Showing papers on "Rhetorical question published in 1986"

Story, performance, and event : contextual studies of oral narrative

Abstract: Based on a corpus of Texan oral narratives collected by the author over the past fifteen years, this study presents an analysis of the literary qualities or orally performed verbal art, focusing on the significance of its social context. Although the tales included are all from Texas, they are representative of oral storytelling traditions in other parts of the United States, including tall tales, hunting stories, local character anecdotes, accounts of practical jokes, and so on. They are also highly entertaining in their own right. Professor Bauman's main emphasis is on the act of storytelling, not just the text. His central analytical concern is to demonstrate the interrelationships that exist between the events recounted in the narratives (narrated events), the narrative texts, and the situations in which the narratives are told (narrative events). He identifies these interrelationships by combining a close formal analysis of the texts with an ethnographic examination of the way in which their telling is accomplished, paying particular attention to the links between form and function. He also illuminates other more general concerns in the study of oral narrative, such as stability and variation in the oral text, the problem of genre, and the rhetorical efficacy of literary forms. As an important contribution to the theoretical and practical literary analysis of orally performed narratives, the book will appeal to students and teachers of folklore, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, and literary theory.

Accommodating Science The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts

Abstract: This article studies the fate of scientific observations as they pass from original research reports intended for scientific peers into popular accounts aimed at a general audience. Pairing article...

Generating Applause: A Study of Rhetoric and Response at Party Political Conferences

Abstract: Recent work in conversation analysis suggests that audience responses to political speeches are strongly influenced by the rhetorical construction of political messages. This paper shows that seven basic rhetorical formats were associated with nearly 70% of the applause produced in response to 476 political speeches to British party political conferences in 1981. The relationship between rhetoric and response is broadly independent of political party, the political status of th speaker, and the popularity of the message. Performance factors are found to influence the likelihood of audience response strongly.

Writing in an Emerging Organization: An Ethnographic Study

Abstract: This study explored the collaborative writing processes of a group of computer software company executives. In particular, the study focused on the year-long process that led to the writing of a vital company document. Research methods used included participant/observations, open-ended interviews, and Discourse-Based Interviews. A detailed analysis of the executive collaborative process posits a model that describes the reciprocal relationship between writing and the organizational context. The study shows the following: (1) how the organizational context influences (a) writers' conceptions of their rhetorical situations, and (b) their collaborative writing behavior; and (2) how the rhetorical activities influence the structure of the organization.

Controversies as informal technology assessment

Abstract: Controversies, especially those that surround "early warnings" about impacts of a technology or a large project, may be welcomed as an informal way of technology assessment. This is not always recognized, because of ideals of consensus and context-free rationality. An alternative, rhetorical perspective is presented on controversies and their sociocognitive dynamics, in which interests and actor-strategies play an integral role besides arguments and evidence. Because of such interactions, articulation of insights and positions occurs, that is, social learning. Improvement of social learning has to take the sociocognitive dynamics into account. Absolute standards and methods are impossible, but one can take robustness of views as a realistic goal.

Apostrophe, Animation, and Abortion

Abstract: Although rhetoric can be defined as something politicians often accuse each other of, the political dimensions of the scholarly study of rhetoric have gone largely unexplored by literary critics. What, indeed, could seem more dry and apolitical than a rhetorical treatise? What could seem farther away from budgets and guerrilla warfare than a discussion of anaphora, antithesis, prolepsis, and preterition? Yet the notorious CIA manual ' on psychological operations in guerrilla warfare ends with just such a rhetorical treatise: an appendix on techniques of oratory which lists definitions and examples for these and many other rhetorical figures. The manual is designed to set up a Machiavellian campaign of propaganda, indoctrination, and infiltration in Nicaragua, underwritten by the visible display and selective use of weapons. Shoot softly, it implies, and carry a big schtick. If rhetoric is defined as language that says one thing and means another, then the manual is in effect attempting to maximize the collusion between deviousness in language and accuracy in violence, again and again implying that targets are most effectively hit when most indirectly aimed at. Rhetoric, clearly, has everything to do with covert operations. But are the politics of violence already encoded in rhetorical figures as such? In other words, can the very essence of a political issue-an issue like, say, abortionhinge on the structure of a figure? Is there any inherent connection between figurative language and questions of life and death, of who will wield and who will receive violence in a given human society? As a way of approaching this question, I will begin in a more traditional way by discussing a rhetorical device that has come to seem almost synonymous with the lyric voice: the figure of apostrophe. In an essay in The Pursuit of Signs, Jonathan Culler indeed sees apostrophe as an embarrassingly explicit emblem of procedures inherent, but usually better hidden, in lyric poetry as such.2 Apostrophe in the sense in which I will be using it involves the direct

