Reviews 223 original ceremony nt Sancta Maria ad Martyres from language that reflects the architecture of the building, the movements of the presiding Pope (Boni­ face IV), the clergy, and the dramatization of God s voice in the words of the chant. Mary Carruthers and the contributors to this volume have produced an extraordinary collection of essays, rich and complex with thematic intercon­ nections and many avenues for further exploration. The overall arrangement illustrates ductus in invention, arrangement, and figurative motifs in the art of rhetoric across disciplinary lines, including composition, oratory, art, archi­ tecture, music, and liturgical performance. Many of the essays also include excellent visual illustrations. The editing is careful, though one system for translations, provided in the text of some essays and in the endnotes of others, would aid consistency. Nevertheless, readers will find Carruthers7 collection a remarkable resource not only for historical and textual studies, but also for insights into medieval culture, worship, and performance through the art of rhetoric. Elza C. Tiner Lynchburg College Marjorie Curry Woods, Classroom Commentaries: Teaching the Poetria nova across Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Text and Context 2), Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2010. xlii + 367 pp. ISBN 9780814211090. Making a well-timed appearance close to the publications of both Copeland and Sluiter's Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric (Oxford University Press, 2010) and Peter Mack's A History of Renaissance Rhetoric (Oxford Uni­ versity Press, 2011), Marjorie Curry Woods' new book helps us to imagine what took place in medieval and renaissance classes on the trivium. As her title suggests, Woods concentrates on commentaries written from the thir­ teenth through the seventeenth centuries on Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Poetria nova, a popular Latin poem extant in over two hundred manuscripts that taught students how to write poetry and prose. By "commentaries," Woods means an assortment of instructive materials from interlinear and marginal manuscript glosses to freestanding explanations, from anonymous interpre­ tations, such as the Early Commentary that Woods previously edited and translated (New York: Garland, 1985), to the works of well-known intellec­ tuals teaching in documentable circumstances. Woods inquires insightfully into what these commentaries meant for teaching grammar and rhetoric in western as well as central Europe, in elementary courses as well as in universities. The scope of this book is therefore daunting, but Woods deftly chooses particular commentaries and teachers that best exemplify the Poetria nova s 224 RHETORICA use. For instance, chapter 3 details Pace of Ferrara's humanist elaboration placing the Poetria nova amidst classical authorities and literatures, while chapter 4 emphasizes Dybinus of Prague's Aristotelian rhetorical interpreta­ tion. As Woods elucidates, such differing constructions show how variously the Poetria nova might function within European curricula: for Pace as an aid to intermediate students in construing literature, for Dybinus as a text for university students analyzing various models of rhetoric, and for others as a guide to dictamen or sermon composition. A reader can learn a substantial amount about intellectual history and educational scenarios from Woods. Such learning is possible because Woods writes in lucid, well-organized prose that appeals to both specialists and those interested more generally in the history of rhetoric and education. For the latter audience, her Preface clearly defines terms such as "accessus" and "lemmata" that will recur in describing the commentaries (xxxviii-xxxix). Further, she opens the book with fifteen plates illustrating the diversity of the commentaries and pro­ viding exempla for later chapters. Nine of these plates include the famous opening phrase of the Poetria nova ("Papa stupor mundi," or in English trans­ lation, "Holy Father, wonder of the world") that becomes the subject of so many speculations about Geoffrey's audience and purpose. Along with the manuscript illustrations, Woods provides copious translations of transcrip­ tions from commentaries. Sometimes the interjection of these visual aids can overwhelm Woods' discussion, for instance in the layout of versions of the Dybinus commentary (190- 208), but Woods' intention is to be generous with manuscript materials over which she has labored long, and indeed many readers would be challenged to assess the divergent points in the commentaries without these explicit side-by-side comparisons. Woods' presentation of manuscript transcriptions also offers doctoral students...

This study examined the role of word-level reading proficiency and verbal working memory in grade 4 and 5 students’ (N = 42; 23 boys) performance on a curriculum-based measure of narrative writing. Two outcomes were measured: correct minus incorrect word sequences (CMIWS; accurate-production of spelling and grammar in-text), and composition quality. CMIWS scores were moderately correlated with the holistic quality score. Word reading proficiency predicted CMIWS above and beyond the variance accounted for by gender, grade, handwriting automaticity, and working memory. Word reading proficiency also predicted composition quality controlling for gender and handwriting automaticity. Working memory, as measured by an updating task, was not a significant unique predictor of CMIWS or composition quality. Grade (5 > 4) and gender differences (girls > boys) were also found for CMIWS scores. Although handwriting automaticity was correlated with CMIWS scores and writing quality, it was not a unique predictor of either measure. The results provide further evidence of the sensitivity of the CMIWS index. They also highlight the importance of considering reading proficiency and handwriting automaticity when assessing children’s writing abilities and planning instruction for children with writing difficulties. Keywords: written expression; curriculum-based measures; reading; handwriting; gender

Beyond mechanics and spelling conventions, academic writing requires progressive mastery of advanced language forms and functions. Pedagogically useful tools to assess such language features in adolescents’ writing, however, are not yet available. This study examines language predictors of writing quality in 51 persuasive essays produced by high school students attending a linguistically and ethnically diverse inner-city school in the Northeastern United States. Essays were scored for writing quality by a group of teachers, transcribed and analyzed to generate automated lexical and grammatical measures, and coded for discourse-level elements by researchers who were blind to essays’ writing quality scores. Regression analyses revealed that beyond the contribution of length and lexico-grammatical intricacy, the frequency of organizational markers and one particular type of epistemic stance marker (i.e., epistemic hedges) significantly predicted persuasive essays’ writing quality. Findings shed light on discourse elements relevant for the design of pedagogically informative assessment tools.

This article focuses on the uses of the Early English Books Online (EEBO) database as a case study for how to introduce undergraduates to archival research. I provide four cases in which working with the digital archive has allowed my students to attend to variations in typography, spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and overall design in early modern printed texts. Working with the EEBO database challenges students to reconsider how a printed text represents a series of editorial choices; it encourages them to make persuasive claims about the differences in the appearance of an early modern lyric or dramatic text when it is situated in different contexts; it enhances the students’ ability to work independently and derive pleasure from the serendipity of the archive; and perhaps most important, it can actually help students develop a clearer and more effective practice of close reading in the twenty-first century.

The aim of this study was to analyze the consequences of emotion during narrative writing in accordance with Hayes’s model. In this model, motivation and affect have an important role during the writing process. Moreover, according to the emotion-cognition literature, emotions are thought to create interferences in working memory, resulting in an increase of cognitive load. Following Cuisinier and colleagues, fourth and fifth graders were instructed to write autobiographical narratives with neutral emotional content, positive emotional content, and negative emotional content. The results did not indicate an effect of emotional instructions on the proportion of spelling errors, but they did reveal an effect on the text length. However, a simple regression analysis showed a correlation between working memory capacity and the number of spelling errors in the neutral condition only. The potential influence of cognitive load created by emotion on the writing process is discussed.

Problem: One of the biggest problems with student and novice writing is that it often lacks clear organization and a coherent structure. However, it is difficult for newer writers to conceptualize a clear structure prior to writing a first draft. Thus, there is a need for an effective process to help writers revise early drafts with a particular focus on organizational clarity. Key concepts: Two concepts underlie this issue. The first is revision, which is the process of changing text to better achieve the writer's goals and serve the reader's needs. Two general categories of revision exist: a comprehensive edit (a thorough review of content, organization, visual design, style, illustrations, accessibility, and reuse to best serve readers) and a copyedit (a review of proper adherence to accepted language standards, which includes attention to grammar, spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure). The second is organizational structure (the arrangement and relationship of ideas), which is critical to help readers understand and use the information in the document. Key lessons: A reverse outline-a process that helps improve document structure and organization from an early draft-was developed to help writers make the organizational structure of an existing document to assess and improve the structure in a subsequent revision explicit. Reverse outlining has four steps: (1) identifying and listing discourse topics from a written draft, (2) arranging the discourse topics into an outline, (3) assessing the structure for appropriateness to audience and purpose, and (4) creating the new structure, modifying content where necessary, and adding headings, bullets, overview statements, and other advanced organizers. The reverse outlining process has been used extensively in the classroom and in the workplace.

