Showing papers in "Quarterly Journal of Speech in 2002"
TL;DR: In this article, publics and counter-publics are compared in the context of counterpublics and publics. Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol 88, No. 4, pp. 410-412.
Abstract: (2002). Publics and counterpublics. Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol. 88, No. 4, pp. 410-412.
1,122 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, publics and counter-publics (abbreviated version) were surveyed in the Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol. 88, No. 4, pp. 413-425.
Abstract: (2002). Publics and counterpublics (abbreviated version) Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol. 88, No. 4, pp. 413-425.
172 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined the reemergence of World War II in public culture and argued that these reconstructions of the past function rhetorically as civics lessons for a generation beset by fractious disagreements about the viability of U.S. culture and identity.
Abstract: This essay critically examines the reemergence of World War II in public culture. By analyzing four popular memory texts (the World, War II Memorial, Saving Private Ryan, The Greatest Generation, and the Women in Military Service for America Memorial) as well as the discourse circulating about them, it argues that these reconstructions of the past function rhetorically as civics lessons for a generation beset by fractious disagreements about the viability of U.S. culture and identity.
158 citations
TL;DR: The role of visual icons in constructing civic attitudes to mediate historical events was underscored by the use of the flag raising image following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Iconic photographs are widely recognized as representations of significant historical events, activate strong emotional response, and are reproduced across a range of media, genres, or topics. The appeal of the iconic image of a group of Marines raising the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima arises from its embodiment of three discourses of political identity— egalitarianism, nationalism, and civic republicanism. Its appropriations reflect a range of public attitudes‐civic piety, irony, nostalgia, and cynicism. The role of visual icons in constructing civic attitudes to mediate historical events was underscored by the use of the flag‐raising image following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
110 citations
TL;DR: Hoover's masking rhetoric employed the pink herring, a tactic that manipulated a moral panic about sex crime to stabilize gender and sexual norms, divert attention from his private life, and silence an invisible audience as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: During the 1930s, sexuality significantly shaped J. Edgar Hoover's public discourse. In response to a homosexual panic that plagued the nation's men and endangered his public persona, Hoover engaged in a passing performance. His masking rhetoric employed the pink herring, a tactic that manipulated a moral panic about sex crime to stabilize gender and sexual norms, divert attention from his private life, and silence an invisible audience that I term the fourth persona.
73 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors apply a theory of constitutive rhetoric with analysis of the ideological codes and cinematic narratives that construct the "1984" Macintosh ad, and explore the integral role ads play in the cultural discourse of new technologies.
Abstract: The “1984” Macintosh ad was broadcast only once in 1984 to launch a personal computer that could easily be used by non‐expert consumers, but the ad has remained in the public eye via numerous television and advertising award ceremonies. Applying a theory of constitutive rhetoric with analysis of the ideological codes and cinematic narratives that construct the ad, this essay explores the integral role ads play in the cultural discourse of new technologies. Ultimately, the ad's rhetoric of freedom and revolution is used to constitute consumers, not rebels, leaving intact capitalism's ideological investment in the technological realization of social progress.
62 citations
TL;DR: The authors employ a multi-methodological approach using two different audience studies and textual analyses of focus group transcripts and news texts to trace the blueprint and recipe metaphors from the "productive" set of potential meanings to the "filter" sets of contextually activated meanings.
Abstract: In the 1990s, critics of public discourse about genetics urged the replacement of the “blueprint” metaphor with the “recipe” metaphor. The subsequent appearance of the “recipe” metaphor in the mass media did not carry the expected reduction of genetic determinism, however. To account for the failure of the critical predictions, this essay extends Josef Stern's contextually based semantic theory of metaphor to a polyvocal theory of how metaphors develop particular patterns of social usage. The essay employs a multi‐methodological approach using two different audience studies and textual analyses of focus group transcripts and news texts to trace the blueprint and recipe metaphors from the “productive” set of potential meanings to the ‘filter” set of contextually activated meanings.
