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2361 articlesOctober 2001
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Domestic, Virtuous Women: Examining Women's Place in a Public Environmental Debate along Louisiana's Cancer Corridor ↗
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Abstract Focusing on an environmental debate that took place in southeastern Louisiana, this study analyzes the experiences of several women who were identified as the debate's domestic, virtuous women: nurturing caretakers who entered public space to speak out as conservators of home and family. While acknowledging how powerful this public stance can be, this study also highlights the limitations of an identity that enables women to access political spheres traditionally closed to them but ultimately dismisses these voices when decisions about the environment must be made.
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Much of the literature concerning participant relationships in academic writing has discussed features that project the stance, identity, or credibility of the writer, rather than examining how writers engage with readers. In contrast, this article focuses on strategies that presuppose the active role of addressees, examining six key ways that writers seek explicitly to establish the presence of their readers in the discourse. Based on an analysis of 240 published research articles from eight disciplines and insider informant interviews, the author examines the dialogic nature of persuasion in research writing through the ways writers (a) address readers directly using inclusive or second person pronouns and interjections and (b) position them with questions, directives, and references to shared knowledge. The analysis underlines the importance of audience engagement in academic argument and provides insights into how the discoursal preferences of disciplinary communities rhetorically construct readers.
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Assessing Critical Thinking in the Writing of Japanese University Students: Insights about Assumptions and Content Familiarity ↗
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L2 writing scholars have recently debated the appropriateness of using cultural constructs to enhance the teaching of English. An important aspect of writing, critical thinking, has received considerable attention. Some have suggested that Asians, including Japanese, do not display critical thought in their writing in English. Other researchers claim that Asians display critical thinking abilities differently than Western learners. In addition, they argue that learners from a particular culture are too diverse to make claims about the whole group's thinking abilities. This study proposes a model for assessing critical thinking in the writing of L2 learners to determine whether content familiarity plays a role in critical thinking. Findings of a study of 45 Japanese undergraduate students indicate that the quality of critical thought depended on the topic content, with a familiar topic generating better critical thinking. Results also suggested that differing assumptions between the L1 and L2 culture may lead to misinterpretations of the critical thinking ability of L2 learners.
September 2001
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Des mots à la parole: Une lecture de la “Poetria Nova” de Geoffroy de Vinsauf par Jean-Yves Tilliette ↗
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422 RHETORICA auf die âufiere Einwirkung auf die Menschen im Sinne der Vorfeldaufgabe beschrânkt. In diesem Kontext gelingt der Verfasserin eine für die allgemeine "Geschichte des Willensbegriffes" (p. 160) tatsâchlich wichtige und intéressante Entdeckung. Bei der Beschreibung des inneren Wirkens Gottes setzt Augustinus das delectare mit dem movere nahezu gleich. Aus dem Dreierschema der officia oratoris wird so ein Zweierschema, das die affektiv-voluntative Seite des Menschen im Kontrast zum kognitiven Bereich starker betont. So wird am Ende der nicht unerhebliche Anteil rhetorischer Terminologie bei der Herausbildung des Willensbegriffes bei Augustinus sichtbar. Um so mehr verwundert es, dass der Verfasserin bei ihrer Interpreta tion von De doctrina Christiana die ebenfalls stark akzentuierte Bedeutung des movere bzw.flectere und damit die affektiv-voluntative Seite der christlichen Rhetorik des Augustinus entgeht: Im Unterschied zu Cicero stehe für Au gustinus auch hier "das docere im Vordergrund" (p. 38). Die Stellen, in denen Augustinus das commovere des stilus grandis (De doct. chr. IV.27) herausstellt oder mit ausdrücklichem Verweis auf Cicero die entscheidende Bedeutung des flectere für den Redesieg (victoria) betont (De doct. chr. IV.28), werden dabei anscheinend überlesen. Kann es sein, daB die Verfasserin unter dem Eindruck der vermeintlichen "Genialitât" (p. 159) des Kirchenvaters den gravierenden Anteil der klassischen antiken Rhetorik an seiner Theoriebildung zu gering einschàtzt? Dieser Kritikpunkt gefâhrdet aber nicht den positiven Gesamteindruck der ansonsten akribischen Studie, die den Variantenreichtum der Prâsenz des rhetorischen Schemas der officia oratoris im Gesamtwerk des Augustinus eindrucksvoll erschliefit und so ein unverzichtbares Hilfsmittel für die zukünftige Augustinusforschung darstellt. Peter L. Oesterreich Augustana-Hochschule, Neuendettelsau Jean-Yves Tilliette, Des mots a la parole: Une lecture de la "Poetria Nova" de Geoffroy de Vinsauf (Geneva: Droz, 2000) 199 pp. The extraordinary popularity of Geoffrey de Vinsauf's early thirteenthcentury Poetria Nova was due in no small part to its being at once de arte and ex arte, a textbook on how to write poetry that is itself a poem. Most of the Poetria Nova's modern readers and many of its medieval ones nonetheless have emphasized its doctrine over its poetry, thereby missing, according to Jean-Yves Tilliette, much of what was new about Geoffrey's "New Poetics". Only by approaching the poem as a homogeneous and coherent work of literature rather than as a collection of conventional rules that have been set in verse, Tilliette argues, can we properly understand its unique status Reviews 423 as both manifesto and exemplar of a "new poetry" that replaces the early medieval "aesthetic of iaiitatio" with verbal virtuosity, explicitly recognises the historical break with the classical tradition caused by the Incarnation of Christ, and conceives of the poet as creator rather than artisan (pp. 9-12). Before he supports this thesis with a close reading or "intrinsic analysis" of the Poetria Nova, Tilliette devotes three chapters of "extrinsic analysis" to the chief influences that define the "cultural environment" of Geoffrey's poem: classical rhetoric as it was taught in the late Middle Ages, Horace's Ars poética or the "Old Poetics", and the Latin allegories of cosmic order and knowledge by Bernardus Silvestris and other writers of the twelfthcentury "School of Chartres". With rhetoric Geoffrey's new poetry shares the function of argument and (moral) persuasion; from the Ars poética, as interpreted by medieval commentators, derives the key insight of the new poetics, that poetry is a specific mode of apprehending and appropriating the world, whose "proper" sense is (paradoxically) the "figurative" sense; and from the platonizing poets comes the conception of the poet as demiurge who reveals the hidden archetypes by recreating in his poetry other possible worlds beyond the sensible world. The remaining five chapters demonstrate how the text of the Poetria Nova simultaneously expounds and embodies what Geoffrey conceives to be the highest goal of poetry: to use figurative language to make "possi ble worlds" visible and thus, in effect, to "reinvent the universe" (p. 68). Each of these chapters analyzes a different section of the Poetria Nova, using questions raised by that section's divergence from traditional pedagogy to highlight Geoffrey's originality. Thus, chapter 4 attempts to explain...
