Recently there has been interest in examining how language is involved in the phenomenon of ‘manipulation’. This paper suggests that investigators, rather than treating ‘manipulation’ as an entity, should examine how communicators might engage in discursive acts of manipulating. To this end a distinction is made between manipulating information and manipulating people. Examples of both types, taken from the Portuguese Parliamentary Celebration of the April Revolution of 2004, are examined in depth to show how acts of manipulating can be performed (...) in different ways. By focussing on acts, we show that supposed ‘cognitive control’ over the audience's minds is not necessarily involved in manipulating; it is shown how investigators can provide evidence that manipulators act ‘knowingly’ when they mislead. We argue that the study of manipulating, and the distinction between manipulating information and people, provides a critical approach to the topic of political oratory. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the importance of wonder in human flourishing and is orientated towards the dynamics between the two, but with an emphasis on how the former is important for illuminating the latter. It begins with a preliminary sketch of both wonder and human flourishing and subsequently moves on to highlight three aspects of human flourishing: 1) ‘Individuality’, 2) ‘Relations’ and 3) ‘The political’, and why these play to wonderment.

Brand Equity Planning with Structuralist Rhetorical Semiotics furnishes an innovative conceptual model and methodology for brand equity planning, with view to addressing a crucial gap in the marketing and semiotic literatures concerning how advertising multimodal textual elements may be transformed into brand associations, with an emphasis on rhetorical relata as modes of connectivity between a brand’s surface and depth grammar. The scope of this project is inter-disciplinary, spanning research areas such as brand equity, structuralist semiotics, textual semiotics, visual and film (...) semiotics, multimodal rhetoric, film theory, psychoanalysis. The proposed connectionist conceptual model of the brand trajectory of signification is operationalized through a methodological framework that encompasses a structuralist semiotic interpretative approach to the textual formation of brand equity, supported by quantitative content analysis with the aid of the software Atlas.ti and the application of multivariate mapping techniques. (shrink)

In 1997, David Foster Wallace published “The Depressed Person,” a short story about a privileged, deeply unhappy woman dedicated to exploring and recounting the texture and etiology of her chronic depression. This essay argues that “The Depressed Person” challenges the long-standing assumption that narrativizing the pain of depression is crucial to overcoming it, and the contemporary view that empathic responses from others promote recovery of the depressed. Taken together, these two critiques inform Wallace’s portrayal of chronic depression as an interactive (...) phenomenon that is articulated, sustained, and regenerated through problematic contexts of interaction. Written at a time when public knowledge of and talk about depression was surging, “The Depressed Person” holds an important, if presently under-recognized place, in the expansive corpus of depression texts that emerged in the 1990s. (shrink)

This article explores the theological/philosophical resonances of the theater. “Holy” and “catholic” are the key terms that shape the reflection. The holy is masked in the ordinary details of plays and musicals. Thus, it is fitting to say that the theater is “God-haunted,” a place of transcendence and transformation. The catholicity of the theater is found in acknowledging its inherent commitment to telling the whole truth, or at least endeavoring to tell what is true, about human existence. We are by (...) nature story-telling creatures, and the narratives embodied in the theater aid in interpreting and reflecting on mystery and truth, in the exegesis of our lives and of our way of being in the world. Two plays and a musical are representative anecdotes that flesh out the ideas advanced in the essay— Equus , Auntie Mame , and A Chorus Line. (shrink)

As scholars have recently suggested, rhetoric has long been remiss when it comes to nondiscursive concerns beyond its traditional purview. While many have sought to broaden rhetoric's scope, no one has yet undertaken a nondiscursive rhetorical investigation of social change in an effort to reconcile the tension between a critique of agency and the perception of human responsibility. This article undertakes such a critique through Alain Badiou's concept of the event, a concept that, I contend, offers the discipline a means (...) of rethinking the opposition between relativism and flat ontology. Analyzing the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi through the frame of the event, I regard Bouazizi's act as an ontic occurrence exerting influence over protestors across the Arab world while demanding collective recognition to emerge as an event. (shrink)

The human propensity for casting our social worlds as "us against them" is perhaps the primary impediment to deep and broadly inclusive understandings of the workings of rhetoric. Many decades ago, Kenneth Burke assailed that barrier with regard to Adolf Hitler. Surrounded by the satisfactions of vituperation against the leader of one of the world's most heinous social movements, Burke begged his readers to make space for understanding how Hitler's rhetoric brought about what it did. Philippe-Joseph Salazar's Words Are Weapons (...) makes a similar contribution for our era. He asks us to resist the gratifications generated by dismissing as "Islamaphobic" any critical analysis of what he calls "caliphal"... (shrink)

