Rhetorical Framework Research Articles

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An Imagined Brotherhood: The Rhetorical Framework and Prospects for China–Taiwan Relations

Current China–Taiwan relations are marked by a worrisome dynamic, as there is no convergence of rhetoric between the two sides. How can China and Taiwan build healthy relations given they disagree on many essential issues? More importantly, in what ways could the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of Taiwan come up with a new framework, despite its recent setback in Taiwan's 2018 mid‐term elections, to engage a rising China? There is an urgent need for a framework of interaction, especially as the DPP, the ruling party, emphasizes the centrality of Taiwan's sovereignty and democratic systems in contrast to an increasingly assertive China under Xi. Drawing on sources from China and Taiwan and current literature on international relations, this study lays out a roadmap that enables both sides to step back from rivalry and move toward mutual accommodation in Asia. This article sets forth a framework of brotherhood for China–Taiwan relations in which both sides maintain their political identities while preserving cultural affinity. It traces the development of official discourse between China and Taiwan, and provides a guideline for how to construct a rhetorical common ground: a family framework that can transform China–Taiwan relations into an imagined brotherhood. In turn, this article provides policy implications for the DPP, so it can proactively engage in political conversations with Beijing while maintaining space for rhetorical maneuvers.

“The Only Thing That’s Real Is Me”: CM Punk and the Rhetorical Framework of the American Dream

ABSTRACT Although the world of professional wrestling is characterized as larger than life, a speech by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) wrestler Phillip Brooks appeared to cross the line between fantasy and reality. Brooks’ speech, instead of being character driven, focused on his lack of promotion despite his tenure of hard work. He broke character, addressing specific elements of backstage politics which affected his actual self rather than the character he portrays, CM Punk. The speech makes apparent the pieces of the previously shrouded oppressive WWE machine. The text is rhetorically examined from the perspective of mythological criticism. Analysis revealed that the speech is an enactment of the myth of the American Dream, where Brooks plays the role of the American Adam. Brooks’ Adam, however, is not the idealistic sprite typical of Horatio Alger’s work, but a darker Adam who has experienced the Fall. Brooks’ speech provides a basis for the expansion of the myth as an exhortation for the oppressed to speak up in order to achieve their own American Dreams.

The politics of elite anxiety: Carter Glass and American financial policy

ABSTRACT Carter Glass played an important role in every financial question that the U.S. Congress addressed from the Federal Reserve Act through the New Deal. Although Glass is often remembered today as a reformer, he was fundamentally a reactionary whose foremost impulse was ensuring that the banking system remained the instrument of financial elites. He promoted legislation that upheld elite banking interests, and employed a rhetorical framework that denigrated subordinate groups and their allegedly unsound financial ideas. But the Great Depression left the bankers disgraced and discredited orthodoxies that Glass insisted were sacrosanct.

South Korea’s and Taiwan’s Territorial Disputes with Japan, 1990s to 2018

South Korea and Taiwan are former Japanese colonies that have undergone similar processes of state-building since WWII. But they have chosen different rhetorical frameworks in their maritime disputes with Japan. In South Korea, negotiating with Japan can be viewed as threatening the country’s independence and pride, whereas in the Taiwanese government, cooperation with Japan is considered mutually beneficial. Why have these two countries taken such divergent stances toward Japan? This article examines the territorial disputes between South Korea and Japan over Dokdo, and between Taiwan and Japan over the Senkaku Islands. It sets forth a rhetorical framework of comparison, and it proposes a constructivist perspective in understanding South Korea’s and Taiwan’s legitimation strategies toward Japan from the late 1990s to 2018. This comparative study suggests that the differences between their legitimation strategies can be traced to their different colonial experiences with Japan.

Al-Mustanṣir billāh al-Ḥafṣī: Triumph and troubles of the Last Caliph of Islam

ABSTRACT This article argues that the prestige achieved by the Ḥafṣid caliph al-Mustanṣir (1249–1277 CE) was more apparent than real, and should be critically evaluated against the lateness of most Ifrīqiyan sources and their authors’ commitments to dynastic panegyric, local history, and other literary genres. First of all, al-Mustanṣir was operating in a rhetorical and aspirational framework established by his father, Abū Zakarīyāʾ (r. 1229–1249 CE), who was already being addressed as caliph in the 1230s. The various pledges of allegiance (bayʿa-s) received by the caliph from Andalusi or Maghribi rulers reflected temporary appeals for Ḥafṣid aid in the 1250s and 60s rather than a recognition of the merits of al- Mustanṣir’s claim, while the famous bayʿa of Mecca was almost certainly a Ḥafṣid forgery. Furthermore, the prestige building projects of al- Mustanṣir’s reign took place against a backdrop of economic stagnation, oppressive taxation and the debilitating financial exactions imposed by the Crusade of Louis IX in 1270. The swift collapse of the caliph’s authority after al-Mustanṣir’s death suggests just how ephemeral Ḥafṣid power really was, even if future members of his dynasty would hold onto his titles for over a century.

