Abstract

This article contributes to recent efforts to add life and movement to rhetorical studies by focusing on the representation of movement in medical texts. More specifically, this study examines medical texts, illustrations, and photographs involving movement by Johann Casper Lavater, G. B. Duchenne de Bologne, Charles Darwin, and Étienne-Jules Marey. By identifying how figures of speech epitomize arguments, this examination follows a shift in the way arguments about movement are represented, a shift from static, visual arguments to gestural enthymemes, as they are named, arguments that are made in movements; these shifts are linked to developments in medical technologies involving photography. These arguments about and using movement attempt to “capture” or express the moments within which life, through the embodied gesture, resides. This extended understanding of the enthymeme broadens current understanding of argument to include delivery, links medical and rhetorical discursive practices, and informs how we make sense of and study the relationships between technology and rhetoric both in the past and present.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
2009-07-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088309335404
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
Closed
Topics
Export

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (9)

  1. Technical Communication Quarterly
  2. Technical Communication Quarterly
  3. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  4. Philosophy & Rhetoric
  5. Technical Communication Quarterly
Show all 9 →
  1. Written Communication
  2. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  3. Written Communication
  4. Written Communication

References (49) · 3 in this index

  1. On rhetoric: A theory of civic discourse. (G. Kennedy, Trans.)
  2. Argumentation and Advocacy
  3. Argumentation and Advocacy
  4. Bolter, D.J. (1993). Hypertext and the rhetorical canons. In J. F. Reynolds (Ed.), Rhetorical memory and deli…
  5. Medical Heritage
Show all 49 →
  1. Brain, R. (2002). Representation on the line: Graphic recording instruments and scientific modernism. In B. C…
  2. J. Marey. Studies in Visual Communication
  3. 10.1080/03087298.1999.10443324
  4. Screening the body. Tracing medicine's visual culture
  5. De Oratore. 2 vols. (E. W. Sutton & H. Rackham, Trans.)
  6. The expression of emotions in man and animals (3rd ed.; Intro by P. Ekman)
  7. Retrieved April
  8. Physiology of motion. Demonstrated by means of electrical stimulation and clinical observ…
  9. Rhetorical figures in science
  10. 10.1080/00028533.2001.11951665
  11. Visualizing medicine and natural history, 1200-1550
  12. Hearing gesture: How our hands help us think
  13. The rhetoric of sensibility in eighteenth-century culture
  14. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  15. De motu cordis et sanguinis. An anatomical disquisition on the motion of the heart and bl…
  16. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  17. Hippocrates. Vol II. (W. H. S. Jones. Trans.)
  18. 10.1080/00335630109384325
  19. Spectacular bodies. The art and science of the human body from Leonardo to now
  20. 10.1017/CBO9780511807572
  21. Essays in physiognomy: Designed to promote knowledge and love of mankind
  22. Greek medicine. From the heroic to the Hellenistic age: A Source Book
  23. Animal mechanism
  24. La méthode graphique dans les sciences expérimentales et principalement en physiologie en…
  25. Movement. (E. Pritchard, Trans.)
  26. Gesture and thought
  27. Approaching hysteria: Disease and its interpretations
  28. A history of madness in sixteenth-century Germany
  29. The human figure in motion
  30. Aristotle and style
  31. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  32. Prodger, P. (1998a). Illustration as strategy in Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Mad and A…
  33. An annotated catalogue of the illustrations of human and animal expression from the colle…
  34. Figures of speech: 60 ways to turn a phrase
  35. Institutio oratoria (4 vols.). (H. E. Butler, Trans.)
  36. British Journal of Photography Annual
  37. Health and the rhetoric of medicine
  38. Rhetorical bodies: Toward a material rhetoric
  39. 10.1080/00028533.2007.11821667
  40. Snyder, J. (1998). Visualization and visibility. In C. Jones & P. Galison (Eds.), Picturing science, producin…
  41. Body criticism: Imaging the unseen in enlightenment art and medicine
  42. The transparent body: A cultural analysis of medical imagining
  43. De corporis humani fabrica libri septem [On the structure of the human body]
  44. Electric rhetoric: Classical rhetoric, oralism, and a new literacy