57 citations
TL;DR: The women's antislavery petitioning not only contributed significantly to the success of the abolition movement, but also figured centrally in the ongoing struggle over defining and redefining various levels of U.S. citizenship as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Women's antislavery petitioning not only contributed significantly to the success of the abolition movement, but also figured centrally in the ongoing struggle over defining and redefining various levels of U.S. citizenship.
47 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that the NBC drama The West Wing provides a powerful and meaningful "presidentiality" that is a discursive construction of the presidency with ideological and rhetorical relevance. But they do not address the cultural anxieties and ambivalences about the contemporary presidency.
Abstract: This essay reads the NBC drama The West Wing against the cultural anxieties and ambivalences about the contemporary presidency, arguing that the program presents a powerful and meaningful “presidentiality,” a discursive construction of the presidency with ideological and rhetorical relevance. Specifically, The West Wing mimetically captures a view of the presidency, offering, in the process, a romantic vision of the institution that reflects the postmodernity of U.S. politics and the uncertainty that pervades questions of heroism and hierarchy at the turn of the twenty‐first century. In part, the political drama disrupts images of traditional power politics, presenting a more chaotic, inclusive, and communal portrayal of the presidency. Against this narrative backdrop, however, we contend that the program situates its postmodern rendition of presidentiality within a cathartic portrayal of the presidency, relying on conservative demarcations of presidential leadership ordered by commitments to intellectual...
42 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the limits of political transformation in the face of stranger sociability, public hope, and public hope in a political system, and propose a solution to this problem.
Abstract: (2002). Stranger sociability, public hope, and the limits of political transformation. Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol. 88, No. 4, pp. 444-454.
40 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors respond to Michael Warner's powerful analysis of publics and counter-publics neither by attempting to add something of my own to his already expansive argument, nor by suggesting that anything in the argument might be taken away-I am persuaded I could accomplish neither feat-but rather by leaning more forcefully on a single term that arises in the course of Warner's analysis, and which perhaps discloses some considerations that were undoubtedly already there in principle, but which have nevertheless tended to remain, to borrow Edward Soja's phrase, "theoretically inert."
Abstract: I will respond to Michael Warner's powerful analysis of publics and counterpublics neither by attempting to add something of my own to his already expansive argument, nor by suggesting that anything in the argument might be taken away—I am persuaded I could accomplish neither feat-but rather by leaning more forcefully on a single term that arises in the course of Warner's analysis, and which perhaps discloses, within the wider debate over the meaning of publics and counterpublics, some considerations that were undoubtedly already there in principle, but which have nevertheless tended to remain, to borrow Edward Soja's phrase, "theoretically inert." The single term in which I am interested is space, used by Warner chiefly in a metaphorical or quasi-metaphorical mode that is well-understood within academic work on the public sphere. For instance, Warner characterizes the public as a "space of discourse" (50), a "social space" (62), or a "metatopical space" (65), and speaks of publics both as comprising, and as existing within, a "space of (discursive) circulation" (81, 84-88). This spatializing terminology aids the theorist in representing the coherence of these otherwise nebulous social entities by transmuting them from adjectives into concrete nouns: a specific public space, or the public sphere, in contrast to some more general sense of public discourse or public participation. To be more precise, spatial terms help the theorist to mark publics as specific, locatable phenomena within the built social and political environment, as well as to begin to describe the way in which publics distinguish and demarcate their own specific character within the wider realm of social relationships. As Warner remarks, "a public is never just a congeries of people, never just the sum of persons who happen to exist: it must first of all have some way of organizing itself as a body and of being addressed in discourse" (51). We might, in this sense, call a public the index of the self-organization of society at its most abstract yet still practical level, independent of any of the other established cruxes of social self-identification. A public is the fact that a group of people is self-organized "independently of state institutions, law, formal frameworks of citizenship, or preexisting institutions such as the church" (51), and the "space" occupied by a public is the quasi-metaphorical marker of its peculiar singularity "aside" from those institutions, or "outside" their own "boundaries and . . . organization" (56). This quasi-metaphorical usage of "space" suits the quasi-metaphysical character of the public itself, which is always, as Warner remarks, "as much notional as empirical" (51). To be part of a public, or to be part of the public, is to be at once both an actor and a stand-in, both a person and a kind of person, whose part could, in principle, have been
TL;DR: In this paper, Rhetorical pedagogy as a postal system: Circulating subjects through Michael Warner's "publics and counter-publics" is discussed and discussed.