A Figure of Thought

Abstract: Me tametaphorical Issues‘ By George Lakofi’ A Figure of Thought For two millenia we were taught a dogma that was largely unquestioned and came to be viewed as definitional. Metaphor was called a figure of speech. As such. it was taken to be a matter of special language: poetic or persuasive language. As a matter of language. rather than thought, it was viewed as dispensible. If you had something to say, you could presumably say it straightforwardly without meta- phor; if you chose metaphor it was for some poetic or rhetorical purpose, perhaps for elegance or economy, but not for plain speech and ordinary thought. Metaphor was seen as contrasting with ordinary, everyday literal language, language that could be straightforwardly true or false, that could lit the world directly or not. Teaching Berkeley undergraduates forces one to question traditional values — even if those values have stood for two thousand years. In 1978, I taught a small undergraduate seminar (there were five students) in which metaphor was one of a number of topics. I had received a pre-publication copy of the Ortony collection on Metaphor and Thought, and we were discussing the papers in the volume. One day one of the students came in too upset to function. She announced that she had a metaphor problem, and asked the small assembled group for help. Her boy- friend had just told her that their relationship qhad hit a dead-end streetq. lt being Berkeley in the '70's. the class came to the rescue. The metaphor makes sense, we soon figured out, only if you‘re traveling toward some destination. and only if love is viewed as a form of travel. if you happen onto a dead-end street when you're traveling toward a destination. then you can't keep going the way you've been going. You have to turn back. qWhat I really want,“ the woman said, “is for us to go into another dimension‘. There is nothing like a disappointing love-afl'air for calling a philosophy of long standing into question. Metaphor, on the traditional view, was supposed to be a matter of speech, not thought. Yet here was not just a way of talking about love as a journey, but a way of thinking about it in that way and of reasoning on the basis of the metaphor. In our culture, there is a full-blown love-as-journey meta- phor that is used for comprehending and reasoning about certain aspects of love relationships, especially those having to do with duration, closeness, difficulties, and common purpose. English is full of expressions that reflect the conceptualization of love as a journey. Some are necessarily about love; others can be understood that way: Look how far we ’ve come. It’s been a long, bumpy road. We can’t turn back now. We're at a crossroads. We may have to go our separate ways. We’re spinning our wheels. The relationship isn’t going anywhere. The marriage is on the rocks. These are_ordinary, everyday expressions. There is nothing extraordinary about them. They are not poetic, nor are they used for rhetorical efiect. The most This is a column which appears regularly in the journal Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, Hillsdale. NJ.: Erlbaum. 3S‘l

Textual criticism: The legacy of G. P. Mohrmann

Abstract: During the last decade of his life, G. P. Mohrmann pursued a sophisticated approach to the textual study of rhetorical discourse. His final and unfinished essay on John C. Calhoun's “Speech on the Reception of the Abolition Petitions” illustrates the potential and the complexity involved of this project. This essay extends Mohrmann's working premises to indicate three principles: Textual criticism should eventuate in theoretical understanding of texts rather than generate or test autonomous theoretical postulates; the sequencing or timing of elements within texts offers the ground for critical judgment; and certain foundational conceptions, often expressed as root metaphors, frame the discourse and influence its temporal progression.

Status, marginality, and rhetorical theory

Abstract: This essay claims that arguments about the genres of discourse contain as a crucial element an attribution of status, which involves a dialectic of authority and marginality Rhetorical scholarship is often a reaction against the condition of marginality Reflection on these matters illumines the ontology of rhetorical discourse

Gandhi and the comic frame: “Ad bellum purificandum”

Abstract: Gandhi's concept of civil disobedience is analyzed through an application of Kenneth Burke's “comic frame.” His leadership of the Indian civil rights movement is characterized by a ritual form emphasizing a recognition of both social and individual power, attempts at identification with the social order even while attacking it, and an emphasis on epiphany as a ritual goal. The “comic frame,” it is argued, is a useful construct for interpreting and assessing certain rhetorical movements.

“Punctuated equilibria”: Rhetorical dynamics of a scientific controversy

Abstract: A case study in the rhetoric of science, this essay follows the development of a controversy through a series of different audiences and interpretive frames. Originating as an attack on gradualistic assumptions in paleontology, the theory of “punctuated equilibria” was then posed as a broad challenge to evolutionary biology, prompting a range of responses within and without the scientific community. The essay highlights the problematic role of expertise as a scientific and rhetorical construction.

Consummatory Versus Justificatory Crisis Rhetoric.

