The visual rhetoric of data displays (e.g., charts, graphs, maps) has changed profoundly over the past 50 years as a result of research in display techniques, the application of traditional and emerging rhetorical approaches, and the democratizing effects of data design technology. Perhaps in no other visual realm than data design is the notion of clarity more critical or more contested. Indeed the ascendancy of rhetorical approaches was initiated by the perceptual/cognitive science of data design, which in seeking to identify optimal display techniques, fostered a concern for ethics and evoked the universality and minimalism of modernist aesthetics. The rhetoric of adaptation, which emphasizes the variability of audiences, purposes, and situational contexts, rendered clarity contingent and mutable-a moving target that requires constant attention. Social rhetoric considered data design as a collective construct, tethering clarity to visual discourse communities, convention-building, cultural values, and power. The concept of clarity has been further reoriented by the rhetoric of participation, which is fostered by interactive digital design that enables users to adapt displays according to their needs and interests.

Abstract This essay examines linguistic and contextual features to understand Anne Askew's ironic performances, her positioning in rhetorical history, and her texts' persuasive power. While Askew's tactical irony has been studied as silence, resistance, and protest, this essay shows that she uses irony to undermine the communicative event and to initiate discourse without committing to cooperative communication for all audiences involved. I argue that Askew's performances are best accounted for as relevant-inappropriateness, and that a close examination of embedded features in her discourse helps us view Early Modern women's performances as inventive and productive rather than patriarchal or anti-patriarchal.

Linda Scott DeRosier’s autobiographical accounts of literacy attainment in Creeker: A Woman’s Journey and Songs of Life and Grace reveal that entrance into a secondary discourse community via literacy can bring both pleasure and pain. Analyzing the identity negotiations DeRosier encounters reveals that although she experiences a sense of loss as a result of continued formal education, such schooling also makes possible the creation of her memoirs, which help overturn stereotypes connecting Appalachia with illiteracy.

This article investigates the contribution visual rhetoric and rhetorical genre studies (RGS) can make to health care education and communication genres. Through a visual rhetorical analysis of a patient record used in an optometry teaching clinic, this article illustrates that a genre's visual representations provide significant insights into the social action of that genre. These insights are deepened by an insider analysis of the patient record that highlights how content analyses of visual designs need to be elaborated by contextual considerations. A combined visual rhetoric and RGS analysis shows that clinical novices learn to interpret the record's visual cues to safely traverse the complex requirements of this apprenticeship genre. The article demonstrates that visual rhetoric research can meaningfully contribute to the understanding of genres by presenting an enriched contextual analysis achieved by consulting with context insiders.

I am honored and flattered that this old text of mine should have been deemed worth translating and publishing in the Rhetoric Society Quarterly. It was initially intended as a chapter of my book Le symbolisme en général (Hermann, 1974; translated as Rethinking Symbolism by Alice L. Morton, for Cambridge University Press, 1975). But, under the encouragement of Tzetan Todorov, it developed beyond what I had planned and was taken out of the draft of the book. In 1975, Deirdre Wilson, who had introduced me to analytic philosophy in general and to the work of Paul Grice in particular, published her book, Presuppositions and Non-truth-conditional Semantics (Academic Press). She and I decided to write a joint programmatic paper covering the ground between semantics and the rhetoric of figures and we ended up collaborating for thirty years, and developing, with the help of many students and colleagues around the world, the cognitive approach to verbal communication known as Relevance Theory. In retrospect, my 1975 “rudiments” were indeed quite rudimentary. Still, re-reading the article, I confess that I find it insightful. Most insights have been integrated and improved upon in later work. Little has been done however with one of the main insights of the article: that the use of figures of speech evokes ideas not just about the topic of the utterance but also about the shared background knowledge of the interlocutors.—Dan Sperber, December 2006

This essay examines linguistic and contextual features to understand Anne Askew’s ironic performances, her positioning in rhetorical history, and her texts’ persuasive power. While Askew’s tactical irony has been studied as silence, resistance, and protest, this essay shows that she uses irony to undermine the communicative event and to initiate discourse without committing to cooperative communication for all audiences involved. I argue that Askew’s performances are best accounted for as relevant-inappropriateness, and that a close examination of embedded features in her discourse helps us view Early Modern women’s performances as inventive and productive rather than patriarchal or anti-patriarchal.