Despite the potential political impact of industry attempts to influence public policy about genetic modification, little research has focused on critical understanding of industry perspectives. This article explores the rhetorical and discursive construction of public messages about this controversial issue by two major New Zealand export industries. The kiwifruit industry advocates a very cautious public policy position, while the dairy industry has been a strong advocate for the commercial development of genetic modification. We demonstrate that these industries draw on multiple (...) identities and rationalities to negotiate, express, and elaborate their positions on genetic modification, informed variously by discourses of risk, science, the political economy of the marketplace, and images of the ‘natural’ environment. We suggest that exploring how organizations seek to influence controversial socio-political issues through the management of multiple identities may facilitate greater understanding of viewpoints often represented in the media as two distinct polarities; that is as either ‘for’ or ‘against’ the issues. (shrink)

As a relatively young profession, public relations seeks a realistic ethics foundation. A continuing debate in public relations has pitted journalistic/objectivity ethics against the advocacy ethics that may be more appropriate in an adversarial society. As the journalistic/objectivity influence has waned, the debate has evolved, pitting the advocacy/adversarial foundation against the two-way symmetrical model of public relations, which seeks to build consensus and holds that an organization itself, not an opposing public, sometimes may need to change to build a productive (...) relationship. A similar battle between adversarial advocacy and symmetry occurred during the emergence of rhetoric in the Athens of the 4th century B.C. Plato and Aristotle favored adversarial/advocacy rhetoric, whereas Isocrates favored a symmetrical rhetoric. Four criteria of comparison of those rhetorics are examined: success of the respective schools, success of the respective graduates, the evaluation of later Roman rhetoricians, and the impact on the future of education. History shows that Isocrates's symmetrical rhetoric clearly was more effective than its adversarial/advocacy rivals. Recent studies of the two-way symmetrical model concur, indicating that it may well be the most effective foundation for public relations ethics. (shrink)

In recent years, outbreaks such as H1N1 have prompted heightened efforts to manage the risk of infection. These efforts often involve the endorsement of personal responsibility for infection risk, thus reinforcing an individualistic model of public health. Some scholars—for example, Peterson and Lupton —term this model the “new public health.” In this essay, I describe how the focus on personal responsibility for infection risk shapes the promotion of hand hygiene and other forms of illness etiquette. My analysis underscores the use (...) of constitutive and stigmatizing rhetoric to depict individual bodies, rather than environments, as prime sources of infection. Common among workplaces, this rhetoric provides the impetus for encouraging individual behavior change as a hedge against infection risk. I argue, though, that the mandating of personal responsibility for infection risk galvanizes a culture of stigma and blame that may work against the aims of public health. (shrink)

One might presume that elite educational environments, including colleges and universities, have been the exclusive venues for rhetorical theory. Rhetorical theory typically takes the form of published treatises, monographs, and essays. Thus, the status of theorist would have been denied to, among others, African Americans during the nineteenth century because they were not afforded opportunities to become literate or, even if literate, not admitted into realms of elite literacy. But there are the seeds of a competing story, particularly regarding the (...) narratives written by Frederick Douglass. Henry Louis Gates Jr., for example, has stated that Douglass used... (shrink)

The emerging epistemic community of ecosemioticians and the multidisciplinary field of inquiry known as ecosemiotics offer a radical and relevant approach to so-called global environmental crisis. There are no environmental fixes within the dominant code, since that code overdetermines the future, thereby perpetuating ecologically untenable cultural forms. The possibility of a sustainability transition (the attempt to overcome destitution and avoid ecocatastrophe) becomes real when mediated by and through ecosemiotics. In short, reflexive awareness of humankind's linguisticality is a necessary condition for (...) transforming ecologically maladaptive cultural forms. As a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary research program integrating the human and natural sciences, ecosemiotic inquiry closes the gap between biophysical ecology and human ecology. A provisional outline of a pragmatic theory of ecoserniotics attempts to describe the processes by which adaptive cultural changes might be facilitated and points toward substantive content areas that constitute sites for further research. Ecosemiotic inquiry frames cultural codes as these shape and reproduce the ongoing stream of individual and societal choices that shape distinctively human existence in a larger context of biophysical realities that drive natural selection. However, while ecosemiotics is a necessary condition for the sustainability transition, it is not a sufficient condition. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This study explores the influence of the French Symbolist poet, novelist, and literary critic Remy de Gourmont on Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's conception of dissociation. It proposes translatio—the medieval trope describing a transfer of ideas—as a lens through which to read the significance of Gourmont's thought on the New Rhetoric Project. Thus forgoing more traditional comparative approaches such as intertextuality, this study argues that translatio serves here as a particularly valuable conceptual tool: it unveils the evolution of Perelman's (...) thought over time, and Olbrechts-Tyteca's significant contribution to it; it also provides a clearer understanding of the relationship between association and dissociation in the NRP than what is generally understood by scholars of the Traité. More importantly, translatio unveils the features that make their conception of dissociation one of the truly innovative aspects of the NRP. (shrink)

