Definition Of Rhetoric Research Articles

Medieval Rhetorical Education: Ethical praxis in Metalogicon

John of Salisbury (1115/20-1180) defended the liberal arts as his preferred educational system throughout Metalogicon. This article addresses the following question: what are the implications of John’s position about the relationship between rhetorical education and ethical praxis? First, Metalogicon is framed as John’s defense of rhetorical education. Second, John’s definition of rhetoric is interpreted as a synthesis of Ciceronian rhetoric and Aristotelian dialectics. Third, ethical praxis is framed by John as the telos of rhetorical education. The Cornificians served as the antithesis of John’s promotion of the traditional education system of Western Europe. Metalogicon serves as a religious teaching manual because John argued that educators should ground their actions in ethical frameworks articulated by the Catholic Church.

When We Can’t Wait on Truth: The Nature of Rhetoric in The Rhetoric of Science

When Alan Gross published The Rhetoric of Science in 1990, he helped initiate a productive controversy concerning the place of rhetoric in science studies while arguing for the continued importance of the classical rhetorical tradition. However, in his 2006 revision, Starring the Text, Gross significantly draws back the classical emphasis while making more central the place of the American analytic philosophical tradition stemming from the foundational logical writings of W.V.O Quine. This essay interrogates this shift in Gross’s writings in order to find the working definition of rhetoric that threads throughout his work. This definition, I argue, turns out to be grounded more in Quine’s holistic theory of epistemology than in any sophistical or even Aristotelian conception of language as a vehicle for advocating judgment in times of deliberation and crisis. I argue that a return to the classical emphasis on situated practice can enrich the study of the rhetoric of science and build on the significant accomplishments of Gross’s work.

The Rise and Fall of a Mechanical Rhetoric, or, What Grain Elevators Teach us About Postmodernism

I use the one-hundred-year, transatlantic circulation of Le Corbusier's grain elevator photographs to tell the story of the short but vibrant life of a mechanized rhetoric. From 1913 to 1969, these photographs were understood in the context of a mechanized rhetoric, and they starred in the iconography of modernity. From 1971 to 2010, the same photographs were contextualized by a symbolic vision of rhetoric. So contextualized, the photographs lost their prestige and became conduits through which postmodernism was introduced into architectural theory—and from there into the American academy. As a case study of rhetoric's becoming-symbolic, then, this essay foregrounds the opportunity costs of symbolic definitions of rhetoric. It suggests that the twinned introduction of symbolism and postmodernism involved a misreading of rhetorical history.

A Review of Studies on Rogerian Rhetoric and Its Implications for English Writing Instruction in East Asian Countries

This paper first introduces the theoretical source and clarifies the definition of Rogerian rhetoric, then systematically introduces its goals and corresponding strategies, and structures, analyzes the major differences between traditional and Rogerian rhetoric and summarizes the main critiques from three aspects. Finally, it focuses on presenting the related studies in English language teaching in the U.S.A. and summarizing some implications for English writing teaching in East Asian countries.

On the Term “Dunamis” in Aristotle's Definition of Rhetoric

The term dunamis, by which Aristotle defines rhetoric in the first chapter of The Art of Rhetoric, is a “power” term, as its various meanings in Aristotle’s corpus—from vernacular ones like “political influence” to strictly philosophical ones like “potentiality”—attest.1 In the Rhetoric, however, dunamis is usually translated as “ability” or “faculty,” a designation that, compared to other terms that describe persuasion in ancient Greek poetics and rhetoric (such as “bia” [“force”] or “eros” [“seduction”]), marks rhetoric as a neutral human capacity rather than the use of language entangled in the vagaries of violence and desire.2 John Kirby calls Aristotle’s definition “one of the boldest moves in the history of the philosophy of language: to redefine rhetoric, not as the use of peitho but as the study of peitho” (1990, 227). The presumption of rhetoric’s ethical neutrality implied by dunamis has indeed become commonplace in interpretations of Aristotle’s treatise itself and of rhetoric as a social phenomenon. As George Kennedy puts it in his authoritative translation of the Rhetoric, “Aristotle was the first person to recognize clearly that rhetoric as an art of communication was morally neutral, that it could be used either for good or ill” (1991, ix). In this article, I would like to probe another, perhaps not so reassuring, implication of dunamis as a term for rhetoric—that as “an ability to see all available means of persuasion,” it does not need to become (or emulate) practical oratory. In what follows, I suggest that Aristotle’s terminology, however neutral it may appear, constitutes an intellectually and politically motivated act of naming that severs rhetorical knowledge from historically specific rhetorical practices and thereby erects a protective barrier between practical rationality and discourses of democracy.

