Rhetorical Practices Research Articles

Video chat exams in an online general education linguistics course

Video chat exams are a potential solution in online, general education introductory linguistics courses that seek to promote academic integrity, differentiate instruction, center student language and rhetorical practices, and offer multiple assessment modalities. Instructors who try video chat exams will want to clearly communicate expectations, offer practice exams, take steps to mitigate bias, and be sure this strategy aligns with their student learning outcomes as well as logistical concerns, like class size.

Conceptualizing Mano Dura in Latin America

Abstract Latin American governments are increasingly adopting mano dura initiatives to combat gangs, organized crime, and insecurity. While mano dura has been a concept of increasing empirical interest, there seems to be limited conceptual clarity about the wide spectrum of strategies developed to combat crime and associated fear. This article proposes a definition of mano dura that has three different dimensions, each of them containing specific elements. The form of mano dura depends on formal, informal, and rhetorical practices. Drawing on 46 scholarly works in the social sciences, we develop our definition anchored in the knowledge of Latin American policing strategies, contributions on responses to crime in the region, and the conceptual development literature. With the purpose of supplementing our effort to standardize the usage of the term with the need to retain a degree of conceptual differentiation, we also offer a stylized model to better classify policing strategies in Latin America. In our stylized model, the numerous ways policies and narratives as well as their implementation (or not) interact can be grouped into four broad categories: full mano dura, institutional mano dura, performative mano dura, and covert mano dura.

Survival and Distinctiveness: The Impulses Shaping the Communication Practices and Rhetorical Strategies in Hunger Relief Organizations

ABSTRACT Nonprofit organizations exist in a unique tension between survival and distinctiveness. Relying on interviews with staff members at hunger relief nonprofit organizations, we investigate how these nonprofits’ communication and rhetorical practices are being shaped by the tension between survival and distinctiveness, as well as the pressures/impulses of civic action, voluntarism, professionalism, and commercialism. Ultimately, we present a more nuanced understanding of how technical communication happens within nonprofits, specifically within the hunger relief sector, as well as offer takeaways for researchers, instructors, students, and community partners.

Black (rhetorics of) migration and laying claim to space

ABSTRACT This essay troubles the romanticized US American “nation of immigrants” narrative through its relationship to Black diasporic histories of migration. The Immigration Act of 1924 codified white ethnocentrism in US American citizenship rights, and thus represented a potential challenge to Black American citizenship claims. Here we reflect on Black American rhetorical practices as a mode of worldmaking; of laying claim to putatively white space and US American citizenship. Through this lens, Black migration and consequent transformation of space functions as a transgressive practice for a people who are perpetually positioned outside of nationality, a way of reclaiming ownership over the spoils of unwilling labor. These Black rhetorical practices echo through the diaspora, as those who built but do not own push back against the ontological negation of ethnonationalist citizenship and immigration policies dictated by white and western imperial powers, in favor of speaking themselves into belonging.

Legitimation work in privatized criminal justice: Softening, shrinking, and signaling

How do private companies justify taking on criminal justice functions? Building on writing on legitimacy and privatization, this article describes three rhetorical practices intended to increase the legitimacy of private companies carrying out criminal justice functions: softening (obscuring the use of force); shrinking (demonstrating deference to the state); and signaling (proclaiming alignment with pro-social values). The article demonstrates the analytic utility of these categories by considering public-facing Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reports produced by one prominent company in the private corrections industry (CoreCivic). The conceptual typology of legitimation work brings together several dynamics that are common in privatized criminal justice and provides an analytic toolkit for future study. A discussion considers how researchers can use this typology to examine legitimation work by other private firms and industries that engage the criminal justice system.

Ambient Engineering: Hyper-Nudging, Hyper-Relevance, and Rhetorics of Nearness and Farness in a Post-AI Algorithmic World

ABSTRACT This essay argues that algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) are producing a transformation in the economics of attention. Attention is a limited concept, a point I demonstrate by providing a phenomenological understanding of attending via Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, specifically showing the usefulness of the existential and platial concepts of nearness and farness. Emerging, AI-driven techniques of hyper-nudging and hyper-relevance address themselves to our senses of nearness and farness. Hyper-relevance is particularly significant as it is proleptic in trying to anticipate concernful engagement, without directly soliciting it, by transforming the conditions of possibility for modes of attending. I call such techniques ambient engineering, which are concerned with transforming the conditions for producing salience. Ambient engineering has consequences for rhetorical practice and theory, including greater focus on subattentive engagements, and thus also an elision of more traditional forms of suasion.