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Research has shown that contemporary popular films are a valuable resource in the ESL classroom. However, the short, silent film has been overlooked. Using D.W. Griffith’s The Painted Lady, Kaspar and Singer demonstrate how to use silent films to facilitate the development of ESL students’ critical thinking and writing skills.
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I argue that our responses to the Oakland ebonics resolution miss what made the resolution so significant while also making debate about it so intractable. I propose that compositionists who acknowledge attitudes that made the resolution so significant can productively engage the larger public regarding literacy education in a racially divided democracy.
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Errors seem to bother nonacademic readers as well as teachers. But what does it mean to be “bothered” by errors? Questions such as this help transform the study of error from mere textual issues to larger rhetorical matters of constructing meaning. Although this study of fourteen business people indicates a range of reactions to errors, the findings also reveal patterns of qualitative agreement—certain ways in which these readers constructed a negative ethos of the writer.
August 2001
July 2001
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Critical thinking pedagogy offers a supportive environment for teaching ethics in the professional communication classroom. Four important aspects of critical thinking which particularly encourage ethical thought and behavior are identifying and questioning assumptions, seeking a multiplicity of voices and alternatives on a subject, making connections, and fostering active involvement. Focusing on these behaviors allows an ongoing incorporation of ethics into many different aspects of the classroom.
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Argues that a lack of language legislation is indicative of a pervasive, tacit policy of "English Only" in composition and of a constellation of assumptions about languages, and language users that continues to cripple public debate on English Only and compositionists' approaches to matters of "error." Proposes an approach to language and "error" considering the relations of language to power.
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Argues that a lack of language legislation is indicative of a pervasive, tacit policy of “English Only” in composition and of a constellation of assumptions about languages, and language users that continues to cripple public debate on English Only and compositionists’ approaches to matters of “error.” Proposes an approach to language and “error” considering the relations of language to power.
June 2001
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Reviews Thomas A. Szlezak, Reading Plato, trans. Graham Zanker (New York: Routledge, 1999), xii + 137 pp. This short book will be interesting to all readers of Plato and all those who have pondered the relationship of oral and written discourse. It consists of twenty-seven short sections (2-6 pages each) the totality of which makes the following argument: Plato's philosophy can best be understood when read in the light of his critique of writing in the Phaedrus. According to Szlezak, nineteenth and twentieth-century readers have misunderstood and misinterpreted Plato's dialogues. This is so, he explains, because they have paid insufficient attention to Plato's critical comments on writing, because they have tended "to align the great thinkers of the past with the attitudes of [their] own times" (p. Ill), and because thy have confused Plato's esotericism, which is directed to a cause, with the notion of secrecy, which is directed to power (p. 115). Szlezak observes that starting with Schleiermacher "the modern devo tees of the god Theuth" (p. 41) have missed the intent of Plato's critique of writing. Consequently, they have supplemented the text of the Phaedrus in in admissible ways. Their graphocentric orientation and anachronistic readings have kept them from seeing Plato's repeated point that written philosophy itself can only go so far; to go further, it needs support, the kind that only the dialectician's oral logos can provide. Szlezak applies Plato's critique of writing to most Platonic dialogues, and shows that most of the recent interpretations have little, if any, merit. This is so, he argues, because the internal evidence of several dialogues points not to what is written but to what remains to be spoken about the texts at hand. Rather than read each dialogue separately, Szlezak reads across several dialogues, and identifies seven structural features they all share: 1) they typically depict conversations, with only occasional monologues within the conversational framework; 2) the conversations are place- and time-bound, happen between true-to-life participants most of whom are historically verifi able; 3) they all have a discussion leader, generally Socrates; 4) the discussion leader converses with one partner at a time, and in some cases he replaces the real partner with an imaginary one; 5) the discussion leader answers all objections, introduces all elements helpful to the conversation, refutes all other participants but is never himself refuted; 6) the conversation is raised to a higher level in the course of warding off an attack; and 7) none of the© The International Society for the History of Rhetoric, Rhetorica, Volume XIX, Number 3 (Summer 2001). Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center St, Ste 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223, USA 341 342 RHETORICA dialogues comes to a definite conclusion, they all point to the need for further investigation and reflection, and they all have one or more "deliberate gaps" (pp. 18-19; 103-108). Szlezak does not argue for the general superiority of oral discourse over its written counterpart. Rather, he shows that oral discourse has a higher status but only for those capable of playing the role of a philosopher, more specifically a dialectician in the Platonic tradition. To play such a role requires that one identify significant topics for discussion (it is simply not the case that any one topic is as good as any other), expedite the discussion through poignant questions, refute objections, and defend doctrines committed to writing. Effectively, a Platonic dialectician possesses something of higher value (ta timiotera) than his philosophical writings (p. 49). This something consists of doctrines whose articulation happens orally and whose function is to support, defend, or extend written doctrines. Reading Plato is a good piece of scholarship, it guides the reader through Plato's dialogues carefully and thoughtfully. And it raises questions that expose the limitations of the disciples of Derridolatry. At the same time, however, it brings attention to several theoretical issues that Szlezak does not address. For example, how is a contemporary reader to "adapt himself to the perspective of the author, against all kinds of prejudices and resistance which are specific to...