442 RHETORICA Judy Z. Segal, Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005), 208 pp., $50.00 cloth, ISBN 0-8093-2677-9. Humanists who study medical discourse are a diverse crowd. They hail from disciplines ranging from anthropology and bioethics to rhetoric and composition studies. Lacking a lingua franca, these scholars understandably draw from the divergent traditions of their primary fields. What has ar­ guably been missing is a comprehensive account of medical discourse aris­ ing squarely from the rhetorical tradition. University of British Columbia rhetorical theorist Judy Z. Segal's Health and the Rhetoric ofMedicine fills this void. Demonstrating the heuristic potential of rhetorical principles for un­ derstanding health and medicine broadly construed, Segal offers a series of lucidly-rendered case studies investigating the role of persuasion in shaping patients, practitioners, and illnesses alike. Segal insists on the uniqueness of particular medico-historical moments. In “Chapter One: A Kairology of Biomedicine," she advances “a study of historical moments as rhetorical opportunities" (23). To illustrate kairology's application, Segal traces shifting accounts of the patient narrator from the eighteenth century forward. Her emphasis is not medical history per se, but how medical history reveals the types of persuasion enabled by particu­ lar changes in medicine. Kairology thus informs the rhetorically-focused medical histories to come. However, her analyses derive insights from Ken­ neth Burke and an eclectic mix of classical and contemporary rhetorical theory. Segal presents seven analysis chapters flanked by a theoretically-based introduction and conclusion in a compact 158 pages of text. These build on Segal's previous publications including reprinted portions of three essays. After the opening chapter on kairology, "Chapter Two: Patient Audience, The Rhetorical Construction of the Migraineur" examines how physicians' char­ acterizations of headache patients influence the doctor-patient encounter and preferred treatments. Segal tracks the construction of the migraineur in medical writing from 1873 through the twenty-first century wherein the migraine personality has become situated in pharmacological terms. "Chap­ ter Three: The Epideictic Rhetoric of Pathography" analyzes illness narra­ tives, and their study, as value-laden rhetoric of praise and blame. Segal focuses on three complicating narrators: the pro-anorexia internet narrator who interpellates the community, the resistant narrator of Barbara Ehrenreich who challenges the tyranny of cheerfulness in breast cancer narratives, and the commercialized narrator of Carla Cantor whose hypochondria queststory represents the pathologized subject. "Chapter Four: Hypochondria as a Rhetorical Disorder" unpacks the strategic ambiguity of hypochondriacs' discourse recasting the condition from a medical mystery to a mystery of motive with historical and current examples. In "Chapter Five: A Rhetoric of Death and Dying," the book's most haunting and personal chapter, Se­ gal interrogates end-of-life rhetoric by analyzing dialogue surrounding her Reviews 443 mother's death and advanced care planning interviews to argue that in­ stitutionalized end-of-life encounters structurally impede fair deliberation. "Chapter Six: Values, Metaphors, and Health Policy" awakens the "sleeping" metaphors in health-care-policv rhetoric, exposing the values underlying medicine is war, diagnosis is health, and body as machine, for example. "Chapter Seven: The Problem of Patient 'Noncompliance': Paternalism, Expertise, and the Ethos of the Physician" addresses problems of physician authority as embedded in the terms patient non-compliance, adherence, and concordance. In her concluding section, Segal underscores the rhetorical lexicon's utility for comprehending medicine and health. Segal ably mixes insightful application of principles to particular cases with mid-level theorizing about the place of rhetoric in medicine and health. Although she draws from an interdisciplinary reservoir, her core an­ alytic concepts are well known to suasion scholars: kairos, genre, audience, metaphor, narrative, interpellation, and ethos. A second strength is her at­ tention to intersecting interactional, public, and institutional discourses. Her persistent focus on persuasion, clear prose, and accessible explanation of concepts make this volume a solid choice for upper-division undergraduate and graduate courses in rhetoric. It should also be useful for medical human­ ists who want to access rhetorical insights: her book shows how rhetorical thinking can uncover historical particularities while fostering generalized insights. The scope of cases considered is impressive, as are the connections to history of medicine scholarship. One of the...

Reviews 439 Those are a few additions to the documentation of Renaissance rhetoric, in the spirit of the open-minded exchange of knowledge which has distin­ guished all of Professor Plett's work. This is not his best book, but it is one which ev ery serious rhetoric library should have, and one from which few readers will fail to profit. Brian Vickers Andrew W. Robertson, The Language ofDemocracy: Political Rhetoric in the United States and Britain, 1790-7900 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005) xix 4- 264 pp. This is a reissue in paperback, with a new Preface, of a book originally published by Cornell Univ ersity Press in 1995. Readers who missed it the first time around hav e another opportunity to consider an interesting and well-reasoned argument that has significant implications for the history of 19th century British and American rhetoric. Robertson is concerned with political rhetoric, which he further restricts to campaign discourse, largely as reported in newspapers. This is a narrow, reductionist view of the subject that may limit the generalizability of his findings, but it does not damage his argument on its own terms. He examines how political culture evolved in Britain and the United States during the 19th century (between 1790 and 1900). The overall answer is that the audience for politics widened and political discourse became more vernacular. It shifted from a laudatory discourse deferring to men of distinguished character, to a hortatory discourse seeking support for specific policies. It appealed less to an elite audience and more to a popular audience. These changes effectively dissolved the boundary between deliberative and epideictic. Having identified this important change, Robertson seeks to account for it. He finds a significant relationship between newspaper coverage and political practice. Specifically, the evolution of printing technology and the institution of advertising made it possible to sell low-cost newspapers to a large audience. This capacity, in turn, influenced trends in newspaper content. And an emerging understanding of what would satisfy a mass audience affected the practice of politicians. Their talk became focused more on policy and less on character, more on demands for specific outcomes and less on deference to men of exceptional judgment. It became more tense, more intense, more partisan, and more competitive. In 1790 the 18th century norms of genteel discourse were still dominant; by 1900 the basis of 20th century politics had been established. Interestingly, however, this change came later in Britain than in the United States. There was a gradual shift in what the term "the people" was understood to mean. Originally it referred to the educated elite who were 440 RHETORICA assumed to be in agreement with political leaders; gradually it came to designate a larger, more heterogeneous public among whom disagreement was likely and whose support must be won and not assumed. The American political audience had enlarged and considerably democratized by the 1820s, when Andrew Jackson claimed to embody the public will. Not because of his noble character but because of his platform, was he deserving of public support. In contrast, the British debates on reform during the late 1820s and early 1830s took place without an expanded press or public. They were much less populist in character. Yet by mid-century, British editorial writers fused discussion of leaders and their policies, as in the United States. Robertson credits the transplanted American editor William Cobbett with instigating the use of hortatory rhetoric in Britain. While it might seem that evolutions in discourse reflected merely the impersonal forces of economics and technology, Robertson believes that they were solidified by the rhetorical prowess of Abraham Lincoln in the United States and William Ewart Gladstone in Britain. What both men had in common, he argues, was the ability to deliver to an immediate, elite audience a speech that was also (and perhaps primarily) intended to be read by a large and anonymous national audience. In overhearing messages and easily imagining themselves among the audience, the citizenrv became accustomed to thinking that political discourse really was intended for them. From that point, the distinction between politics and entertainment broke down. The emergence of the popular political cartoon in the 1870s is evidence of...

