Showing papers in "Quarterly Journal of Speech in 2016"
TL;DR: Lisbeth Lipari's Listening, Thinking, Being: Toward an Ethics of Attunement as mentioned in this paper offers an expansive and compelling view of communication, and the final ten pages draw the book's themes together an...
Abstract: Lisbeth Lipari’s Listening, Thinking, Being: Toward an Ethics of Attunement offers an expansive and compelling view of communication. Although the final ten pages draw the book’s themes together an...
34 citations
TL;DR: Reclaiming Queer as discussed by the authors illuminates the vitality and excessive, unpredictable, risky, and unpredictable nature of Queer Theory. But it is not a death knell or a dismissal of its future in academic or political spaces.
Abstract: Queer theory lives. Lest we ring its death knell or dismiss its future in academic, activist, or rhetorical spaces, Reclaiming Queer illuminates the vitality and excessive, unpredictable, risky, an...
32 citations
TL;DR: The War that Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 by Margaret MacMillan as discussed by the authors shares a good deal with Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War.
Abstract: Margaret MacMillan's The War that Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 shares a good deal with Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War. It offers a lively and engaging account of the origins of one ...
25 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that the root of opposition to fluoridation was not in political ideology, as scholars have often claimed, but in a perceived threat to the body's boundaries, which created intense feelings.
Abstract: This essay forwards a theory of “visceral publics” through a case study of a bitter public health controversy in a small midcentury New England town. Proponents of fluoridation claimed that it yielded significant positive health outcomes, while opponents charged that the measure was politically suspect and physically dangerous. In this essay, I analyze the controversy as it took shape in letters to the editor and argue that the root of opposition to fluoridation was not in political ideology, as scholars have often claimed, but in a perceived threat to the body's boundaries, which created intense feelings. Although visceral publics are most clearly observable in controversies over the boundaries of the human body, the essay concludes by showing how the concept may be applied to controversies over the boundaries of the national body as well.
24 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a rhetorical theory of deixis is proposed to reveal the rhetorical dynamics within the fabric of spoken discourse, dynamics that often refer to what is outside the text to make sense of what is within it, and identify the deictic indicators within a speech text to pinpoint where, how, and why a speaker activates the physical elements of the speech situation as a material means of persuasion.
Abstract: This article advances a rhetorical theory of deixis, a theoretical and methodological orientation that infuses the linguistic concept of deixis with rhetorical understandings of ethos, place, and time. Deixis reveals the rhetorical dynamics within the fabric of spoken discourse, dynamics that often refer to what is outside the text to make sense of what is within it. Ultimately, I argue that identifying the deictic indicators within a speech text enables the critic to pinpoint where, how, and why a speaker activates the physical elements of the speech situation as a material means of persuasion. After outlining the theoretical tenets of this approach, I analyze Harry S. Truman's Address to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on June 29, 1947, to show how a rhetorical theory of deixis orients the critic to the bodies, places, and temporalities implied in and displayed through speech.
21 citations
TL;DR: The Prison Special as mentioned in this paper was a cross-country train tour of 26 white women who had been jailed as a result of their protest activity for woman suffrage using visual, embodied, and verbal enactments of imprisonment and civic action.
Abstract: During the spring of 1919, the National Woman's Party sponsored the Prison Special, a cross-country train tour of 26 white women who had been jailed as a result of their protest activity for woman suffrage. Using visual, embodied, and verbal enactments of imprisonment and civic action, the Prison Special constituted white women's citizenship through simultaneous rhetorics of inclusion and expulsion. The Prison Special's foregrounding of white women's martial capabilities, respectability, and vulnerability justified white women's inclusion in the category of citizen. The Prison Special's contrast of the imprisoned white suffragists to Black women co-prisoners participated in the expulsion of Black women from the category of citizen.
17 citations
TL;DR: A diverse range of approaches have been proposed to define what counts as citizenship, what do citizens look like, how power affects notions of national belonging, and how is such belonging marked as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: What “counts” as citizenship? What do citizens look like? How does power affect notions of national belonging, and how is such belonging marked? These questions propel a diverse range of approaches...
17 citations
17 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that understanding vision and visuality as associated but distinct terms has significant implications for the ways in which we engage with racial constructions of identity and how race and racial identity are implicated in conversations about both visuality and vision.
