“Our findings suggest that the FDA’s deliberative procedures may more adequately capture stakeholder testimony were it to incorporate a pre-hearing event wherein all parties agree to definitions for key points.”

This study examines the corporate environmental reports of 100 companies listed in the 2009 Fortune 1000 in order to illustrate how this type of genre communicates a green corporate ethos to audience members who are trying to distinguish between greenwashing tactics and true environmental concerns. The authors analyze how corporate environmental reports are constructed at macro and micro discursive levels to promote a socially responsible image to in-group (e.g., employees and stockholders) and out-group (e.g., consumers) members. The results of the analysis show how these reports use ideological persuasion to influence or change audience members’ opinions about corporate environmental sustainability.

Using Colin Powell's 2003 pre-war speech to the UN as a case study, this essay illustrates ways in which discourse analytic methods can serve investigations of constitutive rhetoric. Prior to the speech, Powell's reluctance to go to war and his skepticism of the need for military action in Iraq was well known. His conversion to the administration's position was key to the persuasiveness of the speech. Thus, within the speech he needed to reconstitute his ethos from doubter to advocate. The analysis focuses on how specific linguistic qualities such as modality, positioning, narrative, and evaluation assist Powell in doing so. These discourse analytic tools reveal ways in which discrete linguistic moves contribute to the constitutive work of ethos formation and re-formation.

This study considers how adolescents compose historical arguments, and it identifies theoretically grounded predictors of the quality of their essays. Using data from a larger study on the effects of a federally funded Teaching American History grant on student learning, we analyzed students’ written responses to document-based questions at the 8th grade ( n = 44) and the 11th ( n = 47). We report how students use evidence (a hallmark of historical thinking), how students structure their historical arguments, and what kinds of argumentative strategies they use when writing about historical controversies. In general, better writers cite more evidence in their arguments than weaker writers, and older students demonstrate how to situate evidence in ways that are consistent with the discipline. Both the structure of students’ arguments and their use of evidence were predictive of the overall quality of their essays. Finally, students’ use of argumentation strategies revealed patterns relevant to the historical topic and sources in question, as well as to differences related to writing skill. In our sample, better writers used strategies based on facts and evidence from the documents more so than weaker writers and demonstrated the capacity to contextualize and corroborate evidence in their arguments.

Three studies examined the “myside bias” in reasoning, evaluating written arguments, and writing argumentative essays. Previous research suggests that some people possess a fact-based argumentation schema and some people have a balanced argumentation schema. I developed reliable Likert scale instruments (1-7 rating) for these constructs and conducted an evaluation of instrument validity and reliability. A myside bias in argumentative essays was predicted by the fact-based and balanced argumentation schema instruments using these individual-difference measures. Strength of opinion predicted the myside bias in generating reasons but not in writing argumentative essays. There was a weak but significant correlation between the myside bias in generating reasons and writing argumentative essays. In evaluating written arguments, the fact-based schema instrument predicted agreement and quality ratings for claims supported by factual but not nonfactual reasons. Ratings of the quality of rebutted arguments were predicted by the measures of individual differences in argumentation schemata.

Jon McKenzie , University of Wisconsin-Madison Enculturation : http://enculturation.net/smart-media ( Published: September 27, 2012 ) This special section of Enculturation features four sets of experimental media projects produced at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, three by English students enrolled in different courses I have taught over the past several years and one recent experiment of my own. As indicated in the short descriptions provided by their producers, these projects vary in content, form, medium, and function, but all can be understood as emerging scholarly genres—or what we’re calling at UW-Madison smart media . At a time when bookstores are closing, when the MLA is questioning the monograph as the dominant model for dissertations, a time when academic publishers are grappling with the many challenges posed by the web, it is little wonder that smart media such as TED talks, theory comix, video essays, and interactive installations have emerged. Smart media supplement the traditional scholarly genres of book, article, and conference paper, adding elements closely identified with new media: digital images, video, and sound, as well as interactivity. These emerging scholarly genres mix ideas and affects, logos and graphe . If, as Jacques Derrida, Gregory Ulmer, and others have long argued, logocentric writing marginalizes graphe , smart media turns on the high-res display, cranks up the volume, and plays with the inputs and outputs. Writing in no way disappears: it remains a crucial though reinscribed track in a multimedia composition—or rather, design . For design is to digital media what composition is to writing: a craft that can be learned and taught, one that has a long history yet still produces surprises, amazement, and, admittedly, at times clichés and boredom. At UW-Madison, I direct DesignLab , a new design support center for student media projects that works closely with the Libraries (where it is institutionally situated), our central IT…