Reviewed are Toward a Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism, by Sharon Crowley, and Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness, by Krista Ratcliffe.

This article challenges current assumptions about the teaching and assessment of critical thinking in the composition classroom, particularly the practice of measuring critical thinking through individual written texts. Drawing on a case study of a class that incorporated disability studies discourse, and applying discourse analysis to student work, “Accessing Disability” argues that critical thinking can be taught more effectively through multi-modal methods and a de-emphasis on the linear progress narrative.

Abstract In the field of conservation, the distinction between academic research and advocacy appears to be undergoing a shift as the number of PhD-level researchers at conservation advocacy organizations grows. Drawing on my case study of one researcher at a prominent conservation nongovernmental organization (NGO), I have shown how this shift is manifested in the communication of NGO research. My study includes a discourse analysis of this researcher's publications from the forums of both scholarship and advocacy including, as a representation of discourse in the latter forum, gray literature (reports, books, and other texts produced and distributed outside the channels of the academic and publishing industry). I have also drawn on my interviews with this researcher about her publications. My study highlights specific features typical of her rhetoric that result from her occupying a hybridized cultural and professional space where research and advocacy overlap. Notes 1My study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the university where I completed this work. 2All quotes from Brandon are taken from an interview I conducted with her on March 5, 2005. 3Further examples illustrating my points here and elsewhere can be found in CitationLindeman (2006), the larger study that is the basis for this article.

After the conference at Luca in 56 BC, where Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey renewed their Triumvirate, Cicero was forced to accept a compromise, which appears in the orations that he delivered to defend both the Triumvirs (De prouinciis consularibus) and his own enemies (defence of Vatinius and Gabinius). In a letter to Lentulus Spinther of December 54, Cicero justified his new political attitude toward the popular leaders. Designed as a plea, this letter, one of Cicero's longest, raises the question: “What similarity is there between a letter and a speech in court or at a public meeting?” (Fam.IX, 21, 1). Relying on the intertextuality of the letter to Lentulus with the oration Pro Plancio, delivered four months previously, this paper considers how Cicero adapts appropriateness and decorum to his addressee and displays a rhetoric that is half way between judicial eloquence and epistolary discourse.

The “steel bible” emerged in 1919 and went through 11 editions in 80 years. In its evolution we can see the shift from individual to group authorship, an increasing use of visual elements, and a physical change from a small, hand-held volume to a weighty desktop reference. In a textual analysis, we can see that it was essentially static, changing only by additions and deletions, as the industry evolved. The eventual closing of hundreds of plants and the migration of the industry to other countries can be seen in the change of publisher, the sudden absence of photography, and the international references. Originally, the steel bible came from the factory floor and the words of the plant managers, but by the 1990s, it was a highly-abstracted representation of knowledge. In the steel bible, we can see the history of the industry and the maturing of technical communication in the 20th century.

This article explores the nature of epideictic rhetoric in science through a close textual analysis of three Nobel lectures. It examines the effects of the genre shift from original research reports to ceremonial speeches, revealing significant differences from Fahnestock's analysis of the genre shift from forensic research reports to epideictic articles in the popular press, especially a move toward greater candidness about the research process. Epideictic scientific rhetoric, therefore, can be said to celebrate the scientific method in general as much as it does the particular line of research at hand.