Reviews 439 century (p. 517). Can we also conclude that classical early modern philos­ ophy did contain a (hidden) philosophy or philosophies of rhetoric in the sense of attempts to justify rhetoric? This question is important, especially with respect to Descartes and Spinoza. The answer must be negative. The results clearly show that rhetoric does not contribute to the meaning of signs in the work of these authors. Only Bacon, who grew up under nearly ideal circumstances with respect to humanist education and rhetoric, arrives at something like a philosophical theory of rhetoric. To a much lesser extend, this can still be said with respect to Hobbes, who is much more than Bacon a critic of rhetoric, but still in search of an new rhetoric. In Descartes and Spinoza we still find rhetorical education and many reflections on rhetoric (it is one of the great merits of this book to have shown this). At the same time they were convinced that rhetoric constrains the expressive power of language. The conclusion must be that the way the early modern thinkers distinguish between res and verbiuu prevents them from providing a pow­ erful theory of meaning which is the cornerstone of a philosophy of rhetoric. Not a prejudice against rhetoric, but the idea that language only provides a deficient expression of thought proves to be inconsistent with the very idea of a philosophy of rhetoric. In Descartes and Spinoza these effects are enforced by the rationalist assumption that thought is a sphere of reality to which the mind has access independently of linguistic expressions. This book thus proves to be a strong contribution to the literature. Rothkamm enables us to see the real limitations of early modern rationalism with respect to rhetoric much clearer than before. Temilo van Zantwijk Friedrich-Schiller-Universitat Jena Christopher D. Johnson, Hyperboles: The Rhetoric of Excess in Baroque Literature and Thought. Cambridge: Harvard Studies in Comparative Lit­ erature, 2010. 695 pp. ISBN: 9780674053335 According to Christopher Johnson the hyperbole is the "most infamous of tropes, whose name most literary criticism does not praise, and whose existence the history of philosophy largely ignores" (1). As a result of this neglect "no full-scale defense has been made of the Baroque's most Baroque figure. This book aims to remedy that lack" (16). And what a remedy it is. To say that this is a study on a grand scale is certainly not hyperbolic. In nearly 700 pages Johnson "moves from the history of rhetoric to the extravagances of lyric and then through the impossibilities of drama and the aporias of philosophy" (521). The grand scope of Hyperboles is made necessary by the protean role of hyperbole in discourse: "as a discursive figure integral to the success of classical and Renaissance epic, Shakespearian tragedy, Pascalian apology, as 440 RHETORICA well as the viability of the Cartesian method, it can be narrative, dialogic, or structural" (8). Thus hyperbole is no mere figure of speech but rather, says Johnson, following the lead of Kenneth Burke, it is "a 'master trope,' one that vies with metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony for our attention (3). Indeed, Burke's approach to the four "master tropes" in A Grammar of Motives might serve as a preview of Johnson's method in Hyperboles. Say Burke: "my primary concern with them here will not be with their purely figurative usage, but with their role in the discovery and description of 'the truth.' It is an evanescent moment that we shall deal with—for not only does the dividing line between tne figurative and the literal usages shift, but also the four trope shift into one another" (Grammar ofMotives, 503). The hyperbole, now rechristened a "master trope" supersedes the merely figurative. It is more than a stylistic device, so much more that at times it is difficult to say what a hyperbole is—or what it is not. It is a figurative element, to be sure, but hyperbole is also an argumentative tech­ nique, an inventional device, a philosophical critique, and ultimately a world view. In establishing the hyperbole a "master trope" Johnson begins with an examination of the place of hyperbole in the rhetorical theory of Aristotle...

This professional autobiography, covering the time from my first teaching job in Spain upto the present, documents my development as a teacher, teacher educator, and researcher,showing how my thinking about teaching has evolved through my deepeningunderstanding of how learners learn the grammar of a second language.

Writers typically produce their writing in bursts. In this article, the authors examine written language bursts in a sample of 33 children aged 11 years with specific language impairment. Comparisons of the children with specific language impairment with an age-matched group of typically developing children ( n = 33) and a group of younger, language skill–matched children ( n = 33) revealed the role of writing bursts as a key factor in differentiating writing competence. All the children produced the same number of writing bursts in a timed writing task. Children with specific language impairment produced a shorter number of words in each burst than did the age-matched group but the same as the language skill–matched group. For all groups, spelling accuracy and handwriting speed were significant predictors of burst length and text quality. The frequency of pauses at misspellings was related to shorter bursts. These results offer support to Hayes’s model of text generation; namely, burst length is constrained by language and transcription skills.

Reviews 325 much wider rhetorical practice or whether the Sophists offered any notable contribution to these fields. T.'s book is a worthy summary of Sophistic argumentation based on a painstaking analysis of a wide selection of available texts and lucid compar­ isons with modern parallels. Unfortunately, it does not consistently address the thorny (and possibly unresolvable) methodological question of what strategies and why we could call genuinely Sophistic, so he occasionaly seems to read Aristotelian or Platonic concepts back into sophistic texts. Sometimes the line of argument is not easy to follow due to the dense pre­ sentation of facts and the book also suffers from some irritating mistakes both in the English and the Greek spelling (e.g. pp. 35, 48 or 169). However, as a rich and perceptive reappraisal of primary evidence, the study will likely to provoke strong response and stimulate further studies on the Sophists not only in classical and modern rhetoric, but in philosophy as well. Gabor Tahin Burnham, England Pseudo-Dionigi di Alicarnasso, I discorsi figurati I e II (Ars Rhet. VIII e IX Us.-RadJ. Introduzione, Traduzione e Commento a cura di Stefano Dentice di Accadia, Pisa-Roma: Fabrizio Serra Editore (AION. Quaderni 14, 2010), 184 pp., ISBN 978-88-6227-220-9 Accompagnata da un'ampia Introduzione (pp. 11-50) e dal Commento (pp. 129-178), Stefano Dentice di Accadia (D.A.) propone nella collana AION. Quaderni (n. 14) la prima traduzione intégrale in italiano dei Discorsifigurati I e II (Ars Rhet. VIII e IX Us.-Rad. ) di ps.-Dionigi di Alicarnasso, basata sul testo edito, agli inizi del secolo scorso, da Usener e Radermacher (da cui D.A. si discosta in alcuni luoghi, come H vede dalla Tavola delle divergenze a p. 51), con un'ulteriore lettura del Parisinus Graecus 1741 e del suo apógrafo, il Guelferbytanus 14. L'idea di tradurre i due scritti nasce nell'àmbito degli studi di ricostruzione dell'esegesi omerica antica; l'impostazione del lavoro tende infatti a privilegiare l'aspetto della critica letteraria omerica rispetto a quello retorico. I due trattati, che analizzano una particolare técnica oratoria conosciu*a nell'antichità col nome di λόγοι ¿σχηματισμένοι, ossia un discorso in cui il pensiero non viene espresso in maniera diretta, ma in forma mascherata (come si legge nella definizione di Zoilo riportata da Febammone III, 44, 1-3 Spengel), rappresentano un unicum nella letteratura antica perché sono i soli scritti monografici nei quali la teoría è spiegata attraverso 1 analisi di esempi letterari tratti da autori greci (Omero, di cui si analizzano molti passi deïVIliade, Demostene, Euripide e Tucidide). I due trattati a e b costituiscono i capitoli VIII e IX di una Τέχνη ρητορική erróneamente attribuita a Dionigi di Alicarnasso, sulla cui paternité e datazione c'è ancora grande incertezza (si 326 RHETORICA tende a ritenere i due trattati composti tra la fine del I sec. e la prima meta del III sec. d.C., cf. Introd., p. 14 n. 19), un'opera che consiste in una raccolta di testi di retorica e di critica letteraria scollegati per lo piü tra loro, frutto di una collezione arbitraria di diversa provenienza. Potrebbe trattarsi, considerato 10 stile frettoloso e spesso inelegante delle due monografie, di testi scolastici, verosímilmente appunti dettati a vari allievi in momenti diversi (ipotesi contestata da M. Heath, Pseudo-Dionysios Art ofRhetoric 8-11: Figured Speech, Declamation and Criticism, «AJP» 124/1 [2003], pp. 81-105). D.A. non esclude che i due trattati possano essere opera del medesimo autore, né che si possano individuare mani diverse da un'opera all'altra o anche all'interno di uno stesso trattato (Introd., p. 15). L'lntroduzione si compone di un parágrafo (1) relativo alia storia della teoría antica del discorso e della causa figurati, di un parágrafo (2) dedicato all'importanza dei due trattati nel panorama del genere letterario in cui sono inquadrati, con l'illustrazione dei tre σχήματα (il parlare con tatto e decoro [μετ’ εύπρεπείας], il parlare 'per obliquo' [κατά πλάγιον], il parlare 'per contrario' [κατά τό εναντίον]) e un utile e dettagliato sunto (pp. 16-21), e di un parágrafo (3) che traccia uno status tpiaestionis degli studi sull'argomento. Nel penúltimo par...

In a letter of April, 1989, Kenneth Burke suggested that the process of writing A Grammar of Motives contributed significantly to the choice of identification as key term for A Rhetoric of Motives. Burke proposed two representative anecdotes for the study of the composing process of the Rhetoric: The story of the shepherd that appears in the Rhetoric and the story of some children who are born without the capacity to feel pain from the external world. If we follow out these leads, using the methodology of the Grammar to look at the work of writing the Rhetoric, Burke says that we will see how identification emerged as a “positive negative,” a program for negative thinking. We might also learn more about connections between the Grammar and the Rhetoric.