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Ever since Plato, the Sophists have been seen as teaching "the art of persuasion", particularly the art (or skill) of persuasive speaking in the lawcourts and the assembly on which success in life depended. I argue that this view is mistaken. Although Gorgias describes logos as working to persuade Helen, he does not present persuasion as the goal of his own work, nor does any other Sophist see persuasion as the primary aim of his logoi. Most sophistic discourse was composed in the form of antilogies (pairs of opposed logoi), in which category I include works like Helen where the other side—the poetic tradition Gorgias explicitly cites as his opponent—is implicitly present. The purpose of these works is primarily to display skill in intellectual argument, as well as to give pleasure. Persuasion may be a goal of some sophistic works, but it is not their primary goal; and teaching the art of persuasion was not a major concern of the Sophists.
May 2001
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Chester Drawers, Martian Luther King, and Privately Owned Citizens: Beginning Writers Teaching the Teacher ↗
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Considers how rhetoric, cognitive awareness, and competing cultures of community college composition students challenge instructors. Discusses issues such as: updating the definition of “student”; historically dynamic biculturalism; collaboration versus negotiated meaning; destabilizing knowledge; inventing the student; and mastering the art of persuasion. Concludes that instructors must be aware that theories, ideologies, and pedagogy influence students and therefore must be current.
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Suggests that it is easier to invigorate class discussion and stimulate critical thinking if students discover the constructed nature of the canon by first seeing that their notions about a “typical” Poe story have been shaped by an often invisible process of selection and exclusion.
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The purpose of this research was to examine both what it means to teach writing and what it means to write in a first-year university course in the history of science. More specifically, I investigated what students learned about writing when the focus was mainly on subject matter and only secondarily on writing and rhetoric. A number of converging methods of research were used to address this issue: audiotaping classroom discourse and taking field notes, interviewing students and collecting retrospective protocols about their responses to a writing assignment, and analyzing students’ texts. The analyses indicated that classroom discourse focused primarily on framing concepts that brought into focus different and conflicting conceptions of the scientific method and the ways authorship in history is colored by writers’ subjectivity and perspective taking. Although students’ interpretations of the writing assignment were not very detailed, the texts they wrote revealed some understanding of how to use comparisons as a tool for analysis in writing history, the importance of attending to context in examining a given historical phenomenon, and the extent to which writing history is both interpretive and rhetorical. Yet neither the focal students nor the other students participating in this study responded uniformly to the assignment. The data raise the question of whether disciplinary courses in writing provide an authentic alternative to the space general writing skills courses currently occupy, particularly if such classes exist as sites where students are introduced to critical thinking and argumentative writing in college.
April 2001
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Research Article| April 01 2001 “Befriending” Other Teachers: Communities of Teaching and the Ethos of Curricular Leadership Kate Ronald Kate Ronald Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2001) 1 (2): 317–326. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-1-2-317 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Kate Ronald; “Befriending” Other Teachers: Communities of Teaching and the Ethos of Curricular Leadership. Pedagogy 1 April 2001; 1 (2): 317–326. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-1-2-317 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2001 Duke University Press2001 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Articles You do not currently have access to this content.
March 2001
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Explanation is the bread-and-butter activity of any technical communicator. We explain things for a living, but how well can any of us explain the nature of explanation itself? What makes technical explanation different from persuasion or narration? Web-based instructional systems have pushed us away from traditional kinds of paper-bound explanation. In these new realms, anything better than hit-and-miss success requires a clear sense of basic principles. With that in mind, I discuss the basic logic of explanation first proposed by the philosopher C.S. Peirce in the 1870s, and more recently extended by J. Hintikka (1998).
