Showing papers on "Rhetorical question published in 2001"

Sourcebook on rhetoric : key concepts in contemporary rhetorical studies

Abstract: Foreword - H. W. Simons Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: On Defining Rhetoric as an Object Intellectual Inquiry Glossary of Concepts Name Index Subject Index About the Author

The Snowball Phenomenon: Spread of Ways of Talking and Ways of Thinking Across Groups of Children

Abstract: Social influences on the reasoning and rhetorical strategies of 104 fourth graders were examined during 48 small-group discussions A total of 14,942 lines of discussion transcript were sifted to determine patterns of occurrence of 13 argument stratagems serving several rhetorical functions The major finding was that the use of argument stratagems snowballs That is, once a useful stratagem has been used by a child during a discussion, it tends to spread to other children and occur with increasing frequency After the first appearance of a stratagem, the probability that it will appear again usually rises and remains high In general, there are fewer and fewer lines of discussion between successive appearances of a stratagem The snowball phenomenon was more pronounced during discussions with open participation than during discussions with teacher-controlled participation

Learning oral presentation skills: a rhetorical analysis with pedagogical and professional implications.

Abstract: OBJECTIVE: Oral presentation skills are central to physicianphysician communication; however, little is known about how these skills are learned. Rhetoric is a social science which studies communication in terms of context and explores the action of language on knowledge, attitudes, and values. It has not previously been applied to medical discourse. We used rhetorical principles to qualitatively study how students learn oral presentation skills and what professional values are communicated in this process. DESIGN: Descriptive study. SETTING: Inpatient general medicine service in a university-affiliated public hospital. PARTICIPANTS: Twelve third-year medical students during their internal medicine clerkship and 14 teachers. MEASUREMENTS: One-hundred sixty hours of ethnographic observation, including 73 oral presentations on rounds. Discourse-based interviews of 8 students and 10 teachers. Data were quanlitatively analyzed to uncover recurrent patterns of communication. MAIN RESULTS: Students and teachers had different perceptions of the purpose of oral presentation, and this was reflected in performance. Students described and conducted the presentation as a rule-based, data-storage activity governed by “order” and “structure.” Teachers approached the presentation as a flexible means of “communication” and a method for “constructing” the details of a case into a diagnostic or therapeutic plan. Although most teachers viewed oral presentations rhetorically (sensitive to context), most feedback that students received was implicit and acontextual, with little guidance provided for determining relevant content. This led to dysfunctional generalizations by students, sometimes resulting in worse communication skills (e.g., comment “be brief” resulted in reading faster rather than editing) and unintended value acquisition (e.g., request for less social history interpreted as social history never relevant). CONCLUSION: Students learn oral presentation by trial and error rather than through teaching of an explicit rhetorical model. This may delay development of effective communication skills and result in acquisition of unintended professional values. Teaching and learning of oral presentation skills may be improved by emphasizing that context determines content and by making explicit the tacit rules of presentation.

Language learning memoirs as a gendered genre

Abstract: The paper argues that while the analysis of cross-cultural lifewriting may provide important insights for the study of second language acquisition and socialization, researchers should approach language learning memoirs as a genre and not simply as ethnographic data, subject to content analysis. Using gender as a case in point, the paper analyses a corpus of sixteen full-length language memoirs and seven essays within a theoretical framework, which combines sociohistoric, sociocultural, and rhetorical analyses of the narratives in the corpus. The analysis of these texts demonstrates that social, cultural, and historic conventions shape stories that are told about language learning. It is argued that treating language memoirs as a genre has a great potential for future studies of second language learning. While this approach prevents the researchers from using the narratives simplistically as an objective 'source of ethnographic data', it allows for a complex, theoretically and sociohistorically informed, investigation of social contexts of language learning and of individual learners' trajectories, as well as an insight into which learners' stories are not yet being told.

Genre Systems at Work DSM-IV and Rhetorical Recontextualization in Psychotherapy Paperwork

Abstract: In this article, I describe four interrelated analytical concepts useful for studying the discursive practices of professional writers: intertextuality, interdiscursivity, genre systems, and recontextualization. Drawing on structuration theory and neo-Vygotskyan activity theory to provide a framework for the above concepts, I present three theoretical assumptions: (a) genre systems play an intermediate role between institutional structural properties and individual communicative action, (b) a central means for identifying texts in a genre system is their intertextual activity, and (c) the concept of “genre systems” enables the analyst to foreground the discursively salient components of human activity systems. An elaboration of each of these assumptions is followed by an illustration of genre systems at work in one psychotherapist's session notes and the process I call rhetorical recontextualization.

