The Present State of Scholarship in Historical and Contemporary Rhetoric, edited by Winifred Bryan Horner. Rev. ed. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990; pp. x + 260.

This study explores audience awareness of writers as they compose for contrasting audiences. Experienced writers—all of them writing instructors at large public universities―composed aloud for two audiences which differed along the dimension of authority: incoming freshmen and a faculty committee. Protocols were analyzed for patterns of writing activities among all writers and for individual writers. Among all writers, two clear patterns emerged. Writers analyzed the faculty audience less frequently than the freshman audience, but they evaluated their text and writing goals more frequently when addressing the faculty. For individual writers, strong “interpretive frameworks” emerged, unique ways in which writersi nterpreted audiences and writing tasks, foregrounding quite different elements of the rhetorical situation. At times, interpretive frameworks overrode differences between the two audiences presented in the writing tasks; that is, writers attributed the same characteristics to both audiences despite the difference in these audiences’ social status within the university structure.

Research Article| November 01 1990 The Bolevian Sublime in Eighteenth-Century British Rhetorical Theory Barbara Warnick Barbara Warnick Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1990) 8 (4): 349–369. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1990.8.4.349 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Barbara Warnick; The Bolevian Sublime in Eighteenth-Century British Rhetorical Theory. Rhetorica 1 November 1990; 8 (4): 349–369. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1990.8.4.349 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 1990, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1990 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Previous research on the communication failures contributing to the Challenger's explosion tends to ask why it happened that various people in the organizations involved knew about the faulty O-rings but failed to pass on the information to decision makers. This is a faulty question, revealing assump tions many of us unconsciously share even when we consciously reject these as sumptions. This question implies a simplistic notion of knowledge and a conduit model of communication. Insights from the sociology of technology and the new rhetoricians can help us to form better questions about rhetoric in organizations.

Years ago Loren Eiseley that life is most interesting on the margins. You never know what you'll find along the shore of the ocean or along the edge of a highway, or, to extend the notion into metaphor, on the peripheries of our minds or in transitional periods of history. Those of us in English departments who were working on modem rhetoric when it was new and not on literary history and criticism recognize the truth of the observation. The center of things tends to be, if not known, at least more familiar, constrained, and stable. But on the margin experience is more ambiguous and unpredictable, perhaps because it is there that different systems come together. Or perhaps because the people who work there are deliberately looking for change. Whatever the case, on the margin there are more possibilities, and change is easier. It is only on the margins, Eiseley says, that there is the possibility of Eiseley's metaphor for the new and unpredictable in the process of biological evolution. have dragons, he says, one must have change; that is the first principle of dragon lore. Otherwise everything becomes stale, commonplace, and observed (28). Recently at the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Janet Emig, Janice Lauer, and I presented papers on a panel entitled Reconsidering the Discipline: Three Perspectives on the History and Present Situation of Rhetoric and Composition. The title captures well the thrust of Janet Atwill's proposal for the panel; she had asked us to provide eyewitness accounts of the development of the New Rhetoric, at least the New Rhetoric as it was emerging in departments of English, and also do something a good deal more risky, i.e., to characterize the present state of the discipline.l As I worked on my paper, a precursor of this one, I found myself coming back again and again to how much of my own career has been on the margin of English studies. It's still true to some extent today, but at that time to work in the field of rhetoric was to really be on the margin. I doubt if any of us wanted to be marginalized in the profession; but those of us who didn't already know the score soon learned from their better adapted colleagues that rhetoric was a doubtful discipline that belonged, if anywhere, in speech departments, and that composition was not a proper academic discipline at all but merely a service that English departments performed, often with reluctance, for the rest of the academic community. Unless we also had a more respectable intellectual interest on which we could base our reputations, we were on the margin of the margin. To many of our colleagues we were beyond the fringe. I remember that I began looking into rhetoric in the late fifties and early sixties as the result of reading and being puzzled by C.S. Lewis's well-known comment that what separates the modern scholar most from the study of the Renaissance is his ignorance of classical rhetoric. At the same time, caught up in

(1990). The formation of college English: A survey of the archives of eighteenth‐century rhetorical theory and practice. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 261-286.

Examining the relationship between language and literacy and the societal experiences that help shape it, this political and polemical book builds on the author's previous work in reader-response criticism and challenges the now dominant assumption that language is an individual transaction independent of any social context. Moving through a series of interrelated essays, David Bleich explores topics including the social psychology of men, which he maintains exerts undue influence on everyone's education; conceptions of knowledge now offered by feminist epistemologists; social conceptions of language and knowledge found in the work of G.H. Mead, L.S. Vygotsky, Ludwik Fleck, and Mikhail Bakhtin; the influence of gender on language use; the views of current thinkers on the social character of the classroom and academic communities; and the process of individual language development.

