Rhetorical Perspective Research Articles

LEVEL UP! DESENVOLVIMENTO COGNITIVO, APRENDIZAGEM ENATIVA E VIDEOGAMES

Resumo Os videogames são frequentemente acusados de serem prejudiciais à saúde. Sua operatividade colocaria o jogador em uma série de rotinas irracionais, muito próximas a uma relação estímulo-resposta. Sugerimos que tal posição limita as possibilidades de relação entre o videogame e a aprendizagem e está baseada em uma imagem teleológica do desenvolvimento da cognição que toma o aprender como uma caminhada em direção à racionalidade lógica. O presente artigo parte da descrição do aprendizado de um dos autores analisada a partir da retórica procedural com um jogo eletrônico para propor um modo de compreender a ação com o videogame, que convoca a uma constante recomposição do sujeito que joga e do jogo. A teoria da enação, por sua vez, apresenta proposições que sustentam uma modalidade de conhecimento operativo e incorporado, mais próximo da experiência com os videogames.

Rhetoric and Authority in a Polarized Transition: The Case of China’s Stock Market

How do actors in positions of authority attempt to justify their right to rule while introducing controversial institutional practices that potentially delegitimate their authority? China’s reform leaders have found themselves in a legitimacy conundrum when they established and developed the stock market, yet have been able to assert a central role for the party-state in managing the stock market. Using a critical rhetorical perspective, we analyze how actors use “rhetorical genres,” that is, argumentation and narration with differing content and style, to construct new roles of the speaker and speaker–audience relationships that imply new bases of authority, and how these rhetorical genres can be conceptualized as “discursive spaces” that could accommodate contradictions in the rhetorical situations characterized by polarization in ideologies and interests.

El secreto como estrategia dramática: el caso de "Nadie fíe su secreto", de Calderón

Despite the fact that secrecy has been highlighted as an outstanding theme in Calde-ron’s writing, it has not been studied on every occasion. This paper aims to analyze its dramatic construction in the comedia Nadie fie su secreto (c. 1629) from a thematic and rhetorical perspective. This main theme is traced back to the classical tradition and is studied from the development of the plot: the secret of love contention ends with its public revelation. This particular construction of secrecy is deeply connected to the rhetorical resources, especially to those related to the expression of silence, which strengthen the suspense.

Contemporary Perspective of Pedagogical Rhetoric in Higher Education Teaching –the Example of a Seminar

One of the goals of the information society is cooperation with the use of technical resources and information. Knowledge is not associated with any element of the structure, but results from the process of cooperation.Therefore, the requirements regarding the eff ectiveness of the formulation and processing of knowledge are increasing. The problem of not being mature enough to autonomously participate in the global exchange of information relates inter alia to students who engage in various social activities with the use of IT. in the case of university students, who have mature personalities and for whom self-reliance and problem solving orientation are of key importance, diff erent rules of cooperation with lecturers are necessary. The uniqueness of a person’s situation in the knowledge society lies in the extent of the collection and processing of knowledge.

Actual Play at the Forge: A Rhetorical Approach

This paper takes a rhetorical perspective to examine an “actual play” (AP) discussion thread from indie-rpgs.com, popularly known as “the Forge,” an influential and controversial online forum for tabletop role-playing game (TRPG) design that was active primarily during the first decade of the 21st century. It describes the thread as constituting a skilled discursive performance applying the Forge’s “Big Model” to a dialogical phenomenology of play that enabled interlocutors to diagnose game-related sources of frustration, unhappiness or dissatisfaction and offer potential solutions grounded in the aesthetic preferences of players. It suggests that this perspective can usefully augment more typical frame-based approaches to describing the “analog” game experience by emphasizing the lived experience of tabletop role-players in the space of the game.

The role of the Sheffield model on the minimum unit pricing of alcohol debate: the importance of a rhetorical perspective.