The impersonalizing role passive voice plays in scientific discourse is well known. Analysis of the Methods sections of nine medical research articles shows that metonymy is another frequent strategy used to create anonymous authors/agents. Discourse agents were categorized into four semantic domains: familial lay, nonfamilial lay, authorial professional, and nonauthorial professional. Agents were investigated in relation to impersonalization and social identity. Results show that although possessive/causative metonyms produce generic participants and reduce most rival researchers to “previous studies,” significant health professionals are often referred to in terms of representational/locative metonyms, highlighting their authoritative social identities. Additionally, authors are either highly visible or, if they choose to disguise themselves, they do so quite drastically using impersonalization devices or agentless passives. In contrast, for other researchers and health professionals, co-occurrence of metonymy and passive voice is generally avoided; nevertheless, these agents are usually more hidden than are the present authors.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Heath's previous work in the field includes a translation of Hermogenes's On Issues with detailed introduction and commentary (1995) and numerous essays in journals and edited collections (listed among the works cited at the end of this review). See Kennedy (2003 ——— . “Some Recent Controversies in the Study of Later Greek Rhetoric.” American Journal of Philology 124.2 ( 2003 ): 295 – 301 . [Google Scholar]) for an overview of some of the recent work in the study of Greek rhetoric under the Roman Empire. Much important work on Hellenistic rhetoric and rhetorical criticism of the Bible is being done in the “Pepperdine” series of books and conferences, including, most recently, Olbricht et al. (2002 et al. . Eds. Rhetorical Argumentation in Biblical Texts: Papers from the Lund 2000 Conference . Harrisonburg , PA : Trinity Press International , 2002 . [Google Scholar]; 2005 ———, et al. Eds. Rhetoric, Ethic, and Moral Persuasion in Biblical Discourse . Harrisonburg , PA : T&T Clark International , 2005 . [Google Scholar]). See Dilts (1983 Dilts , Mervin . Scholia Demosthenica . Leipzig : Teubner , 1983–1986 . [Google Scholar]) and Gibson (2002 Gibson , Craig A. Interpreting a Classic: Demosthenes and his Ancient Commentators . Berkeley : University of California Press , 2002 . [Google Scholar]) for recent work on Demosthenes scholia. For consensus, see, inter alia, Kennedy (1983 ——— . Greek Rhetoric Under the Christian Emperors . Princeton , NJ : Princeton University Press , 1983 . [Google Scholar]), Pernot (1993a Pernot , Laurent . La rhétorique de l'éloge dans le monde gréco-romain. Tome 1: Histoire et technique . Paris : Institut d'Etudes Augustiniennes , 1993a . [Google Scholar] and 1993b ——— . La rhétorique de l'éloge dans le Monde gréco-romain. Tome 2: Les Valeurs . Paris : Institut d'Etudes Augustiniennes , 1993b . [Google Scholar]), Russell (1983 Russell , D. A. Greek Declamation . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 1983 .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), and Walker (2000 Walker , Jeffrey . Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity . Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2000 . [Google Scholar]). Parks (1945 Parks , E. P. The Roman Rhetorical Schools as Preparation for the Courts under the Early Empire . Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press , 1945 . [Google Scholar]) takes a position similar to that of MRC. Other scholars who emphasize the collaborative and evolving nature of ancient pedagogical works include Dilts and Kennedy (1997 Dilts , Mervin S. and George Kennedy . Eds. Two Greek Rhetorical Treatises from the Roman Empire . Leiden : Brill , 1997 .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Gibson (2002 Gibson , Craig A. Interpreting a Classic: Demosthenes and his Ancient Commentators . Berkeley : University of California Press , 2002 . [Google Scholar]), and Poster (1998 Poster , Carol . “(Re)positioning Pedagogy: A Feminist Historiography of Aristotle's Rhetorica.” Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle . Ed. Cynthia Freeland . University Park : Pennsylvania State University Press , 1998 . 327 – 350 . [Google Scholar]; 2007 ——— . “A Conversation Halved: Epistolary Theory in Graeco-Roman Antiquity.” Letter-Writing Manuals from Antiquity to the Present . Eds. Carol Poster and Linda Mitchell . Columbia : University of South Carolina Press , 2007 . [Google Scholar]).

Margaret Cavendish took an active part in the Royal Society's discussions about plain style. Her contributions to the Royal Society's plain style discussions were closely connected to her scientific practices, both of which explicitly and implicitly challenged the practices of the Royal Society. In her own rhetorical practices, Cavendish modeled herself as a reader and writer of scientific texts, and her challenges to the discursive and experimental practice of seventeenth-century science make her a compelling figure in the rhetoric of science.

During the Middle Ages scholars shifted from using only Latin in academic writing to incorporating the vernacular, English. As Latin helped shape vernacular writing, so did the vernacular shape Latin. And though influenced by Latin academic writing, the vernacular created a new discourse, neither entirely Latin nor English, but informed by both. This article explores the lessons that we, as contemporary scholars, can learn from the past about incorporating home languages in academic discourse.

In addition to the need to correct a significant number of typographical errors, a few factual mistakes, and a few translation omissions, Kennedy explains in his “Prooemion” that the impetus for th...

This tutorial on how to teach report writing is based on the premise that decision-making is a complex process that derives from both rational and quasi-rational ways of knowing the world. The author defines quasi-rational to include consideration of hunches, intuition, and tacit knowledge often embodied in stories that have meaning to the decision-maker. Thus, report writing can be approached as a systematic evaluation of options available given goals and constraints, but also as an uncovering of the narratives that decision-makers see surrounding their own lives. The tutorial explains a course curriculum structured in three sections with the following goals and strategies: (1) helping students face personal or family decisions through a traditional decision-matrix process that also incorporates elements of rhetorical stasis theory, (2) using big case studies to reveal the interplay between rational and quasi-rational thought in decision-making, and (3) finding case studies in the students' local geographic regions in order to further explore this interplay. The paper concludes with a brief assessment of how the author's students responded to such a course

After the conference at Luca in 56 BC, where Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey renewed their Triumvirate, Cicero was forced to accept a compromise, which appears in the orations that he delivered to defend both the Triumvirs (De prouinciis consularibus) and his own enemies (defence of Vatinius and Gabinius). In a letter to Lentulus Spinther of December 54, Cicero justified his new political attitude toward the popular leaders. Designed as a plea, this letter, one of Cicero’s longest, raises the question: “What similarity is there between a letter and a speech in court or at a public meeting?” (Fam. IX, 21 1). Relying on the intertextuality of the letter to Lentulus with the oration Pro Plancio, delivered four months previously, this paper considers how Cicero adapts appropriateness and decorum to his addressee and displays a rhetoric that is half way between judicial eloquence and epistolary discourse.