The in-depth comparative analysis of political rhetoric in a Basque newspaper's editorials, published on 17/18 October 1997, and reporting similar events in Basque or Spanish, suggests that the use of these languages involved different constructions of the readership and strategies to express writer/reader communality. The Basque language editorial eventually conveyed an assertive we Basques, stressing the search of unity, differentiation and sovereignty. Conflict/differences between the Basques were omitted, backgrounded or ironised, while differences with the Spanish were foregrounded. The Spanish editorial (...) avoided using the rhetoric of we and blamed specific Basques for the repression of Basque secessionism. Subtle criticism against Euskadi Ta Askatasuna served to include it among the human victims. The implications of such fine-detailed differences are discussed as those linked to the struggle to strengthen a representative democracy patterned on Western models, which presuppose that since conflicting proposals can co-exist, the use of violence is unnecessary for the communities/political institutions’ implementation. (shrink)

The ‘constructivist turn’ in political representation literature has clarified that representation is crucial in forging identities – through the creation of ideological and symbolic representations that mobilize and coalesce otherwise scattered and undefined social forces – and thus also why it is essentially an interpretative and performative activity. In this article I argue that, as a consequence of this emphasis on interpretation and performativity, this approach makes clear why the ethos of representatives is important in representation. To prove this, I (...) employ some insights from rhetoric. Rhetorical persuasion and democratic representation, indeed, call for a similar kind of judgment, as they both need to mediate between opposing exigencies: rhetoric between attentiveness to the specificity of the audience and the creation of new beliefs, and representation between being responsive to specific interests and giving them a new articulation. Mediating this tension requires an exercise of judgment that, being directed toward the future, inevitably introduces uncertainty into the relation. This is why both in rhetoric and representation the ethos is an essential element. However, as I argue in the conclusion, the personal qualities that should be considered relevant here are above political qualities, rather than technical or moral ones. (shrink)

This work studies manipulative use of language that can be called “deliberate failure of communication”; I characterize this kind of manipulation and show that it can be found in the discourse of marketing experts and legal professionals. Relying on relevance theory, I show that manipulation of this kind takes advantage of what van Dijk calls the “context model” of the addressees. I exemplify two ways in which the context models of some of the discourse’s participants might be misused in order (...) to manipulate them. One way is exemplified by a text from an advertisement, the other by a text from a criminal court file. I propose, finally, that the analysis supports van Dijk’s view that social, discursive, and epistemic inequalities reproduce one another in a kind of vicious circle. It suggests, in van Dijk’s terms, that manipulation by deliberate failure of communication is a discriminatory use of language employed by elite groups in order to reproduce their social power. (shrink)

Our aim is to point out some differences between verbal and visual arguments, promoting the rhetorical perspective of argumentation beyond the relevance of logic and pragmatics. In our view, if it is to be rational and successful, film as (visual) argumentation must be addressed to spectators who hold informed beliefs about the theme watched on the screen and the medium’s constraints and conventions. In our reflections to follow, we apply rhetorical analysis to film as a symbolic, human, and communicative act (...) that may sometimes be understood as a visually laid out argument. As a mixture of visual, auditory, and verbal stimuli, film demands active and complex interpretation and (re)construction. Our suggestion is to focus on five different but interrelated elements. The reconstruction and evaluation of the visual argument will be based on those elements, and the whole process will be one of visual argumentation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Appropriate Indecorum Rhetoric and Aesthetics in the Political Theory of Jacques RancièreEthan StonemanJacques Rancière is one of France's leading intellectuals and a recent addition to the who's who of Continental philosophy. Since his time as a student at the Ecole normale supérieure, Rancière has generated a body of work that is at once wide-ranging, interdisciplinary, and consistent. His arguments for a postfoundational and postliberal democratic understanding of politics have (...) influenced, echoed, or demanded critical response from such other Continental luminaries as Slavoj Žižek (1999, 2004) and Alain Badiou (2005). Much of this cachet is no doubt due to Rancière's central thesis regarding the sources, uses, and ends of politics. According to this argument, politics does not derive from putative a priori truths about knowledge, human nature, or social interaction; it is not a function of particular forms of government, and it neither establishes nor ensures socioeconomic order. Rather, for Rancière politics is a dissensual activity consisting solely in the demonstration of equality. But rather than designating something to be attained, preserved, or balanced against competing factors, Rancière's equality names an assumption that political subjects must presuppose on their own account and exhibit through their own actions. Insofar as a given social arrangement is hierarchical, the egalitarian presupposition will be necessarily agonistic and symbolically disruptive of that order. [End Page 129] In a word, Rancière champions a politics from the ground up, one that defends without patronizing the down-and-out, the disenfranchised, the unseen, and the unheard.During the last quarter of the twentieth century, while Rancière was formulating his theory of politics, American rhetoricians began to assert the continued relevance of decorum to the analysis of contemporary social phenomena (see, e.g., Fantham 1984; Leff 1987, 1990; Rosteck and Leff 1990; Hariman 1992, 1995; Smith 1992; Deem 1995). These efforts were concurrent with other attempts to foreground the aesthetic capacity of rhetoric to create, sustain, and transform perception via the symbolic manipulation of appearances (see, e.g., Farrell 1993; Whitson and Poulakos 1993; Vitanza 1997; Greene 1998). It is surprising, however, that these efforts to revitalize decorum and aesthetics have largely fail to reference recent Continental theories of aesthetics, many of which have tacit but unexplored bearing on decorum and rhetoric in general. Equally surprising is the tendency, within rhetorical studies, to discuss aesthetics without so much as broaching the subject of decorum. One exception to this trend is Robert Hariman (1992, 1995), who makes a convincing case for the conceptual intimacy between decorum and aesthetics. The classical theory of decorum, he argues, "blended significant aspects of rhetorical practice, social awareness, and political structure into an aesthetic sensibility that directed the selection of diction appropriate to one's subject or situation" (1992, 152). According to this account, decorum in the classical era engendered an aesthetic orientation toward one's sociopolitical environment and the rhetorical practices therein.I contend that Rancière's political theory makes significant strides toward bridging the gap between decorum, aesthetics, and politics while at the same time focusing attention on the role of equality and the empowering potential of indecorum. Although rhetoricians have tended not to address the inventional possibilities of indecorum per se, there has been a recurring effort among those writing on decorum to explicate the conditions of rhetorical performances of confrontation, nonadjustment, and resistance—performances that would eschew a logic of influence and assent for a tactics of opposition and disturbance. This trend has been accompanied by periodic attempts to account for rhetoric's potential to interrupt dominant modes of discourse and rationality and to identify its countervailing forces and formal constraints (Scott and Smith 1969; Windt 1972; Campbell 1973; Phillips 1996; Doxtader 2000). It is my contention that Rancière's political vocabulary can extend this line of inquiry by [End Page 130] expanding the possibility for indecorum to subvert the symbolic structures of oppression and domination while avoiding the pitfalls of adaptation and co-optation, that is, the reconstitution of decorum via dialectical syntheses of competing codes of conduct. Specifically, rhetoricians may interpret Rancière's political theory as answering Melissa Deem's... (shrink)

