Showing papers on "Rhetorical question published in 1989"

Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People

Abstract: This book asks an important question often ignored by ancient historians and political scientists alike: Why did Athenian democracy work as well and for as long as it did? Josiah Ober seeks the answer by analyzing the sociology of Athenian politics and the nature of communication between elite and nonelite citizens. After a preliminary survey of the development of the Athenian "constitution," he focuses on the role of political and legal rhetoric. As jurymen and Assemblymen, the citizen masses of Athens retained important powers, and elite Athenian politicians and litigants needed to address these large bodies of ordinary citizens in terms understandable and acceptable to the audience. This book probes the social strategies behind the rhetorical tactics employed by elite speakers.A close reading of the speeches exposes both egalitarian and elitist elements in Athenian popular ideology. Ober demonstrates that the vocabulary of public speech constituted a democratic discourse that allowed the Athenians to resolve contradictions between the ideal of political equality and the reality of social inequality. His radical reevaluation of leadership and political power in classical Athens restores key elements of the social and ideological context of the first western democracy.

Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies

Abstract: In literary theory, the philosophy of law, and the sociology of knowledge, no issue has been more central to current debate than the status of our interpretations. Do they rest on a ground of rationality or are they subjective impositions of a merely personal point of view? In "Doing What Comes Naturally," Stanley Fish refuses the dilemma posed by this question and argues that while we can never separate our judgments from the contexts in which they are made, those judgments are nevertheless authoritative and even, in the only way that matters, objective. He thus rejects both the demand for an ahistorical foundation, and the conclusion that in the absence of such a foundation we reside in an indeterminate world. In a succession of provocative and wide-ranging chapters, Fish explores the implications of his position for our understanding of legal, literary, and psychoanalytic interpretation, the nature of professional and institutional culture, and the place of reason in a world that is rhetorical through and through.

The rhetorical limits of polysemy

Abstract: Current critical studies emphasize the way in which the polysemic qualities of mass mediated texts empower audiences to construct their own liberating readings. An examination of the text, audience readings, and historical placement of an episode of Cagney & Lacey concerning abortion indicates serious constraints placed on audiences by the rhetorical situations in which readings occur. The pleasures of the audience, I argue, may not be sufficient to certify a positive role for mass media in the process of social change.

What do citations count? the rhetoric-first model

Abstract: Because of the widespread use of citations in evaluation, we tend to think of them primarily as a form of colleague recognition. This interpretation neglects rhetorical factors that shape patterns of citations. After reviewing sociological theories of citation, this paper argues that we should think of citations first as rhetoric and second as reward. Some implications of this view for quantitative modeling of the citation process are drawn.

A Rhetoric of Science: Inventing Scientific Discourse

Abstract: Part of a series in "Studies in Rhetoric and Communication", this book casts a fresh light on the process by which scientific claims are validated. If scientists cannot justify their claims in positivistic terms, how can a scientific claim be legitimatized? This book looks at the special problems and values governing the communicative practices of scientists. The author demonstrates that when scientists address their claims to other scientists, they create a special kind of rhetoric with rules that distinguish "scientific" discourse from other discourse and allow claims to be judged as "scientific" or not. The author moves beyond the general idea that science has rhetorical dimensions to outline in detail an informal rhetorical logic that constrains scientific discourse. In particular, the book looks at how scientific arguments are designed and on the grounds on which they persuade and are evaluated as peculiarly "scientific" claims.

Planning text for advisory dialogues

Abstract: Explanation is an interactive process requiring a dialogue between advice-giver and advice-seeker. In this paper, we argue that in order to participate in a dialogue with its users, a generation system must be capable of reasoning about its own utterances and therefore must maintain a rich representation of the responses it produces. We present a text planner that constructs a detailed text plan, containing the intentional, attentional, and rhetorical structures of the text it generates.

Cognition, Context, and Theory Building

Abstract: English studies are caught up in a debate over whether we should see individual cognition or social and cultural context as the motive force in literate acts. This conflict between cognition and context (Bartholomae, Berlin, Bizzell, Knoblauch) has special force in rhetoric and composition because it touches some deeply-rooted assumptions and practices. Can we, for instance, reconcile a commitment to nurturing a personal voice, individual purpose, or an inner, self-directed process of meaning making, with rhetoric's traditional assumption that both inquiry and purpose are a response to rhetorical situations, or with the more recent assertions that inquiry in writing must start with social, cultural, or political awareness? These values and assertions run deep in the discipline. One response to these differences is to build theoretical positions that try to polarize (or moralize) cognitive and contextual perspectives. We know that critiques based on dichotomies can fan lively academic debates. They can also lead, Mike Rose has argued, to reductive, simplified theories that "narrow the mind and page" of student writers. In the end, these attempts to dichotomize may leave us with an impoverished account of the writing process as people experience it and a reductive vision of what we might teach.