Subjective Basis for Elucidating Communication in the Personalistic Perspective

The paper examines man’s involvement in the communication process. While elucidating communication one needs to take into account the subjective factors which condition its existence. The article particularly highlights the personal dimension of human existence and an integrated action of his powers thanks to which man constitutes the subject and motive for all forms of communication activity. The basic types of communication are affected by virtue of a relation to human powers: intellective-cognitive and volitive-emotive. Yet, it is persuasive communication that, methodologically ordered within the framework of rhetoric, seems to fully recognize the communication determinants characteristic of man’s nature. The progressing technicization of the media also needs to be perceived through an integrated personalistic perspective accepting the subjective determinants of man participating in the communication process.

The legitimate expectation of regulatory stability under the Energy Charter Treaty

AbstractOne of the main catalysts for the shift towards renewable energies has been the practice of support schemes in a key number of EU member states. Some of these states have since withdrawn or revoked much of their original support, which has resulted in investment treaty arbitrations being filed against them under the Energy Charter Treaty. Arguably, a balance should be found between investors’ legitimate expectations concerning the stability of the legal framework and the host states’ right to adapt regulations to new needs. This can be achieved by clarifying and delimiting the principle of fair and equitable treatment, and by encapsulating it in a more precise set of rules. Due to its open character, this principle could otherwise become too intrusive a standard of judicial review for the exercise of sovereign power by host states. It could be diluted into a rhetorical framework inviting uncertainty and subjective judgment. While the focus of this article is on energy, the concern for legal stability equally applies to all those sectors where large upfront investments are required, which can only be recouped in the long run.

Revision Strategy and Self-Diagnosis in Italian L1 and L2 Argumentative Essays

The present study investigates the effects of Revision Strategy (RS) on Argumentative Essay (AE) writing. Specifically, the study provides an analysis of 58 short AEs written by L1 and L2 university students. Two different levels of errors are examined: linguistic (Spelling, (Morpho)syntax, Lexicon, Syntax, Punctuation) and structure (Text structure and Coherence) errors, in order to measure how RS influences the texts. The comparison between RS and non-RS samples shows a significant difference in favour of texts with RS. In fact, we can surmise that RS positively influences text production both in L1 and L2 writing. In the third section we provide a quantitative analysis of the errors and we find some common issues within the specific rhetorical and linguistic framework of AE.

Analysis of the Prime Minster Abdulla Hamdok’s Speech from Rhetoric and Linguistic Perspective

The study analyzes the speech of the Prime Minster Abdulla Hamdok at United Nations General Assembly which has four parts, namely, the prologue, the narrative, the proof, and the epilogue from rhetorical and linguistics perspective. It explains the term rhetoric, political discourse and enumerates the rhetorical devices. It is based on rhetoric framework following Aristotle's three-stage model entailing three proofs: pathos which stimulates emotion, ethos which entails credibility and logos which appeals logic. The study investigates the formulation of Hamdok’s speech topics which compromises issues about Sudan’s peaceful revolution, the support from international community, fostering educational system and health care from human resources investment perspective, activating the women role in the government and erasing the name of Sudan from the roster of countries supported and sponsored terrorism. The examination of Hamdok’s speech reveals that he implements the three proofs of rhetoric; he arranges his speech as dramatic plot; he uses various rhetoric devices, various sentences length, formal Arabic and past simple, modality and future form.

Move Confirmation and Teaching Strategy Identification of English Student-Teachers’ Lesson Plans in the Philippines: A Rhetorical Framework for Novice Teachers

Lesson planning is one of the most important skills of a teacher in the Philippines. The Department of Education (DepEd) mandates that a teacher is not allowed to teach without a lesson plan. Hence, all the Teacher Education Institutions (TEIs) ensure that every education student can produce well-planned lessons even before the Teaching Internship course. Despite its relevance, no one has attempted to investigate the lesson plan structure using move analysis. Moreover, a preliminary survey reveals that many of the English student-teachers find it difficult to produce lesson plans. Therefore, this study explored 22 Detailed Lesson Plans (DLPs) produced by English student-teacher graduates of a TEI through move confirmation and teaching strategy identification, which are based on the 5-part lesson plan structure prescribed by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) for the student-teachers. The study is anchored on Swalesean genre analysis that combines rhetoric and linguistics to explain genre as grounded in shared communicative purposes and discoverable through text analysis. Based on the analysis, the five parts or moves were confirmed with their constituent teaching strategies and teaching strategy cycle identified. The findings may provide TEI teachers with insight into effective instructional strategies to help students acquire pragmatic knowledge of the rhetorical structure of lesson plans. A Lesson Plan Framework for English novice teachers is proposed as a guide to offer a frame for structuring their planning of the lessons and a pool of words that can help them in writing the lesson plans. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.18.12.10

