Showing papers in "Quarterly Journal of Speech in 1999"
TL;DR: The authors explored the role of communication in the strategic self-definition of whiteness and found that white participants identify whiteness as incompletion, uninterrogateable space, metaphor for the universal insider, guilty and fair space, and situationally immutable.
Abstract: This study explores the role of communication in the strategic self‐definition of whiteness. The transcripts from two focus group interviews (with Whites from two Historically Black Universities) are used to map the discourses of “White” participants concerning the nature of whiteness. The maps, when analyzed, uncovered significant commentary about White space and White privilege. Five strategies of representation emerged from the discursive territories. They identify whiteness as: (1) incompletion, (2) uninterrogateable space, (3) metaphor for the universal insider, (4) guilty and fair space, and (5) situationally immutable. The results imply that the space that Whites occupy is unclearly constructed and defined, and therefore is enigmatic.
118 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines a complex process of rhetorical expropriation whereby the rhetorical weight of the revolutionary hero was shifted from its origins in African American traditions of resistance onto grounds of racial accomodation, and the work of public memory required to fund, build and present the Crispus Attucks Memorial is treated as evidence for the claim that people not only remember, but get remembered, and that under conditions of historical inequality, getting remembered must take on a politics of its own.
Abstract: The symbolic career of Crispus Attucks provides a disturbing lesson in the politics of commemoration. This essay examines a complex process of rhetorical expropriation, whereby the rhetorical weight of the revolutionary hero was shifted from its origins in African American traditions of resistance onto grounds of racial accomodation. The work of public memory required to fund, build, and present the Crispus Attucks Memorial is treated here as evidence for the claim that people not only remember, but get remembered, and that under conditions of historical inequality, getting remembered must take on a politics of its own.
87 citations
TL;DR: The authors analyzed the three basic functions in presidential acceptance addresses from 1960-1996 and found that candidates primarily produce acclaiming (72%) and attacking (27%). Defenses were relatively rare (1% of the discourse).
Abstract: Political campaign discourse is instrumental, designed to persuade voters to perceive the candidate as preferable to the opponent. To appear preferable, candidates may acclaim (engage in self‐praise) to make themselves appear better, they may attack the opposition to make opponents seem worse, or they may defend against attacks from the opposition to restore lost desirability. We analyze these three basic functions in presidential nomination acceptance addresses from 1960–1996. Nominees primarily produce acclaiming (72%) and attacking (27%). Defenses were relatively rare (1% of the discourse). Democrats acclaim more than Republicans, while Republicans attack more than Democrats. Challengers attack more than incumbents, while incumbents acclaim more than challengers. Recent nominees (1980–1996) are more likely than earlier speakers (1960–1976) to direct utterances toward the candidates instead of the parties, signaling the decline in the importance of political parties and the rise of candidate‐centered po...
55 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a close reading of a speech by British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin in 1945 on the subject of the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry on Palestine provides a microscopic look into argumentative techniques employed when addressing several diverse and attentive audiences simultaneously.
Abstract: Political leadership typically entails the need to address composite, or heterogeneous, audiences, a situation to which rhetorical theorists have devoted little systematic attention. Close reading of a speech by British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin in 1945 on the subject of the Anglo‐American Commission of Inquiry on Palestine provides a microscopic look into argumentative techniques employed when addressing several diverse and attentive audiences simultaneously. Four argumentative techniques are identified in this case. This study indicates that by analyzing these and related techniques, rhetorical theory can contribute significantly to our understanding of political leadership.
50 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines several Native American protest events to reveal the factors contributing to the failure of the reform movement and to suggest some strategies for rhetorically reformulating the campaign, concluding that these protests have not generated significant changes in attitudes and practices.
Abstract: Native American groups across the country have been protesting the use of their symbols and heritage in sports arenas for over a decade. Yet, particularly in the realm of professional sports, these protests have not generated significant changes in attitudes and practices. This critical essay examines several Native American protest events to reveal the factors contributing to the failure of the reform movement and to suggest some strategies for rhetorically reformulating the campaign.
30 citations
TL;DR: Perelman as discussed by the authors has a complete and coherent theory of a rhetorical audience as a concept constructed by the speaker, which is the audience of the speaker's speech, not the audience's audience.