Rethinking the Rhetorical Situation from within the Thematic of 'Différance'

Abstract: Critiques bring to the analysis of rhetorical events various assumptions about the nature of symbolic action Yet almost invariably they share common presuppositions about the constituent elements of the rhetorical situation and the logic that informs the relations between them Whether theorists and critics adhere to an "old" or a "new" rhetoric, they continue to operate under the assumption that a logic of influence structures the relations between the constituent elements in any particular rhetorical situation Symbolic action (what has historically been a linguistic text) is almost always understood as an expression that, wittingly or unwittingly, shapes or is shaped by the constituent elements of the situation out of which and for which it is produced This long-held conception of the rhetorical situation as an exchange of influence defines the text as an object that mediates between subjects (speaker and audience) whose identity is constituted in a terrain different from and external to the particular rhetorical situation Hence, the rhetorical situation is thought to modify attitudes or induce action on the part of consummate individuals I believe a rethinking of the rhetorical situation is called for on two interrelated grounds One, the understanding of the rhetorical

Rhetoric in the human sciences

Abstract: Introduction - Herbert W Simons PART ONE: THE ROLE OF RHETORIC IN THE MAKING OF A SCIENCE The Reality of Construction - John Durham Peters and Eric W Rothenbuhler The Deliberative Character of Strategic Scientific Debates - Jeanine Czubaroff The Rhetorical Construction of Scientific Ethos - Lawrence J Prelli Buridan's Ass - Vito Signorile The Statistical Rhetoric of Science and the Problem of Equiprobability The Rhetorical Invention of Scientific Invention - Alan G Gross The Emergence and Transformation of a Social Norm PART TWO: DISCIPLINARY RHETORICS IN THE HUMAN SCIENCES Distinguishing the Rhetorical from the Real - Herbert W Simons The Case of Psychotherapeutic Placebos Ethnography as Sermonic - W Barnett Pearce and Victoria Chen The Rhetorics of Clifford Geertz and James Clifford Beyond the Rhetoric of Antitheory - Steve Fuller Towards a Revisionist Interpretation of Critical Legal Studies Limits of Consumption - Jenny L Nelson An Ironic Revision of Televisual Experience The Value of Theory in the Academic Market Place - Linda Brodkey The Reception of Structuralist Poetics The Meta-Communicative Role of Epigraphs in Scientific Text Construction - Tamar Katriel and Robert E Sanders PART THREE: PROBLEMATICS OF RHETORICAL ANALYSIS Objectivity, Disagreement and the Rhetoric of Inquiry - William M Keith and Richard A Cherwitz The Rhetoric of Inquiry and the Professional Scholar - Robert Hariman

The argumentative nature of holding strong views: a case study

Abstract: Recently a number of critics of traditional approaches to the study of attitudes have stressed the need to study the ways in which people express views in natural discourse. The present study examines the rhetorical aspects of holding strong views by providing a detailed case study. It focuses on the discourse of a family discussing the British Royal Family, where one member of the family is recognized to hold strong views. A number of rhetorical complexities of the discourse are highlighted and particular attention is placed on the argumentative dimensions of holding strong views. It is suggested that strong views are held in relation to opposing views and in arguing about the issue of monarchy participants are also reflexively arguing about arguments. Examples are given to show that the holder of strong views, as opposed to the holder of weak views, does not necessarily have a greater opposition to the assumption of multisubjectivity, for the discourse of views is paradoxically marked by both assumptions of multisubjectivity and intersubjectivity. It is also shown that the holder of strong views may produce a variable discourse. The rhetorical nature of such variability is discussed and implications are drawn for the study of beliefs and for analysing the relations between thinking and arguing.

