Showing papers on "Rhetorical question published in 1998"

Communication, Organization, and Crisis

Abstract: Communication is increasingly recognized as an important process in organizational crisis and crisis management. The Three Mile Island incident, the Bhopal Union Carbide accident, the crash of Northwest Airlines Flight 255, and the Exxon Valdez oil spill can all be described as specific, unexpected, and nonroutine events or series of events that created high levels of uncertainty and threat or perceived threat to an organization’s high-priority goals. Crises disrupt employees and communities, damage corporate reputations, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Crises also serve as the impetus for investigations and organizational change. This review organizes a dynamic and growing body of communication and organizational literature dealing with crisis, including various developmental approaches used to describe crisis, decision making, public relations, rhetorical approaches, organizational legitimacy, and methodologies for crisis communication research. Research themes and new directions are identifie...

The rhetorical parsing, summarization, and generation of natural language texts

Abstract: This thesis is an inquiry into the nature of the high-level, rhetorical structure of unrestricted natural language texts, computational means to enable its derivation, and two applications (in automatic summarization and natural language generation) that follow from the ability to build such structures automatically The thesis proposes a first-order formalization of the high-level, rhetorical structure of text The formalization assumes that text can be sequenced into elementary units; that discourse relations hold between textual units of various sizes; that some textual units are more important to the writer's purpose than others; and that trees are a good approximation of the abstract structure of text The formalization also introduces a linguistically motivated compositionality criterion, which is shown to hold for the text structures that are valid The thesis proposes, analyzes theoretically, and compares empirically four algorithms for determining the valid text structures of a sequence of units among which some rhetorical relations hold Two algorithms apply model-theoretic techniques; the other two apply proof-theoretic techniques The formalization and the algorithms mentioned so far correspond to the theoretical facet of the thesis An exploratory corpus analysis of cue phrases provides the means for applying the formalization to unrestricted natural language texts A set of empirically motivated algorithms were designed in order to determine the elementary textual units of a text, to hypothesize rhetorical relations that hold among these units, and eventually, to derive the discourse structure of that text The process that finds the discourse structure of unrestricted natural language texts is called rhetorical parsing The thesis explores two possible applications of the text theory that it proposes The first application concerns a discourse-based summarization system, which is shown to significantly outperform both a baseline algorithm and a commercial system An empirical psycholinguistic experiment not only provides an objective evaluation of the summarization system, but also confirms the adequacy of using the text theory proposed here in order to determine the most important units in a text The second application concerns a set of text planning algorithms that can be used by natural language generation systems in order to construct text plans in the cases in which the high-level communicative goal is to map an entire knowledge pool into text

Greenspeak: A Study of Environmental Discourse

Abstract: Environmental Discourses Linguistic Foundations Rhetorical Uses of Science Environmental Narratives The Power of Metaphor Temporal Dimensions Ethno-ecology Linguistics as Environmentalism The Moral and Aesthetic Domain

The Rise of Membrane Technology From Rhetorics to Social Reality

Abstract: The policy category of 'strategic science' is enjoying increasing popularity. Through a case study of membrane technology, as a scientific-technological field and as a newly-emerging 'world' of membranes, this paper shows how such policy labels and rhetorical claims are filled up, and new social realities are created. The key step is the way in which promises put forward, and expectations being voiced, require actors to position themselves with respect to a future technology. Thus a shared agenda is built up at the same time as a 'world of membranes gels'. The rhetorical space opened up by strategic science and technology policy is then filled up by actual strategic sciences and technologies.

Legitimacy, Authority, and Community in Electronic Support Groups:

Abstract: In electronic support groups, people use Internet-based electronic text communication to discuss personal problems or disorders with others who share common circumstances. Although their discussions exist only in the electronic medium, these groups can be viewed usefully as discourse communities. The authors draw on what is known about two other popular sources of help—face-to-face self-help groups and self-help books—to frame the rhetorical challenges faced by members of electronic support groups. The authors then compare the discourse of electronic support groups with that of electronic hobby groups to demonstrate that the two sets differ in terms of the rhetorical behavior of their participants. The authors analyze messages to determine how members establish legitimacy and authority in their texts and how message exchange gives rise to group identity and a sense of community. Our observations indicate that although some discourse characteristics and some rhetorical features are common to all the electr...

Another materialist rhetoric

Abstract: This paper argues for a new materialism. Rhetorical studies can achieve a new materialism by emphasizing how rhetoric traverses a governing apparatus as a technology of deliberation. As such, rhetoric makes possible the ability to judge and plan reality in order to police a population. To achieve this new materialism, I argue that rhetorical studies will need to abandon a logic of representation for a logic of articulation to better account for how rhetorical practices distribute different elements into a functioning network of power.