Образность иллюстраций М.В. Добужинского к сказке Ю.К. Олеши «Три толстяка»

Mstislav Dobuzhinsky’s illustrations to the tale by Yury Olesha The Three Fat Men have not received a convincing interpretation. It is suggested to read these illustrations as a special work with the social imaginary that expands the participation of the fairy tale’s characters in revolutionary events through a special gaze technique. Two types of imagination are distinguished: the narrative imagination, implying the acceptance of the structure of an event, and the eccentric imagination, in which the event requires immediate action. This distinction is rooted in the practices of political rhetoric and was internalized by Olesha himself from his experience with European prints and decals. The magic of decals is essential to the plot of his fairy tale, but even more so to Dobuzhinsky’s pictorial program. Dobuzhinsky uses unusual avantgarde angles, framing, the view from the protagonist’s perspective and the meeting of views, drawing, among other things, on images of knowledge in European utopias. Referring to the philosophical concepts of the gaze, it is possible to reconstruct the system of empathy, sympathy for the characters and their eccentric actions, which Dobuzhinsky’s illustrations are meant to evoke. When reading Olesha’s tale, we follow the twists and turns of the narrative; when looking at the illustrations, we realize how each character contributes to the unusual development of events and how the meeting of gazes can establish a new social order. Dobuzhinsky does not simply interpret Olesha’s tale, but plays it out, engaging readers in an interactive game.

Ungrievable: Theorizing white Christian nationalist rhetorical practices in education

The religiopolitical movement of White Christian nationalism has increasingly impacted policy and practice in public education in the United States. This theoretical paper examines how White Christian nationalist ideologies and rhetoric are influencing the discourse of schooling and education. We use Butler’s (2016) definition of frames, grievability, and precarity in order to describe two underpinning ideologies of White Christian nationalism–namely, dominionism and colonialism. Then, we draw on sociological, historical, journalistic, and theological descriptions of White Christian nationalism to identify rhetorical practices utilized by this growing religiopolitical movement, and also draw on practitioner texts written by Christian teachers as illustrative examples of the ways that White Christian nationalist rhetorical practices might find expression in classrooms and schools. We argue that identifying how ideologies and rhetorical practices of White Christian nationalism influence and affect teachers and students is an important step in considering how educational researchers, policymakers, and teachers might purposefully grapple with how White Christian nationalism is shaping American classrooms.

Roger Bacon’s Ars poetica sacra: Spiritual Persuasion and the Christian Sublime

Roger Bacon (d. ca. 1292) wrote extensively on rhetoric and poetics. He did so in the context of a critical overview of the religious culture of his age. He places poetry (the argumentum poeticum) at the very pinnacle of culture, above the sciences, above the liturgy and preaching, well above scholastic philosophy and any other mode of expression current in his age. Poetry and rhetoric are the modes of exposition capable of captivating and transporting the listener/reader. That makes them an effective means of converting and of inspiring faith. The religious culture of his own time has so far declined that it is incapable of performing this function. Bacon was looking back on real rhetorical practices that had become outmoded. In earlier days Christianity spoke with force and passion. His sacred poetics has a place in the history of pre-modern Christian discourse, one of two works theorizing sacra eloquentia; the other is Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine. Christian traditions of teaching, preaching, prayer, oratory, sacred music, regularly had called on modes that were emphatic, forceful and passionate: the “grand style,” sermo propheticus, sermo affectuosus. Bacon’s poetics commends these modes as it laments their passing.

Media representations of nuclear threats during the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Research objective: This article continues the scholarly tradition of uncovering the rhetorical practices that influence audiences’ perceptions, beliefs, and behaviours towards nuclear actors and issues and examines how the Romanian mass media reports on nuclear threats against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: This article conducts a detailed examination of how media coverage of nuclear-related topics influences public perceptions, generating a feeling of urgency and potentially leading to mass panic and hysteria. The study employed a quantitative methodology, conducting content analysis on a selection of 190 online news articles from the primary Romanian press agencies (Mediafax and Agerpress) published between February 24, 2022, and February 24, 2023. Employing an inductive approach, our analysis was guided by frames identified during the examination of the sample material. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: Nuclear threats and other related issues were frequently reported in the media in the post-World War 2 period. Given the history of media coverage of this topic, it is perhaps not surprising that a return to reporting nuclear threats has dominated the media discourse since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. RESEARCH RESULTS: The results of our study reveal two main frames used to report issues related to nuclear threats during the war in Ukraine: a historical reference frame and a forward-looking frame. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: This study introduces a fresh research direction for potential investigations into the origins and progression of nuclear threats as a unique area of focus in the analysis of Eastern European media reporting during times of conflict.

