En este artículo me propongo revisar en qué medida cabría atribuir a Wittgenstein la responsabilidad de haber propiciado un «giro retórico» con sus inquisiciones filosóficas, correlativo al giro más general, en el mismo sentido, que, según recientemente se ha venido reconociendo, habría sufrido nuestra cultura en los últimos tiempos. Dado que cabe leer la obra de Wittgenstein como si una de sus más pujantes preocupaciones consistiese en dilucidar qué debemos entender hoy por racionalidad, el mentado «giro retórico», de haberse cumplido (...) en él, podría leerse como algo que atañe cardinalmente a tal cuestión. Explicaremos primeramente, pues, en qué consiste efectuar un giro retórico en la filosofía acerca de la racionalidad; para trasladarnos posteriormente a sopesar la presencia de tal giro en Wittgenstein (y de Wittgenstein en tal giro). (shrink)

This essay takes a rhetorical pragmatist perspective on current questions concerning educational goals and pedagogical practices. It begins by considering some challenges to rhetorical approaches to education, placing those challenges in the theoretical context of their posing. The essay then describes one current rhetorical approach—based on Kenneth Burke’s dramatism and logology—and uses it to understand and redescribe another rhetorical approach—Jesuit teaching of eloquentia perfecta. Proceeding in this way, the essay presents both a general theoretical framework for discussing educational aims and (...) a specific practical example of how such aims might be achieved. (shrink)

Understanding each patient's situation or lived experience evolves from a nurse's sincere communication with the patient. Through rhetoric, the nurse's use of competent language and expressions is more likely to engage the patient in a dialogical discussion that brings forth an open, honest display of feelings and emotions. Through hermeneutics, the nurse gains an accurate understanding and interpretation of a patient's beliefs, values, and situations that supports explanations of meaning. Thus, with rhetoric being the words or expressions that give rise (...) to hermeneutics or the interpretation, the blending of the two creates a rhetorical–hermeneutical relationship that provides accurate understanding of a patient's true lived experience. Consequently, knowing the patient depends upon the nurse's rhetorical competence and accurate assessment of each patient's authentic self. Nurses should seek to interpret and understand the lived experiences of patients in order to limit or prevent misunderstandings and inaccuracies in communication. The truth that emerges from the expressed rhetorical–hermeneutical interrelationship will enhance nurses’ sensitivity to patient matters, produce relationship outcomes that emerge from a consistent and effectively applied set of interpersonal principles, and more importantly, successfully influence nurses’ lives and those of their patients with meaning that ultimately improves the human condition. Thus, nurses’ communication and perceptive understanding of each patient's world or lived experience becomes an integral and necessary component to effectively carrying out the practice role of caregiving. (shrink)

This article discusses two twentieth-century examples of humanist controversies in order to demonstrate some rhetorical paths of thought involved in developing and securing rhetorical humanism within philosophy and rhetorical studies. The article begins with Martin Heidegger's antihumanist provocation and examines Ernesto Grassi's response in his revisionist interpretation of a nonmetaphysical Renaissance humanism. Next it takes up the post-Heideggerian moment of late twentieth-century postmodern critiques, including attacks on humanist foundationalism and essentialist notions of agency, and compares Grassi's defense of rhetorical humanism (...) within Continental philosophy to Michael Leff's reinterpretation of Ciceronian humanism within communication studies. Both Grassi and Leff propose a rhetorical humanist alternative to Heidegger's and postmodernism's philosophical antihumanism. These two rhetoricians demonstrate an interpretive power and a rhetorical creativity that not only revitalize rhetorical humanism in the present age but also provide valuable resources for its extension into the future. (shrink)

Though popular in the nineteenth century and widespread since, the elements of the hoax form can be traced to the origins of rhetorical theorizing, principally in the strategies of probability and counterprobability developed by the early orators and sophists. This article begins by defining features of the hoax as a textual event and then describes how hoaxes use traditional rhetorical techniques of both probability and improbability to transport viewers from credulity and acceptance to doubt and disbelief, demonstrating technical mastery over (...) rhetorical conventions of the genre to mock their targets and to entertain and instruct their audience. (shrink)