Slægtskabsreguleringer. Feministisk retsretorik som analyseramme og dens potentiale for at identificere lovens performative effekter

Involuntary childlessness is a well-known phenomenon, and in Denmark, every twelfth child is born through the use of assisted reproduction. Denmark is currently positioned as one of the key global actors both as far as the use of in-vitro ­fertilization (IVF) is concerned as well as within the global ­market in sperm and reproductive technologies. In this article, the authors develop a feminist legal rhetorical framework to discuss how the Danish law and ethical guidelines on adoption and assisted reproduction rhetorically produce different master plots on “natural,” “artificial,” and “monstrous” forms of kinship. The authors conclude with a discussion of the potential that a feminist legal rhetorical framework holds, including its ability to analyze how rhetorical figures and metaphors legitimize certain types of kinship as well as the ability to raise new and provo­cative questions related to gender equality within the law

The Four Speeches Every Youth Leader Has to Know

This article outlines a public rhetoric for youth ministry in an era of ecclesial agoraphobia. The article draws on the findings of a larger research project titled The Four Speeches Every Leader Has to Know. With the use of rhetorical theory, analysis of actual speeches, and a phenomenological and narrative approach to leadership and speaking, this research project has developed a four speeches-typology – the opening speech, the executioner speech, the consolation speech, and the farewell speech. The article uses this typology within the framework of a biblical rhetoric, looking at the speeches of Jesus, to analyse how the four speeches of Jesus may help the youth leader to address the transitory lives of young people in a credible way.

L1 Literacy Practices’ Impact on L2 Text Organization

Situated within the Intercultural Rhetoric (IR) framework, this study uses text linguistic analysis of Arab students’ English academic papers to investigate the transfer of the Arabic language instruction practices into ESL written texts. The analysis involves a comparison of surface linguistic features (syntactic relations and cohesive devices) in a corpus of Arab students and English-speaking students’ papers. Furthermore, the Arabic and English-speaking students completed surveys about the skills emphasized in their L1 classrooms. It is believed that the methods of writing instruction in Arabic, which are influenced by diglossia, are transferred into ESL written texts. The results show that the Arabic speaking and English-speaking students’ texts exhibit differences at the rhetorical level. The characteristics of the ESL texts are similar to Arabic native texts which suggest a transfer of L1 learned writing methods into L2 texts. The findings from the linguistic analysis and the data obtained from the surveys are discussed with reference to Arabic teaching methodology, diglossia, orality, and learning experience transfer from Arabic into English.

Rhetorical Styles in Knowledge Communication

The author of the article applied the rhetorical framework of three styles (genera dicendi) to highlight some of the communicative practices employed in academic discourse. By utilising the persuasive resources of the plain style, authors focus on the rhetorical purpose of docere/probare, i.e. to teach/to prove. The sober matter-of-factness of the plain style suggests to readers that there is no style at all, convincing them that the content reflects reality without any rhetorical mediation. In choosing the persuasive means of the middle style, researchers combine epistemic and aesthetic goals, trying to reach the rhetoric purpose of delectare, i.e. to delight. An engaging style helps them draw readers into intellectually complex issues. The grand style facilitates the reaching of the rhetorical purpose of movere, i.e. to move or induce action. It serves to present science as a helpful resource for readers to make decisions in their lives, hence it is likely to be used by engaged scholars and public intellectuals.

Defiling the Church: The Impact of Mmusuo in Akan Conception

Many Christian churches in parts of Ghana dominated by Akans do not allow corpses to be brought inside the church during funerals services. Others face constant and vehement objection when it is done. Cultural differences on the subject have fuelled heated disputes that have led in some cases to severe congregational division. Opposition is often sustained by a culturally biased approach to biblical texts concerning sacredness and defilement as related to Old Testament sanctuary and temple ritual. Particularly, the religious philosophy of mmusuo provides the psycho-emotive motivation from which many Akan Christians vehemently oppose the practice as sacrilegious. It also provides an analytical and rhetorical framework for appropriating various biblical passages relating to religious sacrilege. This paper unpacks this framework and proposes effectively contextualized theology as a means of avoiding such erroneous conflations and resolving the disputes that arise at the interface of African culture and Christian religion, especially in multicultural congregations.