Rhetorical Strategies and Appraisal Markers in Online Civic Engagement of the Yoruba Nation Secessionist Agitation on Nairaland

This study examines rhetorical strategies and appraisal markers in the engagement of the Yoruba Nation (YN) secessionist agitation in Nairaland. Adopting the appraisal framework and Fairclough’s notions of intertextuality and interdiscursivity as a theoretical anchorage, analysis unveils historical and biblical allusion, proverbs and adages, rhetorical questions, code alternation and pidgin as prominent rhetorical practices and intertextual and interdiscursive resources that index cognitive positioning and ideological evaluations of the agitation and related social actors. While the anti-YN participants express negativity and ideological dissociation from the secessionist course, the pro-YN participants express positivity, solidarity and ideological alignment with the separatist agitation. As the secessionist movement generates concerns about ethnic synergy and national integration, participants take advantage of a heterogeneous virtual space to influence other online participants’ ideological positions on whether to sustain patriotic spirit to strive continually towards Nigeria’s nationhood or to join the vociferous call for the nation’s geo-ethnic dismemberment and ultimately secession.

Education and biopolitics: deconstructing authority in Polish textbooks

The article examines the mutual relations between education, biopolitics and authority. The objective is to deconstruct authority in relation to three biopolitical issues: abortion, sexual orientation, and IVF. This deconstruction is performed by analysis of the manifestations and strategies of authority employed in Polish textbooks for four subjects at secondary school: social studies, family life education, ethics, and religion. This provided an answer to the question both about the significance of biopolitical issues in the education process and about the role of authority in their construction. The main rhetorical practices for the construction of authority were science, using the strategy of “stating facts”; law, with the strategy of “establishing order”; and religion, whose strategy is “initiating opposition”. In the article, I conduct a qualitative analysis of each of the three rhetorical practices and make conclusions on the role of authority in the process of teaching biopolitical issues in school.

Joshua McCarter Simpson's Songs and Mid-Nineteenth Century Antislavery Activism

AbstractThe Ohio-based Black songwriter, Joshua Simpson, published two books of antislavery songs in the mid-nineteenth century, Original Anti-Slavery Songs in 1852 and Emancipation Car in 1854. Unlike most other known songsters, which were compilations of poetry from several authors, Simpson authored original lyrics for borrowed melodies, and he did so with extraordinary care, engaging the original song to enhance his activist messages. Employing the rhetorical practice of signification, his linkage of new lyrics with preexisting songs sometimes builds upon meaning from the original text, reusing it to add weight to the moral and political arguments against slavery. He also extends nature imagery and lyrics about the comforts of home and family in traditional ballads and contemporary sentimental songs to his new lyrics, but more often his signifying practice is ironic. He inverts the original song's sentimentality in deliberately discomforting ways that could persuade Americans to assist self-emancipating people and work toward wholescale abolition of slavery. Simpson's most radical songs talk back irreverently to the originals, especially minstrel tunes containing degrading caricatures and proslavery propaganda as well as patriotic anthems proclaiming hypocritical platitudes. Simpson did not simply write new songs; he transformed some of the most popular and beloved songs of his era, harnessing their renown to sharpen his activist messages.

Facework display of a political leader: Linguo-rhetoric approach (the case study of Julia Gillard's speech on misogyny)

This article focuses on the cognitive rhetoric features of the politician's facework that incorporate face threatening acts, communicative strategies, and discursive functions in a political speech. The data were taken from the speech on misogyny delivered in 2012 by the 27th Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Throughout the article we disclose the interaction of the politician's face, politeness, and power in the institutional discourse. Julia Gillard does her facework actively engaged into the misogyny argument which provides a persuasive ground to confront the opponent's face through reinforced employment of both positive and negative face threatening acts. The findings suggest that doing facework through rhetorical practices Gillard signals her identity in three faces: a political leader, a female politician and her individual social self-image of a woman and daughter. Gillard's face claims are closely bound with her sense of sociality rights and obligations. This entails her relational and collective self-construal prevail over her individual face. The symbolic power obliges Gillard to protect her collective self-credibility and makes the ground for undermining the self-worth of the opponent in a rather straightforward manner. The politeness Gillard exercises is mainly prescribed by the institutional goal and status which directly impact the use of the linguistic means employed by the politician.