Abstract: This article argues that understanding vision and visuality as associated but distinct terms has significant implications for the ways in which we engage with racial constructions of identity. Expanding the ways in which we visualize race beyond simply the visual offers us a more comprehensive approach to understanding the construction of and response to race in the twenty-first-century United States. This article moves from theoretical implications of non-visual visualizations like tactile visuality and audial visuality through photographs taken by blind photographers to ask how race and racial identity are implicated in conversations about both vision and visuality.
16 citations
TL;DR: This article argued on behalf of a conceptualization of anxiety as a result of affective investments in a network of discourse rather than an individual feeling and demonstrated the usefulness of doing so by examining reactions to the Jade Helm 15 military training exercise.
Abstract: This article reclaims the concept of anxiety for rhetoric and demonstrates the usefulness of doing so by examining reactions to the Jade Helm 15 military training exercise. Following Lacan's recently translated seminar on Anxiety, the essay argues on behalf of a conceptualization of anxiety as a result of affective investments in a network of discourse rather than an individual feeling. This rearticulation of anxiety has implications for both rhetorical theory and criticism as well as practical responses to right-wing conspiracy theories such as those surrounding Jade Helm.
15 citations
TL;DR: In this article, Walsh argues that a better understanding of the historical evolution of prophetesses can be found in scientists as prophets: A Rhetorical Genealogy, which is a welcome contribution to the rhetoric of science literature.
Abstract: Scientists as Prophets: A Rhetorical Genealogy is a welcome contribution to the rhetoric of science literature. Lynda Walsh argues that a better understanding of the historical evolution of prophet...
TL;DR: The authors examines Chun Tae-il's self-immolation as an exemplar that showcases how a life deprived of public appearance can enter the public sphere through the willful destruction of one's body.
Abstract: This essay examines Chun Tae-il's self-immolation as an exemplar that showcases how a life deprived of public appearance can enter the public sphere through the willful destruction of one's body. Far from being a strange and curious deviation, self-immolation, I argue, is a necropolitical form of public embodiment for those who have been marginalized and excluded from the space of appearance. Chun Tae-il's self-immolation illustrates that there is an alternative form of self-suspension practiced by subaltern subjects: the art of self-concretization. While all subjects of publicity are required to bracket their self-interests when entering the public realm, Chun Tae-il's self-immolation indicates that the entrance fee for minoritized subjects can be life itself, thus epitomizing the limit condition of self-purgation in the public realm.
TL;DR: In his first inaugural address, President Barack Obama captured the overarching theme from both his campaign and the problems the country faced as discussed by the authors, and declared that "in this winter of our hardship,” he proclaimed.
Abstract: During his first inaugural address, President Barack Obama captured the overarching theme from both his campaign and the problems the country faced. “In this winter of our hardship,” he proclaimed,...
TL;DR: The authors used the rhetorical homology of the urban jungle to conduct an institutional critique of law enforcement in Ferguson, MO, after Michael Brown was killed, and investigated how, in news coverage of Ferguson, a common form was present across verbal devices and nonverbal practices at macro and micro levels that constituted black neighborhoods as subterranean spaces that needed colonization or containment, as frontier scenes with a savage character logic imposed upon its residents.
Abstract: In this article, I use the rhetorical homology of the urban jungle to conduct an institutional critique of law enforcement in Ferguson, MO, after Michael Brown was killed. Rhetorical homologies and institutions intersect where language and practice coalesce, which is to say where group consciousness takes material forms. I investigate how, in news coverage of Ferguson, a common form was present across verbal devices and nonverbal practices at macro and micro levels that constituted black neighborhoods as subterranean spaces that needed colonization or containment, as frontier scenes with a savage character logic imposed upon its residents. The homology inscribes particular meanings into black and white skin colors with Anglophile cultural codes, which establishes a savage/explorer binary and keeps black people and spaces invisible, impoverished, and susceptible to racialized policing. The tools of institutional critique—postmodern mapping, boundary interrogation, and micro/macro alignment—inform t...
TL;DR: In this paper, Hayot applies a potentially counterintuitive analogy to academic humanists at all points of their career (although grad students may not always be humanists), and provides a humorous, sincere, and at times even poignant guide to academic writing.
