Rhetorical Inquiry Research Articles

Recht als Gegenstand rhetorischer Grundlagenforschung

Abstract According to the self-image of lawyers, jurisprudence is a science: the premises in legal conclusions are truth-apt, as are the conclusions or judgements that follow from them, the cognition of true law is consequently regarded as their task. Against this background, a program that understands and analyzes law as the product of a rhetorical practice is confronted with fierce resistance. According to the research of analytical legal rhetoric, on the other hand, the evidence for a rhetorical imprint on law is overwhelming: starting with the logical status of legal inferences, to the peculiarities of judicial procedure, to the motivational situation of those involved in it, everywhere it becomes apparent that the image of strict truth-orientation inadequately describes the genesis of law. Following Aristotle, who assigned law to the field of phrónēsis and not to epistēmē, contemporary legal rhetoric research aims to draw a realistic picture of the genesis of law. Subdivided into the triad of logos, ethos, and pathos, it attempts to fully grasp the interrelationships involved. It becomes apparent that the rational or argumentative dimension is far from dominating in legal justifications. It is precisely at the neuralgic point, i.e., where arguments are opposed to each other, that the rhetor typically uses a rhetorical figure that links all levels of the triad: the restrictio.

Responding to the Investigative Pivots of Rhetoric Research

ABSTRACT In this essay, we offer the “investigative pivot” as a framework for teaching rhetoric researchers how to orient and withstand being re-/dis-/oriented by the research process. Investigative pivoting indexes how a researcher responds to material conditions under which they collect and analyze data. To illustrate investigative pivots, we present and analyze pivot narratives from four graduate student researchers. Drawing on the analytic power of E. Cram’s rhetoric of orientation, these pivot narratives detail how we negotiate infrastructural, ideological, and institutional influences on our research process. When adopted, the investigative pivot prompts researchers to anticipate, recognize, and respond to the material-discursive hurdles of life and learning that follow us into our research sites. Such a framework, we argue, facilitates simultaneous methodological and pedagogical opportunities for students, teachers, and researchers of rhetoric.

Organizational Rhetoric as Subjectification

Given arguments that organizational rhetoric is disconnected from contemporary and useful trends in rhetorical theory writ-large, we build a case for rethinking organizational rhetoric’s founding concept of identification through recent innovations in rhetorical theory. Drawing from theories of psychoanalysis, racialization, and coloniality, we argue for an alternative understanding of organizational rhetoric premised on subjectification, where subjectification is the process through which a subject is brought into being on the basis of shifting contexts, relations, and imbrication in forces of power. We highlight three facets of organizational subjectification that can contribute to innovative organizational rhetorical research: differential relations, dependence on Otherness, and uneven mutuality. These facets, we argue, highlight how processes of coloniality and racialization are fundamental to our very being and becoming, providing a means of understanding organizational rhetoric as inherently political.

A Legacy of Cunning Rhetorical Agility: Métis Polymorphism in the Protest Rhetoric of Sojourner Truth and Sarah Grimké

In Greek mythology, Metis’s cunning intelligence and polymorphism are crucial in Zeus’s victory over the Titans. However, the paranoid god eventually swallows Metis and claims her cunning intellect as his own—an act analogous to the patriarchal consumption of women’s voice. The rhetorical concept of métis derived from this myth refers to wily, cunning, and polymorphic intelligence. This article explicates the rhetorical concept of métis and argues that women have employed métis polymorphic rhetoric throughout history to negotiate intersecting oppressions, protest injustice, and engender change. By reexamining the protest rhetoric of early feminist activists Sojourner Truth and Sarah Grimké and connecting their tactics to contemporary scholarship on feminist activism, this article draws attention to métis as a consistent determinant and a valuable theoretic framework already residing under the surface of much feminist rhetorical inquiry.

Democracy as Fetish

Democracy as Fetish

A Rule That Bends: Aristotle on Pathos and Equity

ABSTRACT Aristotle says in the Rhetoric that leading judges into passions is like warping a rule or kanon before using it. Rather than seeing this as an exclusion of emotion from rhetoric, I argue that the ability for the pathe to bend judgment has its appropriate use in achieving equity. The pathe are themselves a kanon, resembling the soft, leaden rule used by Lesbian masons, referred to in his discussion of equity in the Nicomachean Ethics. In problematic cases, the rigidity of law requires the correction of a judge's pathetic capacity. I then read Lysias's Against Simon, a speech given under strict relevancy requirements, to show how the pathe are used in the narration of the accused party in seeking an equitable judgment. I conclude with how such a view may inform contemporary rhetorical inquiry on the emotions.

