Style Of Argument Research Articles

Mystifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory (review)

Mystifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory, by Noel Carroll; ? & 258 pp. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988, $30.00. Discussed by Kenneth Marc Harris With academic appointments in philosophy and in theater and with respectable publications in other areas in addition to these, Noël Carroll has demonstrated wide-ranging expertise, but it is in film theory, the subject of two of his three books, that he is most widely known. This second and more interesting of the two books on film theory, however, also establishes him as a leading figure in yet another genre, one that may become almost as fashionable. The genre lacks a name but possesses a long pedigree. Those who labor in it have traditionally been British (and later American) scholars, critics on "men of letters" who make it their business to debunk the literary and esthetic propositions emanating perennially from Continental , particularly French, theorists and their cross-Channel (and later transatlantic) imitators. What the philosophes would pass off as established rules or general laws, the debunkers expose as little more than arbitrary and aprioristic presumptions. Or, as Dr. Johnson, a distinguished early practitioner of the genre, puts it in Rambler 158, using language that might appear with little modification in the work of his current successors, the "rules" promulgated by "European scholars," rather than having "attained the certainty and stability of science . . . will be found, upon examination, [to be] authorised only by themselves" and "selected such as happened to occur to their own reflection." Opposed to such dubious practices, of course, is Anglo-Saxon empiricism, Philosophy and Literature, © 1991, 15: 129-138 130Philosophy and Literature not to mention good plain common sense. The intellectual Hundred Years' War rages on to this day, most heatedly in literary studies, where a major offensive against the hyper-theorists and Francophiles was launched a decade or so ago by conservatives such as E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Geoffrey Strickland, René Wellek, and Frederick C. Crews. Carroll assumes that most adherents of contemporary film theory have their origin in the Francophile camp of contemporary literary theory, and for Carroll that association alone is enough to cast suspicion upon them. Referring explicitly to admirers ofJean-Louis Baudry and Roland Barthes in a programmatic early passage in Mystifying Movies, he indicts "many contemporary film theorists, especially those with backgrounds in literature," for confusing "contemporary belles-lettres" with "scientific and philosophical reasoning." In view of this dubious mixing of the literary and the philosophical/scientific—it "is one of the most egregious problems in contemporary film theory"—Carroll feels he is more than justified in adopting throughout his book an "extremely detailed, literal-minded, and argumentative style." Stern measures against the perpetrators are indeed "mandated" on account of "their penchant for belletristic expression, including slippery analogies and metaphors." In sum, they "must be shown that they are using the wrong tools for the task at hand" (p. 32). Having thus brought the charges and spelled out the procedures for handling offenders, Carroll rounds up the usual suspects. First there is a chapter on Baudry and Christian Metz, whose semiotic-cum-psychoanalytic variations on the commonplace analogy between film techniques and certain mental processes, above all dreaming, are no less slippery in Carroll's judgment than the many earlier attempts to make a similar connection, stretching all the way back to Hugo Munsterberg's venerable The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (1916). Another pair of Frenchmen, Louis Althusser and Jacques Lacan, are featured in the second chapter because together they constitute the "paradigm" for what, according to Carroll, "contemporary film theorists . . . take as their central task." That task is explaining how films foster in spectators "the faith that they are free and unified" as individual subjects: Althusser provides the dictum that "the primary operation of ideology is subject construction" and Lacan supplies a description of the psychological mechanism utilized by ideology for going about the construction of subjects (p. 72). Carroll not only swings his wrecking ball against the foundations of both Althusserian Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis , he also demolishes the notion that ideology is a major factor in Kenneth Marc Harris131 maintenance of the status quo in the first place and proposes to...

When Senators and Publics Meet at the Environmental Protection Subcommittee

The hearings of the Senate Environmental Protection Subcommittee on reauthorizing the Clean Air Act of 1987 are analyzed and contrasted with Senate hearings of other committees to show how these hearings fit into the societal debate on clean air. The discourse of the hearings is analyzed by examining the language of the talk and by analyzing the style of argument. The discourse in these hearings is shown to be distinctive by comparing it with other hearings. The argument of the paper is that this distinctiveness is the result of the type of communication possible in electronic/mass media communication.