Qur'an Translation: Discourse, Texture and Exegesis

Abstract: The Qur'an is read by millions of Muslims on a daily basis, yet there is no book available to the reader, Arab or non-Arab, which provides a linguistic and rhetorical insight into Qur'anic discourse This book explains Qur'an translational problems and provides a thorough account of the unique syntactic, semantic, phonetic, prosodic, pragmatic, and rhetorical features of the Qur'an

On gender and rhetorical space

Abstract: In this essay I call critical attention to the role of physical location in rhetorical situations, naming this aspect of communication “rhetorical space.”; Rhetorical space is the geography of a communicative event, and, like all landscapes, may include both the cultural and material arrangement, whether intended or fortuitous, of a location. Drawing on the observations of novelists, philosophers, anthropologists, cultural geographers, and architectural historians, I explore the dimensions of this concept through an investigation of the pulpit, a rhetorical space that communicates a message to the audience quite apart from the sermon.

“New York, New York” Being and Creating Identity in the 2000 New York State Senate Race

Abstract: The authors argue that a critical approach to identity politics posits that identity can be discursively constructed for a group, particularly within a political context. The authors take this general view to study the identity discourses of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rick Lazio in the 2000 New York Senate Race. The following article describes and analyzes how each campaign created an identity for themselves through general strategies of definition and opposition. The authors hope to illustrate the rhetorical dichotomy formed between the constructed identities of the true New Yorker and the fake New Yorker. It will examine how each campaign's efforts to create an identification with the New Yorker as an ideal was, in a very Burkean sense, founded upon a parallel opposition to or division from the non-New Yorker. Second, it will assess the rhetorical strategies utilized to create a subculture of the New Yorker through their discourse.

Performing critical interruptions: Stories, rhetorical invention, and the environmental justice movement

Abstract: Warren County, NC, is the birthplace of the environmental justice movement. This study argues that the discursive efforts of Warren County residents have, in Farrell's words, “critically interrupted” two stories that frame their ongoing environmental struggle. By examining the inventional resources communities possess, I conclude, rhetorical scholars more fully may appreciate the ways in which citizen groups are able to reframe the narratives that sustain oppressive environmental conditions. This investigation challenges the referent of Warren County as solely an “origin,” offers insights into evaluating the “success” of a movement, and encourages environmental communication scholars to further explore environmental justice.

The Gospel of Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary

Abstract: This book offers the first sustained attempt to read the Gospel of Mark both as an ancient biography and as a form of ancient rhetoric. Ben Witherington applies to Mark the socio-rhetorical approach for which he is well known, opening a fresh new perspective on the earliest Gospel. Written when the fledging Christian faith was experiencing a major crisis during the Jewish war, Mark provides us with the first window on how the life and teachings of Jesus were presented to a largely non-Jewish audience. According to Witherington, the structure of Mark demonstrates that this Gospel is biographically focused on the identity of Jesus and the importance of knowing who he is--the Christ, the Son of God. This finding reveals that Christology stood at the heart of the earliest Christians' faith. It also shows how important it was to these earliest Christians to persuade others about the nature of Jesus, both as a historical figure and as the Savior of the world.

“Voice” and “voicelessness” in rhetorical studies

Abstract: This essay begins with the observation that the term “voice” is frequently used in rhetorical studies literature. Interestingly, rhetorical “voice” means different things to different scholars. This essay seeks to accomplish two tasks related to “voice.” First, it clarifies the conceptual confusion regarding “voice” found in the literature by relating it to a tension between “speaking” and “language.” Second, to avoid this tension, this essay presents a case study in which a notion of “voice” is posited that is constitutive of the public acknowledgment of the ethical and emotional dimensions of public discourse.

Ethos at the Crossroads of Disciplines: Rhetoric, Pragmatics, Sociology

Abstract: Examining the rhetorical notion of ethos at the crossroads of disciplines, this article builds up an integrated model attempting to reconcile Bourdieu's theory of language and power with pragmatic views of illocutionary force. For the sociologist, the authority of the orator depends on his institutional position; for Ducrot or Maingueneau, drawing on Aristotle, the image of the orator is built by the discourse itself. Analyzing political as well as literary texts, this essay takes into account the institutional position of the speaker; his "prior ethos" (the image his audience has of him before he takes the floor); the distribution of roles inherent in the selected genre and the stereotypes attached to these roles; and the verbal strategies through which the speaker builds an image of self in his discourse. "Argumentative analysis" thus explores a dynamic process in which social, institutional, and linguistic elements are closely connected.