The minimum unit pricing (MUP) alcohol policy debate has been informed by the Sheffield model, a study which predicts impacts of different alcohol pricing policies. This paper explores the Sheffield model’s influences on the policy debate by drawing on 36 semi-structured interviews with policy actors who were involved in the policy debate. Although commissioned by policy makers, the model’s influence has been far broader than suggested by views of ‘rational’ policy making. While findings from the Sheffield model have been used in instrumental ways, they have arguably been more important in helping debate competing values underpinning policy goals.

Second Language Writing from an Intercultural Rhetoric Perspective

Composing in a language other than one’s first language is a complex process which involves, in addition to familiarity and interest in the writing topic, many sub-skills the student-writer needs to master to communicate accurately, fluently, and appropriately in the written medium of the target language. These sub-skills include knowledge of the target language system (e.g. syntax, morphology, and lexicon), writing mechanics, and the types of rhetorical patterns used to organize the textual content. The latter is one of the major problems that second language learners encounter in their acquisition of writing due to unfamiliarity with these patterns and the impact of first language organisational patterns they tend to transfer to the target language. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it will highlight how the main assumptions of the contrastive rhetoric hypothesis, as advanced by Kaplan (1966) and his supporters emerged to account for the poor rhetorical performance of advanced learners of English as a second language. The main contention at the heart of this hypothesis (recently referred to as intercultural rhetoric by Ulla Connor but in this paper both are used interchangeably) is that the rhetorical patterns governing the development of expository or persuasive writing are not only culture bound but tend to persist in students’ writing even at advanced proficiency levels. Second, it will discuss the types of criticism levelled at the hypothesis and the new directions it has known thanks to the contributions of many authors, including Kaplan himself, and how these led to the developments of contrastive rhetoric as a fruitful field of study on second language writing and composition.

Metaforyzacja mitu w literaturze Rzymu późnorepublikańskiego. Na przykładzie Endymiona

In Roman republican literature the Endymion figure, not unlike other mythical characters, carries a messagewhich becomes apparent only when properly deciphered. For that reason its meaning can be made out best bybeing looked at from a rhetorical perspective.

Villains Called Sicarii: A Commonplace for Rhetorical Vituperation in the Texts of Flavius Josephus

Examining the presentation of sicarii in Flavius Josephus’s Judean War from a rhetorical perspective, this article argues that each reference to sicarii alludes to the clauses of a Roman law concerning sicarii, which Josephus has used as a commonplace for rhetorical vituperation against particular groups. Three literary-rhetorical tendencies of War are highlighted to show how this vituperation, as well as the connection between War’s sicarii and the so called Fourth Philosophy, is part of a general rhetorical strategy to shift the blame for the outbreak of the violent conflict to one particular rebel group.

Design as Value Celebration: Rethinking Design Argumentation

This article introduces knowledge of the rhetorical genre of epideictic to design. The aim is to provide designers with concepts that stimulate their ability to deliberate about design choices and explore the arguments they may be making about the human-made world. The article begins with explorations of how to perceive the situations that designers may address, then rhetorical perspectives that may be useful when creating design arguments, and finally examples of how to use these rhetorical perspectives in design. Based on analyzed examples and theories on design problems, situational perspectives, and rhetorical genres, the article concludes that designers can benefit from perceiving their design as value celebration rather than problem solving.

Second Language Writing from an Intercultural Rhetoric Perspective

Composing in a language other than one’s first language is a complex process which involves, in addition to familiarity and interest in the writing topic, many sub-skills the student-writer needs to master to communicate accurately, fluently, and appropriately in the written medium of the target language. These sub-skills include knowledge of the target language system (e.g. syntax, morphology, and lexicon), writing mechanics, and the types of rhetorical patterns used to organize the textual content. The latter is one of the major problems that second language learners encounter in their acquisition of writing due to unfamiliarity with these patterns and the impact of first language organisational patterns they tend to transfer to the target language. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it will highlight how the main assumptions of the contrastive rhetoric hypothesis, as advanced by Kaplan (1966) and his supporters emerged to account for the poor rhetorical performance of advanced learners of English as a second language. The main contention at the heart of this hypothesis (recently referred to as intercultural rhetoric by Ulla Connor but in this paper both are used interchangeably) is that the rhetorical patterns governing the development of expository or persuasive writing are not only culture bound but tend to persist in students’ writing even at advanced proficiency levels. Second, it will discuss the types of criticism levelled at the hypothesis and the new directions it has known thanks to the contributions of many authors, including Kaplan himself, and how these led to the developments of contrastive rhetoric as a fruitful field of study on second language writing and composition.

