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Showing papers in "Quarterly Journal of Speech in 2009"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The material rhetoric of physical locations like the Museum Park at the North Carolina Museum of Art creates spaces of attention where visitors are invited to experience the landscape around them as a series of enactments that identify the inside/outside components of sub/urban existence, as well as the regenerative/transformative possibilities of such existence as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The material rhetoric of physical locations like the Museum Park at the North Carolina Museum of Art creates “spaces of attention” wherein visitors are invited to experience the landscape around them as a series of enactments that identify the inside/outside components of sub/urban existence, as well as the regenerative/transformative possibilities of such existence. Such rhetorical enactments create innovative opportunities for individuals to attend to the human/nature interface. These rhetorical enactments also create and contain tensions that come to the fore when they are employed as authentic mediations of nature, when they function as tropes to promote development of natural space, and/or when they are translated into discursive environmental argument.

76 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: For instance, the authors argues that the fence logic engendered by groups such as the Minutemen reveals how struggles over the boundaries of citizenship both enable and limit an affect-charged civic imaginary.
Abstract: Current figurations of the “immigration problem” in the United States challenge our understanding of the rhetoricity of contemporary bordering practices. The public discourse of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps serves to chart the alienization of undocumented migrants and the enactment of alien abjection on the U.S.–Mexico border. Alienization promises an antidote to majoritarian anxieties regarding national disunity in the form of a shoring-up of cultural boundaries that border-crossing subjects render troublesome. Ultimately, the fence logic engendered by groups such as the Minutemen reveals how struggles over the boundaries of citizenship both enable and limit an affect-charged civic imaginary.

73 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors contextualize the film within Joseph Campbell's monomyth and argue that its rhetorical efficacy arises in part because Al Gore's personal transformation animates the documentary footage with jeremiad advocacy.
Abstract: Contesting interpretations of An Inconvenient Truth that treat it as political jeremiad, autobiography, or science documentary, we contextualize the film within Joseph Campbell's monomyth and argue that its rhetorical efficacy arises in part because Al Gore's personal transformation animates the documentary footage with jeremiad advocacy. In turn, this fusion of genres enhances Gore's credibility to assess the dangers of global warming and to advise viewers how to respond to them effectively. Our reading has implications for understanding environmental discourse and for critical practice.

70 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In a speech on race as discussed by the authors, Barack Obama portrayed himself as an embodiment of double consciousness, but then invited his audience to share his doubled perspective, and finally models a doubled mode of speaking and acting that is captioned by the well-known maxim, the Golden Rule.
Abstract: Faced with a racialized political crisis that threatened to derail his campaign to become the first African American president of the United States, Barack Obama delivered a speech on race titled “A More Perfect Union.” He begins by portraying himself as an embodiment of double consciousness, but then invites his audience to share his doubled perspective, and finally models a doubled mode of speaking and acting that is captioned by the well-known maxim, the Golden Rule. This speech text thus contributes discursive resources required for the productive doubling necessary for the successful negotiation of contemporary public culture.

63 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper studied the circulation of tropes, affects, and practices of seeing constituting an evangelical public around Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ with special attention to the ways that the film operates as one node in an affective economy that articulates tropes of victimhood and intimacy within the public practices of evangelicalism.
Abstract: Publics are not simply a product of common attention to texts, but are also animated by an economy of tropes and affects that relies on processes of metonymic connection, metaphorical condensation, and affective investment. Drawing on Jacques Lacan's theory of enjoyment and his treatments of metaphor and metonymy as rhetorical forms, this essay details the circulation of tropes, affects, and practices of seeing constituting an evangelical public around Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ with special attention to the ways that the film operates as one node in an affective economy that articulates tropes of victimhood and intimacy within the public practices of evangelicalism. More broadly, this essay suggests that reading publics through the lens of an economy of trope and affective investment provides significant insight into the production and durability of public identity commitments.

58 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors examined the tactics of decolonization employed in the rhetoric of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole nations as it functioned to expose the dilemmas and hypocrisies of U.S. government justifications for Native removal as animated by discourses of territoriality, republicanism, paternalism, and godly authority.
Abstract: This essay examines nineteenth-century Native resistance to the American Indian removal policy as a strategy of decolonization. Attention focuses in particular on the tactics of decolonization employed in the rhetoric of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole nations as it functioned to expose the dilemmas and hypocrisies of U.S. government justifications for Native removal as animated by discourses of territoriality, republicanism, paternalism, and godly authority. This analysis of the rhetorical strategy and tactics of decolonization helps to reassess the agency of nineteenth-century American Native voices and to gauge in general how rhetorics of resistance can be articulated in colonial contexts.