_Discusses philosophers Mencius and Aristotle as socio-ecological thinkers._ Mencius (385–303/302 BCE) and Aristotle (384–322 BCE) were contemporaries, but are often understood to represent opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum. Mencius is associated with the ecological, emergent, flowing, and connected; Artistotle with the rational, static, abstract, and binary. Douglas Robinson argues that in their conceptions of rhetoric, at least, Mencius and Aristotle are much more similar than different: both are powerfully socio-ecological, espousing and exploring collectivist thinking about the circulation of energy (...) and social value through groups. The agent performing the actions of _pistis_, “persuading-and-being-persuaded,” in Aristotle and _zhi_, “governing-and-being-governed,” in Mencius is, Robinson demonstrates, not so much the rhetor as an individual as it is the whole group. Robinson tracks this collectivistic thinking through a series of comparative considerations using a theory that draws impetus from Arne Naess’s “ecosophical” deep ecology and from work on rhetoric powered by affective ecologies, but with details of the theory drawn equally from Mencius and Aristotle. (shrink)

Scholars have long posited justice as a core value of public relations. However, that value has been criticized as being improbably idealistic. Philosopher David Hume locates the origins of justice within the need for property and the reliable exchange of resources. Hume thus embeds the origins of justice within a staple of public relations theory: resource dependency theory. Additionally, Hume believes a respect for justice to be the foundation of a positive reputation. This grounding of the quest for justice in (...) resource dependency and reputation helps establish a realistic basis for accepting justice as a core value of public relations. (shrink)

This book contains 20 essays tracing the work of David Zarefsky, a leading North American scholar of argumentation from a rhetorical perspective. The essays cohere around 4 general themes: objectives for studying argumentation rhetorically, approaches to rhetorical study of argumentation, patterns and schemes of rhetorical argumentation, and case studies illustrating the potential of studying argumentation rhetorically. These articles are drawn from across Zarefsky’s 45-year career. Many of these articles originally appeared in publications that are difficult to access today, and this (...) collection brings the reader up to date on the topic. Zarefsky’s scholarship focuses on the role of language in political argumentation, the ways in which argumentation creates public knowledge and belief, the influence of framing and context on what is said and understood, the deployment of particular patterns and schemes of argumentation in public reasoning, and the influence of debate on politics and governance. All these topics are addressed in this book. Each of the conceptual essays includes brief application to specific cases, and five extended case studies are also presented in this volume. The case studies cover different themes: two explore famous political debates, the third focuses on presidential rhetoric across the course of United States history, the fourth on the arguments for liberalism at a time of political polarization, and the fifth on the contemporary effort to engage the United States with the Muslim world. This book is of interest to scholars in the fields of philosophy, logic, law, philosophy of law, and legal history. The range of topics and concepts addressed, the interplay of concepts and cases and the unifying perspective of rhetorical argumentation make this book a valuable read for students of argumentative practice, whether rhetorically or otherwise. (shrink)