Abstract: (2002). Rhetorical pedagogy as a postal system: Circulating subjects through Michael Warner's “publics and Counterpublics”. Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol. 88, No. 4, pp. 434-443.
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TL;DR: The authors investigates how various representations of the public memory of Thomas Jefferson function rhetorically and examines how three different forms of rhetoric respond to such confusion by fashioning memories of Jefferson that reflect contemporary desires to explain the mysteries of his enigmatic past.
Abstract: This essay investigates how various representations of the public memory of Thomas Jefferson function rhetorically. Curiously, such representations depict a past for which no certain record exists. The portrayal of Jefferson's alleged affair with Sally Hemings in novels, films, and other discourses demonstrates that the rhetoric of public memory, which preserves the relevance and utility of the past for audiences in the present, is often sustained, not by a transparent or even plausible understanding of former persons and events, but by profound and potentially irresolvable confusions over the relationship between what is commemorated and those doing the commemorating. The essay scrutinizes how three different forms of rhetoric respond to such confusion by fashioning memories of Jefferson that reflect contemporary desires to explain the mysteries of his enigmatic past. Consequently, the essay argues that the contemporary public memory of Jefferson is defined by a discursive haunting of his official reputa...
TL;DR: This article examined how the Western metaphors likened the execution of the military campaign to playing the role of the hero in an adventure story, participating in an exciting sports event, and making a great investment.
Abstract: Operation Allied Force was conducted not only with arms, but also with words. The rhetorical action that supported the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia drew heavily upon certain metaphorical frameworks. This article examines how the Western metaphors likened the execution of the military campaign to playing the role of the hero in an adventure story, participating in an exciting sports event, and making a great investment. The Western metaphors outlined a definite and forceful resolution model to the conflict in Kosovo: the monster had to be slain, the match of the century played, and the lucrative deal seized upon.
TL;DR: The authors argued that abortion is more than the termination of a pregnancy: it is a metaphor for cultural amnesia, and argued that women's bodies serve as rhetorical sites of cultural memory.
Abstract: This essay argues that abortion is more than the termination of a pregnancy: it is a metaphor for cultural amnesia. Early medical anti‐abortion rhetoric in the United States established women's bodies as rhetorical sites of cultural memory. Physicians formed a system of mnemonics: cultural truth about humanity was located in women's reproductive physiology, protocols for accessing that truth were formed via diagnostic practices, and a network of bodies (discursive and corporeal) was established through which truth could circulate. In the face of increasing numbers of abortions, physicians made the act of listening to the female body a culturally genealogical act.
TL;DR: This paper explored the ways through which Alain Locke's anthology of African American art and criticism, The New Negro: An Interpretation, constituted an African American ethos during the Harlem Renaissance.
Abstract: This essay explores the ways through which Alain Locke's anthology of African American art and criticism, The New Negro: An Interpretation, constituted an African American ethos during the Harlem Renaissance. Loche enacted a hermeneutical rhetoric that reinterpreted black folk tradition, African artistry, and modem pragmatism as topoi for rhetorical practice, and his discursive strategies appropriated and modified divergent cultural traditions to invent a “New Negro. “Locke's hermeneutical rhetoric exhibits an aesthetic praxis that is sensitive to the ways in which the emotions habituate rhetorical and cultural practices, which inform the achievement of propriety.
TL;DR: This paper used post-structuralist theory to analyze cultural discourse about nuclear espionage, focusing on the case of Klaus Fuchs as depicted in Robert Chadwell Williams' 1987 biography, "Klaus Fuchs, Atom Spy".