The interpersonal strand of political speech

The present study offers an underlying theoretical framework for examining political speeches from a rhetorical perspective. This framework is based on systemic functional linguistics developed by Halliday (most recently updated by Halliday and Matthiessen 2014), and includes discourse structures suggested by later authors. We suggest that the interpersonal stratum of meaning, through which we manage social relations, represents a powerful resource for creating a dialogue with the audience in order to recruit it to a politician’s call for action. To address this issue, we analyzed ten speeches delivered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to five different international audiences. We examined strategies that foster dialogic interaction with the audience, by directly addressing them, or otherwise acknowledging their presence. The interpersonal strategies we identified combine into larger domains which we term forming social bonds, building a consensus and revealing ideology. These strategies may be salient because they tap into various aspects of the audience’s experience and identity: the social, affective, and ideological spheres.

Metonymies of Mind: Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, and the Rhetoric of Liberal Education

Abstract Critics in both philosophy and literary studies have rightly emphasized a “poetics of transition” relating the thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson to that of William James. However, less attention has been given to the ways that Emerson's philosophy of rhetoric correlates with James's rhetorical perspectives on psychology and philosophy. Fundamentally rhetorical interests in the contiguous circumstances and contingent reception of thinking link James to Emerson beyond matters of poetics and style. This article correlates Emerson's understanding of a rhetoric of metonymy as the basis of thinking with the principle of contiguity crucial to James's philosophy of mind. This relation between rhetoric and philosophy reiterates a rhetoric of mind that both Emerson and James associate with the older liberal education of the college just at the point that this curriculum is displaced by the professional, specialized disciplines of the emerging university in late nineteenth-century America.

Rhetoric and the origins of the human sciences: A Foucauldian tale untold

ABSTRACTMichel Foucault’s famous history of the human sciences focused on “the order of things” and in doing so it overwhelmed a rhetorical perspective that can track the arts of moving souls: pedagogy, politics, and psychology. If we revisit Foucault from a rhetorical perspective there are consequences: (1) at the level of architectonic, we rediscover rhetoric’s role at the inception of the human sciences, and (2) at the level of thematic, we can make better sense of rhetorical phenomena such as the sixteenth-/seventeenth-century sacred arts of listening, which feature a “public ear.” Foucault’s late interest in the pastoral picks up this rhetorical thread, although he never was able to revise the disciplinary and biopolitical history implicated therein. This article initiates just such a revision, paying particular attention to historiographic questions, and to recent discussions of biopower that wind up looking very different from this rhetorical perspective.

The Spockian Mother: Images of the “Good” Mother in Dr. Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, 1946–1992

Dr. Spock’s, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, one of the best-selling self-help texts of all-time, “second only to the Bible in popularity” (Meakin & Tattersall, 2004) was one of the most influential childcare books in American culture. The author has been both heralded and disparaged as instrumental in the shaping of untold generations. In the present study, we address the rhetorical construction of the Spockian Mother as she is developed during Spock’s tenure from 1946–1992. We employ a feminist rhetorical perspective to examine the progression of Spock’s texts in order to understand how patriarchal images of motherhood are constructed and maintained through Spock’s lifetime and the first 46 years of its publication. We argue that Spock both reinforced and challenged the institution of motherhood; he challenged institutionalized motherhood by encouraging mothers to “trust themselves” while simultaneously conforming to a patriarchal model of motherhood which is at odds with empowered mothering.

Drawing from Heidegger: Dasein and the question of communication

This article examines the only known diagram of being-in-the-world provided by Martin Heidegger. Approaching the diagram from a rhetorical perspective, the article highlights Heidegger’s fundamental concern with communication and language at the heart of Dasein. Dasein is always being-open and being-addressed, and thus essentially communicative. Furthermore, Heidegger’s diagram extends our thinking about communication by bringing into relief the excessive and hyperbolic nature of communication itself.