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Hermogène, l’Art rhétorique. Traduction française intégrale, traduction et notes par Michel Patillon ↗
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Reviews 271 Tersite (p. 251): L. Spina analyse, dans le cadre des rapports entre l'orateur et le contenu de son discours, condamnations et réhabilitations de Thersite (Iliade, II, 211-277), de Libanios à La Stampa. Dans La testimonianza diAtanasio sul Péri hupokriseôs di Teofrasto (177,368 Rabe = 712 FHS & G) (p. 271), M. Vallozza examine un texte d'Athanasios dans les Prolégomènes au Péri staseôn d'Hermogène comme témoignage sur le Péri hupokriseôs de Théophraste et justifie la correction par Rabe de ton tonon tes psukhês en ton tonon tês phones. On se réjouit que chaque article soit accompagné d'une bibliographie judicieusement sélective et parfaitement à jour. Cela contribue à faire de ce livre une mise au point sur la recherche dans le champ de a rhétorique et une invitation à s'engager sur les pistes tracées, qu'il s'agisse d'auteurs, de thèmes ou d'approches nouvelles. Michel Nouhaud Université de Limoges Michel Patillon, Hermogène, l'Art rhétorique. Traduction française inté grale, traduction et notes, Préface de Pierre Laurens (Paris, L'Age d'homme, 1997), 640pp. In his Lives of the Sophists Philostratos tells of the rise and fall of the adolescent prodigy Hermogenes (577K). By the age of fifteen his reputation was such that Marcus Aurelius came to hear him declaim and left amazed by his talent for improvisation. But, says Philostratos, his powers suddenly and inexplicably deserted him, leaving him to live out the rest of his life in obscurity, far from the glittering prizes of the sophistic performance circuit. The rhetorical textbooks attributed to him, however, became the standard rhetorical curriculum throughout the Byzantine middle ages, before being introduced to Reniassance Europe through the work of Greek émigrés like George of Trebizond. Only two of the treatises, On Issues (Peri Staseôn) and On Types of Style (Peri Ideon Logou) are now accepted as second-century works, the others having been added in the 5th or 6th century. But the corpus as edited by Rabe and as translated here in its entirety for the first time, does show us the full range of the rhetorical curriculum of the later Empire. Starting from Progymnasmata, the collection progresses to the complexities of stasis theory — the systematic analysis of the types of question arising in declamation — in On Issues. The treatises Peri Heureseôs (On Invention) and On Types of Style treat the art of composing a speech, and the choice of style. Finally, the curious treatise on the method of "forcefulness (or simply skillfulness as in Patillon's choice of the French term "habileté"), Peri methodou deinotêtos, provides a collection of advice on a variety of problems likely to face the declaimer such as "how to praise oneself". 272 RHETORICA The two treatises generally accepted as works of Hermogenes have been translated separately into English (On Types of Style by C. Wooten, On Issues notably by M. Heath) and into Russian. But, with the exception of the Progymnasmata, the others have never before been available in a modern language, nor has the corpus been accessible as a whole. Patillon's elegant and clear translation is accompanied by copious notes elucidating the mean ing of Greek terms, unpacking the unspoken assumptions about language and communication which inform the texts, opening up questions which the rhetoricians themselves took for granted. He also pinpoints the relevant passages of the Late Antique and Byzantine treatises and commentaries preserved in the largely uncharted waters of Walz's Rhetores Graeci. The sub stantial introduction (over 100 pages) provides a concise characterisation of the literary and rhetorical culture from which the Hermogenean corpus emerged, discussion of questions of authorship, and an invaluable overview of each of the constituent parts of the corpus. A preface by Pierre Laurens traces the reception of the corpus, particularly the treatise On Types of Style, in the Renaissance and Early Modern periods. The bibliography and indices are full and extremely useful (though the index of Greek words does not always give every occurrence of a term). The publication date did not allow for the inclusion of Patillon's...
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Reviews L. Calboli Montefusco ed., Papers on Rhetoric III (Bologna: CLUEB, 2000), 281pp. On doit savoir gré à Lucia Calboli Montefusco d'avoir assuré la pub lication si rapide de ce recueil d'articles issus de communications présentées au XIL Congrès de la Société Internationale d'Histoire de la Rhétorique (Amsterdam, juillet 1999). Ces articles recouvrent une très longue période, allant d'Homère à l'époque médiévale, ce qui et peut-être justifié un classe ment chronologique. Leur diversité, leur originalité témoignent du regain de faveur que connaissent les recherches actuelles dans le domaine de la rhétorique et font de ce livre un ouvrage particulièrement stimulant. Dans The S. C. de Cn. Pisone pâtre: Asianisam and Juridical Language (p. 1), G. Calboli étudie les particularités linguistiques de ce Senatus Con sultant et y distingue une influence de l'éloquence rhodienne et des traits d'asianisme (grand nombre des relatives). Il met en lumière le rôle joué par Tibère dans la rédaction de ce texte, qui apparaît comme un document sur l'école de rhétorique de Théodore de Gadara. Dans Aristóteles' Benutzung des homoion in argumentatio und elecutio (p. 27), L. Calboli Montefusco con sidère la catégorie philosophique de Yhomoion comme le fondement de la rhétorique elle-même. Elle analyse son utilisation à l'intérieur de la preuve logique sur des exemples empruntés à la Rhétorique et aux Topiques ainsi que sa fonction stylistique dans l'élaboration des métaphores. Avec II sesto libro delT Institutio oratoria de Quintilian: la trasmissione del sapere, Tattualita storica, Tesperienza autobiográfica (p. 61), M. S. Celentano souligne la transfor mation du maître de rhétorique, qui devient un éducateur, un formateur de la jeunesse, par l'introduction dans son oeuvre, à côté des procédés tech niques, de son expérience personnelle et d'une réflexion autobiographique à valeur pédagogique. Quelques observations sur la théorie du discours figuré dans la Tekhnê du Ps.-Denys d'Halicarnasse (p. 75) nous sont données par P. Chiron, qui s'intéresse essentiellement au chapitre 9 de ce texte: l'auteur y décrit le discours figuré, qui consiste à "feindre de dire une chose et à en dire une autre". Ce chapitre prend ses distances vis-à-vis de la déclamation, comme de l'analyse linguistique, pour s'ouvrir sur un réel à charactère poli tique dans lequel les situations sont diversifiées. Dans Meeting the People: the Orator and the Republican Contio at Rome (p. 95), E. Fantham analyse les exigences rhétoriques de ces assemblées informelles que sont les contiones en faisant appel au témoignage de Cicéron, qui a vu, au cours de sa carrière, le caractère de ces réunions passer du meilleur au pire. Ethos and 269 270 RHETORICA Argument: The Ethos of the Speaker and the Ethos of the Audience (p. 113), tel est le rapport qu'E. Garver cherche à déterminer à partir de la remarque d'Aristote (Rhét. 1356al3) faisant de Yêthos le moyen de prouver le plus efficace. L'orateur ne peut viser à Yêthos sans en faire une fonction de lo gos, sa rhétorique devenant un art de l'apparence et de la manipulation. Ainsi Yêthos de l'orateur émerge-t-il de Yêthos de son public. Dans Cicéron critique de l'éloquence stoïcienne (p. 127), C. Lévy commence par présenter quelques personnages que l'orateur "considère comme emblématiques de l'éloquence stoïcienne romaine". Puis il envisage la critique de la rhétorique stoïicienne dans une perspective philosophique (accusation d'obscurité con tre les Stoïciens), avant d'étudier la relation entre cette critique et celle que suscitent les Néoattiques et que est d'ordre essentiellement stylistique. La rhétorique de Cicéron s'affirme par contraste avec ces deux conceptions. Avec Sull'uso retorico délia fabula esopica: un esempio nel De virtute di Dione de Prusa (p. 145), A. M. Milazzo étudie l'utilisation de la fable ésopique...