Mathematics and Culture: The Case of Novalis

The ArgumentIn this paper, the perception of mathematics by a nonspecialist, the Romantic poet Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), is investigated. The study is intended to contribute to a better understanding of the interactions between mathematics and the surrounding scientific culture in Germany at the turn of the nineteenth century. In regard to the problem how the cultural reception of a theory can influence its conceptual development, I argue that the reaction of nonspecialists can be imagined as a sort of resonating body. Some aspects of a theory are stressed, others are ignored or even suppressed. In this way the value system of a theory and thereby the choice of problems and the style of argumentation can be influenced by groups of people who are not active scientists. In fact, the case at hand shows that a change of values has taken place. The original aim of the combinatorial school, whose mathematics Novalis studied, was the mechanization of symbolical calculations. But later, presumably under the influence of the general cultural climate in Germany, this same mathematics was interpreted as furthering — in modern words — a study of abstract structures.

Communication and Litigation: Case Studies of Famous Trials

Examination of seven famous trials, each concluding with an evaluation of the trial by a lawyer, judge, law professor, or communication scholar.The Washington Post coverage of the John Hinckley case preceding the trial demonstrates the effects media may have on a trial. The Haymarket riot trial serves as an example of opening statements in a storytelling form.By analyzing the trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, Schuetz and Snedaker explain direct examination according to its purpose, legal rules, ordering of witnesses, verbal and nonverbal techniques of interrogation, and tactics for introducing evidence.The cross-examination in the Sacco-Vanzetti case shows how advocates enhance or decrease their persuasiveness by adopting communication maneuvers. Closing arguments in the Rosenberg trial took the form of a refutative story with a dual persuasive and instructional content.The Supreme Court appeal in the Sam Sheppard case demonstrates the procedures, form, content, and style of arguments of appellate briefs. The Chicago Eight trial is an example of trial as theatre.

Against the authenticity of the ring CMS II.3.326: fragments of a discourse on Minoan glyptic

In CMS II.3 1. Pini set out a very persuasive case for the view that there are no good stylistic arguments against the authenticity of the Herakleion ring CMS II.3.326 (H.M.216?) [PLATE IV(a)]. Here I want to argue that there are, nevertheless, strong iconographical reasons for doubting that authenticity.I will begin by reexamining two iconographical arguments against the ring's authenticity which have been considered and criticised by Pini. In my view, though his general criticisms are correct, the particular modalities and forms involved in the case under consideration are such as to suggest that the arguments in question, when focussed in certain particular ways, do have force in this particular situation.

Moral Argument and Liberal Toleration: Abortion and Homosexuality

In a similar way, arguments against antiabortion and antisodomy laws take two different forms: Some say the laws are unjust because the practices they prohibit are morally permissible, indeed sometimes desirable; others oppose these laws without reference to the moral status of the practices at issue, and argue instead that individuals have a right to choose for themselves whether to engage in them. These two styles of argument might be called, respectively, the and the sophisticated. The naive view holds that the justice of laws depends on the moral worth of the conduct they prohibit or protect. The sophisticated view holds that the justice of such laws depends not on a substantive moral judgment about the conduct at stake, but instead on a more general theory about the respective claims of majority rule and individual rights, of democracy on the one hand, and liberty on the other.

Comments on Five Manuscripts

he outside observer who comments on any particular theoretical perspective in the social sciences soon faces a binary situation that can be likened to membership in a lineage (Sindzingre 1986): either one is a member (of the lineage, subclan, etc.), or one is not. Of course, one may be a neighbor or be related through marriage or assimilation, and one may adopt a few lineage shrines without adhering to the whole set of rites and beliefs. With regard to a theory, one may either fall in line with the proposed approach and style of argumentation and accept the task of discussing and assessing its concepts; or else one may forthrightly reject the premises. This version of the emic/etic distinction holds for whatever anthropological school of thought one chooses-structuralist, culturalist, cognitivist, ecological, or interpretive (the last has, significantly, had little influence in France), and it may hold even more strongly for the Marxist or neo-Marxist approach, whose concepts, having been worked over for more than a century, both derive from and constitute a school. Furthermore, despite the risk of seeming trivial when pointing this out, these concepts have had an unprecedented applied destiny in politics and economics: they have forced the societies in which they have been actualized to make real ontological commitments. As is well known, the subsequent fate of these commitments has been more or less fortunate, depending on local social and historical contexts (e.g., ''real socialism in Eastern Europe, theoretical Marxism in the West, ThirdWorldism, etc.). For these reasons, texts that assume a Marxist anthropological perspective can be submitted to a culturalist analysis in the same manner as, in a self-referential mode, to a Marxist one. American Marxist texts give voice to a tradition, reflect a style, define a special, indeed critical frame of discourse; nevertheless, though purportedly critical, they take for granted basic concepts (mode of production, domination, imperialism, etc.) that have become exotic for European (notably French) readers. The social, political, and academic backgrounds of Marxist traditions, as well as their networks of influence, are different in the United States and France, if for no other reason than the presence of a Communist Party in the latter. To be brief, post1968 France has massively rejected discourses that consist of globalizing 447

