosopher, the composing genie who could dash off brilliant, eloquent essays and verse, seemingly without planning, revising or even rereading them. With this picture Boswell tries to create Johnson as the ideal writer of the age, whose writing method and style perfectly exemplify the paradigm of composition that prevailed in eighteenth-century Scottish rhetorical theory, particularly that of Adam Smith. Influenced by Smith's lectures, which he had attended while a student at Glasgow University, Boswell constructs Johnson as writer within this paradigm and thus fosters both a narrow view of invention and a mythological image of Johnson as inspired speedwriting genius. In the process, he misrepresents Johnson's theory of writing, tying Johnson too closely to what W.S. Howell calls Smith's new rhetoric (541), which focuses on style and views invention as an autonomous activity based on introspection and imagination rather than as interactive, systematic inquiry, Aristotle's conception of invention. A careful reading of the Life of Johnson reveals major contradictions in the picture Boswell sketches of Johnson as writer and indicates that Boswell's mythical image of Johnson's spontaneous writing ability tends to rest upon thin and questionable anecdotal evidence, upon the clever way Boswell arranges and phrases his material, upon the narrow conception of invention he inherited from Adam Smith, and upon his need to canonize Johnson into literary sainthood and even to make him the secular Godhead of the age, the Father of modern writing. At the same time, it is difficult to avoid concluding that most contemporary critics remain mesmerized by Boswell's myth and impelled by his same motives.

    doi:10.1080/02773949409391018
  4. Teaching stones to talk: Using stasis theory to teach students the art of dialectic
    Abstract

    (1994). Teaching stones to talk: Using stasis theory to teach students the art of dialectic. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 24, No. 3-4, pp. 88-95.

    doi:10.1080/02773949409391020
  5. Sophistic rhetoric and philosophy: A selective bibliography of scholarship in English since 1900
    doi:10.1080/02773949409391016
  6. Neo‐sophistic rhetorical theory: Sophistic precedents for contemporary epistemic rhetoric
    Abstract

    (1994). Neo‐sophistic rhetorical theory: Sophistic precedents for contemporary epistemic rhetoric. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 24, No. 3-4, pp. 16-24.

    doi:10.1080/02773949409391015
  7. Forensic rhetoric and the constitution of the subject: Innocence, truth, and wisdom in Gorgias’<i>palamedes</i>and Plato's<i>apology</i>
    Abstract

    (1994). Forensic rhetoric and the constitution of the subject: Innocence, truth, and wisdom in Gorgias’ palamedes and Plato's apology. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 24, No. 3-4, pp. 148-166.

    doi:10.1080/02773949409391024