Researching the rhetoric of lifelong learning

Abstract: In the analysis of polices for lifelong learning, the gap between the rhetoric and reality has become the focus for much debate and concern. Reality is compared with rhetoric and both are found wanting. In this paper, we argue that such critiques misconceive the significance of rhetoric and we outline the form a rhetorical analysis of lifelong learning policy could take. Using the UK government's 1998 Green Paper and 1999 White Paper on lifelong learning as illustrations, we suggest that rhetorical analysis helps to point to the politics of discourse that is at play in policy-making processes. This is a politics - often dismissed as spin-doctoring - with which we need to engage if our own attempts to develop lifelong learning are to be persuasive.

Ancient perceptions of Greek ethnicity

Abstract: This book is a study of the variable perceptions of Greek collective identity, discussing ancient categories such as blood- and mythically-related primordiality, language, religion, and culture. With less emphasis on dichotomies between Greeks and others, the book considers complex middle grounds of intra-Hellenic perceptions, oppositional identities, and outsiders' views. Although the authors do not seek to provide a litmus test of Greek identity, they do pay close attention to modern theories of ethnicity, its construction, function, and representation, and assess their applicability to views of Greekness in antiquity. From the Archaic period through the Roman Empire, archaeological, anthropological, historical, historiographical, rhetorical, artistic, and literary aspects are studied. Regardless of the invented aspects of ethnicity, the book illustrates its force and validity in history.

`Now is the Time to Put an End to all this': Argumentative Discourse Theory and `Letters to the Editor'

Abstract: This article applies argumentative discourse theory to `letters to the editor', specifically letters written into and subsequently printed in the British broadsheet press. The sampled letters were all written in response to prior newspaper articles and reporting, in which Islam and/or Muslims were cited as actors. The pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation is applied as a model for explaining and understanding argument, emphasizing the functional, contextual and interactive features of argumentative discourse. The theory rejects the traditionally strict bifurcation of dialectic and rhetorical dimensions of argumentation, uniting them in the model. The article is informed by the presupposition that the power relationships represented in the broadsheet press are both generative and transposable, modifying power relations in other fields (Bourdieu, 1991), and concludes by suggesting that the letters represent an example of a discourse of `spatial management' - the `national space' being the space in ques...

Persuasion in the Media Age

Abstract: A contemporary approach to persuasion that emphasizes the influence that media has had on persuasive practices. While drawing heavily from rhetorical theories as a foundation for the book, essential social science behavioral theories are used liberally to complement the discussion.

Recruiting the record: Using opponents' exact words in parliamentary argumentation

Abstract: Members of parliamentary institutions have a special feature of their discourse community open to them in argumentation—the use of the public record as an authority for others’ exact words. We show how members of the British House of Commons use the oAcial record explicitly to recruit their political opponents’ words to promote their own projects. We identify a robust set of elements in which a speaker quotes someone understood to be a political opponent, invoking the unimpeachable source of the parliamentary record. Speakers can exploit the basic framework of the device to emphasize (with dramatic or comic eAect) the identity of the quoted source. The rhetorical eAect in all cases is that such words are especially unchallengeable, and the fact that they are sourced from an opponent’s own mouth makes the message they carry immune to attack as interested or partial.

Computer Conferencing and Assessment: New ways of writing in higher education

Abstract: This article reports upon MA students' use of computer conferencing in an online course, and examines the ways in which students draw upon asynchronous conference discussions in their written assignments. It argues that we can usefully regard these electronic environments as a resource that does more than provide the context for collaborative learning. The technology enables a reflexivity in student learning which has not been possible before, enabling students to benefit from the learning of their peers online and to draw upon this in the construction of their own individual disciplinary knowledge, as explicated in their own written argument. The article explores how computer conferencing can give students the opportunity to rehearse discipline-based debates and then exploit these as rhetorical resources in their written work; students use the voices of their peers in ways traditionally reserved for authoritative published authors. In order to explore the relationship between students' use of computer co...

