Showing papers in "Quarterly Journal of Speech in 1995"

Whiteness: A strategic rhetoric

Abstract: Communication scholars have often overlooked the importance of whiteness as an influence in their research. In this essay, we explore the territory of whiteness in order to map the discursive space it occupies. This mapping of the discursive space, or territory, of whiteness is the first step in the process of exposing whiteness as a rhetorical construction. We then discuss some of the rhetorical strategies through which whiteness resecures its discursive space. We conclude with three aspects of reflexivity that offer directions for further research.

Rooted in the Soil: How Understanding the Perspectives of Landowners Can Enhance the Management of Environmental Disputes.

Abstract: This essay uses mythic criticism to examine missed opportunities for identifying with landowners in ways that would enhance the constructive management of environmental disputes. It focuses on the communicative implications of a policy for managing endangered species that fails to consider existing cultural practices, then offers an alternative mythic understanding of the American (U.S.) West that is drawn from the discourse of its central characters. After reviewing the historical context leading to a conflict over the golden‐cheeked warbler habitat, we explore the meaning system discovered in landowners’ discourse. Interviews conducted with ranchers who have been required to sell or limit their land‐management options to make room for a wildlife refuge display the problematic relationship between public discourse and public policy. Finally, we argue that by encouraging the inclusion of communities that have been directly influenced, yet not consulted when environmental policy is formulated, decision‐mak...

Review essay: Reading, rhetoric, and the texture of public memory

Abstract: MYSTIC CHORDS OF MEMORY: THE TRANSFORMATION OF TRADITION IN AMERICAN CULTURE. By Michael Kammen. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1991; pp. viii + 864. $40.00; paper $20.00. RECLAIMING THE PAST: LANDMARKS OF WOMEN'S HISTORY. Edited by Page Putman Miller. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992; pp. vii + 232. $35.00. REMAKING AMERICA: PUBLIC MEMORY, COMMEMORA TION, AND PA TRIOTISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. By John Bodnar. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992; pp. xviii + 296. $29.95; paper $14.95. THE RITES OF ASSENT: TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE SYMBOLIC CONSTRUCTION OF AMERICA. By Sacvan Bercovitch. New York and London: Routledge, 1993; pp. viii + 424. $15.95 paper.

The "Promiscuous Audience" Controversy and the Emergence of the Early Woman's Rights Movement.

Abstract: For too long we have conflated the rhetoric of the early women activists with that of the organized woman's rights and suffrage movements. In establishing their right to speak from the public platform during the 1830s, activist women did not rely on natural law or constitutional appeals. Rather, in combating the prohibition against addressing “promiscuous audiences,” they employed a rhetoric of gendered morality that emphasized the special nature of female benevolence. Although well adapted to the exigences of the 1830s, early feminist emphasis on female benevolence as a justification for addressing “promiscuous audiences"—and for other forms of activity—had important implications that fettered women's efforts to engage in overtly political action during the 1840s.

The discourse of “environmentalist hysteria”

Abstract: Environmentalism challenges not only social and political but also psychological orthodoxies by offering new opportunities for interpreting the relation of self to society and to the earth. The ego originates in discourse as an object of contemplation, only later to become a “subject position,” a category within which the self can discover a new “I am” in a broader social world. Taking as a starting point the accusation that environmentalists like Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich, and Lois Gibbs are trying to “stir up environmentalist hysteria” and are themselves “hysterical,” this paper explores some of the shared features of the discourses of hysteria and critical ecology, with the aim of mapping current and future directions for environmentalist thought and action.

Gender and genre: Loci of invention and contradiction in the earliest speeches by U.S. women

Abstract: Gender identifies the social roles deemed appropriate for both sexes. Rhetorical genres are also social constructions, but given prohibitions against women speaking, historically, virtually all rhetorical action was gendered masculine. Accordingly, the earliest women speakers faced a double bind that not only spurred them to heights of inventional creativity but also generated contradictions that limited their ability to produce rhetorical masterpieces. At the same time, their challenges emboldened other women, and their arguments became resources for subsequent women speakers. These claims are developed and illustrated through analysis of texts of two of the earliest known speeches by U.S. women, Priscilla Mason's 1793 salutatory oration and Deborah Sampson Gannett's 1802 lecture tour.

China encounters Darwinism: A case of intercultural rhetoric

Abstract: An important but neglected path to understanding intercultural communication is to explore how influential works of one culture are adapted to the needs, circumstances and thought patterns of another. Yan Fu's Heavenly Evolution, a rhetorical “translation” of Thomas Huxley's Evolution and Ethics, the publication of which resulted in a rapid spread of a version of Darwinism in Confucian China at the turn of this century, is analyzed as a case study. It shows the conditions for the rhetorical role of the native interpreter in dealing with Darwinian ideas and terms that were originally in conflict with Chinese modes of thought.