100 RHETORICA his audiences. He was also more interested in practical politics than Mon­ taigne, as registered in his careful representations of the rivalries and tempo­ rary alliances in the Henry VI and Henry IV plays, and later in the not wholly risible representation of the plebeians in Coriolanus, which he sets against the hero's uncompromising denunciations of popular rule. Shakespeare's larger interest in representing the nation leads Mack to focus on Falstaff as common man-appetitive, exploitative, cowardly, defiant, and comradely according to circumstances—the human embodiment of copia. For his part, the later Montaigne more soberly celebrates the sensual as well as the moral and intellectual Socrates: "(B) The most beautiful lives to my taste are those which conform to the common measure, (C) human and ordinate, without miracles though and (B) without rapture" (De I'experience, quoted p. 135). he final chapter, "Ethical issues in Montaigne and Shakespeare" is best described as Peter Mack's commonplace book. Here he addresses such topics as Death, Revenge, Sex and Marriage, Fathers and Children, and compares Montaigne's ruminations on these matters to Shakespeare's. Even seasoned hands will be struck not only by the resemblance of the ideas voiced by the two writers but also by the similarly multiple perspectives each idea elicits, further proof that the grammar school habit of arguing in utramque partem was, as Jonson might say, "turned to blood." Despite some local disappointments, Mack's book achieves the end of all good scholarship and criticism: it makes us want to get back to Montaigne and Shakespeare with newly inquisitive eyes. Joel B. Altman University of California, Berkelei/ Patricia Roberts-Miller, Fanatical Schemes: Proslaven/ Rhetoric and the Tragedy of Consensus, Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 2009. x + 286 pp. Cloth $38.95. ISBN 978-0-8173-1642-6. Paper $29.95. ISBN 978-0-8173-5653-8. Patricia Roberts-Miller's Fanatical Schemes is a capacious study of pro­ slavery thought in the south from 1835 through the coming of Civil War in 1861, though she sometimes glances backwards as far as the ancient world and forward to the Second World War and even occasionally the contempo­ rary United States. It also deals with psychological theory and fiction. Thus, this expansive book covers a lot of time and intellectual ground. There are many lines of argument running through this wide-ranging volume; the pri­ mary thrust is how proslavery rhetoric - often expressed in oratory, though often in print - shaped the course our nation traveled toward Civil War. "The tragedy of consensus" part of the subtitle is that proslavery rhetoric went too far and that led to the South's extremism and ultimate downfall. RobertsMiller presents one of the most comprehensive monographs in recent years Reviews 101 on the role of arguments and ideology in the coming war. Where historians have focused on the threat to the slave economy, the breakdown of the two party system, and the threat that slave labor posed to Northern free labor, Roberts-Miller argues that proslavery rhetoric explains (and even shaped) the movement towards war. (236) The book is set in motion by the abolitionist literature controversy of 1835, in which abolitionists used the US mails to distribute - or attempt to distribute - anti-slavery literature in the South. Vigilante groups and bon fires seem to have taken care of some, perhaps most, of the literature. However, many historians (and people at the time, too), blamed the abolitionists and that episode for starting the shift towards proslavery radicalism. RobertsMiller establishes three key points early on: proslavery rhetoric was welldeveloped before 1835; proslavery advocates silenced antislavery advocates by blaming them for inciting slave rebellion; and South Carolina was the center (or perhaps origin is a better phrase) of much of the proslavery advocacy. To stop criticism proslavery advocates thus harnessed fear that any criticism of slavery might lead to rebellion. That led to a cycle of silencing of dissenters, which made possible - perhaps even likely - more extreme rhetoric. Roberts-Miller develops this argument by first showing the ways that proslavery advocates stifled dissenting opinions - sometimes through threats of violence - which in turn led them to overestimate their support. (31) Then...

102 RHETORICA authoritarians generally, wanted things their way, without acknowledging the criticism, flaws, or consequences of that way or how they got it." (234) Some more nuance is in order. Historians are well aware that proslavery thought ante-dated the abolitionist literature crisis of 1835, though the ampli­ tude of proslavery thought certainly increased after Nat Turner's rebellion in 1831 and became substantially more strident post 1835. Another instance is Roberts-Miller's argument that many proslavery advocates portrayed slav­ ery as anti-modern (65-67). Those tropes are certainly in the proslavery lit­ erature and historians still frequently set up the old South as a place of pre-modern values against the market-oriented North. However, much of the movement (and also the rhetoric) was about how slavery was consistent with progress. Fanatical Schemes is difficult reading. It is dense. The discussion of secondary literature sometimes seems distant from the topic under study. For instance, juxtaposed are references to Orwell and proslavery thought (41, 219), the Nazis and slavery (218-19), and histories of Native Americans and contemporary debate over the Confederate flag (46). However, for those who are interested in the power of rhetoric and the contours of conservative thought, this volume will repay well the time spent with it. Roberts-Miller relocates ideas and words to the center of historv in this J study of how slavery was discussed. The big question one has is how do the ideas expressed here relate to reality? That is, even if the proslavery arguments had been more moderate, would the path of our nation towards proslavery actions - like secession - have been different? Did words cause war? Or is the discussion of proslavery thought more a dependent variable than an independent one? As we try to answer these questions, this important book may help re-ignite the scholarly study of proslaverv thought and the power of words and ideas. Alfred L. Brophy University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Jeanne Nuechterlein, Translating Nature into Art; Holbein, the Refor­ mation, and Renaissance Rhetoric, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011, 242 pp. ISBN:978-0-271-03692-2 In the main, the terms and syntax of early sixteenth-century criticism of art are those of classical rhetoric. Most certainly, rhetorical analysis can illumine any visual or verbal persuasive event, regardless of self-conscious authorial intent or training. And early sixteenth-century Basel was the shared context of Erasmian (and Melancthonian) rhetorical publications as well as of Holbein's early (pre-England) work. Nuechterlein very usefully explores the context and considers the parallel tactics in Erasmian rhetorical theory and practice and Holbeinian visual rhetoric. She observes that Holbein "il- Reviews 103 lustrated , or drew marginal comments" on, Myconius' copy of Praise of Folly, suggesting he read it (67). There is as well an ingenious, useful dis­ cussion of the classical anecdotes Holbein selects for the “political rhetoric" of his decorative program (now lost) of the Basel Council chamber; she also notes possible linkages of the scenes to contemporary political scandal. Still, noting that Holbein s dev otion to variety as aesthetic value resonates with Erasmus s case for the virtue of copiousness, she correctly emphasizes a source of Holbeinian variety as current artisanal practice. Nuechterlein has amassed a great deal of rhetorical information—the available theory and expressive practices—but what rhetorical use does she make of her facts? Her primary, dominating rhetorical strategy is to dichotomize: opposing Holbein's “descriptive" art to the “inventive": phys­ ical to spiritual, body to mind, objective to subjective, observation of reality to “artistic", imaginative inv ention. But are not the "descriptive" portraits “inventive"? Could not a case be made that they are powerfully innovative? True, she asserts that Holbein achiev es a “middle ground" between descrip­ tive/ inv entiv e modes; but this does not do justice to the portraits' delivery of persons simmering with intent. There is the “Young Man, Age 32", alive to the possibility of engaging the viewer; and Holbein's portrait places Thomas More as oligarch, a man of power we know as intent on the cruel repression of heretics, a repression justified in his strenuous Humanist rhetoric. On the other...

Reviews 97 catharsis and his writing vividly about his "gasping-gagging-gulping" and other persistent ailments. Hawhee's suggestive conclusion raps up her argument by focusing on Burke's famous formulation of the motion/action opposition in the eighties. Not the least of Hawhee's many accomplishments in Moving Bodies is her complication of this distinction, which she demonstrates is much more than a simple metaphysical opposition. Rather, the binary of nonsymbolic motion and symbolic action serves Burke as the basis of a "multidirectional theory" that, while positing an irreducible distinction between body and language, nonetheless shows the two terms to be parallel and complementary in the extreme (p. 166). Again and again in Moving Bodies, Hawhee chronicles how Burke worked rhetorically through the body in different discursive fields. Burke thought literally about the body and its causal relation to language, and he thought figuratively with the body in his descriptions and explana­ tions of cultural production and reception. Indeed, within Hawhee's inci­ sive rhetorical biography, the static/moving and functional/dysfunctional body emerges as the very condition of possibility for understanding Kenneth Burke as a theorv-proving, symbol-using animal. Moving Bodies deserves praise not onlv for its full-bodied picture of Burke as language thinker but also for its proposal of an alternative materialist model for doing rhetorical history. Steven Mailloux Loyola Marymount University Peter Mack, Reading and Rhetoric in Montaigne and Shakespeare, London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010. 210 pp. Peter Mack sets himself an ambitious task in this short impressive book: to compare the ways Montaigne and Shakespeare composed essay and speech, respectively, following intellectual habits and practices acquired in their humanist grammar school education-and to explain why knowing this makes a difference. He begins by reviewing the reading and composition training of the schools—topical analysis from Agricola, culling of sentences, proverbs, and figures from Erasmus to furnish copious words and matter; learning the progymnasmata from Aphthonius to build complex verbal structures—then goes on to demonstrate how this training gave the writer a formal grammar by which to register the movements of a thinking mind. Thus an artificial method of reading and writing enabled the mimesis of natural human discourse. Mack adroitly showcases this insight through a close reading of De I inconstance de nos actions, whose very theme signals Montaigne's manner of stating a position—his own or his author s—then responding defensively or critically with historical and poetic examples, 98 RHETORICA contemporary anecdotes, Latin verses, and personal reflections, each of which subtly modifies its predecessor. He is Montaigne still, but becomes much more legible as we recognize the tools he's using to form his judgment. When he cited other men's words, Montaigne wrote, they were no longer theirs but his. In Chapter 2, "Montaigne's Use of His Reading," Mack shows in fine detail how Montaigne manipulates his sources to elaborate themes, strengthen them, and fashion oppositions that open them to fresh consideration. Sometimes he will wrest a line slyly from its context, as in Que philosopher c'est apprendre à mourir, where he quotes Ovid's "When I die I would like it to be in the middle of my work" to reinforce the wish that death might come amidst ordinary toil; in Amores 2.10.36, the work is sexual. In De la vanité, he quotes Horace at length on exercising moderation so as to owe little to Fortune, then drains that stance of self-satisfaction by warning, "But watch out for the snag! Hundreds founder within the harbour." More powerfully still, in Des coches he uses material from Lôpez de Gômara's Histoiregénéralle des Indes occidentales to turn its boastful message of conquest into a critique of European cruelty in the New World. In Chapter 3, "Montaigne's logic of fragment and sequence," Mack walks us through the temporal accretions and logical structures of two early essays, Book I's Des menteurs and Par diverse moyens on arrive a pareille fin, then focuses on the intellectual and emotional logic of a section of the longer De la vanité of Book III. Diagramming all three essays, he provides us with...

