scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question

Showing papers in "Quarterly Journal of Speech in 2007"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article drew upon the work of Northrop Frye to show that stories enacting the American dream contain elements associated with romance, and briefly traces how Ronald Reagan and conservatives utilized the romance of the American Dream to the point that many Americans associated it exclusively with conservatism.
Abstract: This essay draws upon the work of Northrop Frye to show that stories enacting the American Dream contain elements associated with romance, and briefly traces how Ronald Reagan and conservatives utilized the romance of the American Dream to the point that many Americans associated it exclusively with conservatism. The essay then details how Barack Obama, in his 2004 Democratic Convention keynote address, recast the American dream from a conservative to a liberal story.

118 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze how the rhetoric of code status articulates the terms of end-of-life decision-making in one hospital's "Patient Preferences Worksheet".
Abstract: “Code status” is a prominent feature of end-of-life discussions in U.S. hospitals. This essay analyzes how the rhetoric of code status articulates the terms of end-of-life decision-making in one hospital's “Patient” Preferences Worksheet. The Worksheet signifies the abandonment of the technological fix as the preferred treatment for moribund patients and the transformation of a previously private moment into a matter of institutional control. Examining the Worksheet's interlocking institutional, technical, and vernacular deathbed rhetoric challenges the dominant bioethical discourse of patient autonomy and suggests a need to supplement this procedurally rational discourse with one of relational integrity.

36 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: During the Reconstruction era, hundreds of disenfranchised women throughout the United States attempted to register and to vote, performing a participatory argument in an ongoing public controversy about the parameters of the polity.
Abstract: During the Reconstruction era, hundreds of disenfranchised women throughout the United States attempted to register and to vote, performing a participatory argument in an ongoing public controversy about the parameters of the polity As rhetorical rituals, these women's voting efforts displayed an alternative social order and illuminated the normative practices of citizenship as profoundly gendered Whereas suffragists’ legal rationales for direct action laid claim to citizenship as a universalist category, the intelligibility of the rituals relied on the specificity of cultural conventions These public performances thus dramatically showcased the power and the limitations of appropriation as a strategy of protest

25 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Garnet's "Address to the Slaves of the United States of America" to the National Convention of Colored Citizens in Buffalo, New York was read as either an unqualified call for a violent slave rebellion or a celebration of prior acts of militant resistance which suggested that such methods deserved further consideration than they were currently receiving.
Abstract: In August 1843 Presbyterian minister Henry Highland Garnet delivered his “Address to the Slaves of the United States of America” to the National Convention of Colored Citizens in Buffalo, NY. While often read (and almost as often dismissed) as either an unqualified call for a violent slave rebellion or, at the least, a celebration of prior acts of militant resistance which suggested that such methods deserved further consideration than they were currently receiving, the “Address” might profitably be approached within the context of an identity–action dialectic. Garnet's discussion of resistance and violence is more complicated than many scholars have recognized; one way in which we might recuperate these contested ideas and recognize their implications for African American identity and agency is to examine the way Garnet engaged and negotiated some of the antebellum African American community's dominant discursive traditions. The image and the accompanying idiom of a frequently submissive, emasculated “su...

22 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors read the rhetorical theories set forth by Belgians Chaim Perelman and Paul de Man as responses to the Holocaust, and they argue that they better "works-through" the Belgian Holocaust than the one offered by de Man because it offers a vision of reason that can yield justice and places collaborators in the grey zone of totalitarian societies and logical positivism, thereby offering de Man partial absolution for his endorsement of the German occupation and anti-Semitism.
Abstract: In this essay, I seek to read the rhetorical theories set forth by Belgians Chaim Perelman and Paul de Man as responses to the Holocaust. To accomplish this aspiration, I draw from Dominick LaCapra's framework for the analysis of trauma and its expression in historical and theoretical texts. Reading the rhetorical theories of Perelman and de Man, two of the most prominent of the twentieth century, through a lens of trauma theory allows critics to see them as post-war efforts to deal with the implications of the absence of meaning, the murder and loss of 25,257 Belgian Jews, Fascism, genocide, and de Man's collaboration with the Nazis. I argue that Perelman's rhetoric theory better “works-through” the Belgian Holocaust than the one offered by de Man because it offers a vision of reason that can yield justice and places collaborators in the “grey zone” of totalitarian societies and logical positivism, thereby offering de Man partial absolution for his endorsement of the German occupation and anti-Semitism. ...