Abstract: This essay uses post‐structuralist theory to analyze cultural discourse about nuclear espionage, focusing on the case of Klaus Fuchs as depicted in Robert Chadwell Williams' 1987 biography, Klaus Fuchs, Atom Spy. For a variety of reasons, modernist biography is often frustrated in the attempt to depict subjects as unique and coherent individuals. Biographies of Los Alamos spies are shaped by intertextuality, in which their subjects continually recede before a conflicting documentary record of reminiscences, interrogation and trial transcripts, and popular culture images. Accordingly, biography offers a discursive opportunity for post‐Cold War audiences to meditate on and perhaps transform the political processes by which the contingencies surrounding Los Alamos spies and nuclear weapons technology are resolved as truth claims. Implications of this case for post‐Cold War culture and the ongoing Wen Ho Lee scandal are briefly noted.
TL;DR: Douglass strategically juxtaposed explicit claims to his status as a fugitive slave with a persona he enacted by mocking proslavery preaching in such a way that he confronted audiences with what Kenneth Burke called "perspective by incongruity" as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In his early addresses on religion and slavery, particularly his famous “Slaveholder's Sermon, “Frederick Douglass used parody to address one of the abolition movement's most serious challenges, the belief that the Bible sanctioned slavery. Douglass strategically juxtaposed explicit claims to his status as a fugitive slave with a persona he enacted by mocking proslavery preaching in such a way that he confronted audiences with what Kenneth Burke called “perspective by incongruity.” In this way, he forcefully undermined proslavery religion's claim to legitimacy.
TL;DR: The Cultural Front: Aune's "Selling the Free Market: The Rhetoric of Economic Correctness" by James Arnt Aune and James Galbraith as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Selling the Free Market: The Rhetoric of Economic Correctness. By James Arnt Aune. New York: Guilford, 2001; pp. 217. $30.00. The War Against the Poor. By Herbert Gans. New York: Basic, 1995; pp. 195. $12.60. Created Unequal. By James Galbraith. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000; pp. 368. $26.00. Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times. By Robert McChesney. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1999; pp. 427. $34.95. The Working Class Majority: America's Best‐Kept Secret. By Michael Zweig. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000; pp. 208. $14.95. While‐Collar Sweatshop. By Jill Andresky Fraser. New York: Norton, 2001; pp. 352. $26.95. Protest and Popular Culture: Women in the U.S. Labor Movement, 7894–7917. By Mary E. Triece. Boulder: Westview, 2001; pp. 320. $44.00. The Cultural Front. By Michael Denning. London: Verso, 1998; pp. 556. $22.00.
TL;DR: Les As. proposent a reponse to Cherwitz et Hikins' critique as discussed by the authors, insistant sur l'ambiguite des termes utilises and non expliques par Cherwitz and Hikins, and tentent de determiner si la pratique de la recherche en rhetorique se definit comme une redescription or comme a reduction.
Abstract: En novembre 2000, Cherwitz et Hikins proposait une critique de l'integrite intellectuelle des principales lignes de recherches en rhetorique contemporaine, qualifiant l'attitude des chercheurs de provinciale. Les As. proposent une reponse a cette critique, insistant sur l'ambiguite des termes utilises et non expliques par Cherwitz et Hikins, et tentent de determiner si la pratique de la recherche en rhetorique se definit comme une redescription ou comme une reduction
TL;DR: The story of the discovery and development of penicillin was examined in this article, where the authors used familiar narratives of the intervention of chance and divine favor, heroic scientists, and the need to extract good from evil.
Abstract: The struggle over credit for the discovery of penicillin is a powerful case study of the ability of scientific narrative to establish reputation. This paper examines the ways Alexander Fleming and Howard Florey told the story of the discovery and development of penicillin, each providing provenance for the drug and enhanced claims for personal recognition. Fleming's version incorporated familiar narratives of the intervention of chance and divine favor, heroic scientists, and the need to extract good from evil. This account, echoing themes found in British home front stories of the “Blitz,” the Battle of Britain, and the miracle of Dunkirk, appealed to a public imagination already stimulated by a wartime press. By contrast, Florey used a conventional chronology typical of scientific literature to tell his version of the discovery of penicillin, placing his work at the end of a sequence of investigations on antibiotic substances that started in the 19th century. This view of scientific development as build...