Because writing centers have long been viewed as fix-it shops, mentioning the word "grammar" can spark a heated debate over the writing center's role. Stephen North faulted the English department for perpetuating this misconception. Richard Leahy blamed the writing center's history and "peculiar status" for confusing faculty and students alike (43). Elizabeth Boquet explored tensions caused by shifts between the writing center's identity as both method and space (465). All are valid points, but there is a greater issue affecting both academic writing and the writing center-grammar

Problem: Questionnaires are a popular method used by global companies to gain understanding or assess various aspects of their businesses. However, using a questionnaire across cultures requires extra effort in translating it into the target language(s) and culture(s) because a good questionnaire developed in one language/culture may not necessarily “travel well” across cultures due to differences in meaning and interpretation. This tutorial synthesizes the extant research on cross-cultural communication and surveys, and provides guidance in preparing cross-cultural questionnaires. Concepts: Translation affects the design and development of questionnaires to be used across cultures in these ways: (1) It affects the theoretical concepts to be studied: indicators-questions about concrete elements that can be measured and constructs-a series of questions about abstract elements that cannot be measured directly and essentially represent an underlying concept. Constructs must be adapted into a specific cultural context to achieve accuracy in measurements. (2) Differences in the contexts-the overall cross-cultural research context (the setting and the purpose) and the cultural context (the participants and their cultural background) of the study-affect translation because concepts in the source culture might be applied differently or not exist in the target cultures. (3) Translation might unintentionally introduce bias by inadvertently changing the perceived meanings of terms and questions-creating bias in constructs, on individual items on the questionnaire, and in its administration. (4) Translation might affect equivalence of terms in the source and translated versions, including linguistic equivalence (that is, wording of items), semantics (meaning of a phrase or concept), and grammar and syntax. Suggestions: Given these concepts, consider the following items when translating questionnaires: (1) accurately adapt or adopt questions from existing instruments, (2) make sure that you adapt the language to suit the situation, (3) hire translators who understand research processes, (4) use the decentering approach (a process in which translators move back and forth amongst the languages, checking for cultural and linguistic accuracy) when preparing the actual translation, and (5) assess your overall translated questionnaire. The questionnaire assessment model is a resource for guiding the assessment.

Drawing on Kenneth Burke's music reviews in The Nation, this article argues that the shifting music scene of the 1930s heavily influenced Burke's development of the key term “secular conversion” in Permanence and Change. While reviewing works by Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, Burke also witnessed audience reactions to (and often acceptance of) jarring atonal works by Schönberg, Debussy, and others, leading to music reviews that focused on musical as well as rhetorical matters. Burke's interest in music provides a “perspective by incongruity” that illuminates the often-overlooked key term “graded series” as a type of secular conversion that informs Burke's dialectic in A Grammar of Motives. A greater understanding of “perspective by incongruity,” “piety,” and “graded series” through music provides a window into the possibilities of linguistic transformation that bridges Burke's continuously merging, dividing, and transcending dialectic in A Grammar of Motives.

Reviews 437 Alberico di Montecassino, Brcviarimn de dictamine. Edizione critica a cura di Filippo Bognini, Edizione Nazionale dei Testi mediolatini XXL Serie I, 12. Firenze: Sismel-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2008. ix-cc + 199 pp. ISBN 8884502659 Il volume curato da Bognini (B.) viene a colmare una profonda lacuna presente negli studi reíativi ad Alberico di Montecassino e al genere medievale dell ars ictamnu. Si tratta, infatti, della prima edizione critica intégrale del Breviarium de dictamine, un composite manuale sull'arte di scrivere epistole , che rappresenta 1'opera di spicco di Alberico di Montecassino, moñaco attivo nell XI secolo a Montecassino, dove svolse l'attività di maestro di grammatica e retorica e diede v ita a una variegata produzione. Nonostante i vari tentativi di edizione precedenti, a tutt'oggi mancava un testo del genere. Il volume si compone di una prima parte teórica, i Prole­ gomena (pp. XJ-CC), che include le seguenti sezioni: Introduzione (pp. XIII— XXXV), Le fonti (pp. XXXVII-LXXIX), La tradizione manoscrítta (pp. LXXXI), L'anahsi delle relazione fra i manoscritti del corpus (pp. CIXI-CLXV), Bibliografía e Abbreviaziom (pp. CLXVII-CXCIV), Nota al testo (pp. CXCV-CC), e una seconda parte comprendente il testo critico (pp. 3-85), le note di commente relative (pp. 87-170) e gli indici (pp. 173-99). B. dedica il primo capitolo dell'introduzione (pp. XIII-XVIII) alia storia delle edizioni del Breviarium, sottolineando come in realtà non esista nessun lavoro plenamente soddisfacente, in quanto tutti i tentativi precedenti di edi­ zione o si sono limitati a fornire una sola parte del manuale (come hanno fatto L. Rockinger, Briefsteller iindformelbiiclier des eilften bis vierzehntenjahrhunderts (I. München: Franz, 1863), 29-46; H. H. Davis, "The 'De rithmis' of Alberic of Monte Cassino: A Critical Edition," Mediaeval Studies 28 (1966): 198-227; P. E Gehl, Monastic Rhetoric and Grammar in the Age ofDesiderius. The Works ofAlbe­ ric ofMontecassino (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1976), e E J. Worstbrock, "Die Anfànge der mittelalterlichen Ars dictandi," Friihmittelalterliche Studien 23 (1989): 1-42) oppure non hanno tenuto conte di tutti i testimoni esistenti (è il caso di P. C. Groll, Das Enchiridion de prosis et de rithmis des Alberich von Montecassino und die Anonymi Ars dictandi (Freiburg im Br.: Albert-Ludwigs Universitat, 1963)). Nel secondo capitolo dell'introduzione (pp. XVIII-XXIV) vengono invece forniti un profilo biográfico di Alberico e una rassegna della sua produzione complessiva. II terzo capitolo, Genesi e tradizione del «Bre­ viarium» o «Enchiridion» (pp. XXIV-XXXIII), discute inizialmente il núcleo problemático costituito dal titolo dell'opera: sovvertendo in parte quella che è la denominazione usuale, B. ritiene che la definizione di Breviarium sia da restringere solo ai primi sei capitoli, senza pero proporre un titolo al­ ternativo da attribuire a tutto il trattato. Meritevole è, sicuramente, la presa d'atto dell'incompletezza del titolo adottato dalla tradizione precedente, ma, limitandosi poi ad adottare quella invalsa di Breviarium de dictamine, B. sembra lasciare la questione sostanzialmente insoluta. II resto del capitolo è dedicate alla storia del testo, alie fasi di formazione del trattato e alla sua circolazione in ámbito italiano e straniero. L'ultimo capitolo dell'introduzione 438 RHETORICA (pp. XXXIII-XXXV) ha come oggetto la fortuna del Breviarium e l'annessa questione dell'identificazione di Alberico come fondatore della tradizione delYars dictaminis, tesi per cui B. propende nettamente, ricollegandosi aile posizioni di predecessori quali J. J. Murphy ("Alberic of Monte Cassino: Father of the Medieval Ars dictaminis'' The American Benedictine Review 22 (1971): 129-46) e Worstbrock (pp. 1-32 dell'articolo citato sopra). La seconda sezione dei Prolegomena è occupata da uno studio accurato e scrupoloso delle fonti del trattato (pp. XXXVII-LXXIX), che si dispiega in due momenti principali: il primo dedicato alLindividuazione della loro natura (pp. XXXVII-LXXIII), il secondo ai modi in cui ciascuna di esse compare nel testo di Alberico. L'autore nconosce e discute quattro varietà principali di fonti: la Bibbia (pp. XXXVII-LI); le fonti pagane (pp. LI-LV); la letteratura cristiana (pp. LV-LVIII), la letteratura latina medievale fino all'XI secolo (Boezio, Gregorio, Isidoro, pp. LVIII-LX) e la letteratura dei "moderni" (Pier Damiani, Guaiferio e Alfano, pp...

Failure to publish articles in the dominant Anglophone scientific journals has implications for multilingual scholars’ future careers and for the global dissemination of scientific knowledge. Despite the importance of this topic, there have been few studies of the perceptions of multilingual scholars engaged in this process. In an effort to close this gap, an online questionnaire was emailed to 153 German-L1 scholars at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. The 46 respondents ranked 'writing reader-friendly texts' as their number one problem in writing scientific publications in English, followed by 'using correct grammar'. Reader-friendliness was defined by the majority of the respondents as 'writing in a clear and simple style'. The questionnaire also revealed some interesting differences between the views of novice and more experienced scholars regarding the role of different sources of feedback in helping them overcome these problems. The results from the questionnaire will be explored in more detail in follow-up interviews.