Tropofigures as New Realities of Texts in Modern Political Communication

The article examines the mechanisms of organizing verbal constructs that manifest the linguopragmatic structure of texts in modern Russian political communication. A special class of figurative means of political language stands out – tropofigures. Tropofigures include irony and parcelling, which are characterized, on the one hand, by formal-semantic ambivalence and, on the other hand, by an apparent idiostylistic touch. The proposed methodological framework of the study aimed at the identification and systematic characterization of the categorical features of these synergetic linguistic signs, facilitated the description of the ways of their exemplification in political interactions. The authors established that the tropofigures of irony and parcelling ornamentally form the antinomy of the identity / non-identity of the sign and the object (semasiological discrepancy between the logical and grammatical organization of the syntagma). The tropofigures not only organize the expressive-pragmatic center of political discursive practice but also fulfill the function of a verbal marker of the cognitive mechanisms of text formation, which allow the participant to present their communicative goal setting in a certain way. The authors emphasized that the tropofigures of irony and parcelling are transformed from means of enhancing expressiveness into markers of the idiomental process and set a different social perception. The results of the linguistic rhetorical research indicate new mechanisms of convergence / divergence of semantic constructs in various political interactions and, as a result, linguocultural "reaccentuation" of sign-symbolic and axiological constituents of the political institution in the modern Russian-speaking space.

Whites and Browns: A Contrastive Study of Metadiscourse in English Newspaper Editorials

Metadiscourse is an interesting field of inquiry that is believed to play a vital role in organizing and producing persuasive writing. It is a set of linguistic devices used to communicate attitudes and mark the structural properties of a text. The study aimed to investigate whether native and non-native varieties of English varieties are similar or different from each other from the perspective of interactional meta-discourse markers. The study as contrastive rhetoric research scrutinized a corpus of 900 newspaper editorials (450 written in native English newspapers and 450 written in non-native English newspapers). Editorials were culled from 15 native English newspapers belonging to three native English countries, England, America, and New Zealand, and 15 non-native English newspapers belonging to three non-native English countries, Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka. Based on the model of metadiscourse given by Hyland (2005), interactional metadiscourse resources were analyzed. The frequencies of interactional metadiscourse markers in both native and non-native varieties were counted and compared with each other. The results disclosed that there were worth-pointing differences between the native and non-native English editorialists in the use of interactional metadiscourse markers. Two different varieties of English editorials showed variations particularly in the use of hedging and self-mention markers. On the whole, findings suggested that the use of interactional metadiscourse markers in native English editorials were more frequent than those in non-native English editorials which made their writings more appealing and convincing context.Keywords: metadiscourse; native; non-native; newspaper; editorials

Selling research in RA discussion sections through English and Spanish: An intercultural rhetoric approach

Discussion (and/or other closing) (DC) sections of research articles in English-medium journals are difficult to write, especially when English is not a first language. This intercultural rhetoric research explores whether greater effort is made to promote research in English than in Spanish. I drew ten pairs of comparable DC sections from the EXEMPRAES (exemplary empirical research articles in English and Spanish) Corpus. I systematically annotated these sections for their communicative functions, and, for the first time, my annotations were validated by the article authors, themselves. Additionally, I used an online survey to understand the authors' promotional behaviour. This innovative mixed methodology confirmed that the social scientists in the study were more promotional in English than in Spanish. Authors in English highlighted more positive aspects of their studies and applications of their results. In contrast, Spanish authors were more neutral, focussing largely on statements of contribution and relevance to the zeitgeist. Revealing how different levels of culture (unstated communication principles, knowledge areas, socialisation processes and research assessment policies) affect the inclusion of specific communicative functions demonstrates how social scientists’ promotional approaches in DC sections are complex and merit further attention. Implications for the teaching of academic writing in English are drawn.

진시황(秦始皇) 각석(刻石)의 수사학적 탐구 : 송(頌)을 중심으로

본고는 한문의 여러 장르 중 ‘송(頌)’에 나타난 표현 기술(記述)을 탐구하는 데 목적이 있다. 고대의 ‘송’은 신들과 조종 선왕께 제사를 지내면서 신명과 성덕을 찬미하고, 현재의 정치적 통합을 신께 간절히 빌며 미래까지 지속할 나라의 영속성을 염원하는 내용을 담았다. 진시황(秦始皇)은 자신의 업적을 기리며 돌에다 ‘송’을 새기게 하였다. 본고에서는 『사기』 ｢진시황본기｣에 남아 있는 각석(刻石)의 내용을 중심으로 구성과 표현 기술에 집중하여 수사학적 탐구를 하고자 한다. 각석의 내용을 수사학적으로 분석한 결과, 진시황의 공덕을 노래하는 정치적･역사적 통일 과정뿐만 아니라 국가 권력의 상징적인 요소들도 나타났다. 순행이 진행되면서 각석의 표현에는 진시황이 겪는 현실과 이상세계의 괴리가 점점 드러났다. 본고는 이러한 과정에서 나타나는 내용과 단어들의 다양한 변화를 수사학적 표현 기술로 탐구하였다. 이어서 진시황 각석에 나타난 ‘송’으로서 표현 기술의 의미를 역사성, 공덕성, 통치관과 권위성을 중심으로 살폈다. 또 당시 변화하는 정세와 불안정한 정치 경향, 군신 관계의 갈등 속에서 진시황이 중시했던 법률은 정신적, 도덕적 가치의 이념과 무력으로 행사된 사회의 권력 관계, 사회적인 규범･풍속과 연결되어 있음을 밝혔다.

