Rhetorical Problem Research Articles

Silhouettes: rhetoric and science?

Science as part of an open society cannot flourish if science becomes the exclusive possession of a closed set of specialists. The problem of scientific rhetoric, however, is that scientific knowledge cannot be everybody's knowledge in volume or in the concepts used and that therefore a loss of information content occurs when scientific knowledge is projected onto the screen of everyday knowledge: science then appears only as a silhouette. Even so silhouettes can convey an important message in relation to a special context under discussion. The particular silhouette selected then becomes a question of truthfulness in scientific rhetoric.

Organization in discourse: Proceedings from the Turku conference Ed. by Brita Wàrvik, Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen, and Risto Hiltunen (review)

226 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 74, NUMBER 1 (1998) and it also can serve as a handy reference for specialists in the field. [William R. Schmalstieg, The Pennsylvania State University.] Organization in discourse: Proceedings from the Turku conference. Ed. by Brita Wàrvik, Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen , and Risto Hiltunen. (Anglicana turkuensia, 14.) Turku: University of Turku, 1995. Pp. 558. This volume contains 52 papers presented at the conference on Organization in Discourse held in Turku, Finland, 10-14 August 1994. The broad range of topics is gathered under the main theme of discourse structure and organization. Scholars from fields including linguistics, communication studies, and literary theory have joined their efforts in the volume. The term discourse covers both spoken discourse and written text. The volume brings together studies from such genres of written texts and spoken interaction as academic and scientific texts, literary works, business texts, modern and old narratives, institutional discourse, telephone conversations, courtroom testimonies, and classroom discourse. Several ofthe papers discuss cross-cultural or contrastive studies in fields ofrhetoric and writing. Ulla Connor (15-28) looks at methodological issues in contrastive rhetoric and problems deriving from such issues as ethnocentrism and establishing ajoint basis for comparisons for contrastive studies. Nils-Erik Enkvist (41-57) discusses similar issues on methodological problems of cross-cultural rhetoric. Enkvist suggests that the contrastive study of discourse organization should widen its perspectives to include discoursal efficacy, macropatterns, and culturally determined rhetoric. EiJA Ventola (109-28), along with several other contributors, discusses the issues of academic text writing. Academic writing by nonnative speakers of English frequently shows problems with reference, theme-rheme patterns, and the organization of discourse . Ventola emphasizes the importance of intertextuality of the academic text genre, the importance of 'tumng-in' the text to a particular audience and field. Ines Busch-Lauer (175-86) addresses issues of different text organization principles of English and German medical abstracts, while Bo Andersson and Britt-Louise Gunnarsson (139-48) discuss cultural differences of conference abstract writing. Discourse organization is analyzed from various perspectives. Some contributors, such as Jan Firbas, look at layers, dimensions, paragraphs, or other 'chunks' of discourse. Firbas (59-72) concentrates on the communicative functions of sentence constituents and the assignment of information to thematic and nonthematic layers of a text. Frantisek Danes (29-40) analyzes the thematic and compositional relations within a paragraph as well as connections between components of a paragraph. Helena Halmari (273-81) looks at spoken discourse and especially the organization of episode structures in business telephone conversations. Several papers concentrate on issues of cohesion, coherence, and intertextuality. Michael Hoey (73-94) discusses coherence and mutual relevance created by bonding between sentences and texts. He addresses issues of nets of connections in the mind and bonding of sentences as products of the way the human mind stores and utilizes information. A. P. Berber Sardinha (157-61) looks at how bonding relates to the distance between bonding sentences in business reports. Said El-Shiayb (241-48) discusses cohesive devices and chains in Arabic narratives , while Eniko Németh T. (393-402) concentrates on Hungarian pragmatic connectives. Other papers in the volume concentrate on comparisons and parallels between spoken and written discourse. Douglas Biber (1-13) addresses the questions of cross-linguistic patterns of register variation in English, Korean, and Somali. He concludes that written language provides potential for certain forms oflanguage production that are not possible for spoken language. Deborah Du Bartell (231-39) finds characteristics similar to both written and spoken discourse from computer-mediated communication . Jan-Ola Östman (95-108) reviews the history of research on pragmatic particles during the last twenty years. From a study of hesitational phenomena the field has developed into a discourse-functionally oriented study. Ostman emphasizes the importance of pragmatic particles as main organizers of discourse. Uta Lenk (341-52) looks at the discourse marker anyway in establishing conversational coherence, and Teija Multisilta (381-92) looks at Russian pragmatic particles nu and vot that are used mainly for different types of textual transitions. This volume may be of value to scholars interested in various fields of discourse analysis as a source for ideas and for a glance at current research. Unfortunately , the large number...