Research on newsletters, a major form of organizational communication, has largely been practical rather than theoretical. Certain theories, such as those in organizational theory and mass communication, can be applied to newsletters as forms of organizational communication and as media. Rhetorical theory, however, has not been used to understand how newsletter writing achieves its effects. This study applies rhetorical theory to newsletters produced by two political-activist organizations. The newsletters and the organizations are described, as background for the study. Three aspects of rhetorical theory (schema theory, social construction, and theories about audience) are presented, and their application to the newsletters is illustrated with sample passages. An agenda is suggested for further research on rhetorical theory and newsletter writing.

Persuasive discourse, either as a separate mode of discourse (Kinneavy 1971) or as a distinctive part of argumentative discourse,2 frequendy remains part of the overall writing assignment for our composition students. Although we may disagree as to how to define exactly or teach persuasive discourse in writing classrooms, we have more or less followed the tradition of Western classical rhetoric with respect to our basic understanding of it--although few of us would now restrict ourselves only to discovering in the particular case what are the available means of persuasion (Aristotle 1960: 7). For example, we teach our students different sub-types of persuasive discourse and ask them to apply ethical, emotional (pathetic) and logical proofs to their own persuasive essays; we select political speeches, polemic essays or modern advertising materials as prime examples of how different persuasive strategies and techniques can be most effectively invoked to achieve their respective objectives of winning. To varying degrees, many composition text books have adopted, and thus perpetuated this normal way of doing things with persuasive discourse.3 In so doing, however, we have--perhaps unknowingly--imparted to our students two problematic notions, which underlie much of what has been believed to be persuasive discourse. The first assumes that persuasive discourse is grounded in or predicated on conflict or confrontation, which it aims to overcome or eradicate. The second perceives audience as both external4 and oppositional, whom persuasive discourse is intended to transform or convert. It is these two notions and their probable consequences that I will discuss first in this essay. Following this discussion, I will draw upon, respectively, Grice's cooperative model of conversation (1975; 1989) and Burke's concept of (1962) to propose a new heuristic model5 of persuasive discourse, one that takes cooperation through identification as a core constituent and provides a dynamic setting that is conducive to rhetorical diversities. Finally, I will consider some potentials of this new model in our writing classrooms.

In last twenty-five years, field interpersonal communication has expanded tenaciously, establishing connections with disciplines such as sociology, psychology, and even literary studies.l Although this rapid expansion indicates current strength and vigor field, it also indicative a veritable identity crisis. Suggests Arthur P. Bochner, Interpersonal communication is a vague, fragmented, and loosely-defined subject that intersects all behavioral, social, and cultural sciences. There are no rigorous definitions that limit scope field, no texts that comprehensively state its foundations, and little agreement among its practitioners about which frameworks or methods offer most promise for unifying field. (1985, 27) There is nothing inherently wrong with vagueness, fragmentation, or loose definitions, course; Renaissance Humanism was built on such a foundation. What is unsettling about interpersonal communication's crisis character, though, is reticence exhibited by field's theorists to explore connections with distant past. Perusing footnotes, indexes, and bibliographies contemporary interpersonal communication research and pedagogy, one works back only as far as relatively recent [social scientists and other] figures such as Martin Buber, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Eric Fromm, R. D. Laing, and Eric Berne. This suspiciously brief official history is verified in Handbook Interpersonal Communication, in which Mark Knapp and Gerald Miller assert that concerted interest in study interpersonal communication processes and outcomes is relatively recent origin, and that the study interpersonal communication did not commence to bloom profusely until 1960's (8). Knapp and Miller's suggestion that the study interpersonal communication has thus far progressed only from infancy to adolescence (1 1) further supports widespread belief that discipline is extremely young. The central argument this essay-that scholars interpersonal communication, in an effort to define their discipline in modern terms, have mistakenly cut themselves off from their true roots and from much liberal-arts tradition-is built upon three principal contentions. First, interpersonal communication is not of relatively recent origin, but is, in fact, an ancient study, dating back at least as far as Plato. Second, interpersonal communication grew out a healthful, invigorating competition with ancient rhetorical theory and practice. In order to understand claims, power, and limitations one, we must have an appreciation for, or at least an understanding of, other. Third, interpersonal communication specialists, both in their research and in classroom, should highlight their field's long and enlightening battle with

