Rhetorical Logic Research Articles

Rewriting the plan of the world: Peter Thiel’s messianic rhetoric and the end of progressive neoliberalism

ABSTRACT Following the 2007–8 financial crisis, far-Right conservatives advanced a reactionary political turn, seeking to replace the prevailing political order, what Nancy Fraser calls “progressive neoliberalism,” with an overtly exclusionary and rapacious form of capitalism. This article investigates how entrepreneur Peter Thiel sought to shape this transition, adopting a messianic rhetoric to return capitalism to its essential principles. Employing Giorgio Agamben’s study of Saint Paul, I argue that Thiel employed a Pauline stance to realize a plērōma, or fullness, of capitalism, preserving the profit motive while jettisoning neoliberalism’s deployment of progressivism. In this analysis, I build upon rhetorical scholars’ exploration of contemporary neoliberal discourse, framing the billionaire rhetor as a uniquely agentive figure in twenty-first-century capitalism and positing neoliberalism as an eminently versatile rhetorical logic capable of operationalizing arguments from across the political spectrum.

US v. Thind and the Rhetorical Labors of “Where Are You From?”

This paper returns to United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind to take a closer look at the rhetorical logics within the case to understand how race-making discourses solidify the place of South Asian Americans within racial hierarchies. The author contends, an engagement with the rhetorical racialization of Bhagat Singh Thind throughout his trial provides an opportunity to unravel the racial dimensions of the question “Where are you from?”—a kind of historical origin story and illumination of the work of a phrase endemic to the Asian American experience. The question is deployed as a synecdochal framework for capturing the configuration of ocular and geographic ways Thind, and Asian Americans generally, are racialized. This essay argues, through a rhetorical criticism of Thind’s brief, Justice George Sutherland’s majority opinion, and the US brief against Thind, the Supreme Court deployed spatial and temporal discourses as rhetorical mechanisms that racially sutured Thind to a particular spacetime beyond the ostensible boundaries of whiteness. Tracing these discourses illuminates how Thind’s brownness became a coded index of white supremacist conceptions of origin, contributing to a conceptual collapse between the ocular, spatial, and temporal. The paper also argues, the oft-cited phrase “Where are you from?” functions as a rhetorical process of producing race that rests upon spatiotemporal assumptions. The question operates as a racial-ontological query to locate the primacy of whiteness and dislocate “questionably ethnic” people. Interrogating the racial and rhetorical labors of “Where are you from?” shifts the query from the status of a microaggression to a powerful practice of racialization.

“All different, all exactly alike”: identity, geopolitics, and narrative foreclosure in Voyage in the Dark and Good Morning, Midnight

ABSTRACT This essay interrogates Jean Rhys’s geographically displaced, white Creole protagonists and their attempts at self-definition by examining narrative foreclosure and depictions of spatiality in Voyage in the Dark (1934) and Good Morning, Midnight (1939). By redeploying the rhetoric of European imperialism, often through the lens of mapping, Rhys shows how colonial subjects have been constrained by the imposition of colonial narratives and designations that cast them as “others.” The accounts of physical spaces and the language of peers and strangers reflect an imperialist, geopolitical ideology that inflicts psychological and material harm upon Rhys’s marginalized characters. Rhys exposes the flawed logic of geopolitical rhetoric that spatially and psychologically confine and define her characters; in so doing, Rhys takes away some of its power and shows that much of this colonialist rhetoric is founded upon misrecognition and the conflation of different geographic regions.

Nonfictionality, Function, and Salience

Focusing on different treatments of the same nonfictional entity, Huntington’s disease, in two global fictions, Ian McEwan’s Saturday (2005) and Lisa Genova’s Inside the O’Briens (2015), this paper seeks to understand the affective, ethical, and aesthetic dimensions of crucial problematic moments in each. It deploys the concepts of status (fictional, nonfictional, or a blurring of the two), function (how does the particular element contribute to the larger narrative purpose) and salience (how significant is that function for that larger purpose) in order unpack the rhetorical logic of those passages. This unpacking leads to a more positive view of McEwan’s construction of Saturday than the one offered by many of McEwan’s previous critics as well as a general defense of Genova’s construction of Inside the O’Briens. More generally, the essay offers new insights into the interaction of local nonfiction and global fiction.