A critical study of early feminist rhetoric

Abstract: Strenuously attacked for their attempts to involve themselves in concerns outside the home, nineteenth-century women reformers soon recognized the need to work for their own rights before they could effectively champion other reformist causes. This book examines the creative response to that challenge. It offers critical analysis of the speeches and writings that set forth the platform and arguments of the early woman's rights movement and guided its development from the 1840s through the early decades of the twentieth century. Following an introductory overview of the movement, Campbell examines the rhetoric of leading female abolitionists whose initial struggle revolved around achieving the right to speak in public. She next looks at their response to opposition based on theology and the universal moral standard the reformers proposed. The author describes the rhetoric of the various woman's rights conventions and how movement leaders adapted their appeals to male legislators. Conflicts between social and natural rights feminists and between white and Afro-American women are considered, and the rhetorical positions that came together to achieve suffrage are analyzed. In her final chapter, Campbell comments on the rhetoric of the National Woman's Party and the demise of the woman's rights movement in the 1920s. A stimulating analysis of the rhetorical contributions of the best-known and most effective of America's early female reformers, this work, together with its companion volume, should be considered for courses on American public address, women's rhetoric, social movements, and U.S. women's history.

Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings

Abstract: I.OVERVIEW OF ARGUMENT. 1.Argument: An Introduction. What Do We Mean By Argument? The Defining Features of Argument. Argument and the Problem of Truth. A Successful Process of Argumentation: The Well-Functioning Committee. Petition to Waive the University Math Requirement, Gordon Adams. Conclusion. 2.Reading Arguments. Why Reading Arguments Is Important for Writers of Argument. Suggestions for Improving Your Reading Process. Strategies for Reading Arguments: An Overview. Strategy 1: Reading as a Believer. The Coming White Underclass, Charles Murray. Strategy 2: Reading as a Doubter. Strategy 3: Seeking Out Alternative Views and Analyzing Sources of Disagreement. 'Letter to the Editor' in Response to Charles Murray, Patricia Bucalo. 'Letter to the Editor' in Response to Charles Murray, Pamela J. Maraldo. Excerpt from New Cultural Conscience Shifts the Welfare Debate, John Leo. Wrong Way to Reform Welfare, Dorothy Gilliam. An Analysis of the Sources of Disagreement between Murray and Gilliam (A Sample Analysis Essay). Strategy 4: Evaluating the Conflicting Positions. Conclusion. 3.Writing Arguments. A Brief Description of Writers Process. Strategies For Improving Your Writing Process. Using Expressive Writing For Discovery and Exploration. Shaping Your Argument. Using Expressive Writing to Discover and Explore Ideas: Two Sets of Exploratory Tasks. II.PRINCIPLES OF ARGUMENT. 4.The Core of an Argument: A Claim with Reasons. The Rhetorical Triangle. Issue Questions as the Origins of Argument. The Difference Between a Genuine Argument and a Pseudo-argument. Frame of an Argument: A Claim Supported by Reasons. Application of this Chapters Principles to Your Own Writing. Application of this Chapters Principles to the Reading of Arguments. 5.The Logical Structure of Arguments. Overview to Logos: What Do We Mean by the 'Logical Structure' of an Argument. Adopting a Language For Describing Arguments: The Toulmin System. Using Toulmins Schema to Determine a Strategy of Support. Conclusion. 6.Evidence in Argument. Using Evidence From Personal Experience. Using Evidence from Interviews, Surveys, and Questionnaires. Using Evidence from Readings. Using Numerical Data and Statistics. What to Do When the Experts Disagree. Writing Your Own Argument: Using Evidence Persuasively. Conclusion. Choose Life, Dao Do (student). 7.Moving Your Audience: Audience-Based Reasons Ethos, and Pathos. Starting From Your Readers Beliefs: The Power of Audience-Based Reasons. Ethos and Pathos as Persuasive Appeals: An Overview. How to Create and Effective Ethos: The Appeal to Credibility. How to Create Pathos: The Appeal to Beliefs and Emotions. The InterRelatedness of Logos, Ethos, and Pathos: Where Should I Reveal My Thesis? Minneapolis Pornography Ordinance, Ellen Goodman. Our Rewrite of the Same Essay into the Classical Argument Structure. Conclusion.

sentences in the language prison: the rhetorical structuring of an American language policy debate

Abstract: The anti-bilingual movement in the United States is a status movement, but a simple “status politics” analysis does not fully capture its dynamics. Such movements are neither homogeneous nor merely reflective of social structure, but express internal ambivalence and organize sociopolitical change through rhetorical processes. I analyze texts produced in San Francisco's 1983 campaign against bilingual ballots in order to account for the initiative's broad appeal. Rhetorical tropes and recurring themes shift the target of the campaign to aspects of political process of which a wide spectrum of Americans are suspicious, projecting fears onto outsiders and constructing a familiarly benevolent meaning for the initiative.[American politics, language policy, status movements, discourse analysis, ideology]

The Study of Teachers' Written Feedback to Students' Writing: Changes in Theoretical Considerations and the Expansion of Research Contexts.