Periodização imperativa: retórica, teoria e história literária

O artigo trata das implicações teórico-críticas da renovação dos estudos de retórica, com atenção para os estudos de João Hansen, Alcir Pécora, Adma Muhana, Hélio Alves e Belmiro Pereira. Numa primeira parte, discutimos esquematicamente a limitação das categorias literárias para abordagem de textos anteriores ao conceito “teórico” de literatura; numa segunda, fazemos observações para um modelo de estudo que atenda ao imperativo cognitivo da discriminação de períodos e que não recaia naquelas limitações epistêmicas. Trata-se de pensar a possibilidade de periodizar a partir dos estudos de retórica, tomando por horizonte a elaboração de uma ideia de “espaço ético-retórico” como ferramenta periodológica. (Projeto Fapesp No. 2017/11260-4.)

Transference of National Rhetorical Strategies and Argumentation Patterns Evidence From an Advanced English Class of L1 Russian Speakers

The past decade has seen a powerful trend in Russian tertiary education towards soft skills development among university students, favouring them over hard skills. The traditional Russian higher education model is characterised by focusing primarily, if not exclusively, on hard skills. However, with the pressing need to internationalise Russian universities so that they fit into the global education and research landscape, there emerged a need for a shift. An immediate response to the challenge consisted in ‘‘importing’’ British and American curricula to introduce classes of Academic Writing and, later, Academic Public Speaking in Russian universities. However, the attempts to blindly transplant a foreign rhetorical tradition have proved to be misguided. Although both the Anglo-Saxon and Russian academic rhetorics are rooted in the Greek culture, their evolution over the centuries resulted in two separate and non-identical rhetorical traditions. The differences are particularly striking when a student, an instructor or a researcher who was raised in a Russian academic environment is taught or forced to adopt Anglo-Saxon conventions. The resulting tension can be most efficiently addressed by an adjustment of the existing ‘‘domestic’’ conventions and creation of a customised rather than one-size-fits-all curriculum. To be able to take into account the ‘‘domestic’’ conventions, there has to be an inventory of them. The present paper reflects research conducted within the framework of contrastive rhetoric, as proposed by R. Kaplan in his seminal ‘‘doodle paper’’ (Kaplan 1966) which threw into spotlight a need to identify national patterns and build on them when teaching academic writing in English to international students. We start on the premise that before tackling the language issues, the course should address rhetorical strategies and argumentation patterns, as errors in these areas often prove to be a bigger barrier to understanding than purely linguistic mistakes. We analyse a sampling of English-language argumentative essays written by an advanced English class of Russian L1 speakers before they received any instruction in academic writing. We then identify the emergent rhetorical patterns and argumentation chosen by the students. We hypothesise that students will transfer the accepted Russian argumentation patterns and rhetorical strategies into their English language essay.

Improving Visual Communication of Weather Forecasts with Rhetoric

Abstract Communicating weather-related hazards to the public can be a challenge for meteorologists, particularly given the nature of confidence levels in forecasting science. Despite these challenges, communicating high-impact weather remains extremely important because it has implications for the safety, health, and resilience of impacted communities. Because the dynamics of this issue are complex, solutions to weather hazard communication benefit from interdisciplinary solutions and multiple types of expertise. Our work demonstrates how rhetoric, a foundational communication discipline, can be applied to improving weather forecast communication. Applying a rhetorical framework allows the identification of communication strategies that not only invite public involvement but encourage users to act as conduits for weather information distribution. As a result, trust can be developed between the National Weather Service (NWS) and public audiences. The initial results support the hypothesis that effective public communication from NWS messaging can be improved by incorporating the concept of “commonplaces,” which are the expressions of beliefs, values, and norms that construct community attitudes toward weather or natural hazard forecasts, into visual communication techniques such as NWS Weather Stories.

A Pragama-Linguistic Study of Hyperbole in English Political Discourse

Within figurative language research, tropes such as metaphor and irony have received thegreatest amount of attention, while other non-literal forms, like hyperbole, have beenrelatively ignored as a result of such intensive research effort.Although hyperbole has been, since antiquity, one of the many figures of speech discussedwithin the general framework of rhetoric, the emphasis has been primarily laid on definingand classifying this trope. In contemporary language research, the paucity of studiesaddressing hyperbole is most notable, probably because in other disciplines it has beenconsidered a classic trope whose study belongs to that of rhetoric. Thus, no serious attentionhas been paid to the study of hyperbole in the domains of linguistics, psychology, philosophyor literary criticism. Most of the empirical work on exaggeration has involved comparisons offrequency and use in different cultures.This study focuses on the notion of hyperbole in political speeches, and attempts to offer itselfas a tentative contribution to the field of figurative language and political discourse analysis.Throughout the study hyperbole will be used synonymously with exaggeration andoverstatement.The present study aims at finding out how hyperbolic expressions are identified and presentedin English political discourse at linguistic and pragmatic levels.