Abstract This essay recovers the emergence of teachers’ union rhetoric through an analysis of Margaret Haley’s address to the National Education Association convention of 1904. Entitled "Why Teachers Should Organize," Haley’s speech was the first call for a national effort to unionize U.S. classroom teachers. Promising not just material but also professional advancement, Haley broke new rhetorical ground in St. Louis by advocating unionism as a professional duty. Through a close reading of her argumentation, I contend that Haley positioned democracy at the center of teachers’ union rhetoric. To make unionism appealing for her audience of schoolteachers and administrators, Haley paired the democratic goals of progressivism with the democratic potential of labor. Appealing to the commitment to democracy shared by educators, progressives, and labor activists, Haley’s speech was the first to outline the union rhetoric that would transform public education over the course of the twentieth century.

Abstract The relationship between William James and the stoics remains an enigma. He was clearly influenced by reading Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus throughout his career. Some work has been done on the thematic convergences between Jamesian pragmatism and stoic thought, but this study takes a different path. I argue that the rhetorical style that James uses in arguing for his moral claims in front of popular audiences can be better understood if we see it in light of the stoic style of argumentation. I look at a text James read closely and recommended to close acquaintances—Marcus Aurelius's Meditations—to extract a sense of stoic rhetorical style. James's use of the stoic's tactics of vivid examples and rhetorical questions to shape the rhetorical experience of his audience and to thereby make his points becomes understandable as a possible extension of the stoic style of persuasion.

Abstract It does not seem terribly unfair to say that studies of both rhetoric and dialogue have tended, by and large, to pass over listening in favor of speaking. In scholarly as well as quotidian parlance, it would appear that both rhetoric and dialogue are principally concerned with speech, banishing listening to the silent subservience of rhetoric's other. Whichever way it is glossed—as rhetoric, dialogue, language, or argumentation—the Western conception of logos emphasizes speaking at the expense of listening (Fiumara 1990). And the problem with conceiving of logos in terms of speech and speaking is not only that it ignores the importance of listening but also that it obscures how listening makes the ethical response possible. Drawing on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, this article examines the ethical exigency of the face and its relation to primordial discourse in order to disclose the otherwise hidden ethical significance of listening and its vocation as a form of co-constitutive communicative action that can “listen persons to speech.”

In 1837, Margaret Prior became the first female missionary for the American Female Moral Reform Society. She traveled throughout the poorest neighborhoods in New York City’ entering barrooms, brothels, and sickrooms. Based on an analysis of Prior’s missionary reports, published in the society’s periodical and included in her memoir, this essay shows how Prior exerted an ethos of presence. Her willingness to traverse the seediest sections of the city, call on any person, and address any need exerted a powerful ethos in the communities she served and among the audiences who read and heard about her efforts.

Book Review| June 01 2012 Cogent Science in Context: The Science Wars, Argumentation Theory, and Habermas Cogent Science in Context: The Science Wars, Argumentation Theory, and Habermas. William Rehg. Joseph Rhodes Joseph Rhodes Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2012) 15 (2): 390–393. https://doi.org/10.2307/41940584 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Joseph Rhodes; Cogent Science in Context: The Science Wars, Argumentation Theory, and Habermas. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 June 2012; 15 (2): 390–393. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41940584 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2012 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2012 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

This article develops a multimodal model for how claims and evidence work across linguistic, numeric, and visual modes in the professional writing of environmental scientists. I coded and analyzed two reports (Bacey & Barry, 2008 Bacey , J. , & Barry , T. ( 2008 ). A comparison study of the proper use of Hester-Dendy® samplers to achieve maximum diversity and population size of benthic macroinvertebrates Sacramento Valley, California (Report No. EH08-2) . Sarcramento , CA : California Environmental Protection Agency . [Google Scholar]; Levine et al., 2005 Levine , J. , Kim , D. , Goh , K. S. , Ganapathy , C. , Hsu , J. , Feng , H. , & Lee , P. ( 2005 ). Surface and ground water monitoring of pesticides used in the Red Imported Fire Ant Control Program (Report EH05-02) . Sacramento , CA : California Environmental Protection Agency . [Google Scholar]) written by research scientists working for California's Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) by applying concepts from studies of argument, genre, and visual representations in science. The claim-evidence patterns show initial and summative claims as well as warrants being presented in linguistic forms; however, supporting evidence (i.e., data and backing) is found in numeric, visual, and linguistic forms. These findings highlight the need to extend Toulmin's understanding of claim-evidence relationships into a more robust multimodal model.