Abstract: Perelman has a complete and coherent theory of a rhetorical audience as a concept constructed by the speaker. This audience is of two kinds, universal and particular. Universal audiences consist of all rational beings; persuasive discourse addressed to these thematizes facts and truths. Particular audiences consist of one segment or another of humanity: Americans, Republicans, Elks, Medicare recipients; discourse addressed to them thematizes values. Discourse inpublic arenas is rarely addressed simply to particular audiences or to a universal audience; it rarely has its goal either adherence to facts and truths or adherence to values. Usually, public address represents a mixture of goals, and therefore of rhetorical audiences. Finally, the concept of audience with which speakers start differs from the concept with which speakers end the discourse. By means of the discourse, step by step, speakers bring their rhetorical audience to the desired adherence; at the same time, they hope that their discourse bri...
28 citations
TL;DR: The paradox of purity was resolved through a transformation of terms until an ultimate order was recreated that retained the hierarchy, yet placed another collective category, gender, at the pinnacle.
Abstract: Kenneth Burke places order and hierarchy at the heart of his rhetorical theory. The impulse to order creates categories of terms used by cultures to construct social orders based on race, gender, class and economic status. These lead to a “paradox of purity” wherein individuals are evaluated substantively from that category despite their individual motivations. In 1925, a woman of mixed blood was accused of defrauding her husband by “passing” as white. Her white lawyers were required to maintain the racist social structure while simultaneously freeing their client from the strictures of that structure. The paradox of purity was resolved through a transformation of terms until an ultimate order was recreated that retained the hierarchy, yet placed another collective category, gender, at the pinnacle.
26 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined the various ways in which this legend diverges from scholarly rea... and found that the legend of Galileo's persecution by the Roman Catholic Church is treated as an example of scientific folklore.
Abstract: The legend of Galileo's persecution by the Roman Catholic Church is treated here as an example of scientific folklore. By examining the various ways in which this legend diverges from scholarly rea...
22 citations
TL;DR: The authors used Herrnstein and Charles Murray's The Bell Curve to examine the sedimented history of probability in America, and proposed a counter discourse that resists the probabilistic mandate.
Abstract: This essay uses Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's The Bell Curve to examine the sedimented history of probability in America. By creating a moral cartography for the nation, the model reinforces ethnic hierarchy and difference. Three socio‐graphic dynamics define this spatial rhetoric. The first creates an idealized middle to valorize sameness and normalcy, creating a universal standard of judgement. The second uses variable formation and standard deviation to manufacture the basis for difference and ranking. The third relies upon a temporal subjectivity to reinforce ethnic competition through specific progressive trajectories. The essay concludes with suggestions for a counter discourse that resists the probabilistic mandate.
21 citations
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TL;DR: This article explored the complex linkages between Burke and Nietzsche, particularly those forged by Burke in the 1920s and 30s while formulating his well-known concepts: perspective by incongruity, motive, terministic screens, and dramatism.
Abstract: The essay examines the “becoming‐Nietzsche” of Kenneth Burke by exploring the complex linkages between Burke and Nietzsche, particularly those forged by Burke in the 1920s and 30s while formulating his well‐known concepts: perspective by incongruity, motive, terministic screens, and dramatism. An understanding of the ways Nietzsche's philosophy helped shape Burke's views on the nature of language (metaphor, writing, poetry), and the effects language produces, enables a different understanding of central passages in Permanence and Change, Burke the critic, and by extension, the development of rhetoric as a discipline.
21 citations
TL;DR: Gross and Cahn as mentioned in this paper have published Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science, which is a collection of essays from the SUNY Series in Speech Communication.
Abstract: Alan G. Gross and William M. Keith (Eds.) Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1997. SUNY Series in Speech Communication. Dudley D. Cahn Jr. Editor. ISBN 0–7914–3109–6. 371 pp.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors expand the literature of discontent with academic scholarship by showing how our malaise is grounded metaphorically in the uncritical celebration of "up" and the vilification of "down".
Abstract: In this work, we expand the literature of discontent with academic scholarship by showing how our malaise is grounded metaphorically in the uncritical celebration of “up” and the vilification of “down.” We then historicize these metaphors through classical Greek poetry and philosophy to rediscover how flowing back and forth between Apollonian upness and Dionysian descent produced creative conditions for living well. We eventually revisit the academy and offer some general ways we might live these ancient truths more fully in our own scholarly lives.
TL;DR: A response to Simons is given in this paper, where the authors take up the challenge of taking up a challenge: a response to the Simons' challenge, and present a response.