A Research Consortium That's All Over the Map - That's Our Strength, if We Use Trans lation to Teach Each Other: A Response to Janis Forman's ABC Outstanding Researcher Lecture

Janis Forman's ABC Outstanding Researcher Lecture prompts us to consider several issues: whether pure research in business communication is possible, why we translate ideas and methods from other disciplines, and our responsibil ities as translators - to the disciplines we import from and to each other. Because business communication spans a vast territory and because our teach ing situates us in a variety of disciplines across the academy, each with its own research standards, research in our field has become a far-flung enterprise. The breadth of our research consortium, however, should not be seen as a liability, because the peer review process ensures the integrity of our imports, and as a discipline we benefit from the constant influx of fresh ideas. Although importing from other disciplines challenges us to translate for each other, we are uniquely qualified to solve this rhetorical problem because of the intrinsically pedagogi cal nature of business communication.

A critical perspective on fund raising communication: genre in search of rhetoric

Describes how professional fund‐raisers write and speak persuasively to many audiences, utilizing various media. Explains that the essence of fund‐raising is motivating individuals through symbolic action to behave in a desired way. Argues that fund‐raising is essentially a rhetorical exercise and that the utilization of criteria for assessing rhetorical acts is warranted. Rhetorical criteria direct the fund‐raiser to ask important questions pertaining to the purpose, audience, barriers ‐ the rhetorical problem ‐ and the structure of persuasive communication. Argues also that the fundamental Aristotelian genre is apparent in most fund‐raising rhetorical acts and the genre is identified through recurring characteristics of the rhetoric and helps to define the relationship between form and content. Maintains that successful fund‐raisers relied as much on experience and intuition as on formal rhetorical theory but rhetorical criteria may provide the practitioner with a template by which to create persuasive symbolic action in a broader context not limited to a single communicative act.

Empirical Diversity, Interdependence, and the Problem of Rhetorical Invention and Judgment: The Case of Wife Abuse Facts

For nearly 20 years, Dr. Murray Straus and his associates at the University of New Hampshire's Family Research Laboratory have debated critics about the facts of wife abuse and how best to attain them. This debate occurs under circumstances of “empirical diversity” that involve researchers who investigate wife abuse with different methods and adduce a range of often seemingly incompatible facts. Consequently, disputants confront a special pluralistic version of the ancient rhetorical problem of invention and judgment: How can one establish common grounds for creation and evaluation of arguments about facts in the presence of empirical diversity? This essay conducts a topical analysis of Straus's arguments, which reveals two distinct approaches to this problem. One approach locates adjudicating standards in values and assumptions rooted deeply within Straus's preferred orientation toward the issues. Arguments premised on that kind of standard polarize rhetorical judgment under empirically diverse circumstances. The other approach locates standards in practical points of interdependence among disputants. Arguments premised on the interdependence topos open possibilities for more constructive deliberation among those who argue for seemingly incompatible facts. The essay shows that topical analysis of the “ksrats” of invention and judgment affords opportunities for practical intervention in controversies about science.

Cut Off from Words: Robert Lowell's “Tranquilized Fifties”

In a 1961 letter to his cousin Harriet Winslow, Robert Lowell, reflecting on the Cold War crises of the period, particularly the erection of the Berlin Wall, wroteThe world's really strange isn't it? I mean the world of the news and the nations and the bomb testings. I feel it this fall and wonder, if it's just being forty three. Under a certain calm, there seems to be a question that must be answered. If one could think of the question. (Papers)Though this passage illustrates Lowell's tendency to read the world in autobiographical terms, it also displays his sensitivity to the role of language in crisis situations. The rhetorical, public, and communal problem of voicing the required question may be the key to “the world of the news,” yet asking that question is not only beyond Lowell but beyond everyone else (the uncharacteristically impersonal “one”). By the end of the 1950s, voicing the need to ask such a question had become an intrinsic part of Lowell's poetics, most clearly formulated in “For the Union Dead,” a poem completed in 1960 in which the public and the personal dimensions powerfully cohere. However, Lowell's work of the previous decade, collected in Life Studies (1959), in a subtle way had already explored the clichés, aporia, rhetorical corruption, and general verbal difficulties of the first decade of the television era.