Antoinette Deshoulières’s Cat

AbstractThis article examines the poet Antoinette Deshoulières’s (1638–94) interventions in a number of querelles. It focuses on a series of poems that appeared in 1678–79, early in her career, and written as if from her pet cat. Often dismissed for their frivolity, these poems instead reveal Deshoulières’s engagement with the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns and the debates about the animal machine. While such interventions constituted an important strategy for making a name for herself, they are characterized by elusiveness. Although that elusiveness has been read as a gendered strategy of modesty, this article shows instead that her equivocal and even parodic, burlesque way of intervening in the two quarrels is consistent with her skepticism and presents readers with a hermeneutical challenge that disrupts the rhetorical logic of a quarrel. Deshoulières’s interventions invite us to reflect on the roles of gender, genre, and interpretation in early modern quarrels and their study.

Diction and Message Logic in the Podcast of Deddy Corbuzier in Episode "Malih, Pesan Pedas Tuk Ade Londok"

This study aims to identify diction which is related to message logic in communicating on social media. The identification is carried out based on Deddy Corbuzier’s podcast that is aired on YouTube. The analysis of diction is an interesting study when, as one of the reasons, it is related to the efforts to effectively convey messages that are beneficial to a society. This study combines the concept of diction and Message Logic Theory, particularly "message design logic." The method applied is observation on the data source in the form of a video recording with note-taking techniques by which identification, classification and data reduction could be carried out. There are two main results in this study. First, the diction includes general words consisting of graded words and abstract words, and particular words consisting of proper names and the words that have suggestive power. Second, the dominant message logic that appears in Deddy Corbuzier's podcast episode "Malih, Pesan Pedas Tuk Ade Londok” (Malih, Sharp Message for Ade Londok) is expressive logic and rhetorical logic. The implication of this research on diction and communication logic is a description of the importance of choosing the right words in public spaces. This study also recommends other researchers to do further researches by using more speech data so that public communication patterns can be mapped better.

2000년 이후 독도관련 역사학 분야 연구의 성과와 향후 과제

The purpose of this study is to understand the overall tendency of Dokdo research in Korea and then to examine the current status and tasks of Dokdo research in the field of history for about 20 years since 2000. While more than 200 research institutes and related organizations in Dokdo are establishe d, Japan shows only a few research centers, and the number of researchers in Korea is about 10 times than Japan the research results are remarkably high. Nevertheless, Japan has been pushing our loopholes in terms of researc h, spreading the distorted logic of rhetoric that "Dukdo is a unique territory of Japan that is obvious historically and internationally, and that Korea is currently illegally occupied" in Japanese society generalizing their logic. Altho ugh more than 100 studies on Dokdo have been poured out every year, Japan's distortion claims and fictions have not been clearly objectively neutral ized over various issues. First, the Dokdo study in Korea has resulted in the research result that denies the "unique territorial discussion" that the Japanese government claims since 2000. This is the influence of the study by conscientious scholars in Japan and the recently increased research based on Japanese historical record. Second, there is no clear basis for criticizing the claim of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in "10 Points to understand the Takeshima proble m" in relation to the issue of Dokdo sovereignty. This is a part of Japan's logic that gradually complements the blind spot, but it is necessary to complet e the logic that clearly neutralizes historical and geographical international law. Third, in the Dokdo study, it is too concentrated on specific issues such as the Ahn Yong-bok case and the time of Dokdo in 1905. In order to prove the unfairness of Japanese logic and the fiction of "unique territorial debate" and "Terra Nullius - unpreemption theory" claimed by Japan, we should find the evidence of our effective control of Dokdo as more empirical. Fourth, despite the active progress of many new studies, it is necessary to point out the problems following the existing studies and the indiscriminate citation of existing previous studies. Many studies still depend on the recopyi ng the materials from previous or existing researchers, which is a part to be self-reliant, and, it is time to study toward a new viewpoint to overcome the limitations of previous studies. This is not only the responsibility of our research climate, which is evaluate d by short-term performance and quantitative scale, but at least the Dokdo study with national pride should be directed toward a new study method out of repeating past research results. It is necessary to change the existing research and analysis method only to say the same words, or to avoid indiscri minate citation and speculative analysis on raw material interpretation.