In this article we propose, theorize, demonstrate, and report early results from a course that approaches first-year composition as introduction to Writing Studies. This pedagogy explicitly recognizes the impossibility of teaching a universal academic discourse and rejects that as a goal for first-year composition. It seeks instead to improve students’ understanding of writing, rhetoric, language, and literacy in a course that is topically oriented to reading and writing as scholarly inquiry and that encourages more realistic conceptions of writing.

Abstract The celebrated inventor of the “Ocular Harpsichord” is less well known as the author of Mathématique universelle, published in 1728. In this work, the Jesuit teacher develops a cheerful method of instruction in inspired by his desire to popularize a discipline hitherto marked with the seal of austerity. In order to clear away the illusory superiority of professional geometers, Father Castel makes argumentative breaks from tradition, aiming to devalue the ethos of contemporary mathematicians. Through textual analysis of certain rhetorical professions such as candid directness (aretè), ostentatious goodwill (eunoia) and, in a more general sense, the dissociation of appearance from reality, the present study seeks to place in evidence certain ethical concerns which were shaking Jesuite learned world in its confrontation with the new epistemology of the century of the Enlightenment.

Abstract This article examines the strategies nineteenth-century American women physicians used to maintain a respectable ethos when writing about human sexuality and reproduction. In order to make these topics appropriate for women, women physicians strove to alter the connotations surrounding sex, insisting that readers view it from a scientific, socially conscious, pure standpoint. The popularity of these texts suggests that women were active in shaping the scientific and social discourse surrounding “delicate” subjects.

This special issue opens a dialogue among scholars from across the disciplines who are grappling with the theoretical, ethical and practical issues inherent in negotiating difference when interacting with the "Other" in their work in community-based literacy programs. The contributors to this issue help shape a conversation long overdue in service-learning. Given its intentionally interdisciplinary scope and the refreshing range of theories, rhetorical styles, methods of analysis, settings and populations considered in its pages, this issue is, well, diverse.

This article argues that traditional models of WAC too narrowly privilege academic discourse over other discourses and communities shaping the worlds in which our students live and work. Writing Across Communities represents a shift in paradigm informed by Ecocomposition, New Literacy Studies, and Sociolinguistics. A Writing Across Communities approach to writing program reform foregrounds dimensions of ethnolinguistic diversity and civic engagement in contrast to other models or WAC currently institutionalized across the nation. Writing Across Communities, as a resistance discourse, calls for transdisciplinary dialogue that demystifies the ways we make and use knowledge across communities of practice.

This article presents a qualitative text analysis of persuasive documents written by a major U.S. airline in a 2004 counter-campaign against the Teamsters union. The methodology for this study is based on Stephen Toulmin's argument model, including his “double triad” and his interpretation of artistic proofs, which parallel the three classical rhetorical appeals. Actual corporate documents are featured in this article, supported by content from management conference calls that were attended by the researchers. The article concludes with implications for teaching and research in the field of technical and professional communication.

This research article investigates new developments in the representation of the intercultural component in textbooks for a service technical writing course. Through textual analysis, using quantitative and qualitative techniques, I report discourse analysis of 15 technical writing textbooks published during 1993–2006. The theoretical and practical elements of intercultural teaching have been expanded in recent years, but this progress is quite slow. This article provides some directions in which the textbooks can be revised. Such an analysis may be of interest to textbook writers and educators.

This article presents a rhetorical analysis of a Mexican woman's oral narrative performance using a discourse studies and interactional sociolinguistics framework. The results of the analysis suggest that the discursive practice of the oral narrative and that of academic discourse share certain rhetorical features. These features are (a) the fashioning of an authoritative voice, (b) the presentation of evidence for support of a claim, (c) the allusion to authorities for support of claims, and (d) the reaching of a general statement concerning the significance of the account. Given the parallels drawn out between this particular nonmainstream oral performance and the discourse of the academy, the assumptions concerning the link between form of expression and cognition must be reassessed to better understand the nature of constrative rhetorics, especially as this affects students of nonmainstream linguistic backgrounds in mainstream writing classrooms.

Abstract In this article, we contribute to scholarship on visibility and rhetoric by examining the way in which photographs published in march 1965 issues of life magazine functioned rhetorically to (1) evoke common humanity by capturing moments of embodiment and enactment that challenged the established images of blacks in the minds of whites and held up for scrutiny assumptions and power relationships that had long been taken for granted; (2) evoke common humanity by creating recognition of others through particularity; and (3) challenge taken–for-granted ideas of democracy, reminding viewers that a large gap existed between abstract political concepts like democracy and what was actually occurring in american streets. We conclude by considering the transformative capacity of photojournalism as it mediates between the universal and the particular, and enables viewers to experience epiphanic moments when issues, ideas, habits, and yearnings are crystallized into a single recognizable image. Notes This type of discourse is exemplified by the following excerpt from Congressional Debates the year preceding the Selma marches: See "An American Tragedy, Newsweek (22 March 1965), p. 21. The article gives a complete summary of the draft of the bill completed the weekend immediately following the Selma march. Life magazine ran stories about the Selma marches in back-to-back March issues that tied President Johnson's pivotal speech in support of the bill to the photographs and other media coverage of the Selma march. And Senators referred to television coverage of the marches as impacting their view in the Senatorial debate over the bills, see Congressional Record – Senate, "Disorder in Selma, AL," 9 March 1965, p. 4504. The description of the pictures that follows was re-written after a long and frustrating effort to receive permission to reprint the photographs themselves with the article. Black Star, a photo agency with a long and respected history, represents the photographers and their work. Unfortunately, the agency charges a minimum of $300 for reprints of each civil rights–related photograph, making the cost of reprinting quite prohibitive. In our description of the artifacts, therefore, we strive to provide a brief written sketch of each picture we analyze—relying on the analysis itself to provided added dimension—and also describe its relation to others on the page and in the subsequent issue of the magazine. More importantly, we strive to provide information that will assist readers in locating the images via library resources to which they may have access. As Hariman and Lucaites argue, "Photojournalistic icons operate as powerful resources within a public culture, not because of their fixed meaning, but rather because they artistically coordinate available structures of identification within a performative space open to continued and varied articulation" (387). For a summary of this exhibit, see "In the Spirit of Martin: The Living Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr."<http://www.sites.si.edu/exhibitions/exhibit_main_print.asp?id=60>.