In this study, a corpus of essays stratified by level (9th grade, 11th grade, and college freshman) are analyzed computationally to discriminate differences between the linguistic features produced in essays by adolescents and young adults. The automated tool Coh-Metrix is used to examine to what degree essays written at various grade levels can be distinguished from one another using a number of linguistic features related to lexical sophistication (i.e., word frequency, word concreteness), syntactic complexity (i.e., the number of modifiers per noun phrase), and cohesion (i.e., word overlap, incidence of connectives). The analysis demonstrates that high school and college writers develop linguistic strategies as a function of grade level. Primarily, these writers produce more sophisticated words and more complex sentence structure as grade level increases. In contrast, these writers produce fewer cohesive features in text as a function of grade level. This analysis supports the notion that linguistic development occurs in the later stages of writing development and that this development is primarily related to producing texts that are less cohesive and more elaborate.

Despite a long debate and the accompanying call for changes in the past few decades, grammarinstruction in college English classes, according to some scholars, has remained largely “disempowering,” “decontextualized,” and “remedial” (Micciche, 2004, p. 718). To search for more effectiveand empowering grammar teaching, this study explores the use of corpora for problem-basedlearning/teaching of lexicogrammar in a college English grammar course. This pedagogy wasmotivated by research findings that (1) corpora are a very useful source and tool for languageresearch and for active discovery learning of second/foreign languages, and (2) problem-basedlearning (PBL) is an effective and motivating instructional approach. The data collected andanalyzed include students’ individual and group corpus research projects, reflection papers oncorpus use, and responses to a post-study survey consisting of both open-ended and Likert questions.The analysis of the data found the following four themes in students’ use of, and reflectionsabout, corpus study: (1) critical understanding about lexicogrammatical and broader languageuse issues, (2) awareness of the dynamic nature of language, (3) appreciation for the context/register-appropriate use of lexicogrammar, and (4) grasping of the nuances of lexicogrammaticalusages. The paper also discusses the challenges involved in incorporating corpus use into Englishclasses and offers suggestions for further research.

Most of my students arrive in my required freshman writing class full of ideas but lacking the mastery over language needed to express them. Introducing core linguistic concepts can sharpen their writing skills by illustrating how language works, and by heightening their awareness of the role language plays in their lives. These concepts could be seamlessly introduced over a year-long, daily high school class. Lacking that, they could be tucked into university level semester-long classes.

Whether or not Burke’s prophecy became reality, it is clear that Burke’s work on the five terms was taking form even before its first mention appeared in print in his book Philosophy of Literary Form (1941), and long before it debuted as “the pentad” in A Grammar of Motives (1969a). This focus appears to have continued throughout the remainder of his career; as Rueckert (1982) contends, “if there is a single overriding lesson to learn from Burke, it is that everything implies everything else, and everything is more complicated than it seems” (p. 267).

218 RHETORICA Nancy S. Struever, Rhetoric, Modality, Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 158 pp. ISBN 9780226777481 This book is not easy to characterize. In Rhetoric, Modality, Moder­ nity Nancy Struever shapes over a decade of methodological reflection on Hobbes, Vico, Peirce, and Heidegger into a bold historical argument about the limits of philosophy and our most basic modes of being. Methodologi­ cally Struever is closest to C. S. Peirce on beliefs that generate habits of action and Bernard Williams on the limits of philosophy, but ultimately her project exceeds both because it mobilizes rhetoric first, and thus it narrates from the margins with utterly novel results for our understanding of rhetorical topics, inquiry modes, politics, and history. Within the field of rhetorical studies per se Struever's work is polemic in so far as it argues the contempo­ rary historiography of rhetoric is "the location of speculative vigor" rather than the practice (p. 98). In terms of rhetoric and philosophy the work of Michel Meyer is probably closest, though Struever's historical erudition dis­ tinguishes her work along with uncommon familiarity in Anglo-American, French, German, and Italian scholarship. Though she wastes no time rehears­ ing the standard intellectual biographies or reviewing the marginal literature, Struever builds crucial elements of her argument from the ground up, defin­ ing her terms carefully and summarizing periodically'. When Struever tells us "any study of modality must attempt to deal with rhetorical operations; any rhetorician must refine his definitions of modalitv" (p. 73) we must take her seriously indeed. Struever gives us a fresh Hobbes and Vico, now central to the modern project understood in terms of new styles of inquiry, while at the same time explaining why Hobbes and Vico have been marginalized in a tradition of political philosophy that starts from the presuppositions of moral rectitude. On Struever's polemic reading, Hobbes and Vico "could challenge, from within the Anglophone, or Western, discussion, the begged questions of the hegemonous terms and propositions: an exasperating hegemony that seems planetary" (p. 66). Discreet references to "tolerance, complexity" (p. 67) distinguish her treatment of these "pessimistic" figures—especially Hobbes—from the Straussian trajectory most recently articulated in Brian Garsten's Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgnieiit, but more could be said. Along the way Struever takes a stab at theoretical debates around agency, showing cleverly with Hobbes how "will" is procedural and how the "impersonal" does not mean without personality (pp. 42, 54). Starting with Hobbes' crucial bridge concept "natural logic" (p. 33) Struever articulates the relationship between life science, rhetoric (as social science broadly understood), and modality (typically associated with ab­ stract domains of logic, mathematics, grammar theory). But how is Struever's life science (p. 15) distinguished from the Lebensphilosophie ridiculed by Heidegger in his rhetoric lectures that provide Struever a critical touch­ stone (Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophic: Marburger Vorlesun^ Som­ mer Semester 1924)7 Struever offers a nice explanation when she shows how Reviews 219 the animal account for Hobbes "reveals another, possible world of great explanatory value; its force trumps, its plots encompass narratives of Hu­ manistic capacity" (p. 18). In other words the human/non-human is topical (among other things), not just a matter of some extra-physical vitalis. We get another intriguing formulation when Struever writes "the web of political life is an emotional, but also a problematic, uncertain texture" (p. 19) sug­ gesting how a vibrant life science would make room for political possibility undeterred by the human/nonhuman divide. Thus Struever clearly moves beyond statistics and philosophical modality insofar as the field is subject to evaluation: "Possibility as realized in time, fills time: gives it significance and pathos in the accounts of the direction and force of civil movements" (p. 71). Fields of possibility are subject to "the essential rhetorical task of praise and blame" (p. 73) which is to say epideictic. And with this turn to epideictic rhetoric we are reminded of a traditional claim critiqued by Jeffrey Walker in Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity: prag­ matic discourse or what can be seen as civic oratory is the primary form of rhetoric in its preconceptual state, before it emerges into history...

Book Review| February 01 2011 Review: Between Grammar and Rhetoric: Dionysius of Halicarnassus on Language, Linguistics and Literature (Mnemosyne Supplements 301), by Casper C. de Jonge Casper C. de JongeBetween Grammar and Rhetoric: Dionysius of Halicarnassus on Language, Linguistics and Literature (Mnemosyne Supplements 301), Leiden: Brill, 2008. xiii + 456 pp. ISBN 9789004166776. Rhetorica (2011) 29 (1): 108–111. https://doi.org/10.1525/RH.2011.29.1.108 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Review: Between Grammar and Rhetoric: Dionysius of Halicarnassus on Language, Linguistics and Literature (Mnemosyne Supplements 301), by Casper C. de Jonge. Rhetorica 1 February 2011; 29 (1): 108–111. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/RH.2011.29.1.108 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2011 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved.2011 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Error analysis involves detecting and correcting discrepancies between the ‘text produced so far’ (TPSF) and the writer’s mental representation of what the text should be. While many factors determine the choice of strategy, cognitive effort is a major contributor to this choice. This research shows how cognitive effort during error analysis affects strategy choice and success as measured by a series of online text production measures. We hypothesize that error correction with speech recognition software differs from error correction with keyboard for two reasons. Speech produces auditory commands and, consequently, different error types. The study reported on here measured the effects of (1) mode of presentation (auditory or visualtactile), (2) error span, whether the error spans more or less than two characters, and (3) lexicality, whether the text error comprises an existing word. A multilevel analysis was conducted to take into account the hierarchical nature of these data. For each variable (interference reaction time, preparation time, production time, immediacy of error correction, and accuracy of error correction), multilevel regression models are presented. As such, we take into account possible disturbing person characteristics while testing the effect of the different conditions and error types at the sentence level. The results show that writers delay error correction more often when the TPSF is read out aloud first. The auditory property of speech seems to free resources for the primary task of writing, i.e. text production. Moreover, the results show that large errors in the TPSF require more cognitive effort, and are solved with a higher accuracy than small errors. The latter also holds for the correction of small errors that result in non-existing words.