The internal environment of knowledge claims: One aspect of the knowledge-society connection

In the sociology of knowledge, the relationship between society and knowledge —or rather what separates them — remains an unsolved problem. A critical analysis of various solutions that we must look for to this problem suggests the plausibility of a passage between social groups, styles of argumentation and objects of knowledge. An empirical model of “decision displacements” is proposed on the basis of a corpus of texts and of observations derived from concrete analysis of a laboratory situation.

SUBSTANCE AND STYLE: AN APPRAISAL OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL LEGACY OF HERBERT BLUMER

The substance and the style of Herbert Blumer's legacy to sociology are examined. Examining the former proceeds by specifying essentials and nonessentials of a symbolic interactionist framework, and by distinguishing between Blumer's ideas that do and do not contribute toward the objective of general explanatory theory premised on the framework together with rigorous tests of such theory using a full arsenal of research methods and techniques. Examining the latter proceeds by suggesting that Blumer's style of combative and oppositional argumentation, while not without its utility, has contributed to a present‐day scholasticism within symbolic interactionism that inhibits the development of the framework.

Kierkegaard's Dialectic of Inwardness. A Structural Analysis of Stages, and: Kierkegaard: the Descent into God (review)

~62 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 26:1 JANUARY ~988 case, as so little firm ground has been found to link the socialistic "Jtinger Spinozas" with the "Junghegelianer" a wider look at the others could easily have been purchased by the author by simply limiting his discussion of Hess. Such figures as K. L. Michelet or Stirner (who played, as Gascoigne's own work and others indicate, a central role among the Young Hegelians) or Bruno Bauer's politically-minded brother, Edgar, deserve some consideration in any study of Young Hegelianism. In sum, the reaction of some of the Young Hegelians to Hegel's project has been touched upon in this work, but somewhat unevenly and less than exhaustively. The criticisms here advanced are not intended to suggest that the work is without value. It is well-written and researched, and has some very interesting and informative sections, but above all, it does set the Hegelianism of the Vormi~rzinto a matrix which further clarifies our understanding of how Hegel's effort to synthesize the contrary forces of the Enlightenment and Christianity found itself "interpreted both as Promethean atheism and as a reduction of human nature to a mere epiphenomenon of the divine life-process" (265). LAWRENCE S. STEPELEV1CH Villanova University Stephen N. Dunning. Kierkegaard'sDialecticofInwardness. A Structural Analysisof Stages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Pp. xvii + 323 . $32.oo. Jeremy Walker. Kierkegaard: the Descent into God. Kingston and Montreal: McGillQueen 's University Press, a985. Pp. xi + 223. $27.5o. There is an irony in contemporary philosophy that Kierkegaard would certainly appreciate . After a very long period of domination by linguistic analytical philosophy, the philosophical community, if such it may be called, has opened up to larger philosophical vistas and is prone to think in a grand style. Analytical philosophers now prefer to be called "post-analytical" thinkers. Meanwhile, back in phenomenology and existential thought, analytical techniques and styles of argument are becoming more prominant in the writings of individuals who have learned from their opponents. The two studies of Kierkegaard we have before us are cases in point. Dunning admittedly follows the suggestions of Andr6 Clair's work of 1976, Pseudonymie et paradoxe: La Pens~edialectiquede Kierkegaard, and seeks to carry out a deconstruction of his texts in terms of an analysis of the internal dialectic of most of Kierkegaard's major writings. Although Dunning is not primarily concerned with the intention of SK to instigate a sea-change in the attitudes, beliefs, and behavior of his readers, his analyses do clarify the structure of SK's thought and, in the last chapters, he touches on the practical aims of SK's authorship. Dunning is meticulous in tracing the internal dialectic of the aesthetic, ethical, and religious stages of life as articulated by SK. He finds that SK has absorbed more of Hegel's dialectical method of exposition and disclosure than has previously been suspected. He speculates that this is an "unconscious " replication of "Hegelian systematic structures." Although this is possible, we should remember that, in the case of SK, we are dealing with the most self-conscious BOOK REVIEWS 163 philosophical writer in the history of Western thought. We cannot be too sure that he has not deliberately used a Hegelian method in order to demolish Hegelianism. Dunning isolates two basic forms of dialectical structures. One is a dialectic of contradiction in which conceptual polarities are presented in a negative relation; the other involves a display of a reciprocal relation between opposite poles that blocks further development. Fear and Trembling and Philosophical Fragments are said to exemplify a "paradoxical dialectic." Hegel's triadic formula, the in-itself, the for-itself, and the in-and-for-itself, is applied to many of SK's works and to the three modes of inwardness: aesthetic, ethical, and religious. The basic pattern that runs through SK's works is the polarity of inner and outer, self and others. With great care, Dunning displays and elucidates these dialectical patterns. And even though he realizes that his approach to SK is formalistic and presented in the manner of a literary deconstruction of various texts, the outcome of his study is that we get...