AbstractIn this article the author offers a reading of mimetic style (lexis) as it is presented in book 3 of Plato's Republic with the aim of disclosing the importance of style in the acquisition and employment of knowledge—whether scientific or ethical. In fact, the author argues that a careful reading of Socrates' words in the text occasions the idea that reflection on the way that we imitate our inherited content—the ethos, the comportment, in which we exhibit that content—makes visible a potential to appropriate received content and imitated knowledge in original and wakeful ways. In consequence, the author argues that it might be style, not content, that harbors the capacity for us to take a genuine, critical responsibility for our inherited concepts.

This essay examines the role of rural citizens in the social fabric of ancient Italy and the redefinition of the rural by the mightiest orator of that time: Marcus Tullius Cicero. This redefinition created a novel form of ethos, a rural civic ethos, apparent in the valuing of Arpinum in The Laws and in the rural character of Sextus Roscius in Pro Sextus Roscius. Rural civic ethos is further developed through an analysis of Cicero's dual identity as rustic and urbane, trained according to the oratorical style of the city yet maintaining an allegiance to the landscapes and peoples of Arpinum.

One of the most distinctive stylistic virtues of speechwriting is characterization, the art of capturing a client’s voice in a believable and engaging manner. This article examines characterization in the context of corporate communication, interweaving an interview with veteran executive speechwriter Alan Perlman with accounts from the ancient rhetorical tradition. As the analysis shows, Perlman’s approach to characterization confirms long-standing rhetorical wisdom yet incorporates insights that reflect the contemporary corporate context in which he has worked. The analysis also calls attention to enduring tensions in characterization—tensions between imitation and representation, effectiveness and ethics, and dramatic character and trustworthy ethos.

This study explores how different kinds of arguments are situated in academic contexts and provides an analysis of undergraduate writing assignments. Assignments were collected from the schools of business, education, engineering, fine arts, and interdisciplinary studies as well as the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences in the College of Arts and Science. A total of 265 undergraduate writing assignments from 71 courses were analyzed. Assignments were reliably categorized into these major categories of argumentative writing: explicitly thesis-driven assignments, text analysis, empirical arguments, decision-based arguments, proposals, short answer arguments, and compound arguments. A majority of writing assignments (59%) required argumentation. All engineering writing assignments required argumentation, as did 90% in fine arts, 80% of interdisciplinary assignments, 72% of social science assignments, 60% of education assignments, 53% in natural science, 47% in the humanities, and 46% in business. Argumentation is valued across the curriculum, yet different academic contexts require different forms of argumentation.

Using archival admissions records and case histories of patients at a British asylum from the 1860s to the 1870s, the authors examine the medical certification process leading to the asylum confinement of individuals judged to be “of unsound mind.” These institutional texts are, the authors suggest, “occult genres” that function as complex acts of argumentation, whose illocutionary force depends on the success of their felicity conditions. Through the lens of Austin’s concept of “uptake,” the authors analyze the role of medical certification in the admissions history of two patients at Ticehurst House Asylum in the 1860s-1870s. The authors contend that historical genre analysis plays an important role in the rhetoric of medicine and health, shedding light on the performative power of medical certification, an act essential to the practice of psychiatry.

This article reports my classroom-based qualitative research, conducted at a midwestern university, on the role of World Englishes in the ethos transformation of U.S. native English-speaking students. The 30 participants completed assignments that enhanced their understanding of how the English language affects discursive tasks in international audience adaptation. Efforts at internationalizing technical communication can benefit immensely from the inclusion of the World Englishes paradigm in training programs to account for students' language attitudes.

A brief review of composition theory shows metaphor is often underused and misrepresented in the composition classroom; in response, I suggest metaphor is foundationalto argumentation and provide a method to teach it as such.