Contemporary scholarship in rhetoric has recognized Ralph Waldo Emerson's interests in rhetorical theory. James A. Berlin, for example, who identifies Emerson's romantic rhetoric, in opposition to the rhetoric of the late eighteenth century, as a precursor of several modem tendencies, deals adequately with Emerson in his survey of nineteenth-century American writing instruction (42-57). Berlin's treatment of Emerson will be assumed here, qualified by Judy F. Parham's point that the tension between private and public in Emerson is a productive one (80). However, although he implies that Henry David Thoreau's position does not differ significantly from Emerson's, Berlin does not treat Thoreau's theoretical statements separately. Similarly, although dozens of literary scholars have investigated Thoreau's rhetorical practices, to my knowledge no analysis has been done on his rhetorical theory.l My intention is to show that Thoreau presents a theoretical version of eloquence distinct from Emerson's. Although this presentation is by no means unified in terms of a quintessential reduction, a consistent version does emerge across various works and personas, one fundamentally incompatible as well with the psychological rhetoric Thoreau studied in Richard Whately's Elements of Rhetoric and the opinions of Harvard's Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, Edward T. Channing. Thoreau's thoughts on eloquence, I suggest, should be aligned with a much different tradition in order to highlight their unique character.

In their searches for examples of rhetorical strategies, students of modern rhetoric frequently overlook writers from the past. In his huge six-book work on the “Art of Falconry” written about 1247–1249, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, a remarkably versatile ruler, an early renaissance man, an empirical researcher, provided numerous excellent examples of rhetorical practices from which students and practicing writers well could learn. This article offers extended examples of definition, contrast, partition, causal analysis, classification, and description, to name but a few.

English studies are caught up in a debate over whether we should see individual cognition or social and cultural context as the motive force in literate acts. This conflict between cognition and context (Bartholomae, Berlin, Bizzell, Knoblauch) has special force in rhetoric and composition because it touches some deeply-rooted assumptions and practices. Can we, for instance, reconcile a commitment to nurturing a personal voice, individual purpose, or an inner, self-directed process of meaning making, with rhetoric's traditional assumption that both inquiry and purpose are a response to rhetorical situations, or with the more recent assertions that inquiry in writing must start with social, cultural, or political awareness? These values and assertions run deep in the discipline. One response to these differences is to build theoretical positions that try to polarize (or moralize) cognitive and contextual perspectives. We know that critiques based on dichotomies can fan lively academic debates. They can also lead, Mike Rose has argued, to reductive, simplified theories that narrow the mind and page of student writers. In the end, these attempts to dichotomize may leave us with an impoverished account of the writing process as people experience it and a reductive vision of what we might teach.

(1989). Conflict in collaboration: A burkean perspective. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 113-126.

Richard has, of course, been a part of the contemporary philosophical and rhetorical scene for some time now. As, in fact, someone whose views I oppose pointed out to me recently: Rorty has been around long enough now to be attacked by any number of people for his naive view of the nature of discussion, that is, the nature of rhetoric. This same person also subsequently informed me that even (blank) [a well-known literary and rhetorical theorist whom he judged a particularly keen thinker] has moved Rorty. Needless to say, this essay is not at all about Rorty's so-called naivete (although I shall return to my colleague in the conclusion), nor is it about moving beyond anyone. It is, instead, about the usefulness of both Rortian attitudes toward philosophy and a Rormian perspective on the history of Western theories of knowledge, in illuminating the exceptional position in which rhetoric finds itself today. It is an essay about joining or, perhaps, his having already joined us, rather than about passing him--joining him, as Michael Oakeshott would have it (and as, in fact, cited by in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, in a passage which appears later in this essay), not in a universitas, a group united by mutual interests but rather in a societas, persons whose paths through life have fallen together united by civility rather than a common goal (318). That I might illustrate that this is not only a sensible but also a profitable course of action, I will in the pages following first give a brief overview of Rorty's life and published works (at least as they bear upon the possibilities of Rorty-asrhetorician or, better still, Rorty-as-harbinger-of-rhetoric), then outline what I take to be the main thrust of his work (what some would call his activity as a historian of ideas), then relate this thrust to present-day philosophy (as sees it growing and changing in the light of our awareness of that history--a central Rortian point: it is the historical-philosophical frame which gives both clarity and coherence to any explanation of where, intellectually, we have been or might go), and--finally--speak to what I at least find to be Rorty's considerable and enduring importance to the contemporary rhetorical scene. In doing the above, I may well offer more detail than is really needed by some already well-versed in Rorty's work. If this is the case, I ask the indulgence of these readers--in order that I might have the opportunity to address, and attempt to persuade, those who lack such a familiarity. First, life and works.