Letting Rhetoric Be:

In the closing moments of Phaedrus, Socrates announces rhetoric’s last gasp: “And now the play is played out; and of rhetoric enough” (2006, 69). Of course, news of rhetoric’s death has been greatly exaggerated. Indeed, the death and subsequent rebirth of rhetoric have been declared countless times, and debates surrounding the nature and character of rhetoric— from antiquity through the renaissance and even into the modern day— seem to continue almost interminably. In the contemporary context, such debates often flow inexorably from a constitutive indecision that marks rhetorical studies’s complicated relationship to a foundational definition of rhetoric. More often than not, after a brief foray into debates surrounding rhetoric, many theorists retreat, opting, following Robert Scott (1973) to “not define” rhetoric at all, producing an implicit rather than an explicitly conceptually articulated definition of rhetorical theory and practice, albeit in a manner that often opens up as many problems as it solves. When rhetorical theorists do take up the task of defining rhetoric, definitions often vacillate between one of two basic gambits: one stratagem frames rhetoric as the codification of a relatively banal insight about human life together (people have interests, opinions, and investments, and one should take each of these things into account if they would like to persuade or to understand why others are persuaded); the other frames rhetoric as a globally constitutive social ontology in its own right. It may be that a portion of this ambivalence is a historical accident; nevertheless, there is good reason to believe that this ambivalence is part and parcel of the project of rhetoric. In defining rhetoric one potentially also swims in the discursive equivalent of Heraclitus’s river: every definition

Königs kleine Rhetorikkunde: Überblick über die wesentlichen Aspekte und Termini der Rhetorik in Stichworten, Zitaten und Tabellen (König Roughly on Rhetoric: Overview of the Main Aspects and Termini of Rhetoric in Keywords, Quotes, and Charts)

The paper examines the main aspects and categories of the academic discipline of rhetoric, giving both various definitions and examples of practical application, and promoting finally a modern and applicable access to a rather complex subject. Therefore, it is divided in nine sections containing: antique and modern definitions of rhetoric (including its contents and aims), the five canons of production (officia oratoris), the appropriateness of speech (aptum), the rhetorical genres (genera orationis), the five canons of composition (partes orationis), the modes of persuasion, the idea of topics, argumentation and syllogisms, and finally the rhetorical devices. Each chapter combines a rough evaluation of antique and modern approaches, provides definitions and diagrams, and observes links to contemporary theories in other disciplines. The paper concludes with an outlook on both academic and practical application of rhetoric today.

On the Reception of Aristotle’s Rhetoric in Byzantium

The paper deals with the reception of Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric(Rhet. I 1355b26–27) in several Byzantine commentators of Hermogenes’and Aphthonius’ treatises. A justification of critical interpretationof this definition is to be found in the commentaries of Troilus and Athanasius(4th/5th century) as well as Sopatros (6th century) and Doxapatres(11th century), Maximus Planudes (13th/14th century) and several anonymouscommentators. The Byzantine tradition has found Aristotle’s definitionof rhetoric to be all too theoretical and insufficiently connected topractical activity, which Byzantium identified with political life.

In whose interest? A critical examination of public interest appeals made by the public accounting profession in the USA

This paper presents a critical analysis of public interest arguments employed by the USA public accounting profession. We build on prior research that deals with the public accounting profession’s public interest commitments, specifically Willmott (1990), Parker (1994), Robson et al. (1994), Roberts and Dwyer (1998), and Cooper and Robson (2006), by focusing more specifically on an analysis of the logic, authority, and emotional appeals of the profession’s rhetoric. In addition, we engage more extensively with functionalist arguments concerning market control over auditor independence and quality. Relying principally on an Aristotelian (Aristotle, Trans. 1954) definition of rhetoric and Toulmin’s (1969) model of argument, we evaluate the logic, authority and emotional appeal of these claims and present arguments and evidence in rebuttal. Our analysis indicates that, although, public interest claims are not totally void of merit, without consistent ethical performance by accounting professionals, their public interest rhetoric rings hollow, damaging the reputation of the profession as a whole and laying the foundation for further regulatory restrictions.

Race, Rhetoric, and Technology

This article engages disciplinary (and interdisciplinary) conversations at the intersections of race, rhetoric, technology, and technical communication and offers a case study of curriculum development that supports disciplinary inquiry at these complex interstices. Specifically, informed by a decolonial framework, this article discusses the status of cultural and critical race studies in technical communication scholarship; tentative definitions of race, rhetoric, and technology; the cultural usability research conducted and located accountability in the process of designing a graduate course that studies rhetorics of race and technology; and the implications of this inquiry for the discipline, field, and practices of technical communication.