Abstract: In this funny, sincere, and at times even poignant guide to academic writing, Hayot applies a potentially counterintuitive analogy to academic humanists at all points of their career (although grad...
TL;DR: In his first inaugural address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared, "In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor" as mentioned in this paper, nearly two thirds of the way through his inaugural address.
Abstract: Nearly two thirds of the way through his first inaugural address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared, In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor—th...
TL;DR: The authors argue that the New Right seized the liberationist argument for open public discourse about sexuality to sublimate libidinal desires into a national project of familial (re)productivity.
Abstract: Moving from opposition to participation, the Adolescent Family Life Act (1981) and the development of abstinence education marks the conservative movement's pivot to a rhetorical strategy of tolerance that enabled it to coopt the public culture of sex discourse. Working from Herbert Marcuse's theory of “surplus repression,” I argue that the New Right seized the liberationist argument for open public discourse about sexuality to sublimate libidinal desires into a national project of familial (re)productivity. The AFLA is significant in the rhetorical history of sex education because it demarcates the transition to a productive form of biopolitics that sought to manage sexuality by instrumentalizing rather than censuring bodily desire. Conservative sex talk illustrates how Eros—transgressive, creative, and erotic desires—is channeled into the discursive production of hyper-functional subjects invested in their own subjugation.
TL;DR: The authors examines a set of memoranda, speeches, and other official discourse issued during the Global War on Terrorism that transformed the legal paradigm under which the enemy was defined and authorized new norms of conduct previously prohibited by law.
Abstract: This essay examines a set of memoranda, speeches, and other official discourse issued during the Global War on Terrorism that transformed the legal paradigm under which the enemy was defined and authorized new norms of conduct previously prohibited by law. It argues that these texts employ “deconstitutive rhetoric,” defined as discursive action that undermines the existing legal status of those to whom it refers and produces a disarticulate, destitute subject by denying the individual access to the civic forums in which rhetorical agency may be exercised. The essay begins with an analysis of the use of deconstitutive rhetoric in the decision to legally re-define Afghanistan as a “failed state” in order to absolve the United States of treaty obligations with that nation. It then addresses the emergence of “unlawful enemy combatant status,” a new legal category not recognized under the international laws of war. The essay concludes with a discussion the Obama administration’s detention and drone str...
TL;DR: In this article, the New Agendas in Communication: Sports and Identity: New Agencies in Communication offers a much-needed addition to the growing field of communication and sport research.
Abstract: Sports and Identity: New Agendas in Communication offers a much-needed addition to the growing field of communication and sport research. It is the product of the New Agendas in Communication: Spor...
TL;DR: In late 2016, the last U.S. combat troops will depart from Afghanistan and official operations in America's longest war will come to an end as discussed by the authors, which will be the end of a fifteen-year war.
Abstract: In late 2016, the last U.S. combat troops will depart from Afghanistan and official operations in America's longest war will come to an end. The U.S. media has long relegated the fifteen-year war, ...
TL;DR: The authors presents genetic rhetorical criticism as an alternative methodology for the study of multi-versioned rhetorical works, which affirms the value of unauthorized versions of rhetorical works and deepen the field's understanding of particular rhetorical works.
Abstract: This essay presents genetic rhetorical criticism as an alternative methodology for the study of multi-versioned rhetorical works. In contrast to methodologies of textual authentication, which focus on the synchronic delivery of public address, genetic rhetorical criticism focuses on the diachronic movement of writing that both precedes and exceeds the work’s introduction to public history. It does so by affirming the value of unauthorized versions of rhetorical works, which deepen the field’s understanding of both particular rhetorical works and the textual dynamics of rhetoric. To support these claims, this essay reassesses the textual histories of both Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” and Kenneth Burke’s A Rhetoric of Motives. Engaging both works simultaneously shows that there are fundamental features of textuality that unite speech-centered and writing-centered rhetorical works. It also demonstrates that the textual histories of rhetorical works can support multiple scholarly interpretat...
TL;DR: This article examined the use of metonymy in the evolution argument in the Origin of the Species, with most suggesting that it was metaphorically or analogically used or used as a metaphor.