22 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors investigates the rhetorical practices of socio-technical deliberation about free and open source (F/OS) software, and provides support for the idea that a public sphere is a sociotechnical ensemble that is discursive and fluid, yet tangible and organized because it is enacted by both humans and nonhumans.
Abstract: This essay investigates the rhetorical practices of socio-technical deliberation about free and open source (F/OS) software, providing support for the idea that a public sphere is a socio-technical ensemble that is discursive and fluid, yet tangible and organized because it is enacted by both humans and non-humans. In keeping with the empirical shift manifest in recent public sphere scholarship and Bruno Latour's idea that socio-technical deliberation is characterized by the inscription of non-humans, I describe the rhetorical manners in which volunteer citizens define and mobilize a mundane artifact—a web site—in a deliberation over the value of F/OS technologies for their government-funded project. Through inscription of the web site as a rhetorical resource and as the embodiment of their disposition toward computer technologies, the volunteers formed and expressed competing understandings of the role of F/OS technologies in sustaining a public sphere. I argue that these competing views are consequentia...

18 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The relationship between conscience, acknowledgment, heroism, truth and rhetoric in the debate over euthanasia is discussed in this paper, with emphasis on the workings of our metaphysical desire for perfection, a desire that is definitely on hand when debating issues of the good life and the good death.
Abstract: Our project is intended to supplement and extend research that emphasizes how the rhetoric informing the euthanasia debate admits a call of conscience and how this call would have us act heroically as we acknowledge what is arguably some particular truth that is at work in the debate (e.g., only God has the right to take a life). The relationship between conscience, acknowledgment, heroism, truth and rhetoric, we submit, presupposes the workings of our metaphysical desire for perfection—a desire that is definitely on hand when debating issues of the “good life” and the “good death.” The relationship constitutes a rhetoric of perfection that plays an essential role in the euthanasia debate as a whole. Such a rhetoric lies at the heart of the recent and much publicized case of Terri Schiavo—a young woman who lived in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years before she was allowed to die the “dignified” death that she supposedly wanted all along.

18 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a debate in Freedom's Journal, the first African-American newspaper, in 1827 and 1828 concerning the proposals of the American Colonization Society is described, revealing key, often hidden aspects of the discourses of whites and of people of color about race and reform in the antebellum period and in the contemporary public sphere.
Abstract: This essay features a debate in Freedom's Journal, the first African-American newspaper, in 1827 and 1828, concerning the proposals of the American Colonization Society. Arguments favoring colonization illuminate the ways in which whiteness informs and constrains the discourse of white self-professed reformers about race, nation, and public rhetoric. As constitutive rhetoric, the anti-colonization arguments of contributors to Freedom's Journal construct African Americans as agents, citizens, and empowered public rhetors. The exchange reveals key, often hidden aspects of the discourses of whites and of people of color about race and reform in the antebellum period and in the contemporary public sphere.