Recovering the Democratic Value of Public Discourse

The decline of democracy in the US entails the surge of authoritarianism, ascendency of demagoguery, dispersal of the democratic majority, and weakening of public reason. Dissent, envisioned as a rhetorical practice of democratic deliberation, resists authoritarianism by advancing democratic values. Accordingly, this paper examines democracy as a minority voice, explores the deliberative capacity of dissent, and identifies the rhetorical properties of deliberation. The paper argues that dissent, in its fugitive aspect, is dispersed across an array of modest sites, guided by a deliberative ideal partially realised, and framed by democratic values. Dissent functions in this capacity as an itinerant, recurring source of democratic renewal on occasions of political crisis. It is an adaptation to structural constraints that provides a nurturing aspiration to prompt political agency, establish realistic expectations, and sustain vigilance. While the immediacy of the authoritarian threat and corresponding questions about the role of democratic communication are addressed in terms of the 2024 general election in the US, the democratic challenge in the US is indicative of the abiding immediacy of the authoritarian threat to other democracies and suggestive of deliberative adaptations for restoring the vitality of democratic communication and culture. Complacency in democratic theory and practice is counter-indicated.

Writers' communicative resources for comparing present and past research findings: A pedagogically motivated inquiry into scientists' rhetorical practices

Despite the pivotal role of ‘comparing present and past research findings' (CPPRF) in both softer and harder sciences, scant attention has been directed to how linguistic resources are used in such comparisons in certain applied sciences, particularly Material Science (MS) and Agricultural Science (AS). Based on a genre analysis and interviews with specialist informants, we examined the prevalence of CPPRF, the circumstances involved, and the salient linguistic resources employed by expert writers in the two disciplines. It was found that CPPRF is markedly more prevalent in the ‘Results and Discussion’ sections of the research articles in AS than those in MS. Agricultural scientists use more author prominent citations, especially after alignment verbs, to accentuate the roles of previous researchers while making new knowledge claims. Experts in both fields, however, employ ‘copula-complex preposition’ and ‘copula-adjective-preposition’ structures expressing commonality to explicitly support previous research findings. In cases of divergences, writers draw on comparative adjectives to tacitly avoid direct conflicts with previous researchers' findings in the process of knowledge creation. It is recommended that specific word combinations be highlighted in relation to writers' attempts to generate knowledge via comparisons of present and previous research outcomes, thus implicitly signalling additional contributions of their studies.

Mark’s Demonic Christology: Reevaluating the Daimonic Confessions of Jesus’s Messiahship

Abstract Markan scholars have often taken for granted that the daimonic acclamations of Jesus’s messianic identity in Mark’s Gospel present the author’s own Christological perspective. Giving attention to daimonic speech in Mark’s literary context, however, opens up the interpretive possibility that this daimonic speech may serve to mislead rather than teach. By using insights from the rhetorical practice of prosopopoeia (speech-in-character), this article compares the Christology of Mark’s daimones with a) Jesus’s reliable statements about his own messianic identity and b) Mark’s discursive presentation of the messianic role in order to assess whether the daimonic Christology in Mark’s Gospel is trustworthy or misleading.

A rhetorical praxis of rebellious knowledge production: Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s outsider jurisprudence in Utah v. Strieff

ABSTRACT In 2016, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a stunning legal opinion that challenged the Supreme Court’s ruling in Utah v. Strieff and marked a watershed moment for her voice of dissent. In this essay, I argue that Justice Sotomayor’s Strieff dissent was animated by a praxis of rebellious knowledge production – disruptive moves of legal opinion writing that rework interpretive traditions of context, authority, and lived experience to center an episteme of race-consciousness in the law. This study points to the possibilities of outsider jurisprudence as a rhetorical praxis of legal opinion writing and illuminates the democratic promise of Sotomayor’s judicial voice.

The Conditions of Eloquence

Goodman's is a thoughtful discussion of the importance of eloquence, or “skilled speech” (10), for politics. He offers nuanced portrayals of Cicero, Burke, Macaulay, and others wrestling with the possibilities of eloquence under changing circumstances. Most of the subjects of these chapters were themselves involved in politics—and hence were reflecting on and honing their own rhetorical practice as much as contributing to rhetorical theory. Goodman insists on the importance of rhetoric's “stylistic abundance”—“a quality of language in excess of argument” (13).

The practice and pragmatics of Scandinavian research in rhetoric. Audience studies in Scandinavian rhetorical scholarship

This paper demonstrates the connections between certain cultural traits of Scandinavia, a scholarly interest in rhetorical practice and the workings of rhetoric, and a recent interest in audience-oriented research methods. Scandinavia is characterised by a tradition of practical rhetoric, egalitarianism, high trust, and low scores on power distance and masculinity in Hofstede’s culture comparison tool. This, I suggest, is reflected in an interest in the everyday pragmatic functions and workings of rhetoric, paving the way for the use of audience research.