The Thread of Language and the Web of Dominion: Mandeville to Rousseau and Back

BERNARD MANDEVILLE (1670-1733) was a native of Rotterdam who studied at the University of Leyden, practiced medicine in England where he wrote satiric verse, and, during the last decade of his life, acquired the reputation of being a licentious philosopher-a detested name, an opponent lamented, yet ne'er to die.' The Fable of the Bees (1723 and 1729)2 was one of the most widely read and disputed books of its time, and its style, substance, and mode of argument has periodically attracted the attention of students in virtually every branch of the humanities and social sciences. Among the many intellectual lives fashioned for Mandeville by this division of academic labour, that of a theorist of language has seldom been noticed. This omission is understandable, since Mandeville considers the origin and use of language only in digressions meant to support his wider psychological and moral arguments (I: 190-192 and II: 285-291). My purpose in drawing attention to Mandeville's discussion of language is not intended to claim for it a previously unrecognized insight into linguistic processes, but to examine how The Fable

Hegel (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 281 Jacobi's collected Werke. The 1815 edition was reprinted by the Wissenschaffliche Buchgesellschaft in the 197os, but the original edition (which includes a short preface omitted from the second edition) has remained widely unavailable. The appearance of a new, well-produced photo-mechanical reprint edition of the 1787 edition is thus a most welcome event, as is the decision to include (as an appendix to the text) the entire 123 page preface to the second edition. This new edition also includes a 14 page introduction in English by Hamilton Beck. Though Professor Beck betrays a somewhat inappropriately condescending attitude toward Jacobi's philosophical abilities , his introduction nevertheless constitutes a welcome addition to the scant number of discussions of Jacobi's philosophy in English. It includes, in addition to a brief survey of Jacobi's life and writings, an able discussion of the differences between the 1787 text and that of 1815, as well as an informed account of the differences between Hume's concept of "belief" and Jacobi's notion of Glaube (which is not at all inappropriate , considering that this volume is part of a series of reprints of works on "the philosophy of David Hume"). The introduction is supplemented by useful notes and references to the secondary literature. Jacobi's David Hume is a work which still deserves to be read in its own right, in addition to being an essential text for an adequate appreciation of the history of Humeanism or the development of German Idealism. It is especially encouraging to note that an American publisher has been responsible for making this important text more widely available. One would like to hope that contemporary readers of philosophical literature and students of the history of philosophy might thereby be encouraged to become better acquainted with the writings of this truly original and influential authorBthough one must also confess that this is unlikely to happen on any significant scale until Jacobi's philosophical works have begun to become available in English translation. For introducing Anglo-American philosophers to Jacobi, a future translator could make no better choice than David Hume on Belief, or Idealism and Realism. DANIEL BREAZEALE UniversityofKentucky M. J. Inwood. Hegel. The Arguments of the Philosophers. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983. Pp. 582. $45.oo. Historians of contemporary philosophy generally cite Bradley and McTaggart's 'Hegelianism ' as the point of departure for twentieth-century analytic philosophy. Bertrand Russell tells us that t898 was the critical year for his rejection of Hegel and that rejection, together with the later discovery of Frege, has been decisive for the subsequent development of philosophy thoughout the English-speaking world. In light of this, some readers will be startled or fascinated by the ultimate contention of the book under review: So far, "Hegel has outlasted most of his critics" (52o) and "Hegel 's position may ultimately prove to the the right one .... " But it is "too early" to say. Why? Because "it is only recently that.., analytical philosophers have begun to make use of what he has to offer" (523). 