Abstract The Stoic is often seen as the forerunner of Adam Smith's market man of morals, but others have suggested that the sophist played a role in the formation of market morality and political economy. This article traces Smith's treatment of ancient sophists and his use of the term sophistry in the Wealth of Nations. Smith praised ancient sophists for their effective didactic oratory and their ability to make money through teaching. Smith criticized arguments as sophistic when they promoted monetary advantage for a few over and above the principle of competition. This varied reception of sophists and sophistry suggests a keen understanding of the rhetorical tradition and its capacity to influence the development of the discourse of political economy. Smith's use of sophistry and reference to the sophists invites a deeper awareness of the essential vitality of effective argumentation for Smith's “system of natural liberty.”

Scholars in rhetoric are increasingly attentive to the power of places and spaces to shape rhetorical performance. This article takes up the connection between ethos and location identified by several recent scholars, arguing that affiliation with and representation of material environments plays a crucial role in ethos. Ethos strategies are further shaped by genres, which are theorized as locations and environments in order to capture a fundamental dynamic between strategy and social norm. To demonstrate the strengths of understanding ethos in relation to both geographical and genre location, I analyze the ethos-maneuvers of Mary Austin, prominent early twentieth-century feminist, activist, and nature writer whose thirty-year public career merits attention from rhetorical scholars. In articulating how genre shapes Austin's efforts to develop her location in the deserts of the American West into a persuasive public ethos, I argue that ethos emerges in genre-specific formations.

This essay considers how Virginia Woolf's personal and social anti-Semitism disrupts creation of a stable ethos in her political tract, Three Guineas. The article uses De Man's concept of blindness and insight to interrogate Woolf's own ideological blindness and forwards liminality as a frame within which to understand ethos in this work.

Recent rhetorical accounts of mental illness tend to suggest that psychiatric disability limits rhetorical participation. This article extends that research by examining how one group of the psychiatrically disabled—those diagnosed with mood disorders—is using a particular narrative genre to engender participation, what I call the mood memoir. I argue here that mood memoirs can be read as narrative-based responses to the rhetorical exclusion suffered by the psychiatrically disabled. This study employs narrative and genre theory to reveal mood memoirists’ tactics for generating ethos in the face of the stigma of mental illness.

This essay explores how the “heat of composition” is inexorably linked to ethos and also how writers, student or otherwise, might seek to create and intensify pleasure through a sustained textual becoming. I consider how this ethics of affect is an unfolding, an exteriorization of the intensities and forces of becoming writers, student or otherwise, who engage with the movements of desire.

This case study investigates how a group of novice technical communicators used appeals to support their design decisions during group meetings. The results of this ethnographic study suggest that although these technical communicators were well acquainted with user-centered design (UCD) concepts and claimed to actively practice UCD, their appeals often did not reference data collected within user-centered research and instead referenced designer-centric appeals to support their claims. This group’s overall use of appeals to support their design decisions suggests that more empirical study into UCD theory and practice as well as students’ argumentation skills is warranted.

At a search marketing company, each search engine optimization (SEO) specialist writes up to 10 to 12 complex 20-page monthly reports in the first ten business days of each month. These SEO specialists do not consider themselves to be writers, yet they generate these structurally and rhetorically complex reports as a matter of course, while negotiating a constantly changing landscape of a contingent, rapidly changing business sector. Under these conditions, how did the SEO specialists manage to write these reports so quickly and so well? What is the standing set of transformations that they enact in order to develop and produce these reports? And given the multiple contingencies, rapid changes, and high individual discretion at this organization—seemingly a recipe for discohesive practices—how did they maintain and develop this standing set of transformations in order to turn out consistent reports? In this article, I draw on writing, activity, and genre research (WAGR) to examine how Semoptco’s SEO specialists produced monthly reports, specifically in terms of their constant networking, audience analysis, and ethos building. Finally, I draw implications for applying WAGR to knowledge work organizations.

This article analyzes the impact of the design of the Medicare handbook and website on individuals' ability to make effective decisions about prescription drug coverage. The article summarizes Medicare Part D, discusses the characteristics of potential enrollees, and provides an overview of document-based decision making. It uses a rhetorical framework to evaluate the Medicare documents as decision-making tools, arguing that design flaws hinder users'understanding, discourage them from taking appropriate action, and negatively shape perceptions of ethos. The article concludes by discussing implications for functional documents more generally, underscoring the importance of a design cycle that is both user-centered and performance-centered.