“Traditions” from Folklore Studies to Media Product and the Beginnings of Broadcasting in Romania

The rhetorical logic of the discourse which is currently building the image of the junction between tradition and nation (and of the concepts thus required) is also due to processing this discourse in the media. That is to say that the connection between media communication and the political instrumentalization of traditions as a domain of national constructs has offered proper soil for shaping the political and ideological narratives based on nation. The use of some concepts, such as nation, national culture, traditions and folklore in the first decades of the 20th century, and their instrumentalization as radio products, created the premises and particularly the pattern of some specific discursive constructions regarding the nation- state. These were meant to be integrated, embraced and, especially, reproduced on a large scale. Therefore, the discourse focused on national identity – with all its constitutive elements (the state, the language, the history and traditions) – could disseminate a unique hypostasis, shaped under political control, which thus legitimated it. From 1928, the year when the first radio programs were broadcast, until directly after the 1950s, when the recording of the radio programs on magnetic tape was a common professional practice, the only documents that could be considered today are the written texts of the radio programs (conferences, educational or informative programs, political, agricultural news, etc.). Between 1925, when The Romanian Society of Radiotelephony was established, and 1948, the year when the communist regime officially came into power, Romanian radio programs broadcast discourses on a broad range of topics and for a large audience. The present study focuses on the ethnological one. We are interested in how the ethnological discourse rooted in the aforementioned time period also built a media hypostasis for addressing the entire society, and in how programs dedicated to “traditions” bear the signs of this structuring process.

The “Human Rights Activist” Identity in the Axiology and Social Practice of Alexander Esenin-Volpin

The object of the research is the social position and personal axiology of the poet, philosopher and mathematician Alexander Esenin-Volpin. From the second half of the 1960s to the mid-1980s, the human rights movement constituted the core of the Soviet dissidence, and an analysis of the personal axiology and social position of the movement founder permits to understand the specifics of collective identity and of the “human rights activist” behavior model. The purpose of this work is to identify the origins and specificity of the “human rights activist” behavioral pattern, which gradually replaced the “defender” model from nonconformist rhetoric and social practice, and to characterize the axiology and typology of human rights protection. The Legal Note and the Free Philosophical Tractate by Volpin served as the material for this study.The author claims that the “human rights activist” model of social behavior emerged in the practice of nonconformists during the Sinyavsky—Daniel trial. It differs from the “defender” model implemented by the liberal intelligentsia in the Brodsky case. The “defender” is guided by the absolute value of the individual, invites the authorities to take into account personal characteristics of the defendant when sentencing, which means a selective approach to the law. For the “human rights activist”, the law is universal; compliance with the law not only by citizens, but also by the state is the guarantee of justice.Volpin laid several theses on the basis of the ideology and axiology of human rights protection: the state is a subject of law, obliged not only to formulate laws for citizens, but also to comply with the prescribed norms itself; Soviet laws are designed to limit the dictates of the state and to protect the citizens; the citizens have legal rights to defend themselves against illegal actions of the state.The first practical implementation of these ideas — the “glasnost meeting” — showed that the authorities were not prepared for the proposed model of behavior. However, the motivation of the meeting participants mostly fit into the “defender” paradigm; the human rights logic of action and rhetoric were adopted by the community gradually. The Legal Note was written by Volpin to educate nonconformists and popularize human rights ideas.The article concludes that, thanks to Volpin’s activities, appealing to the rights and the law gradually became the usual rhetorical method in literary and journalistic statements and social actions of dissidents.