282 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY We seem to have come a long way since those militant days of analytic philosophy when, as Russell puts it, "... I began to believe everything the Hegelians disbelieved ." In the meanwhile analytic philosophy has softened, moving from a set of doctrines, most now abandoned, to a vague celebration of 'precision' and a characteristically brisk style of argumentation. Of course Mr. Inwood is not the first to serve up Hegel in the generally accepted style of contemporary Anglophone philosophy. But his two major predecessors, J. N. Findlay (Hegel, a958) and Charles Taylor (Hegel, x975), both came to Hegel with philosophical predispositions rather alien to the more austerely Fregean core of analydc philosophy: Neo-Platonic 'rational mysticism' in the case of Findlay and continental hermeneutic phenomenology with Taylor. Inwood 's analytic style is uncontaminated by any such content. Thus he can make fair claim to have written the first large-scale (his book is bigger than Findlay's and, by a hair, Taylor's) and hard-core analytic treatment of Hegel. Students of Hegel who also delight in this style may well take...

Morality, Survival and Nuclear War

This paper proceeds from a sense of dissatisfaction with much of current moral argument about defence policy, in particular the role of nuclear weapons. Discussions of the moral issues tend to divide into two distinct kinds of writing: on the one hand, impassioned calls to action based on and allied with equally impassioned moral exhortations; and on the other hand, usually in academic contexts, meticulous analyses and comparisons of aspects of nuclear policy with paradigm cases of acknowledged moral categories or requirements, with the object of showing by analogy with these that the particular aspect of policy under discussion is or is not morally wrong. My unease is caused by the fact that, while it is difficult not to respond to the impassioned style of argument, as one recognizes in it a practical and moral urgency which our situation seems to demand, nevertheless it plainly appeals only to those already convinced of its conclusions. The unconverted tend to regard it with suspicion or disdain, for in contrast to the analytical style, which manifestly seeks to compel the intellect, the impassioned style seems to make its effect by stirring the emotions as much as if not instead of by compelling the intellect. On the other hand the analytical style can seem curiously irrelevant, even trivial, in relation to the issue. For instance, it has been argued that since: nuclear war is a moral disaster; deterrence is threatening or intending to wage nuclear war; it is wrong to threaten or intend to do something wrong; therefore: deterrence is wrong, and should be abandoned. It is hard to believe that defenders of deterrence as the cornerstone of defence policy are going to be persuaded by such an argument to abandon their advocation of it, if only because the argument totally ignores the object of deterrence.

Morality, Survival and Nuclear War

This paper proceeds from a sense of dissatisfaction with much of current moral argument about defence policy, in particular the role of nuclear weapons. Discussions of the moral issues tend to divide into two distinct kinds of writing: on the one hand, impassioned calls to action based on and allied with equally impassioned moral exhortations; and on the other hand, usually in academic contexts, meticulous analyses and comparisons of aspects of nuclear policy with paradigm cases of acknowledged moral categories or requirements, with the object of showing by analogy with these that the particular aspect of policy under discussion is or is not morally wrong. My unease is caused by the fact that, while it is difficult not to respond to the impassioned style of argument, as one recognizes in it a practical and moral urgency which our situation seems to demand, nevertheless it plainly appeals only to those already convinced of its conclusions. The unconverted tend to regard it with suspicion or disdain, for in contrast to the analytical style, which manifestly seeks to compel the intellect, the impassioned style seems to make its effect by stirring the emotions as much as if not instead of by compelling the intellect. On the other hand the analytical style can seem curiously irrelevant, even trivial, in relation to the issue. For instance, it has been argued that since: nuclear war is a moral disaster; deterrence is threatening or intending to wage nuclear war; it is wrong to threaten or intend to do something wrong; therefore: deterrence is wrong, and should be abandoned. It is hard to believe that defenders of deterrence as the cornerstone of defence policy are going to be persuaded by such an argument to abandon their advocation of it, if only because the argument totally ignores the object of deterrence.