The brand core and its management over time

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the brand core and its management over time. The aim is to develop a framework for managing the core of a brand for continuity and change. Design/methodology/approach – A longitudinal case study of the Volvo brand’s core and its management serves as the empirical basis for a qualitative analysis of the “brand core” using rhetorical perspectives. Findings – The management of the brand core for both continuity and change is an unsolved paradox in strategic brand management literature and practice. Existing conceptualisations offer little or no guidance regarding managing a brand’s core over time. The Volvo brand has evolved by adding and shifting mindsets, which has kept its core surprisingly stable. Research limitations/implications – The new framework mitigates a paradox and, by defining the brand core as a point of reference, allows for brand management to address both continuity and change and consider a range of stakeholders while doing so. The integration ofs rhetoric into the framework makes it applicable to product, service and corporate brands, or indeed anything that can be considered a “brand”. The brand core is defined as “an entity of core values and a promise”. Practical implications – By shifting perspectives on a brand’s core over time, change and development are stimulated while preserving its inner values and promise. Originality/value – The brand core framework integrating rhetoric theory was supported by a longitudinal case study to resolve a strategic brand management paradox.

Calliope’s ascent: defragmenting philosophy of history by rhetoric

In order to find a cure against the pandemic fragmentation in current theory of history this paper aims at uniting experience, narrative, and action from a rhetorical perspective. Developing a pragmatics of speech acts about actions and events from the most simple to the most complex, according to the rhetorical situation in which they occur, the paper presents the notions of retrospective and prospective historical narrative as expressions of historical experience. In the end, it appeals to historians and philosophers of history to take rhetoric more seriously in order to make historiography practically more relevant.

A corpus-aided approach for the teaching and learning of rhetoric in an undergraduate composition course for L2 writers

This paper illustrates a corpus-aided approach for the teaching and learning of rhetoric in an undergraduate writing course for second language writers. The twenty-one international students in the course read and analyzed texts produced by a local environmental group and an international mining company regarding a proposed copper mine in the U.S. southwest. The textual analysis was enhanced and supplemented by a series of activities using corpus data derived from collections of texts from the opposing groups. The contrastive analyses made possible through the study of texts and corpus data from the sharply distinct groups enabled students to notice, analyze, interpret, and discuss the meaningful and purposeful linguistic and rhetorical variation present in the texts, the corpus data, and the debate. This implementation of localized, specialized corpora comprised of texts with immediate relevance to the students' campus and community provides a means to incorporate corpus study in the writing classroom from a rhetorical perspective. This article details the principles guiding the design of the approach, explains the corpus-aided activities, reports students' attitudes to the use of corpus data in their academic writing classroom, and offers suggestions for implementing similar activities in L2 writing classrooms.

Misdirections, Delayed Disclosures, and the Ethics of the Telling in Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend

This essay explores the ethics of the telling of Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend from a rhetorical perspective to demonstrate the ethical implications of misdirections and delayed disclosures, which create a multi-layered author-audience relationship. Our Mutual Friend has received much critical attention but very little has focused on the ethical implications of form for the relationship between Dickens and his audience. By examining the techniques of synthetic functions of character, double communication, misdirections, delayed disclosures, and narratorial devices of uncertainty, this essay demonstrates the consequences (for the genre of realism, the ethics of readerly judgment, the ethics of performance and play) and the rewards of reconfiguring the novel through attention to the synthetic dimension of acts of reading, themes, and characters. I offer some new directions for understanding Dickens’s multi-layered relationships with his readers in Our Mutual Friend, including a focus on perception, interpretation, and judgment; the cognitive pleasure of dealing with techniques that offer both immersion and defamiliarization; and the explicit awareness of the meta-fictional engagement offered by Dickens as designer. I offer a new argument about the nuances of implied author–narrator relationships in heterodiegetic narration, about the significance of mimetic and synthetic components of readerly and textual dynamics and their implications for genre, and about the ethics of the telling in narratives whose effects depend on misdirection and reconfiguration.