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Reviews 273 A reading of the full Hermogenean corpus also reveals the sheer in tellectual demands of the art of declamation as practised by Philostratos's sophists, not to mention countless generations of Greek and Roman school boys. We are familiar with the sophist as virtuoso, as histrionic performer of the Greek past. These treatises take us behind the scenes to show the degree of training in analysis, argumentation, arrangement and verbal expression involved, particularly in an improvised performance like the one which im pressed Marcus Aurelius. The difficulty of the primary sources has been a great obstacle to the appreciation of late classical rhetoric, one can only hope for more translations like this, with commentaries of this depth. Ruth Webb Princeton University R. Meynet - L. Pouzet - N. Farouki - A. Sinno, Rhétorique sémitique. Texts de la Bible et de la Tradition musulmane (Paris: Ed. du Cerf, 1998), 347pp. Cet ouvrage, rédigé à quatre mains par des chercheurs de l'Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth, a déjà été publié en 1993 en version arabe; rédigé originairement en français dès 1985, il est publié ici avec des remaniements et des améliorations substantiels. Son introduction (pp. 7-11) annonce un double but: (1) tenter de définir, à partir de la rhétorique hébraïque et biblique (cette dernière incluant, outre la Bible hébraïque (l'Ancien Tes tament), également le Nouveau Testament, rédigé en grec mais dont le substrat araméen est reconnu), le concept plus large, et par là plus diffi cile à cerner, de "rhétorique sémitique", incluant également la composante arabe; et (2) élaborer, ce faisant, une base de travail commune aux "études exégétiques bibliques et musulmanes", qui ne se situent pas actuallement au même stade de développement et qui dès lors nécessitent la convergence d'une "recherche menée en commun entre chrétiens et musulmans pour une meilleure connaissance mutelle" (p. 7). Il faut saluer ce projet généreux et ambitieux, sans oublier - car il date déjà par certains aspects théoriques (cf. infra) - qu'il a pris naissance dans des circonstances certainement difficiles, à Beyrouth dans les années 1980; comme dans les temps anciens, c est d une crise collective profonde que peut surgir la lumière! L'ouvrage est divisé en trois parties. La Ire partie situe "L'analyse rhétorique dans le champ de la critique" (pp.13-112), en présentant briève ment "L'histoire des critiques" et "L'analyse rhétorique", cette dernière étant une "opération exégétique" (pp. 105 ss.) qui constitue ici le concept opératoire de base. La IIe partie inclut 14 exemples d' "Analyse rhétorique des textes" (pp. 115-272), regroupés selon les deux structures majeures: "Textes parall èlles" (= Textes No 1-8: Siracide 8, 8-9 - Matthieu 25,31-46 - Luc 6,46-49 274 RHETORICA & Bukhâri, Sahih, 2, 33; 3, 20; 23, 93 bis; 24, 26) et "Textes concentriques" (= Textes No 9-14: Psaume 67 - Proverbes 9, 1-18 - Luc 11, 1-54 & Muslim, Sahih 18 - Bukhâri, Sahih, 1,1 & 1, 6). La IIIe partie, consacrée aux "Bilan et perspectives" (pp. 273-308), anal yse successivement : la "Validité de l'analyse rhétorique", ses "Situation et apports" et ses "Domaines". Des indices (réferences bibliques et textes musulmans: auteurs) et une bibliographie complètent cet important volume. Menée selon les principes de "l'analyse rhétorique" (cf. l'ouvrage théorique publié, sous ce titre, par R. Meynet en 1989), la mise en évidence des divers éléments structurels des textes choisis est riche d'enseignements et, par là, convaincante à bien des égards. Les tableaux qui "illustrent" les 14 cas-types constituent ainsi des outils pédagogiques de valeur. La dif ficulté majeure, ressentie par le recenseur, est l'absence, dans cet ouvrage approfondi (et rédigé par des auteurs qui sont de bons sémitisants), de toute référence au niveau des langues sémitiques elles-mêmes; en effet, les textes s. étudiés n'y sont présentés qu'en segments textuels rédigés en...