Rhetorical Definition—A French Initiative

When in his preface to the Histoire de la rhetorique Marc Fumaroli states that the project itself is overambitious and premature, he proceeds to justify his judgment by listing the complications of rhetorical definition: rhetoric is Protean in nature, and in this it simply matches the fluidity of the phenom ena of speech,parole; it is oxymoronic as the science of the uncertain, trying to ally incertitude of topic with intelligibility of explanation; it intricates theoria and ergon, the concept of parole with an engagement with parole in act. Long a part of early education, it generates grace in adult expres sion, finesse. It is as well a primary source for reflection on communication phenomena. It is manifest in works of genius, yet, it is democratic in its accessibility; it is perdurable, remarkably persistent through change; and, it recognizes that the sharing and abusing of parole are intimately bound together. Finally rhetoric stimulates, for it may illumine the contempo rary of literature and the arts, an exile that poses for us the issue of, perhaps intractable, cultural decline (Fumaroli 1999, 2-3).

Communication Theory for Professional Communications: Discourse Elements in Contemporary Marketing, PR and Advertising Strategies

This article examines elements of discourse in professional communication using examples of marketing, PR, and advertising focusing on the communicative functions that serve the major aims of each of the professional communication fields we define as values. It follows the rhetorical definition of communication as a persuasive figure of speech and demonstrates this impact in examples. This professional mass media communication in marketing, PR, and advertising serves commercial interests. It aims to incorporate the audience into the flow of discourses that is set up for serving the commercial interests.

The Art of Reasoning Well: Ramist Logic at Work in Paradise Lost

This article discusses the influence that Milton's education at Christ's College, Cambridge, had upon his poetry in Paradise Lost. Historicist criticism of Milton's works has tended to focus on political and theological concerns, whilst other approaches, where logic has been considered, have done so according to its current meaning over an early-modern conception. This article aims to reorientate current views of the role of logic in early-modern thought by examining definitions of logic and rhetoric within early-modern manuals; specifically it focuses on Ramist manuals, as Milton's own Art of Logic was based on the precepts of the French logician and pedagogical reformer, Petrus Ramus. Expanding on this, the article explores bibliographic material, including handwritten marginalia and printed paratextual apparatus, to suggest how these texts were physically approached in this period. The article argues that the education individuals received in logic imbued within them a way of approaching and analysing any and every subject at hand including literature, defining both how literary texts were written in this period and also how they were read and understood by their audience. Having established how logic was conceived of in the early-modern period and how this functioned, the article concludes by putting these precepts to work in a practical way, using them as a means of analysing Milton's poetry in an historically appropriate way. In doing so, the article argues for a new methodological approach within Milton criticism, using early-modern logical method as a means of reaching historically sound stylistic appreciations of Milton's works.

Rhetorical Definition: A French Initiative

When in his preface to the Histoire de la rhetorique Marc Fumaroli states that the project itself is overambitious and premature, he proceeds to justify his judgment by listing the complications of rhetorical definition: rhetoric is Protean in nature, and in this it simply matches the fluidity of the phenom ena of speech,parole; it is oxymoronic as the science of the uncertain, trying to ally incertitude of topic with intelligibility of explanation; it intricates theoria and ergon, the concept of parole with an engagement with parole in act. Long a part of early education, it generates grace in adult expres sion, finesse. It is as well a primary source for reflection on communication phenomena. It is manifest in works of genius, yet, it is democratic in its accessibility; it is perdurable, remarkably persistent through change; and, it recognizes that the sharing and abusing of parole are intimately bound together. Finally rhetoric stimulates, for it may illumine the contempo rary of literature and the arts, an exile that poses for us the issue of, perhaps intractable, cultural decline (Fumaroli 1999, 2-3).

Rhetorical Definition: A French Initiative

Rhetorical Definition: A French Initiative

Rhetorical Definition: A French Initiative

Rhetorical Definition: A French Initiative

Towards a theory for professional communications. Discourse and communication elements in contemporary marketing and pr strategies.

This article examines elements of discourse in professional communication using examples of marketing, PR, and advertising focusing on the communicative functions that serve the major aims of each of the professional communication fields we define as values. It follows the rhetorical definition of communication as a persuasive figure of speech and demonstrates this impact in examples. This professional mass media communication in marketing, PR, and advertising serves commercial interests. It aims to incorporate the audience into the flow of discourses that is set up for serving the commercial interests.