Vernacular dialogue and the rhetoricality of public opinion

Abstract: Discussions of public opinion are dominated by visions that regard it as a rational ideal or as an objective datum. The evident differences between these interpretations reflect distinct ideologies and disparate scholarly and research interests. Without gainsaying their consequences, attention to these differences has muffled their shared illumination of public opinion as a product of discourse. Even when they give discourse thematic priority, rhetorical norms become buried amidst the rationalism of ideal communication or the instrumentalism of degenerate manipulation. Neither characterization shows satisfactory empirical fidelity to the complex process whereby public opinion is formed and communicated because neither accounts for the dialogical engagements by which an active populace participates in an issue's development; the contours of the public sphere that color their levels of awareness, perception, and participation; the influence on opinion formation of sharing views with one another; and the ter...

Scientific Discourse in Sociohistorical Context: The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1675-1975

Abstract: Contents: Editor's Introduction. Introduction. Conceptual Framework. The Royal Society and Its Philosophical Transactions: A Brief Institutional History. Methods of Analysis and Description of Text Corpus. Rhetorical Analysis. Multidimensional Analysis. Synthesis and Discussion: Scientific Discourse and Scientific Forms of Life. Implications and Conclusions. Appendices: Contents of "Corpus B." Ranges of Variation for Overall MD Analysis. Standard Deviations for Overall MD Analysis.

The semantics and pragmatics of presupposition

Abstract: In this paper, we offer a novel analysis of presuppositions, paying particular attention to the interaction between the knowledge resources that are required to interpret them. The analysis has two main features. First, we capture an analogy between presuppositions, anaphora and scope ambiguity (cf. van der Sandt I992), by utilizing semantic underspecification (cf. Reyle I993). Second, resolving this underspecification requires reasoning about how the presupposition is rhetorically connected to the discourse context. This has several consequences. First, since pragmatic information plays a role in computing the rhetorical relation, it also constrains the interpretation of presuppositions. Our account therefore provides a formal framework for analysing problematic data, which require pragmatic reasoning. Second, binding presuppositions to the context via rhetorical links replaces accommodating them, in the sense of adding them to the context (cf. Lewis I979). The treatment of presupposition is thus generalized and integrated into the discourse update procedure. We formalize this approach in SDRT (Asher I993; Lascarides & Asher I993), and demonstrate that it provides a rich framework for interpreting presuppositions, where semantic and pragmatic constraints are integrated

Mapping Beyond Dewey's Boundaries: Constructing Classificatory Space for Marginalized Knowledge Domains.

Abstract: CLASSIFICATIONS ARE BOUNDED SYSTEMS THAT marginalize some groups and topics by locating them in ghettoes, diasporized across the system. Other marginalized groups and topics are totally excluded from these systems, being outside of their territorial limits. Because classifications are locational systems, spatial analyses borrowed from various disciplines have potential to identify and address their problems. The philosophical basis for the analysis in this article is Lorraine Code’s (1995) conception of “rhetorical spaces” as sites where topics can be taken seriously as legitimate subjects for open discussion. In existing classifications, there is rhetorical space for most mainstream social and scholarly knowledge domains but not for marginalized knowledge domains. Geography offers concepts for building a theoretical framework to ameliorate the biases of classification. This article describes such a framework and how it is applied using techniques such as Gillian Rose’s (1993) “paradoxical spaces,” which are simultaneously or alternately in the center and at the margin, same and other, inside and outside to develop a more complex and meaningful classification for women and other marginalized groups. The project described here operationalizes these theoretical openings by applying them to the Dewey Decimal Classification as both critique and and as techniques for change.

Drawing the line: an analysis of lay people's discussions about the new genetics.

Abstract: “Where do we draw the line?” is a question that is frequently asked in discussions about the new genetics. In this paper we explore a range of lay people's accounts of drawing the line. We show that, beyond its rhetorical function, answering this question involves important discussions about genetic research, testing, regulation, and social provision for people who are sick or disabled. It raises difficult questions about clients' and service providers' autonomy and responsibility and about which human illnesses, conditions, and characteristics ought to be the subject of research and testing. In particular, we show how differences in the amount and type of information and advice available to clients of genetic testing, the level of social support to people with particular conditions, and people's perception of stigma, suffering, and quality of life, make drawing the line highly problematic. We end by discussing the implications of our analysis for policy making, considering how the ambiguities and tension...