Steven Katz's “The Ethic of Expediency” has become a reference point for discussions of ethics since its 1992 publication. Previously, this author assessed Katz's rhetorical analysis of Nazi technical communication against current research on the Holocaust and noted that scholarship suggests ideology rather than technological expediency as its motivating force. Yet implicit in the author's critique are two remaining questions, namely: What other rhetorical interpretations may be possible of the SS technical memo analyzed by Katz? And is Katz, who makes broad generalizations about Western rhetoric based on a single document, supported by examples of other Nazi technical communications? This article explores alternate interpretations of the SS memo suggested by the arguments of Rivers and Moore; presents the author's view that the Katz thesis decontextualizes the memo and that historical context argues for a primarily ideological ethos; and reviews sources for English translations of other Nazi documents.

Abstract U.S. government agencies are collaborating with outside scholars to untangle disparate threads of knotty technoscientific issues, in part by integrating structured debating exercises into institutional decision-making processes such as intelligence assessment and public policy planning. These initiatives drive up demand for rhetoricians with skill and experience in what Protagoras called dissoi logoi—the practice of airing multiple sides of vexing questions for the purpose of stimulating critical thinking. In the contemporary milieu, dissoi logoi receives concrete expression in the tradition of intercollegiate switch-side debating, a form of structured argumentation categorized by some as a cultural technology with weighty ideological baggage. What exactly is that baggage, and how does it implicate plans to improve institutional decision making by drawing from rhetorical theory and expertise? Exploration of how switch-side debating meets demand-driven rhetoric of science not only sheds light on this question, but also contributes to the burgeoning scholarly literature on deliberative democracy, inform argumentation studies, and suggest new avenues of inquiry in rhetorical theory and practice.

The history of American imperialism, as well as China’s strong presence on the contemporary global scene, should encourage American scholars of rhetoric to look beyond the nation-state and study other rhetorical traditions such as Chinese practices of argument. A debate during the Western Han dynasty over the country’s economic policies illustrates how official-orators discursively engaged one another while representing various philosophical orientations. This debate also reminds us of how important the values of humanity, empathy, and responsibility should be in contemporary rhetorical education.

In this paper I analyze strategies policy scientists use to bolster their ethos with American policymakers and the public in the International Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Working Group I Summary for Policy Makers (SPM), from their Fourth Assessment Report released in 2007. Specifically, I treat the visualizations of computer climate models included in the SPM as technologies that the IPCC authors used to re-integrate their paradoxical ethos: commissioned to give policy guidance on the basis of their scientific reputation, these authors nevertheless field ethical attacks if their guidance runs counter to prevailing political winds. The visualizations perform continuity between the authors' traditional scientific ethos and their policy ethos. They also shift the locus of persuasion in the SPM from ethical questions to appeals to values and logic (e.g. the results of the climate models).

Research Article| January 01 2010 Perelman’s Theory of Argumentation and Natural Law Francis J. Mootz III Francis J. Mootz III William S. Boyd School of Law University of Nevada, Las Vegas Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Philosophy & Rhetoric (2010) 43 (4): 383–402. https://doi.org/10.5325/philrhet.43.4.0383 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Francis J. Mootz III; Perelman’s Theory of Argumentation and Natural Law. Philosophy & Rhetoric 1 January 2010; 43 (4): 383–402. doi: https://doi.org/10.5325/philrhet.43.4.0383 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressPhilosophy & Rhetoric Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © Copyright 2010 The Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University. All rights reserved.Copyright 2010 The Pennsylvania State UniversityThe Pennsylvania State University Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: ARTICLES You do not currently have access to this content.

Research Article| January 01 2010 Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s “On Temporality as a Characteristic of Argumentation”:Commentary and Translation Michelle K. Bolduc; Michelle K. Bolduc Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google David A. Frank David A. Frank Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Philosophy & Rhetoric (2010) 43 (4): 308–336. https://doi.org/10.5325/philrhet.43.4.0308 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Michelle K. Bolduc, David A. Frank; Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s “On Temporality as a Characteristic of Argumentation”:Commentary and Translation. Philosophy & Rhetoric 1 January 2010; 43 (4): 308–336. doi: https://doi.org/10.5325/philrhet.43.4.0308 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressPhilosophy & Rhetoric Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2010 The Pennsylvania State University. All rights reserved.2010The Pennsylvania State University Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Engaging the term rhetoricity, which refers both to Cultural Literacy as text and cultural literacy as concept, Cook claims that the most productive pedagogical component of Hirsch's proposal—the sophisticated rhetorical sensibility on which the entire conceptual edifice of cultural literacy depends—was obfuscated by the book's lightening-rod ethos, its deceptively simple veneer, and its smugly casual presumption to name “what every American needs to know.”