Based on feedback from graduate students, from science and engineering faculty who teach graduate students, and from surveys about the skills graduate students need, the authors have designed and taught a graduate-level course in academic publishing. This article describes the need for the course and the theory behind its design, outlines the course content, and presents assessment data from the first three course iterations. The findings indicate that this course has increased students' awareness of the role of rhetorical and discourse knowledge as well as their level of confidence in their ability to write and publish professional work. Further, findings from interviews with faculty advisors yield insight into the benefits of the course for students, advisors, disciplinary programs, and cross-curricular initiatives

This article uses one basic writer’s experience with assessment as a vehicle to explore whether the assessment practices struggling writers encounter on their essays effectively usher them into academic discourse or simply scare them away from that ambition entirely.

This article offers a critical perspective on the default mode of freshman composition instruction, that is, its traditionally middle-class and white racial orientation. Although middle-classness and whiteness have been topics of critical interest among compositionists in recent years, perhaps the most effective challenge to this hegemony in the classroom is not in our textbooks or critical discourse but in what many of our students already consume, the ghettocentricity expressed in the music of rappers like Kanye West, Jay-Z, and Eminem.

This study uses student reflections of previous success in academic writing to guide instructors as they design writing assignments. Seventy-one students in five classes responded to a questionnaire designed to help them identify particularly successful writing experiences and reflect on the circumstances, strategies, and methods they believed impacted their success. Student responses to these questions were analyzed to identify broad categories or themes. This process produced an "emic" or insider's view of what constitutes successful writing assignments and writing process. The findings suggest that students self report their writing as successful when the writing assignment engenders engagement, commitment, collaboration, a systematic approach, and opportunities for external confirmation. Instructors can include these considerations as they plan the writing assignments for their courses. Discovering what student writers believe constitutes good writing and what strategies most effectively help them produce high quality writing provides an opportunity to design writing assignments that empower students to join the conversation in their discourse community. If faculty are aware of student perceptions of writing assignments and use those perceptions in assignment design, the products may be more satisfying for both student writers and faculty readers.

This historical case study of a non-rule policy document (NPD) adopted by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management describes an emerging genre in environmental discourse. The NPD standardizes environmental public policy for land disposal of foundry sand, a solid waste. The collaborative writing process took six months with industry input, and the NPD was presented to two environmental boards. Two contrasts, in process and format, distinguish NPDs from rules. The NPD is an entirely new kind of writing which includes guidance for implementing statutes. The writing process in the case involves government writers and industry representatives, although it does not include other public input such as public hearings. Instead, the staff of the pollution control agency simply presents the NPD to the appropriate environmental policy boards and arranges for its publication. This article adds to the body of knowledge about technical writing in government, specifically environmental policy and non-academic genres.

Research on professional communication in the former Soviet republics and satellite countries was by and large closed to American scholars until recent years. This commentary offers a critical introduction to the forces of globalization, discourse, and democracy in that region, offering to U.S. readers a corrective lens that challenges the American view of the role of writing in regions where democratization is new, fragile, and even alien to the culture. A great part of our work as professional communicators rests on Western, particularly democratic, theoretical assumptions, mainly derived from Greco-Roman assumptions. Too often we do not confront the real otherness of practices that poach on Western assumptions or practices for nondemocratic ends, but we face increasing pressure to do so as our work is relentlessly internationalized.

Abstract This essay blends critical race theory and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's sociological theory of color-blind racism to interrogate color-blind rhetoric. It uses the Kennedy–Nixon Presidential Debates as a site that, while illustrating the widely presumed duplicitous nature of political discourse, paradoxically romanticizes and concretizes the concepts of freedom and equality as race-neutral categories. Tracing the term “color blindness” to the Plessy Versus Ferguson case, the paper exposes the rhetorical and material limitations of legal language, from the Brown Versus the Board of Education decision to current controversies surrounding affirmative action, which advocate race neutrality rather than progressive color consciousness.