17 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the case of women's suffrage, the argument that the U.S. Constitution already enfranchised women citizens was first articulated by St. Louis activists Virginia and Francis Minor as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: From the late 1860s through the mid-1870s, woman suffrage activists developed an ingenious legal argument, claiming that the U.S. Constitution already enfranchised women citizens. The argument, first articulated by St. Louis activists Virginia and Francis Minor, precipitated rhetorical performances by movement activists on public platforms and in polling places, and the Minors pursued their line of reasoning to the Supreme Court. The Minors’ arguments enacted a hermeneutic practice that venerated foundational texts while at the same time subverting their conventional meanings. The rhetorical figure of the gender-neutral, race-neutral citizen provided a basis for imagining a new political subjectivity for women. In the infamous Minor v. Happersett decision of 1875, however, the Court formally dissociated citizenship from voting rights. This analysis of the Minors’ rhetoric illustrates the capacity of argument that “failed” in law to invigorate cultural movements, assisting in the production of new ways of ...

15 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a tropological analysis of "On the Equality of the Sexes" (1790) argues that Judith Sargent Murray deployed a series of ironic reversals, including an example of Kenneth Burke's "dialectical" irony, to make her famous case for women's capacity to reason.
Abstract: This tropological analysis of “On the Equality of the Sexes” (1790) argues that Judith Sargent Murray deployed a series of ironic reversals, including an example of Kenneth Burke's “dialectical” irony, to make her famous case for women's capacity to reason. As such, the article elucidates this trope's peculiar rhetorical potential within the context of eighteenth-century debates on female education and investigates how it can function in conjunction with romantic irony. Significantly, Murray deployed romantic irony in order to question her era's commonplace ideas about women's intellectual capacities and conventional female education. She then employed dialectical irony in order to sidestep relativism, playing off and departing from the expanded field of possibilities that romantic irony opened up. In so doing, she cast doubt upon commonly held doubts themselves, questioning the subversiveness normally associated with learned ladies. Through this series of ironic turns, readers were invited to change thei...

15 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is sometimes said that Wichelns' essay, "The Literary Criticism of Oratory" helped to advance an important rationale for the discipline of speech communication.
Abstract: It is sometimes said that Herbert A. Wichelns’ 1925 essay, “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” helped to advance an important rationale for the discipline of speech communication. In that essay Wi...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper explored a series of discourses surrounding the images of the early twentieth-century stereoscope, focusing on Underwood & Underwood of Ottawa, Kansas, and the Keystone View Company, of Meadville, Pennsylvania.
Abstract: This essay explores a series of discourses surrounding the images of the early twentieth-century stereoscope, focusing on Underwood & Underwood of Ottawa, Kansas, and the Keystone View Company, of Meadville, Pennsylvania. By publishing images of particular geographic areas and historical events, as well as compendium volumes that included instruction on the appropriate uses and meanings of stereoscopic photos and technology, these companies reproduced a series of rhetorical screens which sought to frame stereoscopy as a particularly high-tech, middle-class, white way of looking. Hence, this early twentieth-century stereoscopic imagery suggests important concepts for the study of visual rhetoric, illustrating some important ways in which technological and institutional discourses work to delimit the experience of particular photographic images.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Contemporary political struggles are often framed as a conflict between liberal tolerance and moral conviction, such as the contests over sexual freedom or the clash of religious convictions animat as mentioned in this paper, which is a common misperception.
Abstract: Contemporary political struggles are often framed as a conflict between liberal tolerance and moral conviction, such as the contests over sexual freedom or the clash of religious convictions animat