45 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors examined how a text upholds or betrays an advocate's values, seeking out textual markers of access and influence that belie claims of marginalization, and assessing whether an advocates' discourse implicitly or explicitly widens or narrows discursive space for others.
Abstract: As a conceptual term, “counterpublic” serves scholarship best when contributing to a critical-theory project, which means that particular constellations of materiality and ideology may bolster some calls for counterpublicity while gainsaying others. This may be investigated by examining how a text upholds or betrays an advocate's values, seeking out textual markers of access and influence that belie claims of marginalization, and assessing whether an advocate's discourse implicitly or explicitly widens or narrows discursive space for others. From this perspective, although William Simon claimed that pro-business advocates had been excluded from public debates in his 1978 book A Time for Truth, he nevertheless asserted a commitment to negative liberty that discounted potentially conflicting values in a pluralistic society, evidenced strong financial and political connections as well as a patrician background and bearing, and restricted discursive space for others.

43 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Hooke's Micrographia (1665) holds an important place in the history of scientific visual rhetoric as mentioned in this paper, where Hooke's accomplishment lies not only in a stunning array of engravings, but also in a pedagogy of sight, a rhetorical framework that instructs readers how to view images in accordance with an ideological or epistemic program.
Abstract: Robert Hooke's Micrographia (1665) holds an important place in the history of scientific visual rhetoric Hooke's accomplishment lies not only in a stunning array of engravings, but also in a “pedagogy of sight”—a rhetorical framework that instructs readers how to view images in accordance with an ideological or epistemic program Hooke not only taught his readers how to view a new kind of image, but recruited potential contributors to the program of natural philosophy In particular, Hooke taught his readers to see microscopic specimens as mechanical bodies, as evidence of divine creation, and as pleasant entertainment

37 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Eden and Enoch as mentioned in this paper, Refiguring Rhetorical Education: Women Teaching African American, Native American, and Chicano/a Students, 1865-1911 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008), xii + 225...
Abstract: Jessica Enoch, Refiguring Rhetorical Education: Women Teaching African American, Native American, and Chicano/a Students, 1865–1911 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008), xii + 225...

36 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article analyzed the dynamics in the recent controversy surrounding AIDS policy in South Africa and developed the notion of an epistemological filibuster, an appeal to uncertainty in order to delay policy implementation, and showed the key role it played in producing an argumentative stalemate between President Thabo Mbeki and Western orthodox AIDS scientists that threatened millions of HIV-positive South Africans.
Abstract: International science policy controversies involve disputes over cultural differences in the assessment of knowledge claims and competing visions of the policy-making process between different nations. This essay analyzes these dynamics in the recent controversy surrounding AIDS policy in South Africa. It develops the notion of an epistemological filibuster, an appeal to uncertainty in order to delay policy implementation, and shows the key role it played in producing an argumentative stalemate between President Thabo Mbeki and Western orthodox AIDS scientists that threatened millions of HIV-positive South Africans.