Rhetorical invention is the principal source of politics and ethics as contemporary theories from various disciplines demonstrate. The complex reflexive relationship among politics, ethics, and invention demands ethical responsibility, requiring rhetoricians (who hold a key to this subject) to acknowledge and attend to their ethos, used here in the classical sense of ethos as “gathering place.”

The authors describe their individual and collective experiences reconstructing their New Orleans-based university composition program in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. They emphasize how the concept of floating foundations helps account for changes in their students’ interests, and they suggest that this idea is applicable to the work of writing instructors in general.

Discussions of intellectual property are often the focus of rhetoric and composition research, and the question of textual origins grounds these discussions. Through an examination of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia anyone can edit, this essay addresses disciplinary concerns about textual origins and intellectual property through a discussion of situated and constructed ethos.

Our article seeks to integrate alternative voices into traditional rhetorical study by turning to Bitch and BUST, two mainstream zines that serve as dynamic examples of young women’s rhetoric in action. We believe these zines are shaping the present and future of women’s rhetoric. Their most significant contribution to the understanding of women’s rhetoric is located in the way they accommodate ethotic constructions that are at once contradictory and complementary. While these texts can seem abrasive and perhaps even outrageous, the ways in which the writers shape their ethe can teach rhetoricians and teachers of rhetoric and writing about the modes of argumentation practiced by this subculture of the current feminist movement, one which is firmly grounded in the larger public sphere.

Based on an ethnographic study of a writing course taught by a talented instructor who integrated process and critical pedagogy approaches, I argue that many students actively engage with the concerns of critical pedagogy when the classroom ethos strongly supports their agency’ their ownership of their developing ideas and texts.

This article examines the various uses to which Stephen Toulmin has been put in composition studies. It presents data on citations of Toulmin in nine journals, considers appeals to Toulmin in several strains of composition scholarship, and argues that composition scholars ought to attend more carefully to Toulmin’s later works.

The purpose of this article is to advance the discussion of kairos by developing it as a theory of divine timing. While some critics have noted kairos' potential for understanding “God's time,” we lack a grounding of this interpretation in the close analysis of religious texts. This paper does so and asserts that kairos can be understood not only as a hermeneutic for considering temporal constraints, but also as a theory for the production of revelatory discourse and its political implications. Ultimately, the article tries to enrich our comprehension of kairos (a figure we thought we had understood) by examining an unknown text from Martin Luther King Jr. (an orator we thought we had read) as a foray into an area of our discipline that we have neglected to develop: the rhetoric of revelation.

In 1838, Mary Gove (Nichols) began lecturing on anatomy and physiology, a rhetorical act that was both new and risky because public discussion of the human body and disease was believed inappropriate for women. In order to protect her ethos, Gove used her ostensibly informative lectures to promote her reform agenda, by implying that her audience already shared her beliefs in women's right to physiological knowledge and their obligation to use that knowledge to reform society. Rather than relying only on the conventional advice to construct one's ethos based on the audience's existing values, Gove also crafted her audience's ethos, describing her listeners in ways that emphasized values conducive to her reform agenda. Her use of this strategy suggests that an audience's acceptance of nontraditional speakers is not simply a matter of “letting” them speak; it also means, to some degree, acknowledging the alternative values they represent.

Genred documents facilitate collaboration and workplace practices in many ways—particularly in the medical workplace. This article represents a portion of a larger grounded investigation of how medical professionals invoke a wide range of rhetorical strategies when deliberating about complex patient cases during weekly, multidisciplinary deliberations called Tumor Board meetings. Specifically, the author explores the role of one key document in oncological practice, the Standard of Care document. Each Standard of Care document (one for every known cancer) presents a set of national guidelines intended to standardize the treatment of cancer. Tumor Board participants invoke these guidelines as evidence for or against particular future action. In order to better understand how genred, generalizable guidelines like Standard of Care documents afford decision making amid uncertainty, the author conducts a temporal and contextual analysis of the document's use during deliberations as well as a modified Toulminian analysis of a representative sample. Results suggest that, while on its own the document achieves an authoritative, charter-like purpose, it fails to make explicit a link between individual patients' experiences and the profession's expectations for how to act. Implications for how genred, generalizable guidelines—given the way they encourage certain ways of seeing over others—organize and authorize work are discussed, and a modified Toulminian approach to understanding the relationship between claim and evidence in multimodal texts is modeled.