The forms and limits of prudence in Henry Clay's (1850) defense of the compromise measures

Abstract: In this essay, Henry Clay's rhetorical performance during the 1850 compromise debate is read as an exercise in prudential action. The intent is to offer a grounded critical reading of the discursive instantiation of prudence. The essay argues that Clay both employs a particular idiom and enacts a particular form of prudential conduct: prudential accommodation. The rhetorical forms and practical limits of this prudential idiom are explored. This exploration kelps disclose an alternative prudential idiom—prudential audacity—within the Anglo‐American republican tradition.

The atom according to Disney

Abstract: The broadcast of Disney's 1957 film, “Our Friend the Atom,” a Tomorrow land segment for the Disneyland television show, was a significant moment in the rhetorical history of the naturalization of atomic energy. Disney's interpretation of the peaceful atom, both in the televisual text and in the theme park narratives, had much in common with other mid‐century texts, from world's fairs to popular science books, but the particular contribution of Disney was the metaphor and visual icon of the Genie who grants three wishes. The Genie metaphor offered an optimistic twist on a traditionally ironic story, helping naturalize the peaceful atom.

Nietzsche, eristic, and the rhetoric of the possible: A commentary on the Whitson and Poulakos “aesthetic view” of rhetoric

Abstract: Rejetant la critique de la rhetorique epistemique developpee par S. Whitson et J. Poulakos a partir de leur propre interpretation de la critique nietzscheenne de la philosophie, l'A. definit leur position, ainsi que celle de Nietzsche, comme une eristique dont il mesure forces et faiblesses. L'A. tire les consequences d'une telle conception esthetique de la rhetorique du point de vue de la theorie et de la pratique de l'art

A relational approach to moral decision‐making: The majority opinion in planned parenthood V. Casey

Abstract: Advocates supporting and opposing abortion rights were disappointed by the United Stales Supreme Court ruling on the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). The majority opinion upheld a “fundamental” right to abortion prior to fetal viability but also affirmed a State's right to regulate, abortions. Thus, in establishing a middle ground, the Court rejected simplistic approaches to moral reasoning and acknowledged the complex web of relationships involved in abortion decision‐making. This essay defines a relational approach to moral reasoning and analyzes the Casey decision as an exemplar of that approach. The case study suggests that rhetoricians should “revision” the art of persuasion and argument, in particular, to place more emphasis on relational values.

The “protection” of “woman”: A history of legal attitudes toward women's workplace freedom

Abstract: This essay argues that current symbols can be attitudinally united with historical symbols despite seeming dissimilarities in their construction. This thesis is illustrated by a comparative analysis of the historical dispute over protective legislation for women and the current controversy over fetal protection policies. “Protection” historically meant the protection of “woman” as mother of future generations by the state. Today, “protection” means protection of the “unborn child” by corpora‐lions. Despite seeming dissimilarities, these symbols are attitudinally united because both reduce the interests of all women to motherhood and thereby limit women's autonomy in the workplace. Though contemporary symbols representing women may appear to be more egalitarian, this analysis indicates that the historical inequality of women in the workforce haunts contemporary corporate policy.

Voices of Sexual Distortion: Rape, Birth, and Self-Annihilation Metaphors in the "Alien Trilogy.".

Abstract: The immensely popular science fiction series sometimes referred to as the Alien Trilogy is analyzed for its mythopoetic critique of gender identity. The basis for this critique resides in the movies’ embodiment of the literalized myths of gender and family and its subsequent deconstruction of this framework through meta‐phoric ambiguity. By destabilizing the conventional frame through which the rhetorical subject is constructed, the movies question reified social practice. Such a reading revises the feminist challenge to these texts, locating them in a broader cultural tension revolving around reproductive practice.

The firm, the park and the university: Fear and trembling on the postmodern trail

Abstract: Sheldon Hackney, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, has called for a “national conversation” on “the meaning of American pluralism.” Analysis of The Firm and Jurassic Park is intended to make a contribution to this conversation by exploring the rhetorical textures of incivility that contemporary audiences generally appear to share and enjoy as entertainment but abjure and revile as politics. These postmodern performances celebrating public absence and flight to the private realm are accorded expanded forms of cultural play wherein the risks and rules, the attractions and costs, of mass‐mediated negative aesthetics are placed into discussion among contemporaneous generational perspectives. The essay concludes that the cultivation of an enlarged sense of productive, critical play is important to Speech Communication as afield of inquiry and to the University as a public institution.