Lógica argumental de las políticas sobre envejecimiento y vejez en Uruguay: producción de sentido, tensiones y hegemonías

En noviembre de 2016 fue aprobado en Uruguay el Segundo Plan de Envejecimiento y Vejez, para el período 2016-2019, que pretende avanzar en una perspectiva de integralidad y derechos de las personas mayores. Este trabajo presenta un análisis temático del plan, focalizándose en identificar su lógica argumental, los principales enfoques en los que se funda, así como los significados que le atribuye al envejecimiento, la vejez y las personas mayores. Se inicia con la definición de la formulación de políticas y de la lógica retórica expresada en documentos escritos en tanto prácticas sociales productoras de realidad. Complementariamente, se analiza el nivel de interdisciplina expresado en los lineamientos del plan, es decir, la mayor o menor hegemonía disciplinaria sobre la que fue erigido. De ello se desprenden algunas consideraciones sobre el papel de lo disciplinar en la configuración de las políticas públicas sobre vejez y envejecimiento en el país.

역설의 수사적 논리성

역설의 수사적 논리성

Nonfictionality, Function, and Salience – Or, Affect, Ethics, Aesthetics and Huntington’s Disease in Saturday and Inside the O’Brien

Focusing on different treatments of the same nonfictional entity, Huntington’s disease, in two global fictions, Ian McEwan’s Saturday (2005) and Lisa Genova’s Inside the O’Briens (2015), this paper seeks to understand the affective, ethical, and aesthetic dimensions of crucial problematic moments in each. It deploys the concepts of status (fictional, nonfictional, or a blurring of the two), function (how does the particular element contribute to the larger narrative purpose) and salience (how significant is that function for that larger purpose) in order unpack the rhetorical logic of those passages. This unpacking leads to a more positive view of McEwan's construction of Saturday than the one offered by many of McEwan's previous critics as well as a general defense of Genova's construction of Inside the O'Briens. More generally, the essay offers new insights into the interaction of local nonfiction and global fiction

The Sense and Reference of Sound; or, Walter Pater’s Kinky Literalism

David Sweeney Coombs, “The Sense and Reference of Sound; or, Walter Pater’s Kinky Literalism” (pp. 487–514) This essay explores the erotic possibilities of literal reading by strategically fetishizing the recurring figure of harmony in Walter Pater’s essay “The School of Giorgione” (1877) and his other post-Renaissance writings. I read Pater’s invocations of harmony literally with help from the scientific acoustics of the German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, which achieved immense popularity in Britain at just the moment that Pater made his famous declaration that all art aspires to the conditions of music. Both Pater and Helmholtz understood perception as an act of reading bodily sensations in which reference—our attention to the objects we infer to be present in the world around us—constantly threatens to overwhelm our awareness of the sensations themselves. In his work on acoustics, however, Helmholtz singled out musical harmony as an experience uniquely susceptible to the mental effort to distinguish discrete sensations during the act of perception. Oscillating between sense and reference, harmony exemplifies the rhetorical logic of what Pater calls literal metaphors—figures whose figurative significance can be fully accessed only by taking them literally. The most emblematic of Pater’s literal metaphors is the Paterian figure itself, at once human form and trope. To take Paterian figures literally, this essay suggests, is to reimagine literal reading as a form of kink—a fetishizing of the sensory forces through which a figure affects and dominates us.

