Ethos is generally associated with individual rhetors.1 Certainly that's association Aristotle had in mind when he recorded most influential usage of term (Rhetoric 1356a). But there is ample warrant for moving to a broader level-the level adopted in this paper, a case study of outrageous of a group of generative linguists on cusp of sixties and seventies. There is ample warrant for identifying not simply with specific individuals in specific orations but also with identifiable communities. In ordinary language, for instance, has always been far more communal than individual: Ethos.... [ 1.] The characteristic spirit, prevalent tone of sentiment, of a people or community; 'genius' of an institution or system (OED, 1933 reissue) . And it has a similar sense among our academic neighbors-in literary criticism, where books have titles like The Ethos of Restoration Comedy (Schneider); in sociology, where books have titles like The Ethos of Hong Kong Chinese (Siu-Kai), or, more famously, in Merton's discussion of general ethos of science (268). Coming closer to home, consider Augustine's notion of a Christian ethos, which presupposes that rhetor stands for group values (De Doctrina 4.27-29). Consider similarly presupposing admonition of George Campbell about influence of party-spirit (97). Consider Black's above-epigramitized talk of patterned commitments and stylistic proclivities, which, as Halloran tells us, is essentially projection of to communal level (Black 85; Halloran, Molecular Biology 71). Elsewhere, Halloran tells us more: the word has both an individual and a collective meaning. It makes sense to speak of of this or that person, but it makes equally good sense to speak of of a particular

Usability testing is now recognized as essential to quality documentation, but, unfortunately, the costs and the time required for fullblown testing are prohibitive for many projects. This article presents a set of very practical guidelines for a small documentation team to design and conduct its own usability study—including discussions of preparing task lists, recruiting participants, conducting the study, and analyzing the data.

Socrates, of course, does not mean to venerate the art of discourse here. He is telling Phaedrus that there is discourse and there is truth. Once you have gone out and dug up the truth somewhere else, you apply the art of discourse to it and fashion a persuasive argument that will permit others to partake also of the truth. Two immediate implications follow from Socrates' position. First, only when the art of discourse, rhetoric, is put to the task of selling truth to the benighted does it become real. Second, rhetoric is necessary human affairs just to the extent that humans are unable to apprehend truth directly. It is an unfortunate evil, required because we are rationally degenerate creatures. Both positions have remained very popular over the intervening two millenia. Bitzer, for instance, can still say that in the best of all possible worlds there would be communication perhaps, but not rhetoric;'I we get our truth and knowledge somewhere else, and only our lack of perfection prevents us from casting rhetoric out of the garden. But there is an important lesson those two millenia that can help us to see the Spartan's words another light: the sources of truth which rhetoric has been obliged to serve have changed dramatically-from Socrates' dialectic and Aristotle's apodeixis, to Christianity's biblical exegesis and divine revelation, to the current authority on matters of knowledge and truth, Science. This rotation of leading roles while the supporting actress, Lady Rhetoric, remains constant indicates that the real art of discourse is connected with truth not because of human degeneracy, but because of precisely the reverse, because of our spark of perfection, because we are truth-seeking, knowledge-making creatures who sometimes get it right. We occasionally do something important with rhetoric: we find truth and we build knowledge out of it. When we manage the trick, though, we are so eager to dissociate it from all the foul and inane things we also do with rhetoric that we give the process another name. But these other names are clearly just aliases for rhetoric, or for some subset of rhetorical interests. Dialectic, for instance, is essentially questing debate. Apodeixis is distinguished only by the level of rigor Aristotle demands of the argumentation, not by any qualitative difference. Exegesis is rhetorical analysis. The only possible gap to this pattern is divine revelation, whose capacity to generate truth I will leave to more knowledgeable commentators, pausing only to notice that, true or not, reports of revelation usually involve a fair amount of persuasive machinery-burning bushes, hovering spirits, and the like. In any case, science is certainly no exception.

(1989). Argumentation in Chomsky's syntactic structures an exercise in rhetoric of science. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 105-130.

Linguistics has been largely misunderstood in writing pedagogy. After Chomsky's revolution, it was widely touted as a panacea; now it is widely flogged as a pariah. Both attitudes are extreme. It has a number of applications in the writing classroom, and it is particularly ripe for technical writing students, who have more sophistication with formalism than their humanities counterparts. Moreover, although few scholars outside of linguistics are aware of it, Transformational Grammar is virtually obsolete; most grammatical models are organized around principled aversions to the transformation, and even Chomsky has little use for his most famous innovation these days. Among the more recent developments is Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, a model with distinct formal and pedagogical advantages over Chomsky's early transformational work.

This question, the engine humming at the center of Bakhtin's vision, generating alien words like heteroglossy and polyphony, is one that rhetoricians do not ask. And our work is poorer for the silence. We make inquiries, sometimes very probing ones, into ethos, and occasionally we investigate some rhetor in great detail. But we take identity for granted. It is Plato or Socrates or Burke doing the speaking. we fail to notice is that these labels do not designate autonomous, univocal entities. They designate composites-collections of voices, some in harmony, some in conflict. Mikhail Bakhtin, then, has something to tell us: listen. Listen and you will hear a verbal carnival of such depth and diversity, of such extravagance and exuberance, that your ears will never be the same again. The most immediate consequence of this newfound affluence is that the traditional triangular paradigm of rhetorical events becomes lopsided. The speaker's corner becomes very heavy. But two questions, in parallel with Bakhtin's obsessive probe, present themselves-Who is listening? and What is being said? -and they find similarly multivocal answers. This additional plurality does not so much balance the triangle as burden it. That is, as soon as we start to listen more carefully, the paradigm proves hopelessly inadequate. It simplifies interactions to the point of insignificance, it undervalues or ignores essential elements, and it effects an artificial closure on an inherently openended process. Applying it to any rhetorical event, once we are fitted with our new ears, reveals this inadequacy, but, to keep things in the family, consider how the paradigm fares in an examination of multivalence in the Phaedrus.