February 2001
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The condition of our public discussions about literary and cultural works has much to say about the condition of our democracy and the author argues for more public discourse--in classrooms, newspapers, magazines, etc. to reclaim a public voice on national artistic matters. In this revealing study of the links among literature, rhetoric, and democracy, Rosa A. Eberly explores the public debate generated by amateur and professional readers about four controversial literary works: two that were censored in the United States and two that created conflict because they were not censored. In Citizen Critics Eberly compares the outrage sparked by the publication of James Joyce's Ulysses and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer with the relative quiescence that greeted the much more violent and sexually explicit content of Bret Easton Ellis's American Psychoand Andrea Dworkin's Mercy. Through a close reading of letters to the editor, reviews, media coverage, and court cases, Eberly shows how literary critics and legal experts defused censorship debates by shifting the focus from content to aesthetics and from social values to publicity. By asserting their authority to pass judgments--thus denying the authority of citizen critics--these professionals effectively removed the discussion from literary public spheres. A passionate advocate for treating reading as a public and rhetorical enterprise rather than solely as a private one, Eberly suggests the potential impact a work of literature may have on the social polity if it is brought into public forums for debate rather than removed to the exclusive rooms of literary criticism. Eberly urges educators to use their classrooms as protopublic spaces in which students can learn to make the transition from private reader to public citizen.
January 2001
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Rereading the Elocutionists: The Rhetoric of Thomas Sheridan’s A Course of Lectures on Elocution and John Walker’s Elements of Elocution ↗
Abstract
Subject to neglect and at times harsh criticism, the eighteenth-century British elocutionary movement merits reconsideration as a complex rhetorical episode within the history of rhetoric. Confirming the value of the rhetorical analysis of rhetorical texts, this essay examines the forms and functions of persuasion which two key treatises from the elocutionary movement enacted within their own socio-historical context. A rhetorical reading of Thomas Sheridan's A Course of Lectures on Elocution (1762) and John Walker's Elements of Elocution (1781)—informed by theories of ethos, logos, and pathos—illustrates the nuances of the different cases made for the scholarly and educational credibility of elocution as a new field of study within the context of late eighteenth-century British culture: Walker's text, while profiting from Sheridan's earlier promotional campaign for the value of elocutionary study, attempts to redress the excesses of his forerunner's "florid harangue[s]" and to fill in the gaps of his incomplete instructional method.
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Abstract
130 RHETORICA tion. Fascicule I incorrectly refers to Peter of Blois's dictaminal treatise as an abridgement of work by Bernard of Meting (p. xxxv). An appendix contains the edition of an allegorical letter from Simon O.'s Summa dictandi which concerns the authorship of Regina sedens Rhetorica . A useful Glossary of Medieval Words and Unusual Spellings with ref erences to standard Medieval Latin dictionaries is followed by a list of cited manuscripts, editions of primary texts, cited secondary sources, and a full and accurate index. A copy of this book should be found in the library of every student of the ars dictaminis. Emil J. Polak Queensborough Community College, The City University ofNew York Kathleen Welch, Electric Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric, Oralism, and a New Literacy (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1999) xvii + 255 pp. The dust jacket of Electric Rhetoric sports a blurb from Andrea Lunsford which praises an author who "re-theorizes (and re-races, re-genders, and re performs) pre-Aristotelian rhetoric and then uses it to explore posthumanist literacy and rhetoric in a range of electronic spaces. In its insistent rejection of what Welch calls the 'worst' of Enlightenment, Modernist, and Postmod ernist values—and in its bold program for change—this book is going to make a lot of people nervous. A must read!" I open with Lunsford's remarks because they are as illuminating for what they say as for what they do not say. Welch's book is not a "program" but a polemic for change which, by the author's own avowal, seeks to "redirect inquiry" and raise more questions than it answers (p. 9). Welch does so handily in six chapters housed in two parts, "Classical Greek Literacy and the Spoken Word" and "Logos Perform ers, Screen Sophism, and the Rhetorical Turn", followed by an "Appendix: Excerpt from the Origin Myth ofAcoma and Other Records". In Chapter 1, "Introduction: Screen Literacy in Rhetoric and Composi tion Studies", she opens with the captivating image of the television screen which, for better or for worse, is ubiquitous in "locations of power as well as of powerlessness". In addition to contrasting it effectively with the com puter screen which "mostly appears in locations of power" (p. 4), Professor Welch vows to rouse humanities scholars from what she condemns through out as their utter refusal to acknowledge and rethink the massive cultural changes which attend the universal sign system of video. Of no surprise to those familiar with her prior excellent contributions to the history and theory of rhetoric and composition, she believes that that mission can best be accomplished by returning to (and revamping considerably) Isocratic rhetoric. Simply put, Electric Rhetoric proposes a holistic approach to three fundamental principles: (1) that literacy conditions "how people articulate Reviews 131 within and around their ideas, their cultures, and themselves, including their subject positions"; (2) that "any current definition of literacy must account for changes in consciousness or mentalité"; and (3) that literacy "depends on social constructions (including [sic] gender and racial constructions) that give value to some writing and speaking activities and that devalue others" (pp. 7-8). Chapter 2, "An Isocratic Literacy Theory: An Alternative Rhetoric of Oral/Aural Articulation", provides the forum for Welch's endeavor to re cover Isocrates. Praising his recognition of the dependence between articu lation and thought and his emphasis on aptitude vs. native ability (p. 51), she simultaneously vilifies his rhetoric, which "reveals for us strikingly one of the hideous aspects of classical rhetoric: it appears to erase women or to victimize us. This erasure works hand in hand with Isocrates's agenda of imperialism, an intolerance, a dehumanizing of Others, for which he must be held accountable" (p. 49). Our job, then, as readers of Electric Rhetoric, is to hold the past accountable. The main thrust of Chapter 3, "Disciplining Isocrates", is to dismantle "the Great Man theory of history writing, with some token women thrown in the same underlying theoretical structure" (pp. 82-83). It contains some fascinating readings of the Antidosis, notably the dancing bear episode and its link to learning ability. What is not clear, however, is why "Isocrates's biggest problem lies in his and...