J. Anthony Blair is a prominent international figure in argumentation studies. He is among the originators of informal logic, an author of textbooks on the informal logic approach to argument analysis and evaluation and on critical thinking, and a founder and editor of the journal Informal Logic. Blair is widely recognized among the leaders in the field for contributing formative ideas to the argumentation literature of the last few decades. This selection of key works provides insights into the history of (...) the field of argumentation theory and various related disciplines. It illuminates the central debates and presents core ideas in four main areas: Critical Thinking, Informal Logic, Argument Theory and Logic, Dialectic and Rhetoric. (shrink)

Too often in argumentation studies, an emphasis on argumentative norms fails to give adequate weight to elements of emotion and style that are essential to public speech at its best, not only in ordinary practice but especially in those rare moments where public speech arrives at the sublime. In this paper we examine the coordination of argument with figurative and emotive language whose combination yields sublime effects in the poetry of the Hebrew prophets as well as in examples of modern (...) discourse. It is shown that poetic figures, while not fully reducible to argumentative norms, nor rational in the sense commonly applied to argumentation, do in fact contribute in propriety in public discourse; moreover, they surpass mere propriety to generate moments of the sublime. (shrink)

The recognition perspective is a valuable lens through which identity struggles and historical marginalization and abuses can be explored. This study analyzes Ireland’s Justice for Magdalene (JFM) campaign between 2009–2013; JFM was a group that fought for a state apology and redress for women and girls confined to Catholic-run laundries between the 1920s and 1990s. Such institutions formed part of the post-colonial Irish identity and church-state structure, within which many women and girls once suffered. We document the rhetorical dimension of (...) how a resolution was ultimately reached following the campaign’s transformation of women’s individual experiences into the collective voice of an advocacy group with targeted political goals. Focusing on JFM’s public press releases, we consider the media logic and rhetorical strategies of the group, which effectively built a case against the state. At the core of the discussion is the balance between the instrumental and constitutive functions of the organization’s messaging. (shrink)

Now over a decade since the publication of John Michael’s Anxious Intellects (2000), many rhetoric scholars are no less anxious about the relevance of scholarship to public affairs. Recent exchanges concerning rhetorical criticism, public intellectualism, and academic engagement continue to provide evidence of a prominent felt need to prove public relevance, explain away the lack of readily apparent public engagement, or adopt a more activist posture. That academic work should have political consequences is broadly assumed within a dominant strain of (...) rhetorical scholarship owing to what is doubtless an incontrovertible feature of reality—words have political consequences. From this fact, many rhetoric scholars .. (shrink)

Rhetorician Kenneth Burke’s theory of identification usefully demonstrates how communities are able to engage with difficult, opposing viewpoints as they develop or maintain a sense of shared identity. Identification, “establishing a shared sense of values, attitudes, and interests with [an audience],” is promoted dialogically in the modern national museum in a way that it is difficult for classrooms to emulate. This article examines dialogic national identification particularly through the focus in museums on certain key objects that serve as what Burke (...) termed “mythic images” that ambiguously unify multiple perspectives and translate their debates from the abstract to the concrete. By promoting the reflective identification of one’s personal memories with the collective memory of nationhood, national museums provide an aesthetic/pragmatic space for the dialogical embrace of a public identity that is not merely reflected in its exhibits but also continually reshaped by its visiting individuals. I end with the possibilities, or cautions, these mythic images suggest for varying types of communal identification—a tension inherent as well in Gert Biesta’s arguments for the meaning of a “good” education. (shrink)

“Place” as an argumentative domain, which has been taken for granted and treated by theorists of argumentation simply as a physical notion designating the occasion where an argumentation takes place, carries far more complex meanings beyond its traditionally assumed domain in the following three dimensions: as a geographical locale; as a concept, an idea, a history or a notion with its own disputable narratives and presumptions; and as an imaginative geography. Similarly, an image or a character projected through argumentative discourse (...) should be among the central concerns for argumentation studies, however, limited attention has nevertheless been paid to this traditional face of argument in general and the collective face in particular. We argue that image is a site of discursive production, a symbolic field or a discursively disputable space. The discursive interplay among “place,” “image,” “argument” and “time” offer a new way of thinking about ethotic argument and its key role in the establishment of discursive credibility. (shrink)