building on some common ground with the audience. Aristotle's concept of the enthymeme as a fundamental source of persuasion requires the audience to grant or accept the premises of the rhetor. Aristotle says that a speaker should start from opinions accepted by our judges or by those whose authority they recognize (1395b). Similarly, for Kenneth Burke the key term in rhetoric is identification, which is established between a persuader and an audience by finding some substance or underlying ground in common (consubstantiality) (I 969, 19-23). But what if there is little or nothing in common between a speaker and an audience? What if the audience does not accept the value system of the speaker? How could a speaker proceed in such an extreme case? As Wayne Booth explains, classical rhetoric offers little help, for it assumes

The metaphor has gained much importance as of late. No longer simply a decorative feature of discourse, the trope has obtained an epistemological and ontological dimension. No longer merely a figural flourish of prose, the metaphor has acquired an important role in the study of human understanding. Hence, thanks to theoretical rehabilitation and philosophical reconsideration, metaphorical analysis has become an important and popular pursuit for many disciplines--philosophy, literary theory, linguistics, rhetoric, et al.2 While the insights generated and the discoveries made by metaphorical analysis are significant and worthy of much study, we will take as our point of departure the limits of such critical inquiry. This essay offers another perspective, a sort of theoretical intervention which examines from another angle the study of discourse. Rhetorical theory, it will be reasoned, benefits from a perspective which considers the metonymical features of discourse. As such, the comparative advantages of either metaphorical or metonymical analysis are not measured by which one is true, but rather by which one is most useful for a given project. Simply put, a metonymical perspective can recognize and explain a terrain outside the scope of metaphorical analysis. The change we consider in this essay does not render useless or inadequate previous explanations, but rather opens a space or a zone from which to critically evaluate what has been previously overlooked. As noted, the popularity and importance of the metaphor has never been greater. Whether it be conceived as function, cluster, or nature, the research has sought, and continues to seek, the habitation of the metaphor within all symbolic discourse. Indeed, it may be safe to assume that the study of metaphors remains an important and integral component of contemporary rhetorical theory. As a result of theoretician diligence and persistence, a wide array of techniques exist for the study of metaphors within discourse. For examples of such metaphorical research we turn briefly to the work of I.A. Richards, Max Black, Edwin Black, and Paul Ricoeur. Perhaps no one should figure more prominently than I.A. Richards in the reappraisal of the trope. Using the metaphor, his New Rhetoric, seeks to recover meaning, to stabilize and neutralize the somewhat figural moments of discourse.

The five canons, parts, faculties, or functions of rhetoric are among the most constant features in the systematic treatment of the art (Scaglione 14). In many respects, they constitute the basic pattern of all theoretical and critical investigations into rhetorical art and practice (Thonssen 86). The five--invention (content, discovery), disposition (arrangement, organization), style (diction, elocution), memory, and delivery (presentation)--were canonized in Latin rhetoric as inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronuntiatio or actio. They were important in Greek rhetoric as heurisis, taxis, lexis, mneme, and hypocrisis. While the exact origin of the canons is unknown, the five recur in rhetorical theory from antiquity to the present, where they command attention individually and collectively. Studying rhetoric, most agree, requires studying its canons. They are the sub-disciplines of the main, the lesser arts of the greater (Connors 64). They allow separate analysis and study of a complete five-part system (Murphy 83). They are the aspects of composing which work together in a recursive, synergistic, mutually dependent relationship (Welch Paradox 5-6). In part, the very history of rhetoric consists in changing relationships and interrelationships between them (Mahony 14). The canons apply to both encoding and decoding, forming a complete system for both generating and analyzing discourse (Welch Ideology 270). They represent not only the concepts with which the rhetor must deal and which he must master, but also the aspects of the rhetorical act which the critic examines and evaluates (Thonssen 86). In speech studies, minor changes in the meanings of the five terms have been developed in various treatises, but the pattern remains the same (Thonssen 86). In composition studies, the five canons are one of two prmary theories which dominate the discipline (Welch Ideology 269). The structure which has dominated both disciplines' textbooks, however, is a truncated one. Rarely has the five-part scheme been presented completely and explicitly. In speech studies, the fourth canon--memory--has virtually been dropped and usually receives incidental treatment (Thonssen 87). In composition studies, the first three canons--invention, arrangement, style--organize the vast majority of current textbooks, but the last two--memory and delivery--are typically deleted without a word of explanation (Welch Paradox 5, Ideology 270). This deletion, when explained, has been attributed to changed conditions in the law courts (Kennedy 105), to memory's absorption under disposition (Kennedy 210; Mahony 14) and, most often, to the western world's shift from orality to literacy. The tendency has been for modern rhetorical theory to abandon, remove, neglect, limit, or misunderstand both memory and delivery. On the other hand,