Rhetoric in Poland

ABSTRACT The purpose of the article is to present a case study of the self-organization process within rhetorical studies in Poland, which has emerged as an independent area of research with the ambition to become a full-fledged discipline. The main research question concerns the impact of a single change-initiating event, namely, the first partially free elections in Poland in 1989, on adaptation processes at two levels of rhetorical agencies: those of citizens and rhetoricians. The ensuing socio-political changes allowed for the unrestricted development of rhetorical practices, which had been impossible in countries under the communist regime: advertising and marketing (also in politics), political debates, civic engagement, and academic freedom. The growing number of rhetorical scholars, writing in a different way and about something different than prior to 1989, contributed to the emergence of a modern and fairly compact area of rhetorical research. The article highlights the cultural specificity of Polish rhetorical studies, which include three main sources of inspiration: (a) Old Polish oratory and its contemporary literary analyses; (b) analysis of communist propaganda, including the media; and (c) contemporary concepts in the field of argumentation, rhetorical criticism, discourse analysis and media studies. The main goal is to demonstrate that after 1989, rhetorical research in Poland should no longer be reduced to the enumeration of relatively few, individual contributions, but instead it should be acknowledged as a self-organizing system – a complexity science – created by dense intertextual relations, professional networks and institutional frameworks. In order to advance the awareness of rhetorical endeavors in Poland among international scholars, we adopt here a descriptive methodology, focusing on five key aspects: (a) the process of internal differentiation of rhetorical studies; (b) rhetorical perspectives in language-and-text studies; (c) media studies; (d) politics; and (e), the internationalization processes within the rhetorical studies in Poland through the reception of the American research tradition of rhetorical criticism.

The Columbo method—A rhetoric of inquiry practiced across professions

The increasing numbers of trade articles about the almost trademark “Columbo Method” evidences a growing phenomenon. As demonstrated by the fictional television detective of Columbo 1968-2003, the method is an approach to investigation characterized by rhetorical inquiry (system of questions and timing), an antipotent persona (nonauthoritative, unassuming Everyman), and tenacity in overcoming a responder’s resistance to collaboration or influence. The essay provides a theoretical analysis of Columbo’s informed but indirect questioning, pretense of ignorance, solicitation of help, folksy congeniality, and the false exit. A literature review presents applications of the Columbo Method by professionals to describe effective workplace interaction with resistant responders (conflicting values or allegiances, lifestyle and demographic differences, shyness, anxiety, fear of change, etc.). Third, the theory is applied in an in-depth rhetorical analysis of cases of communication in academia. Most importantly, the work strives to make an impact in ethical approaches to communication with implications for developing rhetorical pedagogy. ©Journal of Professional Communication, all rights reserved.

Courts as Rhetorical Actors: A Rhetorical Analysis of Judicial Conflict Avoidance

The paper starts from the assumption that there is a body of case-law on the German, the European Union (EU) level, and on the international level that is characterised by strategies of judicial avoidance. Courts for various reasons sometimes avoid deciding the substantive legal issues advanced by the parties to a conflict or put before them as a legal question in advisoryproceedings. The phenomenon is multifaceted. It can be observed in different legal contexts, in different countries, and branches of the law. From this perspective judicial avoidance is an important, yet scholarly neglected, element of judicial practice. As the paper demonstrates, it can be detected and categorised by employing the analytical tools of rhetorical science. This namely involves insights resulting from rhetorical research on ‘avoidance strategies’ in various forms of human and organisational communication. The central hypothesis of this paper therefore is that courts can be found to employ a sophisticated toolkit of classical rhetorical practices in order to avoid in their decision a ruling on focal legal issues of a dispute. The crossjurisdictional set of rhetorical practices, which the article traces in the practice of various selected high profile courts, goes well beyond the emanations of classic Western separation of powers-doctrines of ‘judicial self-restraint’, ‘political questions’, or the ‘margin of appreciation’.