31 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
Kelly Pender1
TL;DR: This article argued that rhetorical accounts of how charisma works at all ought not be composed of statements that strategies generate charisma, but rather, such an account may comprise the practical reasoning that explains why such strategies may be expected to work.
Abstract: ‘‘charisma’’ need not be viewed as outside the purview of the study of public argument. For example, a rhetorical account of how charisma works at all ought not be composed of statements that strategies generate charisma. Rather, such an account may comprise the practical reasoning that explains why such strategies may be expected to work. In short, scholars need not and ought not dismiss reasoning in all its guises in studies of the history of rhetoric.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Ferstle as discussed by the authors assesses visual rhetoric: problems, practices, and possible solutions (Saarbrucken, Germany: Verlag Dr. Muller, 2007), xi + 204 pp.
Abstract: Thomas Ferstle, Assessing Visual Rhetoric: Problems, Practices, and Possible Solutions (Saarbrucken, Germany: Verlag Dr. Muller, 2007), xi + 204 pp. $76.00. Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Sue Hum, and Li...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Invective was useful in the early Republic, and continues to be useful today, because it is both constitutive of national identity and a curative rhetoric for managing cultural anxiety.
Abstract: Robert Owen's “Declaration of Mental Independence,” declaimed on the Fourth of July, 1826, was one of the most ill-received speeches in the early Republic. The attendant controversy provides an opportunity to theorize invective's role in democratic culture. Invective was useful in the early Republic, and continues to be useful today, because it is both constitutive of national identity and a curative rhetoric for managing cultural anxiety. However, there are limits to what invective can achieve, and invective's place in democracy is consequently ambivalent. Rather than curing democratic anxiety, invective tends to perpetuate it, disrupting democracy's emphasis on controlled conflict and pushing it ever closer to violence.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A logic of articulation offers a viable alternative by focusing attention on the linkages between the competing material, social, and rhetorical registers in which scientific knowledge is produced and discovered as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Rhetoricians have tried to develop a better understanding of the connection between words and things, but these attempts often employ a logic of representation that undermines a full examination of materiality and the complexity of scientific practice. A logic of articulation offers a viable alternative by focusing attention on the linkages between the competing material, social, and rhetorical registers in which scientific knowledge is produced and discovered. An examination of extant criticism of Dean Hamer's “gay gene” study illustrates the utility of articulation theory as a guide to the rhetorical criticism of science.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The use of the pronoun he in circumstances of sex-indefinite reference unduly emphasizes men over women, thereby both reconstituting and signifying males' micropolitical hegemony as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The use of the pronoun he in circumstances of sex‐indefinite reference unduly emphasizes men over women, thereby both re‐constituting and signifying males’ micropolitical hegemony. To date this claim has been advanced primarily on the basis of imagined examples and of examples from writing. We searched for generic he in everyday conversation and found no clear instances of it. Speakers use they as an unmarked singular generic pronoun. We did find some possibly‐generic usages of he, especially: (1) referring to an unmarked masculine role occupant (e.g., a member of Congress), and (2) referring to a non‐human (e.g., a cockroach). We situate these findings within controversies about gender‐fair references to women and men, and conclude that conversational uses of he seem more various and complex‐and perhaps more anti‐female‐than we had supposed. We caution against facile generalization to conversational interaction of arguments based in written and imagined exemplars.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This essay uses the controversial “Ashley Treatment” to argue that normative body rhetorics have become untethered from and more influential than traditional medical perspectives in determinations about surgical intervention.
Abstract: This essay uses the controversial “Ashley Treatment” to argue that normative body rhetorics have become untethered from and more influential than traditional medical perspectives in determinations about surgical intervention. While disagreeing greatly over the ethics of the “Treatment,” both its supporters and critics construct rhetorics of a “healthy” body against which pre- and post-Treatment bodies can be evaluated. These rhetorics demonstrate how “health” and “illness” can be defined more through social ideology than medical certainty, resulting in fluid notions of what it means to have a “normal” body and how surgical techniques should be employed to achieve normality.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine two of the Pluto Project atlases as they function to identify a radical cartographic style that animates the social control of space by subverting traditional cartographic forms and defying scientific expectations and standards.
Abstract: After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of state socialism in Eastern and Central Europe, cartographers were faced with choices on how the new post–Cold War political landscape would be mapped. One such group called the Pluto Project had been producing atlases since 1981 with a progressive point of view about the nature of state power in the Cold War. This essay examines two of the Pluto Project's atlases as they function to identify a radical cartographic style that animates the social control of space by subverting traditional cartographic forms and defying scientific expectations and standards.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Long Day: The Story of a New York Working Girl, as Told by Herself (1905) as discussed by the authors highlights the ways in which time is disproportionately articulated to different subjects, the means employed to discipline the corporeal enactment of time, and the potential for subjects to resist this orthodoxy.
Abstract: The public circulation of temporal discourse fashions the way in which subjects experience and value their time. At the turn of the twentieth century, experts in systematic management mandated that wage-earning women must be prodded into efficient labor in order to increase the overall yield of industry. Against this regime of time, the narrator of The Long Day: The Story of a New York Working Girl, as Told by Herself (1905) subverted the temporal protocols governing her by re-deploying efficient labor for her own agenda. Analysis of this work highlights the ways in which time is disproportionately articulated to different subjects, the means employed to discipline the corporeal enactment of time, and the potential for subjects to resist this orthodoxy.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors locate an ethical stance within rhetorical practice, and turn to Isocrates, who practiced a constitutive rhetoric that had a strong moral orientation, and their dependence on piety as a receptive attitude toward persuasive discourse may provide insight necessary to develop an ethic supporting the critical orientation of current rhetorical theory.
Abstract: Critical, postmodern, and constitutive rhetorics are typically guided by an ethical stance opposing domination and marginalization. However, this stance often functions as an unreflective morality operating outside the constitutive practices of rhetoric itself. To locate an ethical stance within rhetorical practice, we can turn to Isocrates, who practiced a constitutive rhetoric that had a strong moral orientation. His dependence on piety as a receptive attitude toward persuasive discourse may provide the insight necessary to develop an ethic supporting the critical orientation of current rhetorical theory.