108 RHETORICA thinkers? No wonder Kirby opines “Quot lectores, tot Platones": There are as many Platos as there are readers of him. McCoy's reading of various dialogues is "partial" both in the sense of partisan and less-than-the-whole. But so are all readings of Plato. To disagree with McCoy over particulars strikes me as simply reflecting the fact that her Plato is not my Plato. I suspect many readers may be persuaded that the most consistent means by which Plato distinguishes sophists from philosophers is by their moral purpose without accepting that Plato's account is true (something McCoy does not claim), and perhaps insisting that the most compelling reading of certain dialogues requires us to accept that Plato did, in fact, try to distinguish the two on other grounds, including by method and doctrine. It is to McCoy's credit that she demonstrates familiarity with a broader body of literature than most philosophers who deal with Plato. Readers of Rhetorica will appreciate McCoy's account as a healthy counterpart to the long tradition ofbooks by philosophers that take every opportunity to equate sophists and rhetoric to the detriment of both. Her book should encourage historians of rhetoric who have not examined certain dialogues as part of the canon of rhetorical theory to include a greater variety of Plato's texts. Lastly, by portraying Plato as a sophisticated rhetor, McCoy facilitates a more candid assessment of what she describes as his most consistent theme. After all, if one does not believe in the forms (that is, if one is not a Platonist), then the only difference between sophist and philosopher is the latter's authentic concern for other people. The fact that Plato's rhetoric privileges Socrates in this regard no longer seems a compelling reason for us to do the same. Edward Schiappa University ofMinnesota Casper C. de Jonge, Between Grammar and Rhetoric: Dionysius of Hali­ carnassus on Language, Linguistics and Literature (Mnemosyne Supple­ ments 301), Leiden: Brill, 2008. xiii + 456 pp. ISBN 9789004166776 Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek intellectual active in Rome in the last decades of the first century bce. Not all of his writings have survived, but those that do include (as well a lengthy work on Roman history) a substantial and interesting corpus of literary and rhetorical criticism, including studies of the classical orators and Thucydides, and a treatise on style (On Composition). Modern scholarship has often treated him with scant respect, but he has begun to be taken more seriously in recent decades. Building on that work, and contributing a distinctive anci original approach of his own, de Jonge has achieved a remarkable further advance in our understanding. His focus is on Dionysius' integration of ideas from the whole range of language disciplines—philology, technical grammar, philosophy Reviews 109 and rhetoric; metrics and musical theory also make appearances, though they are less central to de Jonge's enquiry. After an introductory chapter, de Jonge examines Dionysius' general conception of the nature of language; his treatment of the grammatical theory of the parts of speech, and his critical application of this theory; the theory of natural word-order; similarities and differences between poetry and prose; and Dionysius' use of experimental alterations to word order (metathesis, or "transposition") as a tool of practical criticism. One of the study's aims is to use Dionysius as a source for the state of the language disciplines in the late first century (for the most part known only from sparse fragments), and in particular to illustrate the close connections between these disciplines. But in reconstructing the intellectual context of Dionysius' work, de Jonge prudently resists the temptations (traditionally irresistible to classicists) of Quellenforschung: "instead of assigning partic­ ular passages from Dionysius' works to specific 'sources', I will point to the possible connections between Dionysius' discourse and that of earlier and contemporary scholars of various backgrounds" (pp. 7-8). This restraint does not preclude good observations on specific influences: in particular, there is a powerful argument for the view that Dionysius had read, and been influenced by, Cicero (p. 15, pp. 215-16). A second methodological commitment is the adoption of an "external rather than an...

This article presents the results of a study that investigated readers' perceptions of tone formality in online text passages. The study found that readers perceived text passages to be less formal when they contained personal pronouns, active voice verbs, informal punctuation, or verb contractions. The study reveals that professional communicators can impact their readers' perceptions of tone in online passages. This study provides useful guidance for writers who wish to understand the impact of their stylistic decisions on audience perceptions of passage formality.

One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions. —Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (qtd. in Sheehan, 2010) Nineteenth-century freshman composition instruction at Madras University, based on a classical paradigm, prepared students for writing in professional discourses. Examining this pedagogy from today's perspective raises, for the field of postcolonial theory, questions of whether the British, who offered Indians a curriculum comparable to those at important British universities, viewed Indians as inferior beings or those needing help to become modern.

A research project into the grammar and usage error patterns among students at our university showed that error can be located on a rhetorical map within texts, writers, readers, and their social contexts; this perspective helps students and teachers deal productively with error.

EXISTENTIALIST LITERATURE is often referred to as a function of absurdity, alienation and nihilistic despair since the works of this genre are inhabited by unsavory protagonists and gloomy subject matter. The idea of existential dread often dominates our understanding of existentialism, and this is not only unfortunate, but terribly flawed. It is as if the decision to pick up and leaf through any novel by Franz Kafka or Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea , Albert Camus’ The Stranger or Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting For Godot , is not just an exercise in leisurely entertainment, but a statement about how one is feeling—and that feeling might be summed up, in the popular imagination, as meaninglessness. Viewed through a Burkean lens, however, one may re-consider existentialist literature as rhetorical acts that provoke the ontological difficulties with which persons negotiate their social environment equipped with only the resources of symbolic action. Instead of viewing this genre as advancing the desolate egoism of individual consciousnesses, applying the Burkean Parlor described in The Philosophy of Literary Form and Burke’s notion of the representative anecdote re-figure these works of fiction as animating a particular orientation and worldview—the point of which is to create a vocabulary that reflects, selects and deflects reality ( Grammar of Motives 59). Burke’s method of literary analysis suggests that literature should be organized “with reference to strategies ” in “active categories” ( Philosophy 303). By adopting Burke’s methodology to analyze existentialist literature, I’d like to move away from the popular reception of the genre and reveal its preoccupation with the ontological struggle of communication which fits squarely within Burke’s dramatistic notion of symbolic action. These works of fiction should not be evaluated aesthetically but as rhetorical acts whose purpose is to intensify the exigencies that arise in human interaction. In this essay I conceptualize the Burkean parlor as a representative anecdote for existentialism and then analyze two works of existentialist literature through a Burkean lens: Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes From the Underground . I’ve chosen these two works because Beckett and Dostoevsky did not write philosophical essays explicating existentialism to accompany their fiction—like Beauvoir, Camus, and Sartre—but instead sought to articulate the ontological tensions of symbolic action through the presentation of dramatic situations in literary form.

This article reports on the use of the British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus as a source for developing test items for the Grammar and English Usage section of the Warwick English Language (WELT) test in 2007. A key feature of this newly designed multiple choice grammar test was its use of student-generated writing. The extracts used for the re-designed test were derived directly from the BAWE corpus, as opposed to text books, published sources or indeed, simulated extracts of academic writing devised by test developers, which had been the case previously. The rationale for using the BAWE corpus for language test design is outlined, with a particular focus on the attributes of the students’ writing within the corpus, and the inclusion of both first and second language writing. The challenges involved in developing grammar test items based on BAWE corpus data are also presented. While the procedures set out in the paper were undertaken within a specifically British higher education setting, it is hoped that the research will be of interest to test developers and/or researchers in writing skills in other academic settings worldwide.

The trend towards using English as an academic lingua franca has undoubtedly increased the awareness of a need for specific EAP writing instruction and inroads into researching student writing have been made. However, systematic improvements for a theory-informed teaching practice still require more detailed knowledge of the current state of student academic writing, which also takes into account local practices and requirements. Extended genre analysis provides such a means of researching student writing in specific settings. This is an innovative methodology which expands on English for Specific Purposes (ESP) genre analysis (cf. Bhatia, 1993, 2004; Swales, 1990, 2004) to systematically integrate corpus linguistic tools into the analysis and to take into account the special status of student genres. A special advantage of this methodology is that it can be applied easily and successfully to small-scale purpose-built corpora.This paper presents an application of extended genre analysis to a corpus of 55 student paper conclusions produced by non-native speakers in the initial phase of their studies. Findings suggest systematic differences in structure between student and expert genres, as well as a more complex set of differences in lexico-grammar, and especially the use of formulaic language, between research articles and non-native student papers. The implications of these findings as well as of the proposed methodology of corpus-based genre analysis for teaching practice are also discussed.

The present longitudinal study aims to explore possible syntactic complexity differences between oral and written story retellings produced by Spanish speaking children at the end of the 1st and 2nd grades of primary education. It is assumed that differences between oral and written modalities can be found due in part to the cognitive demands of low level writing skills. Indeed, it has been observed that written texts produced by children are shorter and of lower quality than oral ones (Berninger, et al., , 1992; Berninger & Swanson,1994). However, how the transcription skills might constrain the syntactic complexity of children's written texts is not well established.The children (N=163) that participated in this study were attending three different schools located in Córdoba Province, Argentina. The children were examined at the end of the 1st and 2nd year of primary education. The oral and written retellings were analyzed using Length, T- unit number and Syntactic Complexity Index (SCI) (Hunt, 1965; 1970). The analysis of children's productions showed differences between grades and modalities. The differences between modalities were found in text Length and T-unit, but not in SCI. These results suggest that transcription skills do not affect syntactic performance. Nevertheless, a more detailed analysis revealed differences between groups. Possible restrictions of the original text on children's performance were also observed. The implications and the scope of the SCI and units used for the analysis are furthered discussed.

Error analysis involves detecting, diagnosing, and correcting discrepancies between the text produced so far (TPSF) and the writers mental representation of what the text should be. The use of different writing modes, like keyboard-based word processing and speech recognition, causes different type of errors during text production. While many factors determine the choice of error-correction strategy, cognitive effort is a major contributor to this choice. This research shows how cognitive effort during error analysis affects strategy choice and success as measured by a series of online text production measures. Text production is shown to be influenced most by error span, that is, whether the error spans more or less than two characters. Next, it is influenced by input mode, that is, whether the error has been generated by speech recognition or keyboard, and finally by lexicality, that is, whether the error comprises an existing word. Correction of larger error spans is more successful than that of smaller errors. Writers impose a wise speed accuracy trade-off during large error spans since correction is better, but preparation times (time to first action) and production times take longer, and interference reaction times are slower. During large error spans, there is a tendency to opt for error correction first, especially when errors occurred in the condition in which the TPSF is not preceded by an auditory prompt. In general, the addition of speech frees the cognitive demands of writing. Writers also opt more often to continue text production when the TPSF is presented auditorially first.