As Otto A. L. Dieter argues in his landmark essay, (1959), Greek concepts of motion provided classical rhetoricians with a theoretical framework for analyzing and conducting rational argument.' The various ways in which motion can be considered contrary, the different grounds on which contrary motions come to rest, the array of faults impeding contrary motions--all these distinctions, borrowed from the philosophic study of kinesis (movements) and metabolai (changes in Being), were applied by rhetoricians to describe and facilitate amphisbetesis, or the moving apart of opposing assertions. Stasis theory, then, provided a paradigm essential to the two phases of the rhetorical process: Noesis (Cogitation) and Poiesis (Production). This paradigm allowed the rhetorician to reflect upon--and upon reflection, to judge--whether a conflict of wills and a contest of assertions truly existed, and therefore, whether the matter under dispute was properly rhetorical. Likewise, the paradigm allowed him to anticipate the question to be resolved, the strategies of accusation or defense most likely to be adopted by the opponent, and consequently, the posture or strategy best suited to winning the dispute. If it is true that theories of classical rhetoric have survived because of their utility, then stasis theory has proven indispensable: for over 2000 years it has survived within the canon of rhetorical theory.2 Its most recent incarnation has taken place during the past four decades. Motivated first by historical interest, rhetorical scholars are now reconstituting stasis theory for much the same reason that prompted its formalization in the second century B.C.: the need to find an overarching paradigm that shapes the vast array of distinctions belonging to rhetorical theory into a practical system, one capable of identifying and resolving current communication problems.3

Amplification is the set of rhetorical techniques by which a discourse is elaborated and extended to enhance its appeal and information value. Even in the manual, long considered the most laconic of the genres of technical communication, amplification has its place. Drawing on the theory of classical and modern rhetoric, this article shows how amplification tends to increase and improve the coverage, rationale, warnings, behavioral alternatives, examples, previews, reviews, and general emphasis of technical manuals.

Allan Bloom's controversial book The Closing of American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished Souls of Today's Students2 has attracted popular attention to a position that already had been gaining currency among critics of American higher education. These critics charge that we educators are failing our students individually and our community collectively by failing to teach morality--by failing to attend to role our disciplines play for students and practitioners in formation of their character. But questions as complicated and momentous as whether education in a discipline should aim to develop moral character, how it should do so, and how it can do so without damaging spirit and skills of free inquiry are hardly such simple questions as they are often depicted, including by Bloom. This is especially true for a discipline so frequently accused of complicity with evil, or even inherent immorality, as rhetoric. Indeed question of rhetoric's role in formation of character presents a genuine dilemma, one that is often corrupted in public controversies about moral education. On one hand, professors of rhetoric have no apparent special training in such ethical issues, nor is it clear why they would have special obligations. One does not have to be Allan Bloom or Carnegie Commission or even William Bennett to believe that all educators have some general obligation to influence their students for better, but it is not clear why or how this should devolve in a special way on teachers of reading, writing and speaking. It could do so only if ethical issues were found to be somehow intrinsic to rhetoric itself, to what we must teach if we are to succeed in teaching rhetoric at all--intrinsic, perhaps, to its evolution as a discipline and a practice, or to one of its fundamental functions. But how can this be squared with our notions of rhetoric as a neutral instrument? On other hand, contemporary rhetoricians have made it at least as clear that rhetoric has inescapable connections to human character, that these connections by their nature may be objects of distinctively rhetorical inquiry, that such inquiry may sustain and extend critical discourse, and that it may produce knowledge, including moral knowledge. For as Kenneth Burke has taught us, rhetoric is essentially involved in the definition of man, and admits of analysis in terms of those motives through which human characters are constituted and realized.3 Moreover, as Wayne Booth has explained, formation of self occurs in a field of selves; we are made of, as we make, company we keep.4 If our character is so significantly at stake in our rhetoric, then process of understanding rhetoric better would seem to hold some possibilities for better understanding of character. Or put more practically: if character realizes and reveals itself significantly in rhetoric, knowledge achieved in rhetorical education and critical discourse arising from it may make some issues in formation of our characters more a matter of our informed, free, ethically charged choice. But what does all this have to do with our alleged responsibility to inculcate a particular morality?