The prospects of a sapir renaissance in linguistics

Summary This brief presentation reconstructed on the basis of a tape recording a quarter-century after the date of its original delivery is hardly more than an informal causerie, which the speaker never expected to see in print some day. However, it represents an interesting document in the history of American linguistics in that it mirrors the mood of the late 1950s, a decade marked by first attempts to revive interest in certain characteristic aspects of Sapir’s oeuvre. In addition, it exemplifies the particular appeal of Sapir’s thinking and style of scientific argumentation to younger intellectuals born, raised, and educated in Europe, whose careers later unfolded on New World campuses.

Hermeneutics, transcendental philosophy and social science

It has frequently been argued that there must be a necessary and important difference between the methods of the natural and social sciences, or that an empirical method in social science must be supplemented by or is inferior to an interpretative method. Often these claims have been supported by arguments using premises derived from the early Heidegger or the late Wittgenstein. These arguments, in turn, tend either to be transcendental in form or to follow a hermeneutic argument strategy. This paper argues that neither of these types of argument, based on Heideggerian or Wittgensteinian premises, can be used successfully to show an important or essential difference between natural and social science. It does this by examining arguments proposed by Peter Winch and Hubert Dreyfus, showing how they are fallacious and misconstrue the import of the premises upon which they are based, and generalizing these objections to the transcendental and hermeneutic styles of argument in this field as such. The paper con...

Mari Sandoz: Story Catcher of the Plains by Helen Winter Stauffer

Reviews Mari Sandoz: Story Catcher of the Plains. By Helen Winter Stauffer. (Lin­ coln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982. 322 pages, $22.50.) Mari Sandoz’s life makes for a classic American story. The scrawny, lonely, eldest daughter of immigrant parents, she grew up on the Nebraska frontier, forming “close emotional ties with the prairie, the bluffs, and the river,” hiding behind the stove to overhear the stories told by her eccentric father, Old Jules, and his Indian friends, stories which would become the foundation for her understanding of plains culture and history. As inde­ pendent, stubborn, and even cantankerous as her father, the major influence on her imagination, she rebelled against the restrictions he set upon her as a woman to make herself into a writer, teacher, and scholar, largely self-taught and eventually acknowledged as a foremost western historian. Always carry­ ing with her a sense of being an outsider, a visionary response to the land, and the psychic scars of her violent childhood, Sandoz explored in her best work her “emotional identification” with a region and a people. The forces which shaped her character also shaped her understanding of American history, as Helen Stauffer shows in her long-awaited biography, Mari Sandoz: Story Catcher of the Plains. Stauffer focuses on “the author’s life as it relates to her work.” Based on ten years of research as meticulous as that of Sandoz herself, including work with previously unexamined archival materials, Story Catcher of the Plains is tight and lively, gracefully integrating a wealth of information about Sandoz’s professional life, attitudes, and work habits with close discussions of her work. While Stauffer cannot expand greatly upon Sandoz’s own treatment of her early life in Old Jules, she has much to say about the influences on her writing during her formative years in Lincoln. She shows the genesis of her major works and the interrelations among them, traces her sources and explores her research methods, examines her repeated problems with her publishers, and details her awards and the critical reception of her writing. Stauffer empha­ sizes certain crucial themes and concerns like Sandoz’s efforts to de-bunk western myths, to present the Indian point of view, or to preserve historical materials in connection with several of her works at different times in her life. Believing that Sandoz’sprose contributes as much asher historical insights and her careful research to her stature as a writer, Stauffer is particularly perceptive when she analyzes stylistic innovations and shows how they grew from Sandoz’s sense of human experience. She discusses, for instance, how Sandoz conceived of Love Song of the Plains as a series of tall tales which would express the fantastic stories of the region. While acknowledging the 240 Western American Literature book’s lyricism, Stauffer quotes Sandoz as saying that she hopes some of her “written with barbed wire on sandpaper” style remains. Chronicling one of Sandoz’s many stylistic arguments with her publishers, Stauffer recounts an anecdote where Sandoz called an editor an “hadophile” : “ ‘one who has a mania for the word had and sticks it into prose like telegraph poles along a railroad right of way.’” Stauffer’s analysis of Sandoz’s efforts to recapture stylistically the Indian point of view is especially eloquent: Noting the copy editor’s aversion to her use of participial forms, Mari pointed out that although people from villages and cities tend to drop those forms from their vocabulary, persons who are aware of the continuous changes of life use the -ing form. The Indians, she said, were the extremists, particularly the Cheyennes, who had a pervading sense of the present, as their names often indicated: Flying Hawk, Sitting Man — even Dull Knife, which, translated literally, means Knife-that-isn’t-cutting. Participial forms are indispensible to this sense of life as a continuous thing, an endless, flow­ ing stream, Mari argued, and for that reason she objected to the editor’s attempt to eliminate them. While she looks most closely at what she calls Sandoz’s public image, Stauffer brings her subject to life through colorful personal details about her apartments, where filing boxes covered kitchen counters and chairs...