Abstract: The question posed in this study is: Are there differences in rhetorical strategy and tactic between discourse initially constituting the sole response of our government to states of emergency and discourse accompanying, justifying, and rationalizing specific military moves undertaken in response to crises? To provide a partial answer to this question, five presidential messages were analyzed and placed into two categories: consummatory rhetoric‐where presidential discourse initially constituted the only official reply made by the American government; and justificatory rhetoric‐where presidential discourse was part of a larger, military retaliation taken by the government. Differences and similarities between these two kinds of talk are detailed, and implications for crisis rhetoric are presented.

When Words Lose Their Meaning

Abstract: As moral creatures we live in a world of words. The social world is conceptually and communicatively constituted, or, perhaps more precisely, preconstituted. Paraphrasing Heidegger, we might say that we do not have our language so much as it has us.' Who and what we are, how we arrange and classify and think about our world-and how we act in itis deeply delimited by the argumentative and rhetorical resources of our language. The limits of my moral language mark the limits of my moral world. As often as not, these linguistically imposed limits are invisible to the speakers, serving as something like absolute presuppositions of intelligible discourse.2 Sometimes, however, these limits will be perceived as limitations-a prison house from which one longs to escape, rather than a base from which to work within and upon the world.3 At still other times our common world changes shape as the concepts out of which it is constituted change their meanings. "Concepts, like individuals," wrote Kierkegaard, "have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals."4 Although the moral history of our species is the story of almost continuous conceptual change, the philosophical import of this fact until quite recently went largely unrecognized and unappreciated by moral philosophers, particularly those of the Anglo-American "analytical" variety. Fortunately, however, the myopia of the moral philosophers is not shared by novelists, poets, and playwrights, many of whom have made moral and conceptual change their central subject. The clash of conceptual schemes, and the loss of old meanings and the creation of new linguistic and rhetorical resources, are recurring literary themes and achieve-

The "Special Relationship": Anglo-American Relations since 1945

Abstract: Leading authorities here analyze the historic special relationship between Britain and the United States since 1945. The opening chapters trace the development of the alliance and discuss the "special relationship within the special relationship" between Churchill and Roosevelt, Eden and Eisenhower, Macmillan and Kennedy, and Thatcher and Reagan. The contributors go beyond traditional rhetorical appeals to common language and heritage and consider the military, political, and economic links that bind the two countries.

Interpreting the sociological classics: can there be a “true” meaning of mead?

Abstract: Many sociologists have tried in vain to find the “true” meaning of the classic works in the discipline. An interactionist perspective suggests that this search is not a valid one for sociologists, especially symbolic interactionists. Although there can be no “true” meaning, some authors use conventions of writing that make their work more or less clear. Using Mead‘s Mind, Se/f and Society as an example, we discuss the dimensions of clarity. We then argue that the sociological classics should be read to (I) simulate new theories and research (pragmatic analysis), (2) determine how sociologists have used that classic to support or refute particular theories or perspectives (rhetorical analysis), and (3) provide information about the sociological concerns of the author and his/ her contemporaries (historical analysis).

Textbooks and the Evolution of the Discipline.

Abstract: The last twenty-five years have seen an unprecedented surge in the scholarship surrounding writing and the teaching of writing. We are in the midst of an information boom, and for those of us whose professional views have been developed and shaped by reading scholarly journals it is difficult to imagine things any other way. But today's discipline of composition studies is really a very new one. Before 1930, the teaching of rhetoric and writing in American colleges went forward with no important influence from journals at all. During the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, composition theory and pedagogy were overwhelmingly shaped by one great force: textbooks. The course we have inherited today owes much to the forms and genres of textbooks that rhetoric spun off as it devolved after 1860 from a theoretical to a practical pedagogy. In this essay I want to examine the intricate quadrille that textbooks have danced with the teaching of writing in America. Such an examination will show that composition textbooks as they developed between 1820 and the present have always responded to the preferences of the teachers cast up by the culture, meeting their perceived needs and recreating these and other needs in later teachers shaped by the texts. What, first of all, is a composition textbook? We cannot, I think, define it as any book used in any way in a rhetoric or composition course, because books of countless unrelated sorts have been dragged into writing classes over the years, as Albert Kitzhaber has shown.' Even books that are specifically rhetorical are not always texts, since not every rhetorical book was written to structure a pedagogy in writing. Rhetoric books before 1800 were treatises, not textbooks. American composition grew from rhetoric, and although com-

The Theoretical Bases of Persuasion: A Critical Introduction

Abstract: Most business communication textbooks limit their treatments of persuasion to the classical rhetorical model, motive-goal theories, and psychological organizational structures. Suggesting the need ...