Research Article| November 01 1988 Kenneth Burke's Auscultation: A "De-struction" of Marxist Dialectic and Rhetoric Timothy Crusius Timothy Crusius Department of English, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1988) 6 (4): 355–379. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1988.6.4.355 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Timothy Crusius; Kenneth Burke's Auscultation: A "De-struction" of Marxist Dialectic and Rhetoric. Rhetorica 1 November 1988; 6 (4): 355–379. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1988.6.4.355 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 1988, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1988 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

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

A methodical audience identification approach called a prewrite is proposed to reduce the need for rewriting a document. To prewrite, the writer must write a statement of the purpose of the document and a statement identifying both the intended audience and the implications of writing to that audience. Five questions the writer must answer about the audience are given, and information on audience identification and the needs of particular audiences is included.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

This question, the engine humming at the center of Bakhtin's vision, generating alien words like heteroglossy and polyphony, is one that rhetoricians do not ask. And our work is poorer for the silence. We make inquiries, sometimes very probing ones, into ethos, and occasionally we investigate some rhetor in great detail. But we take identity for granted. It is Plato or Socrates or Burke doing the speaking. we fail to notice is that these labels do not designate autonomous, univocal entities. They designate composites-collections of voices, some in harmony, some in conflict. Mikhail Bakhtin, then, has something to tell us: listen. Listen and you will hear a verbal carnival of such depth and diversity, of such extravagance and exuberance, that your ears will never be the same again. The most immediate consequence of this newfound affluence is that the traditional triangular paradigm of rhetorical events becomes lopsided. The speaker's corner becomes very heavy. But two questions, in parallel with Bakhtin's obsessive probe, present themselves-Who is listening? and What is being said? -and they find similarly multivocal answers. This additional plurality does not so much balance the triangle as burden it. That is, as soon as we start to listen more carefully, the paradigm proves hopelessly inadequate. It simplifies interactions to the point of insignificance, it undervalues or ignores essential elements, and it effects an artificial closure on an inherently openended process. Applying it to any rhetorical event, once we are fitted with our new ears, reveals this inadequacy, but, to keep things in the family, consider how the paradigm fares in an examination of multivalence in the Phaedrus.

Before selecting the most significant passage for rhetorical theory in the work of I. A. Richards, two prerequisites seem necessary. First is a criterion or standard upon which to base a selection. The title itself (which was assigned), suggests the criterion of impact: a passage from Richards that has proven so important that it must be included in any serious discussion of rhetorical theory. Upon that basis, the passage chosen for this essay is found in The Philosophy of Rhetoric. In Chapter V, Richards writes, is the omnipresent principle of language. (1) There are to be sure other passages on metaphor that could have been chosen. This one, however, was selected because its insistence upon the ubiquity of metaphor in language necessitates using other Richardian statements about metaphor in order to make a full explanation about its importance.

Research Article| February 01 1988 The Atrophy of Modern Rhetoric, Vico to De Man Brian Vickers Brian Vickers Centre for Renaissance Stadies, ETH-Zentrum, Ramistrasse 101, CH-8092 Zurich. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1988) 6 (1): 21–56. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1988.6.1.21 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Brian Vickers; The Atrophy of Modern Rhetoric, Vico to De Man. Rhetorica 1 February 1988; 6 (1): 21–56. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1988.6.1.21 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 1988, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1988 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

This article surveys and analyzes the contemporary reception of Plato's rhetorical theory in contemporary rhetoric and composition studies by examining the response from three current perspectives: (1) presenting Plato as completely against rhetoric; (2) leaving Plato out of rhetoric altogether; and (3) interpreting Plato's work as raising issues central to classical and contemporary rhetoric. The discussion of the first two responses to Plato's relationship to rhetoric reveals a reductive, or formulaic, presentation of classical rhetoric. The discussion of the third perspective shows that it is the most accurate interpretation. Plato's rhetoric is related to the traditional five canons that were prominent in Greek rhetoric and explicitly systematized in Roman rhetoric, beginning with the Rhetorica Ad Herennium. If Plato's extensive contribution to the last two of the classical canons of rhetoric, memory and delivery, were more commonly included in the historicizing of rhetoric, then the five canons would work in the fullness of their interaction, rather than as the three-part system (invention, arrangement, and style) that dominates much current interpretation of classical rhetoric. Examples of reintegration of Plato into classical rhetoric (the third perspective) leads to a conclusion that Plato's rhetoric is central to contemporary interpretations of classical rhetoric.