IS KENNETH BURKE'S pentad actually a hexad? The answer is complicated. In the original edition of A Grammar of Motives , Burke discusses just five terms—act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose—as part of his dramatistic vocabulary for discerning human motivation. In fact, Burke likens these terms to five fingers on a hand (xxii; “The Study of Symbolic Action” 13-14). When elaborating the interrelationships of these concepts, Burke explores a separate term—“attitude”—that refers to one’s disposition to respond in a particular way to his or her circumstances. However, he classes attitude under either act, agent, or agency, rather than as a separate sixth term. Attitude, he says in Grammar , may be “the preparation for an act, which would make it a kind of symbolic act, or incipient act.” 3 As it may also be a “state of mind ,” attitude may “be classed under the head of agent ” ( Grammar 20). Additionally, Burke occasionally refers to attitude as a variation of agency ( Grammar 443; “Counter-Gridlock” 367; Attitudes 394; “Questions and Answers” 332). He reinforces his preference for a pentad in at least two other works. In The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences , he calls the pentad “incipiently a hexad” (446). In Dramatism and Development , he expresses some regret that he "had not turned the pentad into a hexad, with attitude as the sixth term. However, the Grammar contains a chapter that implicitly performs this very function. It is entitled ‘Incipient’ and ‘Delayed’ Action” (23). Despite these assertions, Burke's "hand" sprouts a sixth digit. In the 1969 edition of Grammar , he states, “I have sometimes added the term ‘attitude’ to the…five major terms” (443), thereby making the pentad a hexad. In 1984, he admits that, had his view of attitude been “clear” years ago, the “Pentad would have been a Hexad from the start” ( Attitudes 393-394). Burke’s oscillation has undoubtedly contributed to differing views of the hexad. For example, Trevor Melia embraces six terms, pointing out that attitude “was implicit in the pentad from the beginning” and maintaining further that, “were Burke writing the Grammar today [in 1989], he would treat the pentad as a hexad” (72, note 21). However, other scholars—among them Dana Anderson, Debra Hawhee, and Cheryl Tatano Beck—have performed significant scholarship highlighting attitude while working with only five terms, with attitudinal considerations being adequately included under act, agent, or agency.

Presents a review of this humorous book on grammar by June Casagrande. The book is a comprehensive, authoritative, and easy-to-use guide for professional communicators.

Technical communication consultants steeped in conventional academic notions of writing pedagogy may encounter different assumptions about the nature of writing and the significance of grammar in writing instruction when they consult with professional engineers. This paper examines historical, theoretical, and practical reasons for these sometimes contradictory beliefs and traces the authors' efforts to reconcile these differences while planning and conducting a writing seminar for an engineering firm. A strong emphasis on grammar and mechanics can lead to numerous benefits, including a stronger sense of shared purpose between consultants and engineers and a point of entry into additional conversations about institutional writing practices and writing environments.

Advances in technology, such as the word-processor, have long supported the pedagogy of composition. However, in the Internet environment a variety of electronic tools and multimedia can further enhance best practices in teaching writing: the integration of reading and writing, recursive drafting, targeted grammar and vocabulary study, peer review, and publication.

In this study, a corpus of expert-graded essays, based on a standardized scoring rubric, is computationally evaluated so as to distinguish the differences between those essays that were rated as high and those rated as low. The automated tool, Coh-Metrix, is used to examine the degree to which high- and low-proficiency essays can be predicted by linguistic indices of cohesion (i.e., coreference and connectives), syntactic complexity (e.g., number of words before the main verb, sentence structure overlap), the diversity of words used by the writer, and characteristics of words (e.g., frequency, concreteness, imagability). The three most predictive indices of essay quality in this study were syntactic complexity (as measured by number of words before the main verb), lexical diversity (as measured by the Measure of Textual Lexical Diversity), and word frequency (as measured by Celex, logarithm for all words). Using 26 validated indices of cohesion from Coh-Metrix, none showed differences between high- and low-proficiency essays and no indices of cohesion correlated with essay ratings. These results indicate that the textual features that characterize good student writing are not aligned with those features that facilitate reading comprehension. Rather, essays judged to be of higher quality were more likely to contain linguistic features associated with text difficulty and sophisticated language.

The aim of this study was primarily to investigate the effects of morphological strategies training on students with and without spelling difficulties in English as a foreign language (EFL), but also to assess the feasibility of morphological strategies training in a classroom context. The intervention was piloted in the sixth grade of a Greek primary school: 23 Greek-speaking students, aged 11-12, were assigned to the treatment group receiving explicit teaching on inflectional and derivational morphemic patterns of English words. The control group, composed of 25 Greek-speaking students of the same age, attending a different classroom of the same school, was taught English spelling in a conventional (visual-memory based) way. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were employed to gain insights: a pre- and post-test, an observation schedule, a student questionnaire and a teacher interview. The pre- and post-test results indicated that the metamorphological training yielded specific effects on targeted morpheme patterns. The same results were obtained from a sub-group of nine poor spellers in the treatment group, compared to a sub-group of six poor spellers in the control one. The observation data revealed that the metamorphological training promoted students' active participation and the questionnaire data indicated that students got satisfaction from their training. Finally, interview data highlighted that teachers considered the intervention as a feasible way of improving students' morphological processing skills in spelling.

Our aim in this study was to test two programmes designed to lead preschool children to use conventional letters to spell the initial consonants of words. These programmes differed in terms of the characteristics of the vowels that followed those consonants. The participants were 45 five-year-old Portuguese children whose spelling was pre-syllabic - they used strings of random letters in their spelling, making no attempt to match the oral to the written language. They were divided into two experimental and a control group. Their age, level of intelligence, and phonological awareness were controlled. Their spelling was assessed in a pre- and a post-test. In-between, children from the experimental groups participated in two programmes where they had to think about the relationships between the initial consonant and the corresponding phoneme in different words: In Experimental Group 1, the initial consonants were followed by an open vowel, and in Experimental Group 2, these same consonants were followed by a closed vowel. The control group classified geometric shapes. Experimental Group 1 achieved better results than Experimental Group 2 following open vowels, being more able to generalize the phonological procedures to sounds that were not taught during the programmes. Both experimental groups used conventional letters to represent several phonemes in the post-test whereas the control group continued to produce pre-syllabic spellings.

In the tradition of work by Shaughnessy (1977) and Bartholomae (1980) applying concepts from second language acquisition research to developing writing, we explore the commonalities of L1 and L2 writers on the specific level of linguistic choices needed to order information within and across sentence boundaries. We propose that many of the kinds of constructions in L1 and L2 writing most difficult to categorize, labeled as errors, are in structures that are, from the writers’ perspective, principled attempts to meet their obligation of managing information. We examine 90 essays written by college students, 60 by native speakers, and 30 by nonnative speakers, and identify 360 non-target-like structures that are attempts to manage information. There are similarities in number and type of these constructions used by L1 and L2 developing writers.