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Abstract
Background While all institutions of higher learning value writing, each institution manifests its values in different ways. Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) has established an Office of Campus Writing, with a Director to design and offer faculty development opportunities to integrate writing more meaningfully and more effectively in the curricula of the 21 academic and professional schools that comprise the campus. One major faculty development offering is the annual two-week intensive Summer Faculty Writing Forum. This Forum accepts up to 15 faculty each year from schools and disciplines across the campus. These faculty, more used to the role of writing to demonstrate learning, investigate the capacity of writing to communicate learning, enhance learning, improve critical thinking, and reflect upon and evaluate learning. They design writing assignments, develop rubrics, and explore how to respond to written work more effectively. Upon completing the Forum, all faculty are asked to apply what they have learned to their own teaching, and to disseminate successful applications among their colleagues. This article focuses on the three-semester application of one Forum participant, an application that has evolved into a research project that clearly demonstrates the power of writing-to-learn to improve student understanding of quantitative analysis. It traces this evolution through e-mail exchanges between a professor of Computer Technology (Bob) and the Director of Campus Writing (Sharon).
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Abstract
1 Bruno Latour and Rachel Carson are allies across the span of thirty years. I think that the allegiance is a fact of major importance for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it allows us to get Latour down to earth, where he can do us some good, and out of the realm of mannered high-cultural debate, where he is rendered as useless as the rest of his fellow debaters.
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Abstract
In considering how curriculum and teaching influence education, it is revealing to note that most faculty members treat curriculum the way bankers treat investments. They generally spend much time, planning, and careful thought on curricular matters-reasoning here, analyzing there, relying on experience, and carefully considering both the long-term and short-term dividends of knowledge - but when it comes to teaching, many faculty members operate less like bankers and more like barnstormers, flying by the seat of their pants and guiding themselves primarily by instinct or by repeating whatever worked yesterday.
2001
December 2000
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Abstract
Notes that teaching composition in a technical college presents a number of challenges. Considers how employers are calling for the hands-on training to be combined with more communication and critical thinking skills so that employees have a broader education that allows them to switch speeds or tasks. Describes activities and course components for technical college writing instruction.
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Abstract
Preview this article: Response to "More Methodological Matters: Against Negative Argumentation", Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/52/2/collegecompositionandcommunication1421-1.gif
November 2000
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Evaluating the Impact of Collectivism and Individualism on Argumentative Writing by Chinese and North American College Students ↗
Abstract
Analyzes writing features conceptually linked to collectivist or individualist orientations among students from Taiwan and the United States. Notes that theses features were indirectness, personal disclosure, use of proverbs and other canonical expressions, collective self, and assertiveness. Makes comparisons across languages and nationalities and also across language alone.
October 2000
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Speaking Ebonics in a Professional Context: The Role of Ethos/Source Credibility and Perceived Sociability of the Speaker ↗
Abstract
Within a theoretical context of speech accommodation theory, this study follows Lambert et al.‘s (1960) “matched-guise” technique. Seventy-two African-American students at a mid-south university listened to and evaluated a tape-recorded excerpt of a speech given by Jesse Jackson at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. The first version of the speech was translated into Ebonics. After students listened to the first four-minute speech in Ebonics, students then proceeded to answer a questionnaire concerning the ethos/source credibility and perceived sociability of the speaker. Next, students listened to the same audiotaped speech (given by the same speaker), except the text of the speech was translated (and subsequently delivered) in Standard English. The students then rated this second speaker on those same ethos/source credibility and sociability scales. The speaker who used Standard English was viewed as more credible (i.e., more competent and having a strong character) and sociable than the Ebonics speaker. Both of these scores were significant at the p .05 level. Future research replicating these results is urged across other African-American samples.