“Place” as an argumentative domain, which has been taken for granted and treated by theorists of argumentation simply as a physical notion designating the occasion where an argumentation takes place, carries far more complex meanings beyond its traditionally assumed domain in the following three dimensions: as a geographical locale; as a concept, an idea, a history or a notion with its own disputable narratives and presumptions; and as an imaginative geography. Similarly, an image or a character projected through argumentative discourse (...) should be among the central concerns for argumentation studies, however, limited attention has nevertheless been paid to this traditional face of argument in general and the collective face in particular. We argue that image is a site of discursive production, a symbolic field or a discursively disputable space. The discursive interplay among “place,” “image,” “argument” and “time” offer a new way of thinking about ethotic argument and its key role in the establishment of discursive credibility. (shrink)

The article analyses Finland’s and Norway’s female politicians’ war rhetoric with reference to the war in Afghanistan and contrasts it with Laura Bush’s rhetoric and feminism. In the Nordic countries the strong liberal and equity tradition of feminism could open up spaces for thinking differently about war, and yet the co-optation of hegemonic war rhetoric occurs in several ways. The ideograph ‘women-and-children’ is often evoked and added to the hegemonic foreign policy rhetoric without questioning the actual rhetorical work it does. (...) Gender-neutral rhetoric is used to hail into being a collective and unitary western do-gooder identity and to distance Nordic involvement from the US ‘war on terror’. The panegyric of UN Resolution 1325 facilitates the metamorphosis of the militaristic and masculine US-led NATO into a collective peacekeeper capable of saving ‘brown women from brown men’. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to apply theEntrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model(EC-Model hereafter; seeSchmid 2014,2015,2016,2017,2018;Schmid & Mantlik 2015) of language knowledge to genre, with the aim of showing how a unified theory of the relation between usage and linguistic knowledge and convention can shed light on the way genre knowledge becomes entrenched in the individual and shared conventional behavior in communities. The EC-Model is a usage-based and emergentist model of language knowledge and convention rooted in cognitive linguistics and usage-based approaches. It sees (...) knowledge as emerging from language usage, and explains the processes underlying the intertwining of social practice and cognition. However, so far, no suggestion has been advanced on how to extend the model to account for entrenchment and conventionalization at the supra-sentential level. In the area of genre studies various attempts have been made by scholars to develop or apply theories belonging to different scientific domains to understand the nature of genre. However, so far, there has been no research that applies a unified model in the attempt to link entrenchment of genres in individuals to their conventionalization at the societal level. I largely focus on the long tradition of rhetorical studies of genre, one among the different approaches that, over time, have regarded genre as their main topic of investigation. I concentrate on this tradition as it opens up the entire field of enquiry that defines contemporary genre research. To these I add by showing how the explanations provided so far can be cognitively clarified and unified under the EC-Model. The paper, then, argues that the EC-Model is theoretically apt to address questions about the nature of genre, capturing in an elegant way the interplay between cognition and social interaction in genre emergence, evolution, stabilization and variation. (shrink)

In ‘The making of argumentation theory’ van Eemeren and van Haaften describe the contributions made to the five components of a full-fledged research program of argumentation theory by four prominent approaches to the discipline: formal dialectics, rhetoric/pragmalinguistics, informal logic, and pragma-dialectics. Most of these approaches do not contribute to all components, but to some in particular. Starting from the pragma-dialectical view of the relationship between dialectical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness – the crucial issue in argumentation theory – van Eemeren and (...) van Haaften explain the positions taken by representatives from the approaches discussed and indicate where they differ from the pragma-dialectical approach. It transpires that approaches focusing on dialectical reasonableness are, next to pragma-dialectics, formal dialectics and informal logic; approaches focusing on rhetorical effectiveness are, next to pragma-dialectics, rhetoric and pragmalinguistics, and the informal logician Tindale. When it comes to the relationship between dialectical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness, some interest in it is shown in rhetoric and pragmalinguistics, but only in pragma-dialectics and in Tindale’s work is it a real focus. The main difference between Tindale’s view and the pragma-dialectical view is that in pragma-dialectics the decisive role in deciding about reasonableness is assigned to a code of conduct for reasonable argumentative discourse and in Tindale’s approach this role is assigned to Tindale’s interpretation of the Perelmanian universal audience. (shrink)

(1995). Migrating across disciplinary boundaries: The case of the periodicity paper of David Raup and John Sepkoski. Social Epistemology: Vol. 9, Boundary Rhetorics and the Work of Interdisciplinarity, pp. 151-164.