Since 1992, Steven Katz's “The Ethic of Expediency” on the rhetoric of technical communication during the Holocaust has become a reference point for discussions of ethics. But how does his thesis compare to current understandings of the Holocaust? As this article describes, Katz was in step with the trend two decades ago to universalize the lessons of the genocide but his thesis presents key problems for Holocaust scholars today. Against his assertion that pure technological expediency was the ethos of Nazi Germany, current scholarship emphasizes the role of ideology. Does that invalidate his thesis? Katz's analysis of rhetoric and his universalizing application to the Holocaust are two claims that may be considered separately. Yet even if one does not agree that “expediency” is inherent in Western rhetoric, Katz has raised awareness that phronesis is socially constructed so that rhetoric can be unethically employed. Thus, rather than remain an uncritically accepted heuristic for technical communicators, “The Ethic of Expediency” can be a starting point for ongoing exploration into the ethical and rhetorical dimensions of the genre.

This article describes a cognitive argumentation schema for written arguments and presents three empirical studies on the “myside” bias—the tendency to ignore or exclude evidence against one's position. Study 1 examined the consequences of conceding, rebutting, and denying other-side information. Rebuttal led to higher ratings of agreement and quality and better impressions of the author than when the same arguments excluded other-side information (i.e., exhibited the myside bias). In Study 2, claims had a significantly greater impact on agreement ratings and reasons had a significantly greater impact on quality ratings. When participants were given myside reasons supporting other-side claims, they acknowledged argument strength while making relatively minor changes in agreement. In Study 3, the authors found that a brief, theoretically motivated written tutorial was effective in improving undergraduate students' written argumentative essays by significantly increasing the precision of claims, improving the elaboration of reasons, and reducing the myside bias.

“The study of activity ceases to be the psychology of an individual, but instead focuses on the interaction between an individual, systems of artifacts, and other individuals in historically developing institutional settings” (Miettinen, 1997). As teaching technical writing online becomes more widespread, teachers and scholars are identifying ways to increase teaching/learning efficacy. One way of accomplishing this goal is by continually reflecting on different types of student ethos being constructed in an online course. The changes that occur in the ethos development process can be contextualized through activity theory, which emphasizes the dynamic, evolving nature of social environments. Activity theory's focus on cultural history and tools makes it ideal for exploring active communication among multiple participants in an online technical communication environment. The triangle of human activity adapted and developed by Engeström (1987) Engeström, Y. 1987. Learning by expanding: An activity theoretical approach to developmental research., Helsinki, Finland: Orienta-Konsultit Oy. [Google Scholar] provides a framework for exploring ethos as an object within an online course's activity system.

Phishing e-mails deceive individuals into giving out personal information which may then be utilized for identity theft. One particular type, the Personal Solicitation E-mail (PSE) mimics personal letters—modern perversions of ars dictaminis (the classical art of letter writing). In this article, I determine and discuss 19 appeals common to the PSE. These appeals were established first by conducting generative rhetorical analysis, then by volunteer coding, on 170 e-mails collected over a 12-month period. After defining these categories, I show how these letters are excellent twenty-first century teaching tools for pathos-based argumentation, logical appeals, the creation of ethos, and kairos in the development of perceived exigency.

Genre use entails a rhetorical response to an exigence in the writer's context. In one category of genres, which the author calls temporal genres, linear time constitutes a major exigence to which writers must respond. Temporal genres, such as annual reports and status reports, call for writers to publish texts because a certain amount of time has passed, even if they are not yet ready to do so. The first annual report of the Privacy Office of the Department of Homeland Security reveals an ineffective ethos and discontinuities between the mission of the office and that of the department. But the second annual report reveals a more effective ethos and greater harmony between the missions. This study shows how the requirement to report can force writers to decide existential issues of identity and mission.