If is one thing contemporary observers of American literary studies agree upon, it is New must finally be transcended. William Cain, for example, protests New Critics' identification of with close reading of classic literary texts. It is not 'close reading' is itself misconceived, he argues, rather case for it has always been made at expense of other important things. Because New Critics won their case so convincingly, these other things have long been excluded from literary establishment. A list of costs resulting from institutionalization of New in 1950s, according to Cain, would include the rejection of other methods and other kinds of texts; misguided attempt to define (and thus defend) teaching of literature as, above all, 'close reading'; skepticism shown towards literary theory; and refusal to see other disciplines as having relevance for 'literary' criticism (New Criticism 1111-12). Criticism, in short, has become formalistic, to use an old critical buzz-word. Even deconstruction, as Cain correctly observes, is more an intensified continuation of tradition of formalistic close reading than a new, expansive kind of Fortunately, says Cain, there have been signs in recent years New Critical reign is at last coming to an end. The most important of these signs is the revival of 'history' as an instrument for criticism. This revival is result of work of certain critics and theorists-Cain mentions Foucault, Said, and Jameson-who have shown that 'history' does not have to imply-as it did for scholars New Critics attacked in 1930s-a narrow and naive review of sources, backgrounds, and influences. Rather, history now means the formation of an archive, building up of a rich, detailed, and complex discursive field. The ground for criticism, from this point of view, is not classic literary text, but inter-textual configurations and arrangements; 'criticism' thus entails study of power, political uses of language, and orders of discourse (New Criticism 1116-17). This reconstitution of ground for will produce, presumably, an analogous transformation of practice of close reading and expand domain of to include methods, texts, and disciplines suppressed by New Criticism. These developments, needless to say, win Cain's seal of approval.

The author considers the creation of safety labels. Standards developed by organizations such as the American National Standards Institute and the Westinghouse Electric Corporation can help technical writers design effective safety labels. According to such standards, safety labels should contain a signal word, a hazard alert symbol, a specific color, a symbol or pictograph, a hazard identification, a description of the result of ignoring the warning, and a description of how to avoid the hazard. In addition, the safety label should be clear, concise, forceful, descriptive, and well-organized. Safety labels usually should be placed in the operator manual and on the product, and they should appear before the operator encounters the hazard. Considerations involved with this placement include reading distance, viewing angle, and available space on the product.

In his essay The Function of Rhetorical Study at the Present Time, J. Hillis Miller remarks: the recognition that all language, even language that seems purely referential or conceptual, is figurative language and an exploration of the consequences of that view for the interpretation of literature represent, it seems to me, one of the major frontiers of literary study today (13). This view of language also represents one of the major frontiers of composition study. To connect this view of language to the study of composition, I propose that a theory of can be a means of relating composition theory to literary theory. More specifically, I would like to suggest that the four metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony - can provide a conceptual framework for the composing process and a guide to critical reading. Tropes have developed into an explanatory power in a great many disciplines, including rhetoric, linguistics, philosophy, history, and literary theory. Rhetoricians have catalogued and defined a large number of these tropes, four of which - metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony - have been considered the most important. Kenneth Burke labeled these the master tropes

(1987). For a modern rhetoric: A prose‐poetic persuasion. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 87-89.

Based upon several years of research on proposal writing in large management consulting firms, this article attempts to define the proposal genre and argue the importance of the background section, especially in the management consulting environment. Because the background is the first major section in these proposals, it offers writers the opportunity to demonstrate implicitly their qualifications as problem solvers long before a qualifications section does so explicitly. That demonstration, the projection of image and ethos, can occur logically—through an argument that responds to the generic requirements of proposals, and psychologically—through the incorporation of themes that respond to the rhetorical situation.

R. M. Gagné's distinction between lateral and vertical transfer can be elaborated for written composition: (a) the lateral transfer of mechanical and formal skills and (b) the vertical transfer of higher-order knowledge in the domain of rhetoric and writing. Vertical transfer of writing skills is situational: a function of the context and content of a specific rhetorical situation. Success in a situational writing task depends on two types of domain-specific knowledge being operational: (a) knowledge of the specific content of the subject matter and (b) knowledge of the domain of rhetoric and writing. The theory of lateral and vertical transfer as applied to writing is compatible with current conceptions of declarative and procedural cognitive processes and with a balanced pedagogy of both student-centered and direct, content-oriented instruction. Two appendixes present practical procedures based on transfer theory for improving general program goals and classroom instruction of writing.