Rhetorical status: A study of its origins, functions, and consequences

Abstract: Rhetorical status is a feature of all communicative interaction. It is the relative standing or positioning of parties to communication or, defined cognitively, it is this standing as reflected in the identities that interacting parties assign to themselves and to others as communicators, as each takes account of salient qualities of self and others. Rhetorical statuses are mutable and context‐specific, yet quite often durable and consistent across time and place. The concept of rhetorical status is distinctive to communication studies, and it is vital for explaining the efficacy of communication—its power or persuasiveness. To show how rhetorical status enters into everyday communication, we examine a protracted set of interactions between two sisters and a small‐town mayor over disputed water bills.

The perversion of empire: Edmund burke and the nature of imperial responsibility

Abstract: Professions by British politicians of their nation's responsibility or obligation to provide “just” rule for foreign peoples have long been characterized by critics of the British Empire as being little more than hypocritical ploys intended to obfuscate the “true” economic and racist motivations for nineteenth‐century imperialism. But such criticisms, while undoubtedly accurate in many cases, do not account for the British public's acceptance of the ideal of imperial responsibility as a political necessity. This essay proposes an alternative interpretation of imperial responsibility founded upon Edmund Burke's rhetorical denunciation of the East India Company in 1783. By ironically foregrounding the classical justification for empire in order to indict the Company's policies in India, Burke essentially constructed a new understanding of imperial responsibility in which the need to protect foreign peoples from unscrupulous Britons was stressed instead of any sense of racial superiority or paternalism. This...

Rhetorical interpretations of the American Civil War

Abstract: ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION. By James M. McPherson. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990; pp. xiii + 167. AMERICA IN 1857: A NATION ON THE BRINK. By Kenneth M. Stampp. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990; pp. ix +388. HALF SLAVE AND HALF FREE: THE ROOTS OF CIVIL WAR. By Bruce Levine. New York: Hill and Wang, 1992; pp. viii + 292. LINCOLN AT GETTYSBURG: THE WORDS THAT REMADE AMERICA. By Garry Wills. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992; pp. 315. THE ROAD TO DISUNION: SECESSIONISTS AT BAY, 1776–1854. By William W. Freehling. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990; pp. xii + 640.

Renewing Aristotelian theory: The cold fusion controversy as a test case

Abstract: As practical criticism, this account exhibits the strength and flexibility of science as a rhetorical enterprise. The rhetorical analysis of coldfusion reveals science under considerable stress: the mass media assault science's most cherished social arrangements, while a new experimental result threatens its deepest theories. Yet its rhetorical resources prove more than equal to this challenge. This analysis also contributes to rhetorical theory. It assumes the continuing viability of classical rhetoric as an explanation for the persuasiveness of texts, including the texts of science; at the same time, it acknowledges the need to re‐examine and to clarify the central concepts of classical rhetoric in the light of the current state of relevant knowledge—in this case, a more sophisticated understanding of audience, of discourse community, and of consensus.

Review essay: Cultural studies and rhetorical studies

Abstract: BRITISH CULTURAL STUDIES: AN INTRODUCTION. By Graeme Turner. New York: Routledge, 1992; pp. 246. $39.95; paper $14.95. CRUSOE'S FOOTPRINTS: CULTURAL STUDIES IN BRITAIN AND AMERICA. By Patrick Brantlinger. New York: Routledge, 1990; xi, pp. 212. $39.50; paper $13.95. CULTURE STUDIES AS CRITICAL THEORY. By Ben Agger. Bristol, PA: The Falmer Press, 1992; vii, pp. 217. $77.00; paper $26.50. TELEVISION, AUDIENCES AND CULTURAL STUDIES. By David Morley. New York: Routledge, 1992; viii, pp. 325. $69.95; paper $16.95. THE POLITICS OF PICTURES: THE CREATION OF THE PUBLIC IN THE AGE OF POPULAR MEDIA. By John Hartley. New York: Routledge, 1992; xiii, pp. 247. $69.95; paper $16.95.

The president as god, the recession as evil: Actus, status, and the president's rhetorical bind in the 1992 election

Abstract: This essay uses theodicy to analyze political discourse concerning President Bush's relationship to the “evil” (recessionary) economy during his 1992 reelection campaign. It shows that Bush, Clinto...

Eisenhower's farewell address: Response to Medhurst

Abstract: (1995). Eisenhower's farewell address: Response to Medhurst. Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol. 81, No. 4, pp. 496-501.