Abstract: This paper identifies four successive phases in the study of written feedback to students' compositions. The studies included in these phases are distinguished by views of writing instruction reflected in their theoretical frameworks: the view of writing instruction as a series of teacher provided stimuli and students' responses to these stimuli; the view that the writing class is a rhetorical community, where teacher and students interact as readers and writers over texts; the view of learning to write as a phenomenon both natural and problematic, where school may interfere with students' natural development; the view that learning to write, like all other learning, depends on successful student-teacher interactions within student's zone of proximal development. While reviewing recent studies of written feedback, the paper shows how these changing views of writing instruction are accompanied by changing theoretical perspectives for the study of the provision and processing of written feedback as well as by a gradual expansion of research contexts for looking at this problem. Finally, in view of such a line of development, it suggests an agenda for future research.

Personality and crime: Knowledge destruction and construction in criminology

Abstract: Antipersonality themes in mainstream criminology have been fueled for years by highly suspect moral, professional, and ideological concerns and by something less than a rational empirical approach. The research evidence regarding the importance of personality has been positive form the beginning but has been the focus of a highly rhetorical and pseudoscientific form of criticism. These efforts as knowledge destruction are reviewed and are found to be ideologically and professionally convenient but weakly grounded logically and empirically. The papaer concludes that a social theory of criminal conduct need not resist recognition of the importance of human diversity.

The Fourteenth Amendment: from political principle to judicial doctrine

Abstract: In a remarkably fresh and historically grounded reinterpretation of the American Constitution, William Nelson argues that the fourteenth amendment was written to affirm the general public's long-standing rhetorical commitment to the principles of equality and individual rights on the one hand, and to the principle of local self-rule on the other.

Rhetorical criticism as moral action

Abstract: The abandonment of managerial rhetoric and the rise of symbolic rhetorics naturally involves the critic more deeply in morality and social order. Furthermore, these changes compel a view that morality is more than merely support of particular positions. If language is more than mere expression, then the moral quality of rhetorical forms interpenetrates a social order. These notions of criticism and morality are explored in an example of the criticism implied, a tracing of the grounds for the perspective in contemporary American rhetorical studies, a discussion of the imperatives for the implied critical program, and consideration of the character of the involved rhetorical critic.

Cognitive and Rhetorical Styles of Traditionalist and Reformist Soviet Politicians: A Content Analysis Study

Abstract: Previous research on democratic political leaders has revealed systematic relationships between the content (ideological orientation) and structure (integratively complexity) of political thought. Conservatives tend to be less integratively complex than liberals and moderate socialists-although this effect is qualified by the existence of role-by-ideology and issue-by-ideology interactions. The present study explores the relationship betwen ideology and integrative complexity in a very different political and cultural context: the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s. Systematic coding of politcy statements of key Soviet leaders revealed a number of effects: (a) Communist Party leaders classified as reformers (pro-Gorbachev) had more integratively complex styles of policy reasoning than traditionalists; (b) this difference was significant in both time periods examined (the last six months of Chernenko's tenure in office and the first six months of Gorbachev's) and was much more pronounced in the Gorbachev period. The article concludes by noting parallels between the data on Soviet and Western political leaders and by considering alternative cognitive, impression management, and institutional explanations for these data.