A Place to Stand: Politics and Persuasion in a Working-Class Bar

Abstract: Linguists have become increasingly interested in examining how class culture is socially constructed and maintained through spoken language. Julie Lindquist's examination of the linguistic ethnography of a working-class bar in Chicago is an important and original contribution to the field. She examines how regular patrons argue about political issues in order to create a group identity centred around political ideology. She also shows how their political arguments are actually a rhetorical genre, one which creates a delicate balance between group solidarity and individual identity, as well as a tenuous and ambivalent sense of class identity. Using a comination of sociolinguistic and rhetorical analysis, Lindquist's work offers new insights into the shape and meaning of the sociopolitical identity of the working class, and demonstrates how class can be created at the local, and purely rhetorical, level. Compelling and persuasive, her work will be of interest to scholars and students of sociolinguistics, rhetoric, anthroplogy, and cultural studies interested in the complex dynamics of contemporary culture.

The Denial of Racism: The Role of Humor, Personal Experience, and Self-Censorship

Abstract: Informed by discursive psychology, this study aimed to identify and explicate those rhetorical maneuvers that function to introduce the issue of race into conversations in the presence of an interracial couple (the first two authors) in the “new South Africa” and to negotiate “race talk” in their presence while distancing the speaker from inferences of racism. Over a period of 2 months, conversations of people with whom the first two authors came into contact were tape-recorded in a variety of social settings without their knowledge. The study revealed that humor, personal experience, and self-censorship were rhetorical maneuvers drawn on extensively in conversations about race. Two possible reasons for this are suggested. First, the conversations involved the interracial, heterosexual couple and other persons of different races, rather than only White speakers, as in many previous studies. Second, unlike previous studies, conversations occurred in naturalistic settings and not in contrived settings.

A fantasy theme analysis of political cartoons on the Clinton-Lewinsky-Starr affair

Abstract: –We used Symbolic Convergence Theory to analyze 2,000 political cartoons on the investigation, impeachment, and trial of the president. The cartoonists' vision incorporates components from Starr's and Clinton's visions: “Our public figures (Clinton, Starr, Congress, the news media) are engaged in a tawdry burlesque drama.” The number of levels in a rhetorical vision depends on the vision's complexity. We show that multiple, independent, rhetors can create a rhetorical vision. These messages, highly visual and generally critical, freely use metaphor and allusions, allowing multiple interpretations and rendering the fantasy themes in these dramas accessible to readers with widely divergent attitudes. Despite their fictionality, these messages concern important issues and make moral judgments on these public figures.

The rhetorical imagination of Kenneth Burke

Abstract: WIDELY HAILED as one of America's greatest rhetorical theorists, Kenneth Burke (1897-1993) ranged freely across many fields of knowledge, investigating the ways language, literature, and ideas relate to one another and to the social and political aspects of life Skeptical of disciplinary boundaries, Burke garnered both praise and censure for his eclecticism While several intellectual movements - including the New Critics - have claimed him as a member, Burke himself strongly resisted such affiliations In a comprehensive examination of Burke's achievements, Ross Wolin sifts through the misconceptions associated with the critic and uncovers a complex set of theoretical concerns to which Burke devoted his career In a work that is part biography, part intellectual history, and part rhetorical, theory, Wolin analyzes Burke's early essays of the 1920s and all eight of his theoretical volumes and argues that each of these represented a rearticulation and extension of the writer's previous studies, all of which brought together socially and politically charged ideas born of World War I, the Great Depression, and the aesthetic movement of the 1920s and early 1930s Wolin suggests that Burke turned to psychology, history, literature, philosophy, and religion, while increasing his focus on rhetoric and the general nature of language, in the hope of overcoming the formidable rhetorical problems that his scrambling of intellectual categories inevitably produced Wolin recaptures the richness of the critic's vision of "a better life" through understanding the nature of language and its social and political uses

Persuasive Definitions and Public Policy Arguments

Abstract: This paper shows how persuasive definitions are extremely powerful rhetorical tools often used to influence public policy arguments. In five case studies analyzed and evaluated, the use of the pers...