The documentary program "Confusion in a Jar," shown on the PBS series NOVA, is analyzed in terms of rhetorical theory. The program is characterized as an instance of the genre of epideictic rhetoric. However, unlike most studies of epideictic that emphasize the way the genre builds communion, in this case the negative side of epideictic as the rhetoric of exclusion or excommunication is investigated, especially its rhetorical function of closing off discussion. The program is shown to follow six episodes of (...) an excommunication narrative modeled on the narrative structure of the New Testament Gospels. (shrink)

Jacques Rancière is one of France's leading intellectuals and a recent addition to the who's who of Continental philosophy. Since his time as a student at the Ecole normale supérieure, Rancière has generated a body of work that is at once wide-ranging, interdisciplinary, and consistent. His arguments for a postfoundational and postliberal democratic understanding of politics have influenced, echoed, or demanded critical response from such other Continental luminaries as Slavoj Žižek (1999, 2004) and Alain Badiou (2005). Much of this cachet (...) is no doubt due to Rancière's central thesis regarding the sources, uses, and ends of politics. According to this argument, politics does not derive from putative a priori .. (shrink)

This article investigates the uneasy process of integrating midwifery’s alternative, women-centered model of childbirth care within the medically-dominated healthcare system in Canada. It analyses the impure processes of rhetorical identification and differentiation that characterized the debate about how to regulate midwifery in Ontario by examining a selection of submissions from diverse health care groups with vested interest in the debate’s outcome. In divergent ways, these groups strategically appeal to the value of the “public interest” in order to advance professional concerns. (...) The study considers the implications of this rhetorical process for re-defining midwifery’s distinctive professional identity in relation to other health professions, to the state, and to the women for whom midwives care. Likewise, it suggests the relevance of rhetorical analysis for understanding the discursive formation and re-formation of health models, values, and professions in Western culture. (shrink)

: The nature/culture dualism has long been criticized for constructing social beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that fail to respect and value the natural world. One possible way to bridge the divide between the human and non-human worlds is the process of identification. Orangutans, an endangered species found in Indonesia and Malaysia, enable individuals to bridge, connect, and identify with a seemingly separate natural world. Through identification with orangutans, humans come to reevaluate their own perspectives and dichotomous ways of thinking about (...) their relationships with nature. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.3 (2001) 260-274 [Access article in PDF] Second Thoughts on the Critiques of Big Rhetoric Edward Schiappa This note is divided into three parts. First, I explore some answers to the question "How did Rhetoric get so Big?" Second, I review some of the more important criticisms of a "globalized" or "universalized" view of rhetorical studies. Finally, I contend that the critiques of Big Rhetoric do (...) not withstand scrutiny and ought to be dismissed for insufficient evidence. While there certainly are important issues for scholars of rhetorical studies to consider about how to enhance the quality and importance of our work, such issues should not include the concern that rhetoric has grown too "big."By "Big Rhetoric" I refer only to the theoretical position that everything, or virtually everything, can be described as "rhetorical." I refer to the growth of rhetorical scholarship in communication studies and other disciplines as the "popularization" of rhetorical studies. 1 Theories associated with Big Rhetoric are credited with popularizing or at least rationalizing what Herbert W. Simons (1990) calls the "rhetorical turn" in a variety of disciplines. Within the journals and conventions of members of the National Communication Association (NCA), popularization is often characterized by studies of the form "the rhetoric of X," where X could literally be anything. Outside of the NCA-defined parameters of communication studies, popularization is evidenced by the apparently ever-increasing ranks of scholars who use "rhetoric" as a relevant and important term of art within their scholarship. By either measure, it can be argued fairly convincingly that "rhetoric" has become a widely used construct in scholarship. What I wish to engage is the disputed desirability of broad definitions and the related popularization of rhetoric. [End Page 260] 1. Whence big rhetoric? There are a number of narratives on the rise of Big Rhetoric already in print in communication studies (Simons 1990; Gaonkar 1990), rhetoric and composition (Berlin 1987; Young and Goggin 1993), and interdisciplinary publications (Roberts and Good 1993; Mailloux 2000; Nelson, Megill, and McCloskey 1987). Many accounts identify the 1960s as a turning point. For better or for worse, there was a confluence of changing rhetorical practices, expanding rhetorical theories, and opportunities for rhetorical criticism. The cultural clashes of the 1960s were felt perhaps most acutely on college campuses. The sufficiency of deliberative argument and public address can be said to have been called into question, whether one was an antiwar activist who hated LBJ's war in Vietnam or a pro-establishment stalwart trying to make sense of the rhetoric of protest and demonstration. Years later, scholars would characterize war itself as rhetorical. What counted as rhetorical practice was up for grabs.At about the same time, our understanding of rhetorical theory was being expanded. Here we can identify two main strands of thought. For ease of reference I will call one the symbolic interactionist rationale and the other the epistemological rationale. The symbolic interactionist rationale can be boiled down to a syllogism: All persuasive actions are rhetorical. All symbol/language-use is persuasive. Therefore: All symbol/language-use is rhetorical. Perhaps the two most significant pronouncements of this approach--for my generation of rhetoric scholars, at any rate--are by Richard Weaver and Kenneth Burke. Weaver claims that "language is sermonic" in the sense that whenever we offer a description or label a phenomenon, we are "preaching" a particular way of making sense of it (1970, 201-25). Burke, of course, has two famous (or infamous) statements in Rhetoric of Motives: first, that rhetoric is "the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols" (1950, 43); and second, that "something of the rhetorical motive comes to lurk in every 'meaning,' however purely 'scientific' its pretensions. Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric. And wherever there is 'meaning,' there is 'persuasion'" (1950, 172). Obviously, such pronouncements serve as encouragement to [End Page 261] those who would define rhetoric broadly, and arguably fueled the popularization of rhetorical studies within the ranks of NCA.The epistemological rationale is fueled... (shrink)