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article traced the lineaments of this older Baconian world view in the scientistic ideology of those whose identity is compressed into this symbol, and showed that the Darwin fish emblem manifests this secular reshaping.
Abstract: The culture of modern science continues to establish its public identity by appealing to values and historical conceptions that reflect its appropriation of various religious ideals during its formative period, most especially in the rhetoric of Francis Bacon. These elements have persisted because they continue to achieve similar goals, but the scientific culture's growing need for autonomy has required their secularization. The Darwin fish emblem manifests this secular reshaping. This essay shows this by tracing out the lineaments of this older Baconian world view in the scientistic ideology of those whose identity is compressed into this symbol.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors trace appropriations of the Bengali bandit Devi Chaudhurani as she is transfigured within the Indian nationalist novel and the contemporary feminist street play Meye Dile Sajiye or Giving Away the Girl.
Abstract: In this article, I trace appropriations of the Bengali bandit Devi Chaudhurani as she is transfigured within the Indian nationalist novel Devi Chaudhurani and the contemporary feminist street play Meye Dile Sajiye or Giving Away the Girl. These representations are characterized by an eclecticism and a hybridity that treat “the bandit” as a hermeneutical resource for rhetorical invention. Each representation draws its force from the tensions and incongruities it strategically manifests, playing with indigenous Indian and colonial notions of criminality in order to advance ideologically complex arguments about the social conditions for women and their roles in colonial and postcolonial society.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors closely read King's act of writing the Letter, along with the figures of speech he employs in it, and show how both are essential to King's political strategy of nonviolent direct action, as well as to the Letter's argument against segregation.
Abstract: Scholars have celebrated the spoken word in King's “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” but they have overlooked the significance of the Letter's writing. In this essay I closely read King's act of writing the Letter, along with the figures of speech he employs in it, and I show how both—by enacting the mass media's ability to cross contexts—are essential to King's political strategy of nonviolent direct action, as well as to the Letter's argument against segregation—an argument that, before the fact, follows the steps we have since come to associate with deconstructive analysis.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: By 1946 the members of the Speech Association of America had found in "speech" a master term for naming the Association, its two journals, and academic departments allied with it.
Abstract: By 1946 the members of the Speech Association of America had found in “speech” a master term for naming the Association, its two journals, and academic departments allied with it How did this come

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article examined the rhetorical persona of the "Fool" as employed by General Charles Gordon in six volumes of journals recorded during the siege of Khartoum by Mahdist forces from September to December, 1884.
Abstract: This essay examines the rhetorical persona of the “Fool” as employed by General Charles Gordon in six volumes of journals recorded during the siege of Khartoum by Mahdist forces from September to December, 1884. After identifying the particular rhetorical aspects of the “Fool” as social critic/site of ideological contestation, I argue that Gordon utilized this persona to undermine the Gladstonian opposition of an imperial morality based upon economic frugality and foreign non-involvement versus the immorality of imperial expansion. To accomplish this purpose, Gordon appropriated a textual location of social exteriority, employed ridicule of superiors as a form of “hidden transcript” made public, and subverted Gladstone's moral imperialism as a grotesque hybridization of moral ends mandating the use of immoral means by means of conditional reasoning. Finally, Gordon proposed an alternative meaning of moral imperialism as loyalty to indigenous allies.


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Fredal and Corbeill as discussed by the authors, Rhetorical action in Ancient Athens: Persuasive Artistry from Solon to Demosthenes (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006).
Abstract: James Fredal, Rhetorical Action in Ancient Athens: Persuasive Artistry from Solon to Demosthenes (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006), ix + 249 pp. $50.00. Anthony Corbeill, Natur...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: As we approach the centennial of the National Communication Association in 2014, it is worth reflecting on what we know, do not know, and ought to know about the intellectual and institutional history of the NCA as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: As we approach the centennial of the National Communication Association in 2014, it is worth reflecting on what we know, do not know, and ought to know about the intellectual and institutional hist...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A recent Forum in the Quarterly Journal of Speech (92, no. 1) featured commentary by Michael Leff, Steven Mailloux, and James Arnt Aune on the intersections of rhetorical studies in composition as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: A recent Forum in the Quarterly Journal of Speech (92, no. 1) featured commentary by Michael Leff, Steven Mailloux, and James Arnt Aune on the intersections of rhetorical studies in composition, co...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the Proceedings of the 1900 Modern Language Association, W. E. Mead announced that the Pedagogical Section of the MLA had recently shown "a very unusual, if not alarming, energy"1 rooted entire language association.
Abstract: In the Proceedings of the 1900 Modern Language Association, W. E. Mead announced that the Pedagogical Section of the MLA had recently shown “a very unusual, if not alarming, energy”1 rooted entirel...