The day after: Rhetorical vision in an ironic frame

Abstract: This essay presents a fantasy theme analysis of the issue of nuclear war as it emerges from a comparison of personal statements and the film The Day After. These forms of discourse resonate with one another and reflect a rhetorical vision consisting in part of actors as victims, the bomb as antagonist, the scene as one of rubble, and plot as one of acts of destruction, death, and attempts to survive. It is suggested that a new deep structure of irony underlies the rhetorical vision of nuclear war and the implications of this frame for the nuclear war issue are discussed.

Presidential Communication: Description and Analysis

Abstract: Presidential Communication is the first book to combine a study of the presidency with communications. First it builds a base for the rhetorical presidency--what it means and how it works--and why an Approach based on an analysis of presidential rhetoric and persuasion works better than others to uncover the essential nature of the office. The authors also examine the presidency from the major areas of concentration traditionally found in communications scholarship. The theoretical discussion is reinforced with case studies drawn from recent history.

On the authenticity of televisual experience: A critical exploration of para‐social closure

Abstract: This essay argues that critics are caught in the dialectical tension between “technology” and “art” in the study of television. The polar extremes of the dialectic are examined in order to discern how this dialectic informs and constrains examination of television. The claim is made that television critics should draw inferences from practical consideration of everyday televisual experience. To support that claim, “rhetorical aesthetics” is presented as the preferred perspective in the emerging field of television criticism, as it allows for understanding of “television as art” in practice. To illustrate the utility of the preferred perspective, concluding episodes of long‐running American television series broadcast from 1975 to 1985 are analyzed.

Electoral Rhetoric and Political Polarization: The Begin-Peres Debates

Abstract: The article is based on a political-stylistic analysis of the first televised debates in Israel, which took place in 1977 and 1981 between Menachem Begin and Shimon Peres. It examines how the Israeli parliamentary democracy adapted and changed the debate format which originated in American presidential elections. The rhetorical strategies of the two candidates are then identified and compared to determine whether they are idiosyncratic or anchored in contrasts between their rival ideologies, focusing especially on the `spheres of polarization' by which their verbal behaviours were shaped.

Rhetorical resemblance: Paradoxes of a practical art

Abstract: This essay uncovers in the classical tradition an underlying paradox that helps to explain contemporary confusions about rhetoric's mimetic status. Aristotle situated rhetoric in a conflicted relationship—between rhetoric as an ethical‐political practice and poetic. The aesthetic possibility of rhetoric is thus liberated and limited by constraints imposed by Aristotle's most perfected poetic form, tragedy.

The Topic Sentence Revisited

Abstract: Historically considered, the concept of the topic sentence seems to be related to the concept of the topoi in classical rhetoric-in the sense of a topos or topic as subject matter treated in a speech or a portion of a discourse, as a method of reasoning about a subject, and as a place or heading from which arguments are drawn. All of these senses of the word seem to have been maintained in the kind of advice given by 19th-century textbook writers about methods of constructing paragraphs. In order to construct a paragraph, the advice goes, the writer should embody the main idea of the paragraph (its subject) in a topic sentence. Then, drawing upon a list of commonplace methods of reasoning about the subject (in the form of headings, such as comparison, contrast, and cause and effect, that label relationships), the writer should develop the central idea contained in the topic sentence into a unified and coherent paragraph. This connection between the topic sentence and the classical topoi is eminently suggestive, but however interesting it may be, the fact is that as an independent concept the topic sentence did not begin to emerge until the mid-19th century. It first appeared in Alexander Bain's discussion of the paragraph in 1866, and it attained fuller development in the late 19th and early 20th century. But the 19th-century conception of the topic sentence has come under considerable attack in recent years because of its deductive origins and because one kind of research has revealed that many contemporary professional writers do not use topic sentences in their writing. I would like to argue, however, that in some kinds of writing the topic sentence can be a valuable rhetorical strategy because it can help writers to organize their ideas and it can help readers to follow the logical development of the writer's ideas. As a means of developing my argument, I would like to look briefly at the origin and development of the concept of the topic sentence, consider the criticisms that have been made of the topic sentence in the 20th century, and then, drawing upon readability research that discusses the topic sentence and schema theory, argue that this kind of research supports the value of using topic sentences in expository prose.

The Relativity of Interpretation

Abstract: What makes an interpretation good? This question defines an area where the concerns of philosophers and literary theorists coincide. One sort of response, which stresses the relativity of interpretation to the interests, purposes, and background beliefs of interpreters, increasingly commands the attention of both groups, though it is hard to get past one's initial reac tion, favorable or not, to the accompanying displays of rhetorical plumage. In this essay I shall try to do just that, in the hope of seeing what the relativi ty of interpretation consists in and whether it need lead to the consequences that make some people pine for universal constraints and determinate meanings.