Rhetoric Review Jul 2019

“The Caprices of an Undisciplined Fancy”: Using Blame to Negotiate the “betweens” of<i>Ethos</i>via the Epideictic

Elizabethada A. Wright University of Minnesota, Duluth

Abstract

Building on the scholarship of Nedra Reynolds, Dale Sullivan, and recent feminist scholars writing on ethos, this article argues that blame is a vehicle that rhetors can use to enhance their ēthē. Specifically, this article shows that blame can modify social mores when used by an ethically strong rhetor who censures another individual with a strong ethos. To make this argument, this article considers the rhetoric of a nineteenth-century French-American Catholic Sister living at the intersection of various worlds, as the article illustrates how she, when challenged by an American bishop, used a rhetoric of blame to further enhance her ethos.

Journal
Rhetoric Review
Published
2019-07-03
DOI
10.1080/07350198.2019.1618157
Open Access
Closed
Topics
rhetorical theory argument

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Stenberg (2023)
    Feminist Witnessing from the Bench: A Study of Judge Aquilina’s Epideictic Rhet…
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly

Cites in this index (5)

  1. Tomlinson et al. (2018)
    Epideictic Rhetoric Born Digital
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  2. Fredlund (2014)
    Antinarcissistic Rhetoric: Reinforcing Social Inequities through Gender Performance
    Rhetoric Review
  3. Reynolds (1993)
    <i>Ethos</i>as location: New sites for understanding discursive authority
    Rhetoric Review
  4. Sullivan (1993)
    The epideictic character of rhetorical criticism<sup>1</sup>
    Rhetoric Review
  5. Walker (1989)
    Aristotle's Lyric: Re-Imagining the Rhetoric of Epideictic Song
    College English
Also cites 7 works outside this index ↓
  1. 10.1080/01463378509369608
     ↗
  2. Cribiore Raffaella. (2013)
    Libanius the Sophist: Rhetoric, Reality and Religion in the Fourth Century
     ↗
  3. Kong Katherine. (2010)
    Lettering the Self in Medieval and Early Modern France
     ↗
  4. 10.1007/978-94-010-1713-8_8
     ↗
  5. 10.1525/rh.2001.19.3.293
     ↗
  6. 10.1057/9780230118560
     ↗
  7. 10.2307/378414
     ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 3 View in citation network →

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