Abstract Drawing upon published and unpublished texts from Kenneth Burke, this article argues that A Rhetoric of Motives represents the first, “Upward” half of his project on rhetoric. Emphasizing this unexpected connection between Burke and Plato, the article offers a dialectical rereading of the text, one that locates the ultimate rhetorical motive not in identification, but pure in persuasion. Interpreting the latter as a “‘mythic image,”’ it emerges as a non-empirical, imagistic portrayal of the formal conditions underlying persuasion, the origin of rhetoric. Rhetoric, dialectically redefined in terms of pure persuasion, produces the divisions that we humans would (paradoxically) discursively bridge. Notes 1This is from a letter contained in the Stanley Edgar Hyman Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The author expresses gratitude to Phoebe Pettingell Hyman for her permission to quote from these unpublished manuscripts. Letters from this collection will be parenthetically indicated “SH.” 2This manuscript is drawn from a folder in the Kenneth Burke Papers labeled: “R of M Drafts. Including final draft.” Apart from “The Rhetorical Radiance of the ‘Divine'” (and some scattered deletions in pencil), the manuscript indicated as the text's “final draft” is identical to the published version of the Rhetoric—and its 430 typed pages even include a table of contents. Thus it is quite clear that this was, until quite late in the process, the complete text of the Rhetoric. This material is taken from the archives of The Kenneth Burke Papers, Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection, Pattee Library, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA. The author is grateful to Sandra Stelts, Jeannette Sabre, the Penn State Libraries, and the Burke Literary Trust for their help and for permission to quote from these unpublished manuscripts. 3Another appears during discussion of “timely topics” and the press: “We pass over it hastily here, as we plan to consider the two major aspects of it in later sections of this project (when we shall consider the new level of ‘reality’ which journalistic timeliness establishes, and shall study the relation between transient and permanent factors of appeal by taking the cartoons in The New Yorker as a test case)” (Rhetoric 63). 4Authorial intentions provide notoriously controversial evidence for reinterpretation. However, as the above-quoted header makes clear, Burke altered his initial plan late in the publication process. Although other Burkean texts were altered during composition (for example, the pentad was a later addition to the Grammar), the Rhetoric project is different; the material with which Burke began was postponed, not supplemented, as in the case of the Grammar. Most significantly, Burke's papers reveal an organizational framework linking the excised material to that which remained; thus, examination of Burke's original vision for the project as a whole sheds new light on the version of the Rhetoric that was published. 5This quote is from a letter from Burke to Cowley dated 26 January 1947, housed in the Burke Papers. Letters from this collection will be parenthetically indicated “KB.” 6Judging from this description, it seems that some of this material was published in Burke's essay, “Rhetoric: Old and New” (see especially the discussion of blandness [69–75]). 7Additionally, such interpretations of Burke's text often produce an artificial separation between Burke's rhetoric and dialectic. Having sharpened this difference into a distinction, effort is required to explain their connection (e.g., Crusius, “A Case,” “Orality”; Ercolini). 8Here one might object, also citing Burke's essay on the “new” rhetoric, whose “key term” is identification (“Rhetoric” 62–63). However, in both texts, identification is introduced in the first section (or “stage”), but is transcended by other sections/stages. Further, in the Rhetoric, Burke describes persuasion and identification as his “two interrelated themes” (x), and discusses his “generating principles,” “persuasion and/or identification” (169; emphasis added)—a point he later reaffirmed in letters to Cowley (e.g., Williams 12). Identification is undeniably important in Burke's rhetorical theory, but I contend it must be contextualized within Burke's foundational claim about the nature of rhetoric. 9See also “Rhetoric: Old and New,” which contains a dialogue patterned after the Platonic dialectic—including the character “Socraticus” and references to the “Upward” and “Downward Way” (63–66). 10Although I have not altered any quotations, contemporary scholarship recognizes that the masculine is not a universal, and so my own usage reflects this philosophical commitment. 11Although there is extensive debate regarding Platonic dialectic (e.g., Kahn; Benson), Gonzalez is cited here to demonstrate two things: that appropriation of Plato is not necessarily the adoption of Platonist metaphysics and that Burke's definition is neither idiosyncratic nor outdated. Gonzalez's recent study does not cite Burke, but is distinctly Burkean in its rejection of Platonist metaphysics, and its refusal to divorce Plato's dialectic from the dramatic form of the dialogues. Further, Gonzalez emphasizes the role played by ideas and images in Plato's dialectic (e.g., 129), echoing the book cited within the Rhetoric's discussion of Plato: Stewart's The Myths of Plato. 12These unpublished notes are drawn from a folder labeled “Myth,” housed in the Kenneth Burke Papers. 14Here I draw on this essay because Burke identifies it as the foundation for this portion of the Rhetoric (e.g., Burke to Hyman, January 26, 1948, SH). 13Moreover, he argues that Mannheim's perspective gains much of its appeal—including “the feel of an ultimate order”—from its furtive resemblance to the Platonic dialectic, and (in its ambiguous concept of “Utopia”) an implicit foundation in chiliastic myth (A Rhetoric 200; cf. Burke, “Ideology” 306). 15These unpublished notes are drawn from a folder labeled “Myth” in the Burke Papers. 16These notes are also from the “Myth” folder (but: cf. A Rhetoric 203; “Ideology” 306–307). 17Said another way, by retaining our myth's connection to the Platonic dialectic, we will recognize the narrative order of myth as an imagistic portrayal of a logical order—and not as an accurate, objective account of origins (cf. Grammar 430–440). 18Which is not to say that Burke rejects Kafka; Burke's account is designed to place Kafka's (and Kierkegaard's) vocabulary within a broader whole, not dismiss it. Although I cannot here respond to a recent essay by Ercolini, disputing Burke's interpretation of Fear and Trembling, I feel Ercolini misses the point of Burke's reading of Kierkegaard. Here Burke is moving toward dialectical transcendence, and thus his critique of Kierkegaard focuses on the difference between empirical and mythic images of courtship. 19For this reason, I would argue that the definitions of pure persuasion in the scholarly literature—designed for critical use—fail to see its ultimate, mythic significance (e.g., Hagen; Lee; Olson & Olson; Sweeney). 20This is again why, for Burke, Mannheim's approach falls short; Burke argues that unlike his own approach, Mannheim's sociology cannot provide an “ultimate ground of motivation” (Rhetoric 201). 21Of course, Biesecker is not the only scholar to draw on such statements to equate identification and pure persuasion. Robert Wess likewise does not recognize pure persuasion as a mythic image, and thus his formulation of it as the “identification of identifications” subordinates it to the latter concept (e.g., 214). Similarly, although Zappen's introduction to Burke's “On Persuasion, Identification, and Dialectical Symmetry” insists on the importance of the third section of the Rhetoric, he ultimately does not connect dialectic, “pure persuasion,” and “ultimate identification” (e.g., 334). 22For this reason, I would argue (pace Wess and Biesecker) that identification cannot be equated with pure persuasion; identification presumes a preexisting distance between persons, unlike pure persuasion, which symbolically introduces and maintains distance. This is, I would argue, a more rounded interpretation of Burke's famous statement—early in the Rhetoric, I would add, prior to arriving at his mythic image—that “to begin with ‘identification’ is, by the same token, to confront the implications of division” (Rhetoric 22; Burke's emphasis). Thus, Burke's oft-cited discussion of the interrelation of identification and division in rhetoric follows from pure persuasion's more primary, ontological shattering of unity. This is also, I believe, why Burke later describes the most profound variant of identification as the partisan carving up of a situation through terminological means (see Burke, “The Rhetorical” 271). 23As per the “paradox of purity,” these would be identical (e.g., Grammar 35–36). 24For others beginning with symbols as introduction of division rather than unity, see Anton, Thayer, and Wilden. Additional informationNotes on contributorsBryan Crable Bryan Crable is Associate Professor

Abstract Lu Yin (1899–1935), a modern Chinese writer, employed a variety of vernacular genres to explore women's living conditions at the turn of the twentieth century. With her vision of nüquanzhuyi (feminism) and her conceptualization of writing, Lu Yin modeled herself as a feminist rhetorician and employed redefinition and diary/epistolary fiction as major rhetorical strategies to challenge the sexist assumptions in the prevailing patriarchal discourses and to empower Chinese women. This study further calls for a more flexible and sensitive approach to studying women's rhetorics from different cultures. Notes 1I thank RR reviewers Mary Garrett and Xing (Lucy) Lu for their constructive feedback. I am also grateful to CSU–Fresno for its support of this project with a Grant for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities. 2On May 4, 1919, students in Beijing demonstrated against the Chinese government's humiliating policy toward Japan. There resulted a series of strikes and associated events amounting to a social and intellectual revolution. These events were soon dubbed by the students the May Fourth Movement, which acquired a broader meaning in later years. 3See Chinese Department at Jinan University, Zhongguo lidai shige mingpian shangxi. 180–83. 4Unless noted otherwise the passages quoted from the original texts are my translation. 5Lu Yin was well versed in classical Chinese; her view of writing was inevitably influenced by the ancient Chinese philosophers in terms of cosmology and epistemology. This sense of a unity with the whole of society and of the world comes from the Neo-Confucian tradition—the great learning paradigm grounded in the cosmological assumption of a unity of heaven and man—which claims that the outer world may be ordered by first cultivating the inherent goodness within the individual mind. 6Since the late Qing period, Chinese intellectuals and writers had engaged in the Baihua (Vernacular) Movement in which they translated various kinds of Western philosophical and literary works, experimented with new words, sentence structures, vernacular genres, and other baihua rhetorical devices to create a new culture. See Edward Gunn's Rewriting Chinese: Style and Innovation in Twentieth-Century Chinese Prose. 7Lu Xun's short fiction "Diary of a Mad Man" was published in New Youth in May 1918. Ding Ling published "Diary of Miss Sophia" in Fiction Monthly in 1928.

While there is no advice on spelling in this book, Wolman tells the history of how English spelling has changed since the Anglo-Saxon period and American spelling since the American Revolution and explains how and why the changes occurred. His history is highlighted with astute comments, personal anecdotes, and even philosophical musings. The book should be entertaining and informative for anyone who might want to learn more about how our present-day spelling got to be in the shape it is in.

This paper discusses an alternative way to look at the epigram from Burke’s Grammar of Motives and proposes to interpret it under the light of his own theorization of Dramatism and cathartic use of symbolic action. The paper draws a linguistic connection between the terms “war and “beauty” treating them as interchangeable double metaphors. Burke’s awareness of this was adumbrated in his own writings and in the manuscript of the Symbolic .

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring drew on the familiar resources of cultural pastoral attitudes of a natural order, and redrew the boundary of the natural order at an ecological self that needed to be protected from contamination. In the world of Silent Spring, a Citizen Housewife shared her substance with the natural order, had the legitimacy of rights and knowledge, and she exercised political agency. This identity resonated in political and social life, and created an identification for social action. In this paper, I trace the adoption and use of a Citizen Housewife identity in the environmental justice movement over time. First published in 1962, Silent Spring was an attack on the large scale use of pesticides and herbicides. Pesticides had been used without due regard for their interrelated effects on natural ecosystems and human health. Building on a clear and involving introduction to ecology and natural systems, Silent Spring shows how the supposedly safe use of pesticides and herbicides causes harm at every level of organization of life, from the cell to the ecosystem. The war on insects is a war against our own bodies.