Environmental, cognitive, and metacognitive influences on text revision: Assessing the evidence

To assess progress in understanding text revision, we review research reported since 1980, when process analyses of writing were beginning (Fitzgerald, 1987). A modernized version of the revision model by Flower, Hayes, Carey, Schriver, and Stratman (1986) was used to organize findings about how revision is influenced by environmentally posed rhetorical problems and actual text variables; by cognitive knowledge, strategies, and representations of the text being revised; by metacognitive understanding, monitoring, and control of knowledge and strategies; by interactions among these environmental, cognitive, and metacognitive influences; and by how working memory limits those interactive influences. These influences have been studied with a rich diversity of research approaches, and even though no part of the modernized model has been studied fully, and even though interactions of the model's parts have been examined minimally, clearly interpretable results have been reported about all of the model's parts. Substantial and encouraging progress has been made toward understanding text revision, and the stage has been set for more progress. We suggest investigations to increase understanding of revision and to promote integration of research and theory about reading and writing.

Communicating Risk in a Cross-Cultural Context

This article analyzes how culture influences the rhetorical strategies writers employ to represent expert knowledge in the workplace and the underlying values and assumptions in a culture that enable readers to understand and evoke the knowledges represented as visual and verbal narratives. The study examines the problems of risk communication in a cross-cultural context at three levels: (a) the technical problems of representing safety information in an uncertain and hazardous environment, (b) the translation problem of multiple representations and cultural understandings in a cross-cultural environment, and (c) the rhetorical problem of defining a rational basis for argument about what constitutes safety in an economic and political context. This article expands upon previous notions of cross-cultural communication as the translation processes necessary to mediate cultural difference or translate from one culture to another. In examining risk communication within a larger global context, this article analyzes the problems writers face in applying generalized models of communication practice to solve technical problems in a culturally and politically complex global economy.

Rhetorical problems of emergent democracy: Political change and political discourse in Poland

Rhetorical problems of emergent democracy: Political change and political discourse in Poland

Displaying Disciplinarity

Publishing in professional journals requires the author to display disciplinarity and yet to say something novel. This article approaches this familiar rhetorical problem from a novel perspective by analyzing disciplinarity as a kind of orthodoxy. Four elements of orthodoxy (narrative knowledge, assumptions and methodologies, hierarchy, and doctrinal knowledge) are identified. Then, the article argues that an orthodox ethos is created by signaling allegiance to a plurality of these elements. An example of an article that displays disciplinarity, David Raup's “Cohort analysis of generic survivorship,” is analyzed, showing the author establishes his orthodox ethos by challenging only one of the elements of orthodoxy while simultaneously signaling allegiance to the others.

The English National Forest: Local Reactions to Plans for Renegotiated Nature-Society Relations in the Countryside

The designation of a new National Forest in the English midlands presents a series of practical difficulties in implementing the afforestation of existing landscapes. It also suggests the imposition of new representations of nature-society relations on existing people and communities. In this paper, we use Margaret Fitzsimmons' notion of 'social nature' and subsequent concerns with the social meanings of nature to interpret a variety of narratives used to represent the likely outcomes of the National Forest proposals. These narratives were constructed in public meetings with community groups a methodology which, despite problems of intersubjectivity and rhetoric, offers thoughtful and insightful indications of how different social relations and social meanings of nature are 'placed' through the social construction of locality.

The Substructure of stasis-theory from Hermagoras to Hermogenes

Stasis-theory seeks to classify rhetorical problems (declamation themes, or real forensic and deliberative situations) acccording to the underlying structure of the dispute that each involves. Such a classification is of interest to the practising rhetor, since it may help him identify an appropriate argumentative strategy; for example, patterns of argument appropriate to a question of fact (did the defendant do what is alleged?) may be irrelevant in an evaluative dispute (was the defendant justified in doing that?).