The making of orthodoxy: The rhetorical schools and their influence on patristic exegesis

Abstract: To honour Henry Chadwick is to honour the great tradition of British scholarship to which Edwin Hatch belonged. The work of Edwin Hatch was the inspiration of this paper, and it may be regarded as a celebration of the centenary of the publication of his Hibbert lectures of 1888, as well as a tribute to one who, like him, has achieved international acclaim for his erudition. Some of what Hatch pioneered in those lectures on The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity has become commonplace, but not all. It was the content of the first three lectures which provided the starting point of this study, those on Greek education and its legacy, on the influence of Greek methods of exegesis on Christian exegesis, and on the debt Christian preaching owed to Greek rhetoric. By the Christian era, there was long established a system of education based upon the study of literature and practical exercises in speech-making. As Hatch explained, literature from the distant past was powerful speech preserved from a Golden Age, which could act as a model for those who produced literary exercises to be declaimed. The teaching of the grammaticus and the rhetor in each city's gymnasium was the principal agent for the spread of Hellenistic culture throughout the then known world, and for its ongoing transmission through approximately 800 years. Hatch stressed the hold the educational system had upon the society into which Christianity came, and showed how inevitably it would affect the emerging church.

The power of address: Explorations in rhetoric

Abstract: Presents a view of language as essentially rhetorical through the use of sources as varied as classical rhetoric, modern linguistics and the critical reading of literature. This book should be of interest to students and teachers of English studies, communication studies and linguistics.

The Deconstructive Turn : Essays in the Rhetoric of Philosophy

Abstract: Analyzes the literary and rhetorical techniques used in the writings of philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, and Saul Kripke.

Piety, propriety, and perspective: An interpretation and application of key terms in Kenneth Burke's permanence and change

Abstract: Pursuing Burke's conceptions of piety and appropriateness, this essay argues for propriety as the master term of rhetorical completion, assimilating style and argument to a common goal, holding discourse together as it extends that discourse into the world. A case study suggests that even a radical text might be self‐justifying by creating its own sense of decorum.

Editing: The Design of Rhetoric

Abstract: This book is intended to familiarize readers with the theoretical basis and practical applications of the editing process. This involves the examination of the rhetorical canons-invention, arrangement, style, delivery; and the corresponding rhetorical objectives of editing - accuracy, clarity, propriety, and artistry. We envision a diverse audience for this book. For aspiring editors, we offer an introduction to rhetorical principles as a vehicle for developing a repertoire of theoretically sound and effective strategies. For professionals-directors of communications, public relations specialists, experienced writers and editors of professional and technical publications - this book will serve as a reference and guide reinforcing their intuitive understanding and appreciation of the art of editing.

Differences in Writers' Initial Task Representations

Abstract: : This exploratory study investigates how writers represent their task to themselves before beginning to write. Using data from verbal protocols, we examine the initial plans of twelve writers (five experts and seven student writers) who were working on an expository writing task. The protocols were coded for types of planning. We also obtained independent measures of the quality of the subjects' plans and of the quality of their texts. The analysis suggests that both the quantity and quality of a writer's initial planning may make a difference in the quality of the final text. We found a positive correlation between the amount of initial planning and text quality, and between the quality of planning and text quality. In particular, we found that writers who developed rhetorical plans (i.e., plans for audience and purpose) tended to produce higher-rated texts. From our analysis, we hypothesize that experienced writers build a rhetorical representation of their task. We defined a rhetorical representation as one which is rich in rhetorical goals and plans relating to the audience, purpose, form and language of the text, and in which the writer integrates his plans to form a coherent theory of the task.

A comparison of Arab and American conceptions of “effective”; persuasion

Abstract: This study examines different cultural orientations toward the role of political debate in society by comparing the rhetorical tactics in a Saudi Government advocacy advertisement, or paid editorial, with those in a Mobil Oil Corporation advocacy advertisement The two advocacy ads employ radically different rhetorical tactics to accomplish similar objectives. The analysis identifies the contrasting assumptions about the nature of persuasion implicit in each artifact and explains the differences between American and Arab “rules”; for political debate.

Narrative knowers, expository knowledge

Abstract: Occasional dissent notwithstanding, “expository” prose—usually conceived as depersonalized and decontextualized—continues to be the main focus of most writing instruction at the secondary and college levels. This article critically examines the opposition of objectified exposition and personal narrative posited by rhetorical tradition and maintained by most composition texts and syllabi today. The liveliness of recent cross-disciplinary discussions regarding the narrative as a uniquely rich mode of thought and discourse contrasts rather sharply with the negative and often impoverished assumptions about storied prose held by most composition theorists and teachers. Unsupported by empirical evidence, such assumptions reflect a cultural bias that prefers abstractions to stories and fails to grasp their dynamic interplay. Where writing instruction is concerned, narrative and exposition are best perceived as poles of a dialectic, with personal experience informing one's interest in abstract knowledge beyond th...