Abstract This essay blends critical race theory and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's sociological theory of color-blind racism to interrogate color-blind rhetoric. It uses the Kennedy–Nixon Presidential Debates as a site that, while illustrating the widely presumed duplicitous nature of political discourse, paradoxically romanticizes and concretizes the concepts of freedom and equality as race-neutral categories. Tracing the term "color blindness" to the Plessy Versus Ferguson case, the paper exposes the rhetorical and material limitations of legal language, from the Brown Versus the Board of Education decision to current controversies surrounding affirmative action, which advocate race neutrality rather than progressive color consciousness. Notes 1I appreciate Lorien Goodman, Steven Mailloux, Catherine Prendergast, Jacqueline Jones-Royster, and Victor Villanueva for making comments on a rough draft of this essay. I wish to especially acknowledge RR reviewers Keith Miller and Barbara Warnick for their insightful suggestions. 2Though it has been well documented that many blacks switched allegiance from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party with Franklin Roosevelt's presidency, many others remained loyal to the GOP. Of particular note here were the two preconvention meetings that the NAACP sponsored in 1960, one in Los Angeles for the Democrats and the other in Chicago for the Republicans. Of the combined 14,500 who attended these meetings, 7,500 attended the pre-Republican convention. According to Roy Wilkins, the NAACP was determined to remain nonpartisan. Aside from this, several prominent African Americans, according to Taylor Branch, wanted Democrats other than Kennedy to receive the presidential nomination. Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, for example, initially supported Lyndon Johnson. Baseball great Jackie Robinson, a Republican, supported Democrat Hubert Humphrey during the primaries. Robinson said he would support Nixon if Kennedy were nominated, and Powell, as the third Kennedy-Nixon Debate reveals, eventually made some outlandish statements in support of the Democratic frontrunner. Powell's support, if not these statements themselves, may be attributable to the bribe Powell sought and received from the Kennedy camp. See The Crisis, August-September issue of 1960 and Branch's critically acclaimed Parting the Waters. 3While Nixon alludes to Lincoln five times in his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination in July 1960, he does not invoke his name at all during the four debates. Kennedy alluded to Lincoln twice during his acceptance speech and four times during the debates. Though both men referred to how slavery supposedly fueled Lincoln's moral fervor for the Union's cause, all of the references gloss over the inequities that African Americans were experiencing during the 1960s, and only one of these references, ironically, identifies their race. Equally important, domestic freedom became a synecdoche for America's international agenda. Lincoln's larger-than-life status as a harbinger of freedom for blacks has been well researched and critiqued. For a fairly recent, provocative analysis, see Lerone Bennett's Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream. 4The Republican and Democratic respective civil rights planks of 1960 are worthy of rhetorical analysis aside from this study. As might be expected, both parties appealed to the spiritual, legal, and moral implications for civil rights that the Constitution and Declaration of Independence supposedly suggest. More surprisingly, each plank condemns racial discrimination as a practice that extends beyond southern borders. Both planks also appeal to the civil rights acts of 1957 and 1960 as the foundation and impetus for racial progress. While the Democratic platform set a deadline of 1963 (an acknowledged link to the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation) to comply with the Brown decision, the Republican platform rejects this specific timetable, believing that it would actually encourage delays in school desegregation. Under proposals to ensure voting enfranchisement, the Republican platform proposes that "completion of six primary grades in a state accredited school is conclusive evidence of literacy for voting purposes." In contrast, the Democratic platform promises to "support whatever action is necessary to eliminate literacy tests and the payment of poll taxes as requirements for voting." These passages underscore a fascinating ironic twist, for it was the Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) who started and protected literacy tests as one way of disenfranchising black voters; yet the Republican proposal could be viewed as an appeasement to the Southern Democrats' constituency. 5The widely recognized birth date for the Sit-in Movement is February 1, 1960. Only nine days later, according to Lerone Bennett, "the movement had spread to fifteen Southern cities in five states." By March 22, "more than one thousand blacks had been arrested in sit-in demonstrations." No wonder Nixon felt compelled to say a word about this movement. Curiously, he did not say more. More curiously, Kennedy says nothing on this topic during the debates. 6Kennedy admits during this debate that he borrows the phrase "moral leader" from Franklin Roosevelt. The Democratic Platform also uses the expression. In reality, Kennedy, according to Mary Dudziak among others, would not become fully convinced about civil rights until after the Birmingham campaign of April and May 1963, and the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing in September would transform him into a full-fledged moral leader. 7At the close of the fourth debate, Nixon asserted that with regard to "civil rights," the Republican Party had made "more progress in the past 8 years than in the whole 80 years before." The Republican platform, from which Nixon lifts this statement almost verbatim, specifies what "progress" Nixon may be alluding to, namely the civil rights legislation passed in 1957 and 1960. 8King had little tolerance for permutations of "liberalism" that were not radically progressive on the issue of racial justice. Two stellar examples of this posture are his speeches, "Give Us the Ballot," delivered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1957, and the other, "The Rising Tide of Racial Consciousness," delivered at the Golden Anniversary Conference of the National Urban League in 1960. Both speeches contain sections that challenge Northern liberals to examine their motives behind fears about achieving racial justice. See The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., James M. Washington, editor. Additional informationNotes on contributorsDavid G. Holmes David G. Holmes is Associate Professor of English and Blanche E. Seaver Professor in Hu-manities at Pepperdine University, where he teaches courses in rhetoric, composition, the civil rights movement, and the Harlem Renaissance. His most recent essays have appeared in College English and in the anthology Calling Cards. His research interests include epistemologies and rhetorics of racism, theories of ethos, and the civil rights movement mass meetings.