Rhetoric in Ancient China, Fifth to Third Century B.C.E: A Comparison With Classical Greek Rhetoric

Abstract: In Rhetoric in Ancient China, Fifth to Third Century B.C.E., Xing Lu examines language art, persuasion, and argumentation in ancient China and offers a detailed and authentic account of ancient Chinese rhetorical theories and practices in the society's philosophical, political, cultural, and linguistic contexts. She focuses on the works of ten well-known Chinese thinkers from Confucius to Han Feizi as well as on the Later Mohists, a group that represents five schools of thought - Mingjia, Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, and Legalism. Lu identifies seven key Chinese terms pertaining to speech, language, persuasion, and argumentation as they appeared in these original texts, selecting ming bian as the linchpin for the Chinese conceptual term of rhetorical studies.

Obstacles to Understanding Cognition As Situated

Abstract: Greeno (1997) argued that these are misreadings of situative positions, occasioned by paradigmatic differences in presupposition and language: "In discussions of the situative and cognitive perspectives, proponents of the two sides tend to talk and write past each other because they address different questions" (pp. 5-6). Greeno is optimistic that "by identifying the presuppositions of the different questions, we can clarify substantive differences between the perspectives and thereby understand better what theoretical and educational issues are at stake in the debate" (p. 6). But despite his notable effort to contrast the cognitive and situative presuppositions, Anderson, Reder, and Simon (1997) continue to see the problems as "more linguistic than substantive" (p. 19): "For the life of us, we fail to see the difference between these questions" (p. 19); "A rhetorical language game is being played" (p. 19); "If it were not for Greeno's labeling we would not have been able to guess which was the cognitive and which was the situated question" (p. 20). In this response, we explore the current state of situated cognition theory and point to underlying issues that remain to be clarified for the substantive differences be-

Improving summarization through rhetorical parsing tuning

Abstract: We study the relationship between the structure of" discourse and a set of summarization heuristics that are employed by current systems. A tight coupling of the two enables us to learn genre-specific combinations of heuristics that can be used for disambiguation during discourse parsing. The same coupling enables us to construct discourse structures that yield summaries that contain textual units that are not only important according to a variety of position-, title-, and lexical-similarity-based heuristics, but also central to the main claims of texts. A careful analysis of our results enables us to shed some new light on issues related to summary evaluation and learning.

Are simple business request letters really simple? A comparison of Chinese and English business request letters

Abstract: This cross-cultural study of Chinese and English business request letters, and of English letters written by native English speakers and Chinese non-native speakers is aimed at examining the rhetorical differences between them. By using Swales'move structure analysis and Mann and Thompson's rhetorical structure theory, the comparison between Chinese and English business request letters reveals that they have a rather different rhetorical structure although they share the same communicative purpose of expressing a wish for something. This is probably due to two factors: first, the inherently different discoursal patterns of the two languages, and second, the different readers' and writers' expectations regarding making a request in the two cultures. In the Chinese letters, a deference face system is predominant, including features such as the inductive introduction of requests (justification + request), an absence of face-threatening moves, and a greater proportion of and flexibility in the use of rapport-building strategies throughout the whole text. On the other hand, in the English letters, a solidarity face system is employed in making business requests, with features such as the deductive introduction of the request, greater emphasis on the ideational content, and frequent occurrence of face-threatening moves. The English request letters by Chinese writers show patterns similar to those found in the Chinese request letters, such as the preferred pattern of justification followed by request, greater emphasis on interpersonal or rapport-building strategies, and an absence of face-threatening moves. Certain possible areas of discoursal transfer in English business request letters by Chinese writers have been identified for further investigation. Lastly, move structure analysis and rhetorical structure theory are compared for their relative strengths and weaknesses for textual analysis

Rhetorical ethics and internetworked writing

Abstract: From the Publisher: Rhetorical Ethics and Internetworked Writing develops rhetoric theory as a heuristic tool for addressing the new ethical and legal complexities cyberwriters and writing teachers face on the Internet and World Wide Web. Porter conceptualizes rhetoric as an ethical operation (first by examining the rhetoric-ethics relationship in classical and modern rhetoric, then by turning to postmodern ethics, which revives a casuistic approach to ethics). In the second half of the book, Porter considers special cases involving electronic discourse on the networks that challenge or undermine conventional print-based law and ethics.