Corporate rhetorical strategies in the legitimation of genetically modified foods

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the rhetorical strategies used by organizations when the legitimacy of their products is challenged by stakeholders’ sustainability concerns.Design/methodology/approachThe approach involves rhetorical analysis of texts addressing the implications of genetically modified foods for sustainability. The rhetorical logic (pathos, logos, or ethos) and discursive intent (promotion of validity or propriety) invoked by leading seed producers to address stakeholders’ sustainability concerns was identified.FindingsEthos was found to be used to address validity judgments, pathos to address propriety judgments, and logos to address both validity and propriety judgments. The mechanisms through which rhetorical logic supports discursive intent are described.Research limitations/implicationsThis study contributes to a growing body of research at the intersection of discourse and legitimacy, and reveals the rhetorical strategies used to address stakeholders’ sustainability concerns. Future research can build on the study’s findings by examining the effectiveness of distinct rhetorical strategies in building legitimacy.Originality/valueWe lack a complete understanding of how legitimacy is discursively constructed when stakeholder concerns, such as those around sustainability, threaten an organization’s legitimacy. This paper’s examination of rhetorical logic and discursive intent advances this understanding.

Rhetorical Strategies of Validity and Propriety: The Legitimation of Genetically Modified Foods

This paper examines the rhetorical strategies used by organizations when the legitimacy of their products is challenged by stakeholders’ sustainability concerns. We conduct a rhetorical analysis of texts addressing the implications of genetically modified (GM) foods for sustainability. The rhetorical logic (pathos, logos, or ethos) and discursive intent (promotion of validity or propriety) invoked by leading seed producers to address stakeholders’ sustainability concerns are identified. We find that ethos is primarily used to influence validity judgments, pathos to influence propriety judgments, and logos to influence both validity and propriety judgments. This study contributes to a growing body of research at the intersection of discourse and legitimacy, and reveals the rhetorical strategies used to address stakeholders’ sustainability concerns.

A Multitheoretical Approach to Big Text Data: Comparing Expressive and Rhetorical Logics in Yelp Reviews

This article uses a multitheoretical approach to investigate the relationship between language use and opinion expression on Yelp. Using review metadata (e.g., star rating) to observe variation in reviewer feelings and motivations, we test for the strength of different message design logics: expressive logics, where language reflects a reviewer’s underlying opinion, and rhetorical logics, where language reflects a reviewer’s desire to make his or her opinion credible and acceptable to their audience. Results suggest that emotional language is motivated by expression as higher rated businesses are reviewed with more positive and fewer negative emotion terms. Rhetorical logics are associated with the use of abstract and self-focused language, with analysis suggesting this may result from the reviewer’s decision to write either narratively or formally.

‘Under Heavy Manners?’: Social Work, Radicalisation, Troubled Families and Non-Linear War

The “war on terror” signalled a new type of warfare, one that accorded with the features of what Surkov argues is non-linear war Pomerantsev (2014). Traditional war, that takes place in a particular geographical location, with an identifiable enemy, is no more. Instead, warfare is a more fluid phenomenon. The paper argues that Surkov’s concept can be usefully applied to current developments in social work practice in the UK. We trace the origins of key anti-terrorist policy developments in the UK (PREVENT and CHANNEL) from the war on terror and argue that such policies have serious implications for social work. We argue that there is an increasing securitisation approach in addressing modern social problems. We describe these as reflecting conflationary rhetorical logic, notably, the linking of Troubled Families programmes with “terror”. The paper concludes that social workers, need to firstly recognise tactics at play in the state of non-linear war, secondly, become critically aware of conflationary rhetorical turns in political discourse, third: actively resist securitised discourses and lastly, reject discriminatory notions of so called dangerous people and communities. In other words, we should actively re-engage with and promote social work values and social justice.

Translators and the Emergence of Historiography in Eighteenth-Century Russia Recensiones