In The New York Times Book Review of March 15, 1981, Richard Kostelanetz described Kenneth Burke as implacably American, citing in evidence Harold Bloom's earlier assertion that Burke was strongest living representative of the American Critical tradition, and perhaps the largest single source of that tradition since its founder, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1 1). Others too have seen Burke as vintage American: Merle Brown, for example, who wrote sixteen years ago that Burke, like John Dewey and Van Wyck Brooks, was clearly the man of the American 20s who sought to close the gap he saw widening then between the specialists and the masses (8-9);' and, more recently, Bloom's Yale colleague Angus Fletcher, who, in his English Institute essay, sees Burke as the American individualist and romantic hero:

The argument of this book is that the earliest tradition of Western rhetoric, the classical perspective of Aristotle and Cicero, continues to have the greatest impact on writing instruction--albeit an unconscious impact. This occurs despite the fact that modern rhetoric no longer accepts either the views of mind, language, and world underlying ancient theory or the concepts about discourse, knowledge, and communication presented in that theory. As a result, teachers are depending on ideas as outmoded as they are unreflectively accepted. Knoblauch and Brannon maintain that the two traditions are fundamentally incompatible in their assumptions and concepts, so that writing teachers must make choices between them if their teaching is to be purposeful and consistent. They suggest that the modern tradition offers a richer basis for instruction, and they show what teaching from that perspective looks like and how it differs from traditional teaching.

As a concept of rhetoric in technical writing, relevance involves an awareness of time. The report deals with the past; the manual, with the present; the proposal, with the future. To be considered relevant, however, all the modes of technical writing must relate to the present reality of the audience. Writers must recognize this need not only as it influences grammar and style but also as it affects larger concerns of organization and tone. Realizing that the temporal classification of modem reports, manuals, and proposals correlates with Aristotle's designation of forensic, epideictic, and deliberative discourse, technical writers can discover a body of rhetorical theory on which to base choices about selection, arrangement, and presentation of subject matter.

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In the years since its publication in 1983, The Present State of Scholarship in Historical and Contemporary Rhetoric has become a classic in its field, proving to be an invaluable resource for students of rhetoric and composition, as well as for scholars in English, speech, and philosophy. This revised and updated edition defines the field of rhetoric as no other volume has.

Summaries of expository texts were obtained from undergraduate students and examined for the nature of text-to-summary mapping by asking judges to identify the text sentences of origin for every summary sentence. The analysis revealed that simple omission and one-to-one mapping of text sentences into summary sentences were the most favored strategies. Following these in order of frequency were the combining of pairs, triples, and longer runs of text sentences that were predominantly adjacent in the texts, showing a strong tendency to preserve the original order of text sentences. Although writers did not select the same text sentences for omission, it was possible to identify a core set of text sentences that was always preserved in summaries of the larger texts. These sets, when compared with randomly selected sets in their original order, appeared as meaningful and coherent “mini-texts” to independent judges. The results are discussed in the light of Brown, Day, &amp; Jones's (1983) identification of a “mature” summarizing strategy in which narrative texts are reorganized and condensed by combining text sentences across paragraphs. It is suggested that the “mature strategy” does not appear in these results because the structure of expository text resists easy reorganization, and because a severe length constraint was not imposed.

This article studies the fate of scientific observations as they pass from original research reports intended for scientific peers into popular accounts aimed at a general audience. Pairing articles from two AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) publications reveals the changes that inevitably occur in “information” as it passes from one rhetorical situation to another. Scientific reports belong to the genre of forensic arguments, affirming the validity of past facts, the experimental data. But a change of audience brings a change of genre; science accommodations are primarily epideictic, celebrations of science, and shifts in wording between comparable statements in matched articles reveal changes made to conform to the two appeals of popularized science, the wonder and the application topoi. Science accommodations emphasize the uniqueness, rarity, originality of observations, removing hedges and qualifications and thus conferring greater certainty on the reported facts. Such changes could be formalized by adopting the scale developed by sociologists Bruno Latour and Steven Woolgar for categorizing the status of claims. The alteration of information is traced not only in articles on bees and bears, and so on, but also on a subject where distortions in reporting research can have serious consequences—the reputed mathematical inferiority of girls to boys. The changes in genre and the status of information that occur between scientific articles and their popularizations can also be explained by classical stasis theory. Anything addressed to readers as members of the general public will inevitably move through the four stasis questions from fact and cause to value and action.

This study explored the collaborative writing processes of a group of computer software company executives. In particular, the study focused on the year-long process that led to the writing of a vital company document. Research methods used included participant/observations, open-ended interviews, and Discourse-Based Interviews. A detailed analysis of the executive collaborative process posits a model that describes the reciprocal relationship between writing and the organizational context. The study shows the following: (1) how the organizational context influences (a) writers' conceptions of their rhetorical situations, and (b) their collaborative writing behavior; and (2) how the rhetorical activities influence the structure of the organization.