During the last decade we have been working, together with colleagues interested in this endeavor, on an extension of the ''standard'' pragmadialectical theory of argumentation developed by van Eemeren and Grootendorst by integrating insights from classical and modern rhetoric.This integration of rhetorical insight in a dialectical theoretical framework was motivated by our wish to improve the quality of a pragma-dialectical analysis and evaluation of argumentative discourse.The integration was brought about with the help of the introduction of the notion of ''strategic maneuvering,'' which designates the balancing act of reconciling the simultaneous pursuit of dialectical and rhetorical objectives that arguers have to perform in the conduct of argumentative discourse.Even if they are in the first place out to fulfill their dialectical obligations in the explicit or implicit exchange, they may still be expected to be aiming at realizing the rhetorical aspirations that go with entering an argument; and if they are in the first place led by their rhetorical aspirations, they still cannot ignore the dialectical obligations that they have to meet when entering an argument.These considerations concerning the ''double'' concern that arguers may be assumed to have are at the heart of our efforts to develop an extended pragma-dialectical theory.They are also the starting point for this special issue of the journal Argumentation in which authors from various theoretical backgrounds -which may be quite different from our pragma-dialectical position -offer, from their specific vantage points, their ''Perspectives on Strategic Maneuvering.''The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, NWO, granted us a substantial subsidy to further develop our ideas concerning strategic maneuvering in argumentative discourse, in particular by examining the strategic function of maneuvering that consists in pointing out an inconsistency in the other partyÕs position and formulating the soundness conditions applying to that way of maneuvering (research program no. 360-80-030).Apart from involving four excellent PhD students and a post-doctoral researcher in the project, this subsidy allowed us also, just as we intended, to organize a series of small-scale and clearly focused conferences dedicated to specific aspects of strategic maneuvering.At these conferences scholars of argumentation interested in any of these specific aspects could discuss their views with other interested parties and contribute in this way to the progress of our project, not in the last place by criticizing some of our points of departure and offering constructive alternatives.The first

Bakhtin’s work from the late 1920s and 1930s on the novel has been the principal source for critical discussion of his views of rhetoric and poetics—a discussion in which both arts are deprecated—but his early phenomenological work on architectonics and Voloshinov’s early sociological work provide alternative sources that offer fresh terms for rethinking these discursive practices. The phenomenological works permit us to reconceptualize rhetoric as the primary discourse of active evaluative being-in-the-world and poetry as an imitation of that discourse that makes it available for aesthetic contemplation. The sociological work preserves the relation of speaker/agent to the other that the phenomenological work emphasizes and adds to it a relation of speaker to listener. The translation of the phenomenological terms to a sociological register brings the theory closer to life and history. © 2006 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Preeminent scholar David Olson opens this symposium with a reflection on the decades-long debate concerning the relationship between written and oral discourse. His essay is followed by a series of responses by leading literacy researchers, including David Bloome, Anne Haas Dyson, James Paul Gee, Martin Nystrand, Victoria Purcell-Gates, and Gordon Wells. The symposium concludes with a further essay by Professor Olson, in which he offers his reflections on these scholars’ comments and looks to the continuing conversation.

Preeminent scholar David Olson opens this symposium with a reflection on the decades-long debate concerning the relationship between written and oral discourse. His essay is followed by a series of responses by leading literacy researchers, including David Bloome, Anne Haas Dyson, James Paul Gee, Martin Nystrand, Victoria Purcell-Gates, and Gordon Wells. The symposium concludes with a further essay by Professor Olson, in which he offers his reflections on these scholars’ comments and looks to the continuing conversation.

Preeminent scholar David Olson opens this symposium with a reflection on the decades-long debate concerning the relationship between written and oral discourse. His essay is followed by a series of responses by leading literacy researchers, including David Bloome, Anne Haas Dyson, James Paul Gee, Martin Nystrand, Victoria Purcell-Gates, and Gordon Wells. The symposium concludes with a further essay by Professor Olson, in which he offers his reflections on these scholars’ comments and looks to the continuing conversation.

Preeminent scholar David Olson opens this symposium with a reflection on the decades-long debate concerning the relationship between written and oral discourse. His essay is followed by a series of responses by leading literacy researchers, including David Bloome, Anne Haas Dyson, James Paul Gee, Martin Nystrand, Victoria Purcell-Gates, and Gordon Wells. The symposium concludes with a further essay by Professor Olson, in which he offers his reflections on these scholars’ comments and looks to the continuing conversation.

While academic discourse communities have been extensively studied as social contexts of forms/functions, and teachers, lessons, and students have been researched from every imaginable angle, the prevailing view of academic writing conventions is still quite normative. The conventions of the academy are often regarded as a stable collection of formal rules and objects that can be taught explicitly.

Preeminent scholar David Olson opens this symposium with a reflection on the decades-long debate concerning the relationship between written and oral discourse. His essay is followed by a series of responses by leading literacy researchers, including David Bloome, Anne Haas Dyson, James Paul Gee, Martin Nystrand, Victoria Purcell-Gates, and Gordon Wells. The symposium concludes with a further essay by Professor Olson, in which he offers his reflections on these scholars’ comments and looks to the continuing conversation.

Preeminent scholar David Olson opens this symposium with a reflection on the decades-long debate concerning the relationship between written and oral discourse. His essay is followed by a series of responses by leading literacy researchers, including David Bloome, Anne Haas Dyson, James Paul Gee, Martin Nystrand, Victoria Purcell-Gates, and Gordon Wells. The symposium concludes with a further essay by Professor Olson, in which he offers his reflections on these scholars’ comments and looks to the continuing conversation.

Preeminent scholar David Olson opens this symposium with a reflection on the decades-long debate concerning the relationship between written and oral discourse. His essay is followed by a series of responses by leading literacy researchers, including David Bloome, Anne Haas Dyson, James Paul Gee, Martin Nystrand, Victoria Purcell-Gates, and Gordon Wells. The symposium concludes with a further essay by Professor Olson, in which he offers his reflections on these scholars’ comments and looks to the continuing conversation.