A New History of Classical Rhetoric

Abstract: George A. Kennedy.A New History of Classical Rhetoric. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. xii + 301 pp. $54.95 cloth; $19.95 paper. For scholars of rhetoric today, George A. Kennedy might well take Aristotle's place in Dante asmaestro di color che sanno. He is the author of four seminal volumes on the history of classical rhetoric and its Christian tradition (not to mention other works on Quintilian, the New Testament, and ancient literary criticism), the first of which, The Art of Persuasion in Greece, came out over thirty years ago. Kennedy's influence on this growing field of study has been correspondingly formative, and in many respects he first laid the groundwork for the contemporary revival of interest in a field once largely the province of departments of speech and communication. The accessibility, clarity, and intelligence of these volumes have made them a standard in the bibliography of any scholar engaging with the history and theory of classical rhetoric. Kennedy has now come out with a new volume on rhetoric and rhetorical theory, an "extensive revision and abridgement" (iii) of the three earlier works on classical rhetoric: TheArt of Persuasion in Greece, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, and Greek Rhetoric under Christian Emperors. The title of the present volume, with its reference to anew history of classical rhetoric, suggests that it is revision rather than abridgement that is the engine behind the publication. However, readers familiar with the earlier volumes will find that the changes are comparatively limited. For the most part, Kennedy has summarized the contents of these volumes in chronological order, and while the original volume on Greek rhetoric has been rewritten and rearranged, it offers substantially the same treatment of the texts. Some notice has been taken of new work since the 1960s-the bibliography includes, for example, Peter Brown' s Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity, Nicole Loraux's The Invention ofA thens, and The Recovery of Rhetoric, edited by R. H. Roberts and J. M. M. Good. Aside from updating the bibliography, Kennedy also evokes some new critical terminology in his preface, where he reformulates part of the book's project as the history of the development of "metarhetoric," theoryabout rhetoric, throughout the Greco-Roman period. (I discuss this further below.) For the most part, however,A New History of Classical Rhetoric is new because it offers three volumes in one, not because Kennedy has altered his original interpretations. This caveat aside, it would be ungenerous to take Kennedy's book to task for being exactly what it promises to be: a denser and more compact version of several volumes important to any student of rhetoric. And a student reader, as Kennedy himself points out, is precisely the projected audience for his book. To this end, Kennedy has removed most of the original scholarly notes and other material that would appeal to the specialist and often provides a brief description of social and political features of ancient society that a student reader might not be familiar with. The rapid pace of the discussion, and its broad coverage, renders the book almost encyclopedic: a reference work that will answer basic questions and offer sketches of crucial rhetorical texts, all without necessitating the purchase of three separate volumes. This single book comprises some thirteen chapters that span the range from "Persuasion in Greek Literature before 400 B.C." (chapter two) and "Greek Rhetorical Theory from Corax to Aristotle" (chapter three) through the Attic orators, Hellenistic rhetoric, early Roman rhetoric, Cicero, the Augustan and Silver ages, Greek rhetorical treatises under the Empire, and the Second Sophistic, to "Christianity and Classical Rhetoric" (chapter twelve) and "The Survival of Classical Rhetoric from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages" (chapter thirteen). Such a format necessarily has both advantages and disadvantages. …

The Trials and Tribulations of Racialized Critical Rhetorical Theory: Understanding the Rhetorical Ambiguities of Proposition 187

Abstract: This essay explores the role that race plays in rhetorical theorizing. Linking the literature in critical race theory (CRT), critical rhetoric, and vernacular criticism, the essay examines the case of Proposition 187 for the ways in which race was deployed and occluded. The essay demonstrates that rhetoricians can and should systematically assess racial dimensions in communicative practices. Such a rhetorical turn emphasizes race as part of historical, legal, political, and cultural discourses. The authors build a case for a racialized critical rhetorical theorizing (RCRT).

Cognition as Context (Whose Cognition

Abstract: In a series of papers Emanuel Schegloff (1987, 1989, 1991, 1992a, b, 1997) has developed arguments concerning the coherence of analytic procedures for addressing entities that would traditionally have been glossed as ‘social structure’ or ‘social context’. He argues that ‘social context’ should be treated as relevant to analysis only insofar as it features as a participants’ concern; that is, only insofar as it is invoked, formulated, oriented to, or displayed in actual interaction. Research conclusions should be disciplined by attending to the procedural consequentiality of any claimed contextual particular. This paper will briefly review Schegloff’s argument and pick out some themes that have been highlighted by recent work in discursive psychology (Edwards and Potter, 1992, 1993; Edwards, 1997; Potter, 1996). In particular, it will emphasise the way that cognition, in some form or other, is often treated as a taken-for-granted background in discussions of context. In effect, cognition is treated as the inner stuff of perception, storage and inferences and it is set over against an outer reality of context, which might be events, settings and social structures. However, that reality is typically seen as having its effect via its cognitive perception, representations and processing. The paper will argue that cognition can be subject to some of the same analytic moves as context and that, indeed, in participants’ discourse things that analysts have traditionally glossed under the categories ‘cognition’ and ‘context’ often blur together. My suggestion is that ‘cognition’ and ‘reality’, conventionally the inner and the outer, can be treated in the same way as things which are formulated, attended to, and oriented to in discourse. In this way cognition becomes a topic of discursive study, but is respecified in the process. In the title of a recent paper, Schegloff (1997) asks the rhetorical question Whose Context? This highlights the questionable status of analysts versions of context vis a vis 3 those of participants. My subtitle – Whose Cognition? – raises a parallel question with respect to cognition.