September 2000
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L’art de s’exprimer en toutes circonstances. Les secrets dévoilés des orateurs par Gilbert Collard ↗
Abstract
Reviews 467 Gilbert Collard, L'art de s'exprimer en toutes circonstances. Les secrets dévoilés des orateurs (Paris: Presses de la Renaissance, 1999), 204 pp. Maître Gilbert Collard, du barreau de Marseille, est un des plus grands avocats français, bien connu du public pour sa participation à des causes célèbres impliquant des personnalités du monde politique, artistique ou sportif. Auteur déjà de nombreux ouvrages, il publie ici un livre qui se définit comme "recueil de vingt-six ans de pratique oratoire" et somme de conseils, tant pour les futurs avocats que pour d'autres utilisateurs qui auront à s'exprimer en public. Or, sur la couverture de ce livre, l'auteur a tenu à faire figurer sa qualité de membre de l'International Society for the History of Rhetoric: démarche intéressante pour les lecteurs de Rhetorica. La première partie de l'ouvrage consiste dans un bref historique, qui commence par les œuvres d'Homère, qualifiées à juste titre de "poésie oratoire". G. Collard note que la rhétorique doit beaucoup aux sophistes, qui "méritaient mieux que la mauvaise réputation que Socrate leur fit". Se référant aux travaux de Marc Fumaroli, qui l'ont inspiré, il cite Aristote, Cicéron, Quintilien, et souligne l’importance de la tradition et des enseignements quelle dispense pour qui veut apprendre à parler aujourd'hui. La deuxième partie prolonge ce plaidoyer en faveur de la parole, en montrant, avec des raisonnements efficaces, comment l'art de parler a partie liée avec la formation de l'intelligence et du sens critique, avec la démocratie, avec l'humanité. L'auteur pose le problème moral de la rhétorique (comment distinguer persuasion et manipulation), présente les notions d'éthos et de pathos, puis énumère un certain nombre de défauts à éviter. Chemin faisant, des anecdotes illustrent l'actualité toujours renouvelée des problématiques rhétoriques, et l'avocat livre le fruit de ses expériences. Par exemple, Maître Collard estime que "ïe meilleur discours du monde ne devrait jamais dépasser une heure, l'idéal 468 RHETORICA étant le discours de quarante minutes" -au-delà, l'endormissement guette... La troisième partie brosse un panorama des principales notions techniques : les figures (notamment l'hyperbole, définie comme "la Marseillaise du répertoire"), les procédés d'argumentation (ici l'auteur s'appuie sur les travaux de Chaim Perelman), les principaux types de plan. Des conseils d'entraînement pratique sont donnés, et le livre se termine, dans une quatrième partie, par des analyses de discours fameux prononcés par des hommes politiques et des avocats, depuis Mirabeau jusqu'à Henri René Garaud. Comme l'auteur l'indique lui-même, son but n'est pas universitaire. Il n'entend pas proposer une recherche savante sur l'histoire de la rhétorique, mais offrir le témoignage d’un grand praticien de la parole. Le livre de G. Collard témoigne de l’intérêt de l'auteur pour la rhétorique et pour l'histoire de celle-ci, vue comme une source d'inspiration pour le présent. Il manifeste une approche du sujet, qui, sans être érudite, est profonde, parce qu'elle s'étend à l'histoire, à la morale, à la littérature. G. Collard est un orateur qui pense que la pratique oratoire doit être fondée sur le travail, la méthode, la culture, qui a des exordes prêts d'avance (comme Démosthène!), qui lit Montaigne et les poètes et qui veut réhabiliter la rhétorique dans des milieux (il y en a) où elle n'a pas bonne presse. Son témoignage est important. Laurent Pernot Université de Strasbourg II ...
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Abstract
This article reviews studies on Ramus amd Ramism published between 1987 and 2000 under the headings: Biographical and General Studies, Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Scientific, and Ramism, this latter subdivided by geographical areas. It finds that the study of Ramus is in a very healthy state, particularly through international collaboration, though there are still considerable problems for scholars in securing access to the different versions of his works. Ramus is now presented primarily as a teacher and educationalist. The debate about Ramus's "humanism" has produced new work on his classical commentaries. Attempts have been made to achieve better definitions of Ramism.
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Abstract
Describes how the author uses reading response journals in her composition classes. Shows how it actively engages students in the reading/writing process, and how students learn careful, active reading and develop confidence generating ideas and formulating opinions via the structure, freedom, enhanced comprehension, critical thinking, and confidence that these reading response journals offer.
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Abstract
Reviews four books: Reading Poverty, by Patrick Shannon; Race, Rhetoric, and Composition, ed. by Keith Gilyard; Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention, by Cynthia L. Selfe; Critical Thinking, Thoughtful Writing: A Rhetoric with Readings, by John Chaffee with Christine McMahon and Barbara Stout
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Abstract
Visual metadiscourse can provide design criteria for authors when considering the needs and expectations of readers. The linguistic concept of metadiscourse is expanded from the textual realm to the visual realm, where authors have many necessary design considerations as they attempt to help readers navigate through and understand documents. These considerations, both textual and visual, also help construct the ethos of authors, as design features reveal awareness of visual literacy and of the communication context. Visual metadiscourse complements textual metadiscourse in emphasizing the necessity of rhetoric in technical communication.
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Abstract
In the spring of 1998, Richard Leo Enos, as chair of the Lorraine Sherley lecture series, invited James Kinneavy and Linda Ferreira-Buckley to speak to the faculty and students at Texas Christian University. As a graduate student working on a dissertation involving kairos and American literature, I saw in Professor Kinneavy's arrival a significant opportunity to clarify some of the ideas I had been considering. In particular, I had read Kinneavy's article on kairos as a Neglected Concept and saw in his ideas a great potential for the integration of literary and rhetorical studies. Nonetheless, I felt Professor Kinneavy had failed to address fully the transcendental aspect of kairos (best articulated by Paul Tillich) that, I felt, was central to the type of interdisciplinary work I was interested in pursuing. When I approached Kinneavy at TCU, then, I was, truth be told, on a naive mission to right a wrong I felt he had committed. Needless to say, I was quickly disabused of my perception. Professor Kinneavy and I began a conversation on the complexities of kairos, and he carefully illustrated the significance of the term to both rhetoric and literature. Most importantly Kinneavy asserted that kairos was transcendent in that it worked across culture lines and that it offered a subtle way of addressing the situations in which rhetoric is born. Indeed, kairos, he argued, actually explained how rhetoric was born. He felt the term expressed how certain cultural movements and conditions united with special moments to create ripe times for the rhetorical act. In this way kairos was a cornerstone for rhetoric. When Professor Kinneavy left TCU, he and I began a dialogue through email and phone that culminated in the interview printed here for the first time. The interview was conducted at his home in Austin, Texas, in August 1998 and was initially meant simply as background research for my dissertation and an article I was writing. My hope for the interview was that Professor Kinneavy would expand upon his idea of kairos and that he would clarify his position in relation to those of other theorists.