Abstract: (1999). Taking up the challenge: A response to Simons. Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol. 85, No. 3, pp. 330-334.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the interaction of public argument and legislative debate in the construction of public policy regulating a contested social practice, lay midwifery and homebirth, and explore the ways in which the discourse of a representative governing body serves to explicitly represent, omit, or modify public argument.
Abstract: This study elaborates on theoretical models of consent formation by examining the interaction of public argument and legislative debate in the construction of public policy regulating a contested social practice, lay midwifery and homebirth. It explores the ways in which the discourse of a representative governing body serves to explicitly represent, omit, or modify public argument in its construction of public policy; and how public policy, once enacted, serves to advance certain meanings over others in public argument, in effect re‐norming it. Lay midwifery policy instantiated more positive meanings of alternative birthing practices than those characteristic of the public consensus. This divergence indicates that legislative discourse can be generative, particularly when the crafting of local strategic accommodations leads to the privileging of intra‐legislative ideographs over public ideographs.
TL;DR: The authors argue that the deconstructive practice of disturbing the status quo between opposites extends as far back as Newton and constitutes one of the central themes of physics since the Enlightenment and that to question post-modern language theory exemplified in deconstruction necessitates questioning also the parallel developments in physics from Newton to the present time.
Abstract: Alan Sokal's concern about a decline in intellectual standards includes an indictment of what he calls current “subjectivist” trends accompanying a general erosion of “objectivity “ stemming from postmodern views such as deconstruction. This erosion is identified most importantly in postmodern claims about the instability of rigorous distinctions between opposites. This study argues that the deconstructive practice of disturbing the status quo between opposites extends as far back as Newton and constitutes one of the central themes of physics since the Enlightenment. Parallel developments in physics and language studies are summarized from Aristotle to Einstein and quantum theory‐all in support of the contention that to question postmodern language theory exemplified in deconstruction necessitates questioning also the parallel developments in physics from Newton to the present time. Both physics and language theory make rigorous distinctions between opposites a thing of the past. This circumstance necessi...
TL;DR: The authors examines the evolution of Senator Daniel Webster's attack on the expansionist policy of President Polk and demonstrates that his anti-war public addresses braided genre to achieve their ends, shifting between genre to generate new arguments, to surface past positions, to defend against attacks, and to advance political objectives.
Abstract: While rhetorical scholars have ignored Webster's speeches against the war with Mexico, others have mistakenly described him as an imperialist. To remedy the situation, this study examines the evolution of Senator Daniel Webster's attack on the expansionist policy of President Polk. The study demonstrates that his anti‐war public addresses braided genre to achieve their ends. Webster's rhetoric shifted between genre to generate new arguments, to surface past positions, to defend against attacks, and to advance political objectives.
TL;DR: The authors argue that the most significant influences on post-modern rhetorical theory are rooted predominantly in the philosophical ideas of one thinker, namely, Friedrich Nietzsche, and suggest the form a rhetoric based on Nietzsche's later philosophy would likely take.
Abstract: This essay argues that the most significant influences on postmodern rhetorical theory are rooted predominantly in the philosophical ideas of one thinker‐Friedrich Nietzsche. Yet the particular Nietzschean ideas upon which many postmodern rhetorics are based were abandoned by Nietzsche as his epistemological and ontological views developed over the course of his career. Nietzsche's mature thought is viewed as wholly incompatible with currently fashionable postmodern rhetorics. Sections of the essay: (1) establish the Nietzschean grounding for postmodern rhetorics; (2) detail Nietzsche's mature epistemology and ontology; (3) suggest the form a rhetoric based on Nietzsche's later philosophy would likely take; and (4) discuss implications for contemporary rhetoric.
TL;DR: Campbell's reputation has suffered from modem conceptions that assume Aristotle's Rhetoric as the paradigm for rhetorical theory and from modern commitments to epistemic and dialogic rhetorics.
Abstract: Campbell's reputation has suffered from modem conceptions that assume Aristotle's Rhetoric as the paradigm for rhetorical theory and from modern commitments to epistemic and dialogic rhetorics. A focus on the place of the passions and emotional appeal in Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric (POR) brings his achievement more clearly into view. The “sentiments, passions, dispositions,” three key terms in Campbell's definition of the “grand art of communication,” are an index to his consideration of non‐rational response, a consideration informed by a discussion of “the passions” in the moral psychology of the period and that culminates in Book II of Hume's Treatise on Human Nature. What emerges when POR is seen from this perspective has significance for our understanding of the relationship between reason and passion in persuasion and for our appreciation of POR, which is arguably the most coherent conception of rhetoric that we have.