THE HORWITZ THESIS AND COMMON LAW DISCOURSE IN ENGLAND

It is the view of an appreciable number of American legal historians' that the character of judicial discourse in nineteenth century America underwent a discernible and significant change. There is rough agreement among them as to the timing of this change, and as to how American judicial discourse should be characterized both before and after it. They locate the grand or instrumentalist style of discourse in the period up to 1840 or 1850 or even the Civil War. In this period, it is said, judicial opinions were marked by a relatively free-wheeling style of argument. Judges adopted a critical approach to precedents: precedents were regarded as more or less persuasive depending on the reputation of the judge who set the precedent, but were to be followed only if in conformity to 'principle' and embodying 'sound policy'. 'Sound policy' was regarded as the promotion of commercial prosperity and economic development. So judicial opinions had an overtly instrumentalist dimension: judges openly resorted to arguments which were 'utilitarian' or 'policy-oriented' or 'political'.2 Then, in the later decades of the nineteenth century, came theformalistic style of judicial opinion. It was characterized by a closure of the sphere of discourse, the reduction of judicial argument to appeals to the authoritative. Precedents were treated as giving rise to binding rules by a process of induction; the application of these binding rules was treated as a matter of pure deduction. Judicial logic thus presented itself as inexorable, ineluctable. Meanwhile policy considerations were suppressed as extraneous and irrelevant.3 In Llewellyn's sketch of formalism: '. . the rules of law are to decide the cases; policy is for the legislature, not for the courts .... Opinions run in deductive form with an air or expression of single-line inevitability. Principle is a generalization producing order which can and should be used to prune away those anomalous cases or rules which do not

Who was John Brereley? The Identity of a Seventeenth-Century Controversialist

In the early seventeenth century there appeared in print a small group of Catholic controversial works in English written by someone calling himself ‘John Brereley, Priest’. These works were celebrated in their day because of their immense erudition and also because they introduced into religious controversy a novel style of argument that soon became fashionable among Catholics and Protestants alike: that of proving a case mainly from the admissions and self-contradictions of the opposing side. The most important work in the group and the one that established ‘Brereley’s’ chief claim to fame was—to give it the title of its secohd edition by which it is always known—The Protestants apologie for the Roman church.

Evidence for the Indonesian origins of certain elements of African culture: A review, with special reference to the arguments of A.M. Jones

The hypothesis that sea-going peoples from the general area of present-day Indonesia contributed to the formation of various aspects of African culture, and in particular to aspects of material culture, continues to be a controversial topic in African studies, and the prominent contribution by ethnomusicologists to the argument makes it of special interest to students of African music. Since it was first formulated by Frobenius at the end of the last century (Frobenius, 1898: a convenient English summary in Frobenius, 1900), new evidence has been adduced by von Hornbostel, (1964, 1971 and 1972). It is not my intention to deal with all the literature on this subject, but rather to focus on musicological and related topics and to scrutinise the validity of the style of argument employed by these authors.