Journal ArticleDOI
Abstract: Fusing the concept of “the beard” with the genre of the tall tale to theorize bearded tales deepens our understanding of closet eloquence, or rhetorical repertories of sexual passing in U.S. history. An examination of adventurer-writer-lecturer Richard Halliburton's sexual provenance and bestselling travel tale, The Royal Road to Romance (1925), illustrates how such autobiographical feints conceal and confound queer subjectivity by proximate heteronormative apparitions that configure straight ethos. At the same time, these fragile constructions gesture toward queer worlds inscribed between the lines for the fourth persona while reflecting upon the exile of archives, and the queer legacy of bearding.


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Gorgias's Helen has earned a central place in the revival of interest in sophistic and neo-sophistic rhetorical studies in the late twentieth century as mentioned in this paper, and the speech is not a veiled defense of the Art of Rhetoric.
Abstract: Gorgias's Helen has earned a central place in the revival of interest in sophistic and neo‐sophistic rhetorical studies in the late twentieth century. This essay offers a “predisciplinary” historical analysis of the text and makes five arguments: 1) Identifying Gorgias’ Helen as an “epideictic” speech is a somewhat misleading characterization; 2) The speech is not a veiled defense of the Art of Rhetoric; 3) Gorgias may have inaugurated the prose genre of encomia; 4) Gorgias advanced fifth‐century BCE “rationalism” by enacting certain innovations in prose composition; 5) The Helen's most significant “theoretical” contribution is to offer a secular account of the workings of logos— an account that functions as an exemplar for later theorists.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a Communication Perspectives on HIV/AIDS for the 21st Century (New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates/Taylor & Francis Group, 2008), xxix + 477...
Abstract: Timothy Edgar, Seth M. Noar, and Vicki S. Freimuth, ed., Communication Perspectives on HIV/AIDS for the 21st Century (New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates/Taylor & Francis Group, 2008), xxix + 477...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, Lavin presents a political challenge: how do we get ourselves out of the business of blame-laying in a liberal democratic public sphere without giving up on the idea of responsibility?
Abstract: other that postliberal interdependence requires. Such an act most certainly puts the one taking responsibility in jeopardy: in the example provided by Friedlander, breaking curfew was punishable by death, and even giving up one’s meager ration of food could lead to starvation. Lavin is clear on this point: ‘‘[V]ulnerability is not episodic but an unavoidable component of human experience’’ (130). Vulnerability and risk is what there is, and responsibility (of a postliberal sort) is how we constitute ourselves as subjects. Chad Lavin presents us with a political challenge: how do we get ourselves out of the business of blame-laying in a liberal democratic public sphere without giving up on the idea of responsibility? His answer is that we don’t*that, in fact, we have to give up on the strictly liberal conception of publicity and of agency in order to do so. The alternative, a conception of distributed agency that sees subjects as interdependent and in the process of constant engagement (substitution), is far better*he claims*given the current circumstances, although it also comes with attendant risks, which are unavoidable. What remains is for us to take up Lavin’s challenge not only in the political sphere but in the ethical one, to develop notions of social and intersubjective engagement, along the lines of Butler’s (and, for my money, Levinas’s, Alain Badiou’s, or Jean-Luc Nancy’s), and to take seriously the idea that substitution*figural, performative, and bodily*is the principal condition of everyday life.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that controversy develops when our basic assumptions about the world are challenged, and that those engaged in a controversy must perform their objections, which leads to the question of what it is that makes people choose to leave their everyday routines in order to perform their protests.
Abstract: In histories of American cinema written by film scholars, censorship is an external, repressive force that exerts pressure on the industry and those creative individuals who work within it. Perhaps because he was trained as a rhetorician, Kendall R. Phillips understands censorship differently. In his recent book, Phillips reminds us that censorship is not a self-generating, abstract force. Nor is it merely a set of regulatory institutions and policies. Film censorship is rather an effect of political protests inspired by controversies. When film historians narrate controversial cinema exclusively in terms of the history of censorship, they eclipse the rhetoric of protest that produces censorship as an answer to the problem of controversial cinema. Phillips invites us to pause ‘‘in that cultural moment between offense and regulation’’ in order to study the performances of opposition that happen after a public feels offended by a particular film (or in many cases, what it has heard about a film) and before the implementation or enforcement of regulatory mechanisms (xvi). It is in the vital moment of controversy itself that people voice their objections. Regardless of what we think of the particular positions taken, such controversies are worthy of the attention of rhetoricians because in each case, they are characterized by the fundamentally democratic process of average citizens raising their voices in an attempt to influence cultural politics. The basic criterion Phillips uses to assess whether or not public attention to and attitudes about a particular film have reached the level of controversy is as follows: have people been provoked to the point of abandoning their everyday routines in order to actively engage in the process of contesting the film? In other words, the rhetoric of controversy implies the concrete actions and embodied practices of those protesting a particular film (e.g., letter-writing campaigns, picketing, and boycotts). And here we see Phillips engaging recent conversations about political protest taking place on the borders of rhetoric and performance studies. Phillips writes, ‘‘A final aspect of controversy that is especially important in my present exploration is that those engaged in a controversy must perform their objections’’ (xx). This begs the question of what it is that makes people choose to leave their everyday routines in order to perform their objections. Phillips argues that controversies develop when our basic assumptions about the world are challenged:

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the Implications of Gestalt psychology Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol 14, No 1, pp 8-29 (1928) and (1930).
Abstract: (1928) Implications of gestalt psychology Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol 14, No 1, pp 8-29


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Mao's reading Chinese Fortune Cookie as discussed by the authors is an explanation, conceptualization, and performance of Chinese American rhetoric from beginning to end, and is an important contribution to the theorization of rhetorical studies for a number of reasons.
Abstract: the concepts of indirection and directness, and wrestles with these concepts to illustrate their complementary relationship. The title of the book, Reading Chinese Fortune Cookie, also performs a hybrid rhetoric. Mao draws attention to his choice to exclude the definite article, which he stresses does not exist in the Chinese language, and thus invites us to engage in Chinese American rhetoric from the start. From beginning to end, Mao’s book is an explanation, conceptualization, and performance of Chinese American rhetoric. Reading Chinese Fortune Cookie is a groundbreaking book, and an important contribution to the theorization of rhetorical studies for a number of reasons. First, it attends to emergent ethnic rhetorics broadly and Chinese American rhetoric specifically, recognizing that both are phenomena born of rhetorical borderlands. Second, Mao situates Chinese American rhetoric as a way of understanding emergent ethnic rhetorics at the borderlands. He skillfully theorizes Chinese American rhetoric from the ground up, using a multiplicity of texts drawn from daily life to do so, and taking into account Chinese and European American cultural contexts to avoid orientalizing Chinese Americans or their rhetoric*thus providing an excellent theoretical basis for the future study of emergent ethnic rhetorics. Although the book focuses on Chinese Americans and on the intercultural relationship between European Americans and Chinese Americans, it has the potential to help us understand other rhetorical contexts. Mao’s book is an important read for scholars who wish to learn more about rhetoric, the rhetoric of emerging ethnic groups, and rhetoric as a transformative experience and practice.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Coombes and Stern as mentioned in this paper described the history after Apartheid in South Africa as "visual culture and public memory in a Democratic South Africa" (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), xviii + 366 pp.
Abstract: Annie E. Coombes, History after Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Democratic South Africa (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), xviii + 366 pp. $27.95 (paper). Steve J. Stern, R...