Abstract: Although theories of agricultural breeding came to epitomize Charles Darwin's evolutionary argument, little scholarship considers the rhetoric of agricultural writings he consulted. This inattention results from scholars misunderstanding how breeding figures in the Origin, with most suggesting Darwin uses it metaphorically or analogically. It is, however, better considered a metonymy, substituting a condensed causal description of selection that is qualitatively identical to the more complex process of natural evolution. Reevaluating Darwin's use of figuration sheds light on the way he and other scientists use a wider array of figurative resources (beyond metaphor), and particularly metonymy, to make causal arguments.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose a set of procedural principles to guide the citizens in the process of policy-making (deliberation, voting, laws) so that the outcome of policymaking is consistent with the voters' preferences.
Abstract: Liberal democracy is caught in a paradox. It needs to establish a set of procedural principles to guide its citizens in the process of policy-making (deliberation, voting, laws) so that the outcome...
TL;DR: Although fortyfive years have passed since Nixon's famous "silent majority" speech on November 3, 1969, the address has loomed large in the collective memory of U.S. citizens through the Cold War as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Although forty-five years have passed since Nixon's famous “silent majority” speech on November 3, 1969, the address has loomed large in the collective memory of U.S. citizens through the Cold War,...
TL;DR: This article revisited Foucault from a rhetorical perspective and found that, at the level of architectonic, they rediscovered rhetoric's role at the inception of the human sciences, and at a level of thematic, they can make better sense of rhetorical phenomena such as the sixteenth/seventeenth-century sacred arts of listening, which feature a public ear.
Abstract: Michel Foucault’s famous history of the human sciences focused on “the order of things” and in doing so it overwhelmed a rhetorical perspective that can track the arts of moving souls: pedagogy, politics, and psychology. If we revisit Foucault from a rhetorical perspective there are consequences: (1) at the level of architectonic, we rediscover rhetoric’s role at the inception of the human sciences, and (2) at the level of thematic, we can make better sense of rhetorical phenomena such as the sixteenth-/seventeenth-century sacred arts of listening, which feature a “public ear.” Foucault’s late interest in the pastoral picks up this rhetorical thread, although he never was able to revise the disciplinary and biopolitical history implicated therein. This article initiates just such a revision, paying particular attention to historiographic questions, and to recent discussions of biopower that wind up looking very different from this rhetorical perspective.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue on behalf of the importance of a posthuman conception of ontic media, recuperating feminist agency not within a particular historical individual but, instead, in the relationships between mediational networks and their nodes.
Abstract: This essay pursues a pressing question in the study of posthuman rhetoric: Now that distributed agency has, to a degree, been theorized, to what use can it be put by feminists? In attempting one provisional response, the essay argues on behalf of the importance of a posthuman conception of ontic media, recuperating feminist agency not within a particular historical individual but, instead, in the relationships between her mediational networks and their nodes. Taking as its primary artifact Anita Loos’s groundbreaking 1916 film His Picture in the Papers, the essay historicizes and articulates Loos’s particular brand of indirect-qua-distributed feminist agency. In doing so, the essay gestures more broadly toward the role of such networks in the recovery of feminist critiques previously resistant to historicization due to their distributed nature.
TL;DR: This article conceptualized protest rhetoric in order to theorize the underlying relationship between communication and subjectivity, highlighting how rhetorical protest challenges the sovereignty of voice and argues that Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses is an example of a sign that protests.
Abstract: Our paper conceptualizes protest rhetoric in order to theorize the underlying relationship between communication and subjectivity. We do this by highlighting how rhetorical protest challenges the sovereignty of voice. Our argument is that Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses is an example of a sign that protests. To make this argument, we use a materialist method from media studies that simultaneously examines the formal capacities of a sign that protests and maps its historical transformation. Our analysis opens with the two prevailing accounts of Luther's theses: disputation and dissemination. We extend both disputation and dissemination by placing them in a “universal history” of protest rhetoric that grounds many accepted critical rhetorical theories in specific systems of representation. Drawing together our findings, we conclude by urging the replacement of logos and logocentrism with the logistics of protest rhetoric in order to link together disputation and dissemination as a mechanism for b...