The rhetoric of ideological consensus in the United States: American principles and American pose in presidential inaugurals

Abstract: For over two hundred years, many influential observers have argued that the people of the United States are uniquely united by certain constitutive ideals. But what, exactly, are these ideals? In this essay I review and critique traditional accounts of the United States' alleged ideological consensus in order to show how rhetorical scholars might redirect this discussion towards a more epistemological and pragmatic focus on how these ideals have been invoked within public discourse. This essay uses presidential inaugurals as a case study to illustrate this approach. My reading of these speeches suggests that presidents have not only urged the American people to think of themselves as sharing certain ideals, but also as sharing a particular attitudinal disposition, thus defining American character in terms of both principles and pose. This combination, I argue, has enabled presidents to translate mythic ideals into a less philosophical and decidedly conservative idiom for American national identity.

The "Illusion of Life" rhetorical perspective: an integrated approach to the study of music as communication

Abstract: –The illusion of life rhetorical perspective increases our understanding about how discursive linguistic symbols and non-discursive aesthetic symbols function together to communicate and persuade in didactic music. We argue that lyrics and music work together to offer messages comprised of both conceptual and emotional content through the constructs of virtual experience (lyrics) and virtual time (music). Both virtual experience and virtual time must exist for music to function rhetorically. For songs without lyrics, virtual experience must be derived from some other source. Emotional content is progressively articulated in music and is understood by considering intensity and release patterns both individually and contextually. Music's rhetorical significance lies in the degree of congruity or incongruity that exists between virtual experience and virtual time. Congruent messages make the meaning more poignant, but could come at the expense of listener appeal. Incongruent messages transform the message in...

Second Thoughts on the Critiques of Big Rhetoric

Abstract: This note is divided into three parts. First, I explore some answers to the question "How did Rhetoric get so Big?" Second, I review some of the more important criticisms of a "globalized" or "universalized" view of rhetorical studies. Finally, I contend that the critiques of Big Rhetoric do not withstand scrutiny and ought to be dismissed for insufficient evidence. While there certainly are important issues for scholars of rhetorical studies to consider about how to enhance the quality and importance of our work, such issues should not include the concern that rhetoric has grown too "big." By "Big Rhetoric" I refer only to the theoretical position that everything, or virtually everything, can be described as "rhetorical." I refer to the growth of rhetorical scholarship in communication studies and other disciplines as the "popularization" of rhetorical studies.1 Theories associated with Big Rhetoric are credited with popularizing or at least rationalizing what Herbert W. Simons (1990) calls the "rhetorical turn" in a variety of disciplines. Within the journals and conventions of members of the National Communication Association (NCA), popularization is often characterized by studies of the form "the rhetoric of X," where X could literally be anything. Outside of the NCA-defined parameters of communication studies, popularization is evidenced by the apparently ever-increasing ranks of scholars who use "rhetoric" as a relevant and important term of art within their scholarship. By either measure, it can be argued fairly convincingly that "rhetoric" has become a widely used construct in scholarship. What I wish to engage is the disputed desirability of broad definitions and the related popularization of rhetoric.

'This very difficult debate about Wik': stake, voice and the management of category memberships in race politics.

Abstract: The issue of ‘race’ has assumed an extraordinarily salient position in Australian politics since the election of the conservative Howard government in 1996. Central to debate in the Australian polity has been the nature of the relationship between indigenous, or Aboriginal, Australians and the rest of the population, in particular over the issue of the land rights of indigenous people. Land rights, or ‘native title’, assumed a pre-eminent position in national political life in 1996/97 with the handing down by the High Court of the so-called ‘Wik judgment’. The discursive management of the ensuing debate by Australia's political leaders is illuminative of key sites of interest in the analysis of political rhetoric and the construction of ‘racially sensitive’ issues. Taking the texts of ‘addresses to the nation’ on Wik by the leaders of the two major political parties as analytic materials, we examine two features of the talk. First, examine how the speakers manage their stake in the position they advance, with an extension of previous work on reported speech into the area of set-piece political rhetoric. Second, in contrast to approaches which treat social categories as routine, mundane and unproblematic objects, we demonstrate the local construction of category memberships and their predicates as strategic moves in political talk. Specifically, we demonstrate how the categories of ‘Aborigines’ and ‘farmers’, groups central to the dispute, are strategically constructed to normatively bind certain entitlements to activity to category membership. Furthermore, inasmuch as such categories do not, in use, reflect readily perceived ‘objective’ group entities in the ‘real’ world, so too ‘standard’ discursive devices and rhetorical structures are themselves shown to be contingently shaped and strategically deployed for contrasting local, ideological and rhetorical ends.