An important aspect of the modernisation of Russia in the 18th century was the creation of academic institutions that relied on European traditions of research and education. Translation was the main mechanism of the ‘transfer of knowledge’, as well as a scientific method. Translation, however, was not restricted to the mere translation of academic texts into Russian: it also played a crucial role in the development of the sciences themselves in Russia and facilitated the exchange of scientific and scholarly knowledge with Western Europe (the ‘circulation of knowledge’). History was one of the disciplines where translation was particularly crucial. This article studies in detail the dynamics of translation within 18thcentury Russian historiography. Based on statistical data derived from the Slovar’ russkikh pisatelei XVIII veka and the Katalog lichnykh arkhivnykh fondov otechestvennykh istorikov XVIII v., the article draws some interesting conclusions with regard to the constantly changing relationship between translators and historians (who were not infrequently the same people). Most of the article (and its prequel in the previous issue of QR) deals with the role of translation in the emergence of Russian history as an academic discipline. It developed from a tool used for political purposes under Peter I into a method for the study of historical sources. This development led to the establishment of historiography as a discipline that relied both on verifiable sources and followed the rhetorical logic of narrative texts. At the beginning of the 19th century, translation as a tool and a historical methodology lost its significance. What did remain was the profound tradition of reference to international knowledge. Later on, Russian historiography was considerably enriched by translations of historical works.

Переводчики XVIII в. и становление историографии как науки в России

An important aspect of the modernisation of Russia in the 18th century was the creation of academic institutions that relied on European traditions of research and education. Translation was the main mechanism of the ‘transfer of knowledge’, as well as a scientific method. Translation, however, was not restricted to the mere translation of academic texts into Russian: it also played a crucial role in the development of the sciences themselves in Russia and facilitated the exchange of scientific and scholarly knowledge with Western Europe (the ‘circulation of knowledge’). History was one of the disciplines where translation was particularly crucial. This article studies in detail the dynamics of translation within 18th-century Russian historiography. Based on statistical data derived from the Slovar’ russkikh pisatelei XVIII veka and the Katalog lichnykh arkhivnykh fondov otechestvennykh istorikov XVIII v., the article draws some interesting conclusions with regard to the constantly changing relationship between translators and historians (who were not infrequently the same people). Most of the article (and its sequel in the next issue of QR) deals with the role of translation in the emergence of Russian history as an academic discipline. It developed from a tool used for political purposes under Peter I into a method for the study of historical sources. This development led to the establishment of historiography as a discipline that relied both on verifiable sources and followed the rhetorical logic of narrative texts. At the beginning of the 19th century, translation as a tool and a historical methodology lost its significance. What did remain was the profound tradition of reference to international knowledge. Later on, Russian historiography was considerably enriched by translations of historical works. This argument makes up the first part of the article.

Retorika Iklan Kampanye Politik Pemilihan Presiden Indonesia 2009 dalam Media Televisi

Indonesian presidential election campaign advertisement 2009 in its realization through the medium of television has a wide variety of creative concepts to change the state of mind of the audience target. The creative concept was created to build up the rhetoric to communicate his political message. The main purpose of this research is to know aspects of rhetoric that is used by participants of presidential election 2009 in communicating a political message that reflects the vision and mission through the medium of television political campaign advertisement.Data in the form of political campaign advertisement of presidential election 2009 television media was analyzed by looking directly series of motion picture which has been captured then described with text analysis method in which the overall visual and narrative elements of advertising is a cultural text that became the focus of the study object. To understand aspects of the rhetoric used in political campaign advertisement of each Indonesian presidential election participants 2009, identified with the method of text analysis which is associated with the theory of rhetoric so that will be known the forms of rhetoric and rhetorical strategies used by each presidential candidate and vice presidential candidates in communicating their political message and in it represented an ideology which underlying the combination of signs behind those advertisement. While, understanding the rhetoric of work processes in sign system is identified with the method of text analysis associated with the order of narrative story advertisement. The purpose of understanding of the two main things above is to dissect more critical about aspects of rhetoric, concept of rhetoric and logic rhetoric used in the three advertisements. Critical understanding that is meant here is comparative analysis of rhetorical strategies of each presidential candidate and vice presidential candidates communicating their political messages to build a visual image through a system of signs which is constructed on a political campaign advertisement on television in relation to the concept of rhetoric and logic of rhetoric of each presidential candidate and vice presidential candidates become a rhetorical discourse Indonesian presidential election advertisement 2009 thoroughly through the process of interpretation.