Judgment, Progression, and Ethics in Portrait Narratives: The Case of Alice Munro's "Prue"

Judgment, Progression, and Ethics in Portrait Narratives:The Case of Alice Munro's "Prue" James Phelan Over the past twenty years, there has been much good work done on narrative ethics by critics such as Martha Nussbaum (1990), J. Hillis Miller (1987), Wayne Booth (1988), Adam Newton (1995), and Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan (2002, 2005), to name just a few. One of the common features of this work is the contention that narrative and ethics are intertwined phenomena, that narrative is an excellent site for explorations of and inquiries into ethics. Narrative, in this view, is a way of thinking about ethics and ethical action. In this essay, I want to extend some of my own work on these issues, work that I have elsewhere called "rhetorical literary ethics" (Phelan 2004) by looking at the relation between rhetorical form and ethics in a hybrid genre that I call portrait narrative, with Alice Munro's "Prue" as my test case. As I describe the hybrid form, I shall explain what I mean by both rhetorical form and rhetorical ethics, and I shall argue for the central place of narrative progressions and narrative judgments in our understanding of form, ethics, and their interrelation. Furthermore, I shall use my account of the portrait narrative and of the interrelation of rhetorical form and rhetorical ethics in order to elucidate Munro's significant experiment with the short story in what we might call the post-epiphany age. I begin with an approach to three possible qualities of literary texts, narrativity, lyricality, and portraiture, and with the significance of progression and judgment for each. Just as two texts we call narratives may have different degrees of narrativity, so too may two texts we call lyric poems have different degrees of lyricality, and two we call character portraits have different degrees of portraiture. The larger point, which will prove significant for the claims I want to make about hybrid forms, is that my accounts of narrativity, lyricality, and portraiture are [End Page 115] not meant to apply perfectly to individual texts but, rather, are meant to articulate the properties (both textual and experiential, as I shall argue) by which we determine degrees of narrativity, lyricality, and portraiture. By progression I mean the synthesis of the textual mechanisms that generate and guide a narrative's movement from beginning through middle to end with the trajectory of the audience's response to that movement. By judgments I mean decisions of three kinds that an implied author guides —to greater and lesser degrees from one narrative to the next —the authorial audience to make and that often overlap. The three are (1) interpretive judgments about how to understand a particular character, event, or narrational act; (2) ethical judgments about the values displayed by characters, narrators, and authors; and (3) aesthetic judgments about not simply the beauty but rather the overall quality of the experience that the narrative offers us. The ways in which progression and judgment interact leads me to the ways in which my rhetorical approach theorizes narrativity, portraiture, and lyricality.1 A rhetorical understanding of narrativity is tied to both the rhetorical definition of narrative (somebody telling somebody else on some occasion and for some purpose that something happened) and the concept of narrative progression. From this perspective, narrativity is a double-layered phenomenon, involving both a dynamics of character, event, and telling and a dynamics of audience response. The phrase "somebody telling ... that something happened" gets at the first layer: narrative involves the report of a sequence of related events during which the characters and/or their situations undergo some change. As I have discussed elsewhere (Phelan 1989), the report of that change typically proceeds through the introduction, complication, and resolution (in whole or in part) of unstable situations within, between, or among the characters. These dynamics of instability may be accompanied by a dynamics of tension in the telling —unstable relations among authors, narrators, and audiences; the interaction of the two sets of dynamics, as in narratives that employ unreliable narration, may have significant consequences for our understanding of the "something that happened." [End Page 116] Turning to the second layer, the dynamics of audience response (or...

Rhetoric and anthropology

This essay deals with the relationship between rhetoric and anthropology, along three main lines of argument. The author offers reflections on the relationship between the two fields, highlighting contentious intersections, as in the case of the French anthropological tradition. He proposes to weigh the rhetorical definition of ‘figure’ or ‘trope’, and to revisit these rhetorical concepts. He then turns to a case of social performance, that of perpetrators of human rights abuses in South Africa, in an attempt to show how rhetoric engages with a seemingly non-rhetorical, social practice.

Female Suicide, Subjectivity and the State in Eighteenth‐Century China

This article examines the social and political significance of female suicide in Qing Dynasty China and its implications for women's agency, feminine subjectivity and the state's interpretation of violence. Tracing the development of state and elite interpretations of the propriety of women's suicides, it situates the discourse on female suicide in the context of state efforts to control the definition and enactment of moralised violence and pervasive rhetoric about women's incapacity for moral agency. Demonstrating the problematic ethical and judicial status of suicides committed in the wake of a violation of chastity, in particular, it argues that such suicides represented a distinctively female definition of moral order and the role of violence within it.