TL;DR: The concept of psychotic entelechy was introduced by Burke in his first book of criticism as discussed by the authors, and the concept exists implicitly in Burke's discussion of entelechial methods.
Abstract: Aristotle coined the term entelechy to describe the processes of nature. Burke extends entelechy to the realm of human symbolic action. Burke implicitly recognizes the possibility of a type of entelechy that might be called psychotic entelechy as early as his first book of criticism. Although Burke does not use the term psychotic entelechy, the concept exists implicitly in Burke's discussion of entelechy. Biblical scholar James D. Tabor claims that the 1993 Branch Davidian disaster could have been avoided. Burkean entelechial methods are used here to critique the socio‐political tragedy known as Waco. Burkean‐style methods of curing psychotic entelechy were actually being used to attempt to avert the tragedy.
TL;DR: For instance, the authors used the British national anthem "God Save the King" to express the transitions and conflicts in American national identities, from loyal colony to independent nation, from the coronation of George III to Washington's farewell address.
Abstract: National songs are favored resources for the expression, inculcation and contestation of national identities. From the coronation of George III to Washington's farewell address, the British anthem “God Save the King” was a ubiquitous feature of American civil life. Dozens of lyrical adaptations of the song expressed the transitions and conflicts in American national identities, from loyal colony to independent nation. Eighteenth century American uses of “God Save the King” illustrate the rhetorical processes through which national songs are institutionalized, embedded in national conflicts and appropriated for other nations and causes.
TL;DR: The authors argue that East Germany's failure was typical of totalitarian propaganda systems, which have inherent weaknesses that guarantee the long-term failure of their propagandas, and use Ellul's approach to propaganda.
Abstract: Why did East Germany's outwardly successful propaganda system collapse in 1989? Despite enormous effort, East Germany faced difficulties training propagandists, producing quality propaganda, surmounting inefficiencies within the system, and persuading the citizens to accept its message. Using Jacques Ellul's approach to propaganda, I argue that East Germany's failure was typical of totalitarian propaganda systems, which have inherent weaknesses that guarantee the long‐term failure of their propagandas.
TL;DR: In this article, a female storytelling round which preceded a family wedding is described, where the topic was improper gender relation, with wider implications about gender categories and social boundaries transmitted from mothers to daughters, and my involvement in the production of the verbal interaction is used to examine the position of "native ethnographer" in and outside of the field.
Abstract: This paper treats a female storytelling‐round which preceded a family wedding. As is typically the case, the topic was improper gender relation, with wider implications about gender categories and social boundaries transmitted from mothers to daughters. Beginning with a description of the event as seen by a member of the group, the paper progresses to an analysis from a performance perspective treating patterns of participation, genres, and meaning within the specific cultural context. My involvement in the production of the verbal interaction is used to examine the position of “native ethnographer, “ in and outside of the field. This is followed by reflections on the process of interpreting experience and insights into the writing of an ethnographic text.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that scientific argument is spatially and temporally patterned and this structure can intensify or confuse moral, pragmatic and emotional issue and no where is the clash of spatial and temporal issues more important than in the biodiversity debate.
Abstract: Scientific argument is spatially and temporally patterned. This structure can intensify or confuse moral, pragmatic and emotional issue. No where is the clash of spatial and temporal issues more important than in the biodiversity debate. The author would like to thank Andrew King, William Keith, and Janice H. Rushing for their helpful comments.
TL;DR: A POETIC FOR SOCIOLOGY: TOWARD A LOGIC OF DISCOVERY FOR THE HUMAN SCIENCES as mentioned in this paper, by Richard Harvey Brown.
Abstract: A POETIC FOR SOCIOLOGY: TOWARD A LOGIC OF DISCOVERY FOR THE HUMAN SCIENCES. By Richard Harvey Brown. Cambridge: University of Chicago Press, 1989 [1977]. pp. 1–302, $17.95. SOCIETY AS TEXT: ESSAYS ON RHETORIC, REASON, AND REALITY. By Richard Harvey Brown. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. pp. 1–252, $16.95. SOCIAL SCIENCE AS CIVIC DISCOURSE: ESSAYS ON THE INVENTION, LEGITIMATION, AND USES OF SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY. By Richard Harvey Brown. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. pp. 1–227, $33.00. TOWARD A DEMOCRATIC SCIENCE: SCIENTIFIC NARRATION AND CIVIC COMMUNICATION. By Richard Harvey Brown. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. 283 pp. $32.00.