Over the last few decades there has been a strong narrative turn within the humanities and social sciences in general and educational studies in particular. Especially Jerome Bruner’s theory of narrative as a specific ‘mode of knowing’ was very important for this growing body of work. To understand how the narrative mode works Bruner proposes to study narratives ‘at their far reach’—as an art form—and on several occasions he refers to the dramatistic pentad as an important method for ‘unpacking’ narratives. (...) The pentad proposed by Bruner to study narratives was developed by the American philosopher and rhetorician Kenneth Burke and is embedded in his general linguistic theory of dramatism. From an educational perspective Bruner’s reference to the work of Burke has not been elaborated upon thus far. In this paper we aim to take Bruner’s suggestion at hand and explore how his educational theory of narrative as a mode of knowing can indeed be enriched by Kenneth Burke’s theory and method of dramatism. We claim that specifically the rhetorical framework that is developed by dramatism offers an important perspective about perspectives for education in a context that is increasingly confronted with a plurality of interpretive frameworks. (shrink)

In this article we introduce the special issue Attitudes Toward Education: Kenneth Burke and New Rhetoric, which brings together a number of contributions that were first presented at the conference Rhetoric as Equipment for Living. Kenneth Burke, Culture and Education. Kenneth Burke [1897–1993] is one of the foundational figures in the development of what is known as the ‘new rhetoric’. The aim of the contributions to this special issue is to explore what is pedagogical about Burke’s anthropological account of rhetoric (...) and, more specifically, whether his concepts and ideas can still be relevant for educational research and practice. In this article, we briefly introduce some key concepts from Burke’s rhetorical framework and we give an overview of the different contributions that are part of the special issue by summarizing how they address the educational dimension of Burke’s corpus. We end by introducing a ‘grammar of educational motives’ to explore educational purposes and implications. (shrink)

This article explores the ideological origins of the American free-speech tradition. It analyzes the two principal categorizations of free speech in classical antiquity: isegoria, the right to voice one’s opinion, and parrhesia, the license to say what one pleases often through provocative discourse, thus grounding modern free-speech epistemology and jurisprudential philosophy in a sociohistorical context. Part 1 reviews the First Amendment corpus juris. A progression of incrementally absolute judicial holdings promotes parrhesia, highlighting democratic utility over individual self-actualization; thus, Americans no (...) longer view freedom of speech as an end ipso facto. While Athenian democracy recognized the need for provocative speech, certain institutional and social constraints, such as dokimasia, established standards of truth and accountability. Part 2 frames the historical developments of isegoria and parrhesia for modern analysis. The author begins by discussing isegoria’s principal aims, namely, promoting individual self-actualization and effective democratic governance. The European free-speech tradition, which views the individual as the locus of power, favors the former. The American tradition, which ‘depersonizes’ civil liberties such that the collective becomes the locus of control, favors the latter. Part 3 identifies the colonial developments in Anglo-American history that account for present-day U.S. free-speech permissiveness. It shows that the American preference for parrhesia-based absolutism was born from British imperialism and censorship. Part 4 suggests a need to reexamine free speech-understandings in the context of new-media proliferation and digital content regulation. The dominance of U.S.-based social media companies injects the American speech tradition into cultures with disparate free-speech philosophies and practices. (shrink)

In a market place crowded with practical rhetoric books what educational value could a challenging work such as Kenneth Burke’s A Rhetoric of Motives possibly have? Burke knows but doesn’t use the terminology of the classical art and rather than analysing the persuasive rhetoric of well-known speeches to equip us with strategies, he weaves his way around literary texts, teasing out meanings that their authors something intended, sometimes did not. Yet, despite such difficulties, A Rhetoric of Motives is a practical (...) rhetoric book. It is just that its process of explication teaches us to think well. This essay tries to explain Burke’s rethinking of the purpose and contents of a traditional teaching tool—the rhetorical handbook—and defends the value of literary-rhetorical reading that aims to ‘equip’ citizens to think openly. (shrink)

The whole factual world of human affairs depends for its reality and its continued existence … upon the presence of others who have seen and will remember. … Without remembrance and without the reification which remembrance needs for its own fulfillment … the living activities of action, speech, and thought would lose their reality at the end of each process and disappear as though they never had been.Research on the relationship between public memory and collective identity is varied and extensive, (...) but one fairly prominent scholarly perspective coalesces around Hannah Arendt's idea that the practices of remembrance are the lifeblood of the polis.1 The stakes here are high, for it seems that without remembrance .. (shrink)