TL;DR: In this article, the epistemic pest and the mistaken Nietzsche are discussed. But this paper is limited to a single sentence: "Mistaking Nietzsche: Rhetoric and epistemic pests".
Abstract: (2002). Mistaking Nietzsche: Rhetoric and the epistemic pest. Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol. 88, No. 1, pp. 121-127.
TL;DR: The authors reconstructs the historical, rhetorical, and political implications of Fanny Fern's 1855 sentimental novel, Ruth Hall, and argues that although Fern's prose is sentimental in places, the novel as a whole is dialectical, ironic, and politically savvy.
Abstract: In order to reconstruct the historical, rhetorical, and political implications of Fanny Fern's 1855 sentimental novel, Ruth Hall, this essay engages in three critical maneuvers. First, as a means of situating Fern both in and against contemporary scholarly views of sentimentalism, the essay addresses arguments offered by Edwin Black and Stephen Browne. Second, as a means of expanding our understanding of sentimentalism, it reconstructs both the elite intellectual and mass cultural foregrounds to sentimental rhetoric. Third, it argues that although Fern's prose is sentimental in places, the novel as a whole is dialectical, ironic, and politically savvy. By reconsidering the nuances of sentimental rhetoric the essay expands our means of addressing political persuasion in antebellum America.
TL;DR: The authors situates figures of speech and culture between the sublime and the ridiculous, pious awe and impious ridicule, and critiques the representative attitudes they cultivate for publics, arguing that the fundamental characteristic of a democratic aesthetic as it has been historically realized and imagined, and of which Davy Crockett is an intriguing representative, may be its figural hybridizing of these two rhetorics, sublim...
Abstract: Figures of public discourse and imagination such as Davy Crockett model novel subjectivities and participate in the constitution of new frontiers‐ In the nineteenth century, figures like Crockett embodied the virtues and vices of combining with nature in speech and deed, while in the twentieth century figures such as cyberspace gurus, images of subjectivity from economic and social theory, and popular culture display the virtues and vices of combining with the “second nature” of commodities and computers. Engaging new frontier discourses and their characteristic rhetorical ornaments across time, this essay situates figures of speech and culture between the sublime and the ridiculous, pious awe and impious ridicule, and critiques the representative attitudes they cultivate for publics. The fundamental characteristic of a democratic aesthetic as it has been historically realized and imagined, and of which Crockett is an intriguing representative, may be its figural hybridizing of these two rhetorics, sublim...
TL;DR: Chapman's Coatesville address as mentioned in this paper is more a hermeneutic than a rhetorical act, an anticipation of its own future life after death, and the open-ended strategy of the speech is a self-reflexive enactment.
Abstract: Rhetoric has claimed Chapman's Coatesville address as its own, but the hermeneutic tradition adds to our understanding of it. As a speech act it was intentionally a non‐event, a memorial for its own failure. This was its strange rhetorical purpose and its claim on a posthumous textual life. In a strange way, it is more a hermeneutic than a rhetorical act, an anticipation of its own future life after death. The open‐ended strategy of the speech is a self‐reflexive enactment. Chapman's Coatesville address is a textual model, illustrating the passage from autobiography to rhetorical engagement, from self to community. Because its community is the nation that as yet has not dealt with its darkest problem, the narrative identity of the speech's audience is an identity in process. Caught up in the reception of the speech, we are still being invited to respond to that lynching at Coatesville.
TL;DR: Sunstein this paper discusses the impact of the Internet on American politics and the role of technology in American political life, and discusses the importance of social media in the political process and its role in American politics.
Abstract: ELECTRONIC WHISTLE‐STOPS: THE IMPACT OF THE INTERNET ON AMERICAN POLITICS. By Gary W. Selnow. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1998; pp. xxiii + 221. $67.00 cloth; $20.95 paper. republic.com. By Cass Sunstein. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001; pp. iii + 224. $19.95. WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH THE INTERNET? By Mark Poster. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2001; pp. ix + 214. $44.95 cloth; $17.95 paper.