Metaphorical transcendence: Images of the holy war in Franklin Roosevelt's first inaugural

Franklin Delano Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address is a prime example of a speech that used metaphor to transcend a recurring rhetorical problem. Roosevelt's twofold task was first to calm, then activate the American people. In service of these conflicted goals, Roosevelt merged two metaphoric clusters, religious and military, into a powerful and familiar image of “holy war,” which drew its strength from the nation's civil‐religious traditions. In so doing, Roosevelt enacted military and religious leadership and called for action in a genre of speech normally focusing on contemplation.

Community, collaboration, and the rhetorical triangle

Although “community”; is an important concept for writing, writers have been unclear about how a sense of community relates to the writing process or to the documents produced. This study reports a comparison of several technical reports showing the influences of a writer's identification with a community on features of the resulting document. Features most affected were personal and community references within the document, writer's stance toward the reader, and definition of the rhetorical problem.

Rhetoric, Consensus, and the Law in Rousseau's Contrat Social

While it has often been recognized that Rousseau links politics and language throughout his work, relatively few studies of Du contrat social have addressed the problem of rhetoric in and for Rousseau's political discourse. As Bronislaw Baczko and Jean Starobinski have noted, rhetoric involves politics for Rousseau when, as eloquence or persuasion, it raises the question of the efficacite performative of language or a pragmatique of discourse.' In the Contrat, we shall see in this essay, rhetoric is at issue because Rousseau's critique of force and his legitimation of political authority cannot do without a forceful act of persuasion, a sublime eloquence, that constitutes the state by eliciting to rational law. What Paul Ricoeur has said of ideology describes in this respect the pivotal function of rhetoric we will investigate in the Contrat: since every system of political authority, however violent or rational, needs consent and cooperation to rule, ideology must bridge the in the very structure of legitimation, the tension between the claim to legitimacy made by the authority and the belief in the

A Study of Reading as Learning-Activities in Teaching History : Concerned with the Problem of Rhetoric in History Narration

A Study of Reading as Learning-Activities in Teaching History : Concerned with the Problem of Rhetoric in History Narration

The political use of mythic discourse: Prophetic interpretation in pat robertson's presidential campaign

Pat Robertson's concepts of apocalyptic fulfillment provided an ideological basis for his 1988 presidential campaign, but resulted in significant rhetorical problems. The transformation in Robertson's apocalyptic vision is a result of his need to address differing audiences.

Using apocalyptic discourse to exploit audience commitments through “transfer”

Many persuaders face the rhetorical problem of how to use audience allegiance to a revered text as the basis for urging further commitments and actions. The essay considers the way in which recent religious apocalyptic discourse motivates actions and attitudes toward secular issues by appealing to sacred texts. One strategy of that discourse is transfer, a strategy explained by Kenneth Burke's concepts of form. The strategy is traced through three components of recent religious apocalyptic. Implications for rhetorical strategies which exploit reverence for texts are explored.

Der Ort des rhetorischen Wissens Kunst und Natur bei Isokrates

AbstractThis paper poses the question of the place of rhetoric as a discipline. It addresses the topical demand that nature, art, and exercise have to be combined by way of an analysis of Isocrates' Against the Sophists. Its thesis is that the call for a “combination” of art and nature solves the disciplinary problems of rhetoric, even though such a synthesis is in fact inconceivable. Rhetoric is not a science, and does not have access to a methodical correlation of rhetorical strategies and their effects upon the audience. Isocrates' criticism of those rhetoricians who assume that their art could be taught in much the same way as the art of writing is of paramount importance here. The case of Isocrates is instructive because it shows how rhetorical success depends on re‐designing the institutional structure of rhetoric and on the capacity to cope with its lack of methodical knowledge. As a result of its para‐scientific nature, rhetoric refers to various models and metaphors to present itself as a discipline. Of these the orator perfectus, the orator imperfectus, and the sophist model of the art of writing as criticized by Isocrates are discussed. This paper attempts a rhetorical reading of the discourse of rhetoric by exploring the implications of these metaphors. At the same time it argues for a history of science which does not shrink away from an analysis of such para‐sciences as rhetoric. It is precisely the lacking scientificity of rhetoric as a discipline which warrants increased attention from the point of view of the history of science.

II Putting Theory into Practice: the Job Search as Rhetorical Problem

II Putting Theory into Practice: the Job Search as Rhetorical Problem