Beyond String Matching and Cue Phrases: Improving Efficiency and Coverage in Discourse Analysis

Abstract: RASTA (Rhetorical Structure Theory Analyzer), a discourse analysis component within the Microsoft English Grammar, efficiently computes representations of the structure of written discourse using information available in syntactic and logical form analyses RASTA heuristically scores the rhetorical relations that it hypothesizes, using those scores to guide it in producing more plausible discourse representations before less plausible ones The heuristic scores also provide a genre-independent method for evaluating competing discourse analyses: the best discourse analyses are those constructed from the strongest hypotheses

Doing rhetorical history : concepts and cases

Abstract: In the thirteen essays gathered here, eminent scholars address the ongoing dialogue over the regrounding of rhetorical study and the relationship between theory and history as well as history and criticism in the field. Some examine the conceptual issues involved in the juncture of rhetoric and history; others offer case studies, often based on research with primary documents, to illustrate the process and promise of rhetorical history. Collectively, their work tests theory and complements criticism while standing as a distinct and valid approach in and of itself.

The Question of Reliability in Interpretive Psychological Research

Abstract: The “Achilles heel” of interpretive research is that two or more researchers, confronted with the same data, posing the same question(s), will invariably express their findings differently. Different words will be used to express the “same” (i.e., congruent) meanings; it is also likely, of course, that different meanings will be thematized as well. Thus, there arises the question of the reliability of interpretive research methods. In what sense can a method (when applied by multiple researchers to the same set of data) yield results that are not “consistent” yet can still be considered “reliable”? Should we alter our definition of reliability to accommodate qualitative methods, or should we adhere to definitions of reliability that have been developed with respect to quantitative methods? Should we abandon interpretive research altogether if it cannot stand up to existing scientific conventions? These questions are merely rhetorical, for it is clear to us that definitions of methodological criteria are themselves a function of human understanding and interpretation; thus, they cannot be carved in stone and are always open to reconsideration.

Classical rhetoric in Anglo-Saxon England

Abstract: This passage from The Wanderer demonstrates some of the rhetorical techniques which have been noted in Old English texts. Its most striking features are the rhetorical questions and the figure of anaphora which is produced by the repetition of ‘Hwaer’. Another rhetorical element is the use of the theme (topos) of ubi sunt (‘where are…?’) to lament the loss of past joys. In classical antiquity, features such as these, which served to create effective discourse, were the products of ars rhetorica. This art was distinguished from the more basic subject of ars grammatica in that rhetoric, the ‘ars … bene dicendi’ (Quintilian, Institutio oratoria II.xvii.37), aimed at the good production of text (for oral delivery) with the aim of persuading the listeners to take or adopt some form of action or belief, whereas grammar, the ‘recte loquendi scientia’, was responsible for correct speech and also for the interpretation of poetical texts (‘poetarum enarratio’: Quintilian, Institutio oratoria I.iv.2). In terms of classical rhetoric, the above passage from The Wanderer could be analysed according to the three phases of the production of a text (partes artis) which pertain to both written and oral discourse: inventio (finding topics such as the ubi sunt), dispositio (arranging the parts of the text) and elocutio (embellishing the text stylistically, for example with rhetorical questions and other figures and tropes).How and under what circumstances did the Anglo-Saxons acquire their knowledge of how to compose a text effectively?

A Teacher's Response to ‘Reflection‐in‐action’

Abstract: > A teacher‐researcher questions whether Schon's Reflective Practitioner is an appropriate text for ensuring change in teaching practices. It is argued that teachers’ perspectives prompt a particular interpretation of ‘reflection‐in‐action’ that justifies individualistic, immediate and limited change strategies. Schon's rhetorical appeals can be interpreted as offering tacit approval for the existing craft culture; for the inhibiting effects of this craft culture to be effectively challenged, individual teachers need the supportive insights which collaboration can provide.

A Black Woman as Rhetorical Critic: Validating Self and Violating the Space of Otherness

Abstract: This essay explores a Black woman rhetorical critic's search to re-cover Black women's rhetorical traditions in America, which centers Black women's epistemology in a rhetoric of survival. A Black ...