La importancia de los tratados psicológicos aristotélicos para los estudios retóricos

This note reviews the new translation of Aristotle’s De Anima and Parva Naturalia by Fred D. Miller Jr. Against its backdrop, the importance of these psychological treatises for interdisciplinary, rhetorical research is also analyzed, with special emphasis on both Aristotelian criticism and the arts of memory from Antiquity to the early modern period.

Metafora „wiedza to widzenie” w różnych systemach semiotycznych i dyskursach”

The article refers to the presence of the metaphor ‘understanding is seeing’ in various semiotic systems and discourses, pointing to the dominance of cognitive function of metaphor and the unification of sensory experience and mental cognition within it. Outlined is the context in which the emergence of the identification of knowledge with sight takes place and the establishment of this epistemological metaphor, important for Western culture (an oculocentric discourse). The presence of metaphor in visual arts, polysemiotic arts, and music is analyzed, with the indication of the multisensory nature of perceptual experiences (the perspective of rhetorical research on heterosemiotic cultural phenomena is adopted here). In the further part of the text, the role of metaphor in scientific and artistic discourse and media communication is examined, as well as the perspective of the development of the ‘visual field’ in the face of wear out of metaphor, the co-presence in culture of oculocentric and oculophobic tendencies, and the digital remediatization of cultural texts.

Logic is (Somewhat) Overrated: Image-Based Versus Concept-Based Rhetoric in Crowdfunding Narratives

Drawing on image-based versus concept-based rhetoric research, we test whether concept-based rhetoric—evoking rational, logical, and concrete thinking—could be less useful than image-based rhetoric—evoking more primal, imaginative, and irrational imagery—in driving crowdfunding performance. We further examine how these forms of narrative rhetoric might serve to moderate the relationship between narcissistic rhetoric and crowdfunding performance. Based on a sample of 75,636 Kickstarter projects, image-based rhetoric is positively related to crowdfunding performance, and concept-based language suppressed the relationship between narcissistic rhetoric and crowdfunding performance. Our findings have implications for understanding how narrative elements interact to influence crowdfunding outcomes.

Banking on bullshit: indifferences towards truth in corporate social responsibility

PurposeThis study aims to identify and deconstruct bullshit in banks' corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication to advance the management rhetoric research space, which has been characterised by an indifference to truth and meaning.Design/methodology/approachWe provide a typology of bullshit phenomena overview in the banking sector and follow the McCarthyet al.'s (2020) C.R.A.P. framework from to showcase how bullshit can be comprehended, recognised, acted against and prevented.FindingsThis paper puts a spotlight on written and spoken language to detect bullshit in banks' CSR statements. It provides actionable insights into how stakeholders can act against and prevent bullshit statements from occurring in the future.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research is warranted to assess the use of still imagery, events and video materials in corporate communications and non-financial reporting. Further rigorous assessment of actual CSR initiatives must be undertaken to assess claimed contributions.Practical implicationsMonitoring mechanisms and independent assurance statements prepared by authorised third parties may strengthen the motivation and ethicality of CSR activities.Originality/valueThis viewpoint is the first to follow the C.R.A.P framework and critically assess indifferences towards truth in banks' CSR communications.

RHM, Interdisciplinarity, and an International Public Health Conference

Building connections with professionals in subject matter disciplines—practitioners and/or academics—is a growing area of interest for many scholars working in the rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM). However, strategies for creating and building meaningful, productive interdisciplinary relationships has not been a central theme in RHM-focused scholarship. This entry endeavors to address this gap by using RHM’s emerging version of the “dialogue” genre to describe the author’s experience co-chairing the communications track for an international public health conference. The author weaves in commentary from contributors who participated in the conference and discusses and reflects upon two key challenges that emerged: 1) differences in language choice/terminology, and 2) epistemic conflict. Through this reflective discussion, this dialogue proposes several strategies that RHM scholars might draw from in building their own interdisciplinary relationships moving forward: 1) negotiate shared meanings and goals, 2) find commonalities, and 3) normalize rhetorical inquiry. 
 Featured Contributors: Nicholas Bustamante, MFA; Alina Deshpande, PhD; Amy Ising, MS; Jamie Newman, PhD; Kirk St.Amant, PhD

The Ostomy Multiple: Toward a Theory of Rhetorical Enactments

Recent research in rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM) has called on scholars to find ways to more adequately attend to patients’ lived and embodied experiences. At the same time, scholarship within and allied to RHM has long worked to address the problems of perspectivalism and relatedly, Cartesian binaries such as mind/body or self/nonself. This article aims to build theory that simultaneously addresses these concerns by examining patients’ experiences with ostomies. This article develops rhetorical enactments as a theoretical frame that enables RHM scholars to explore lived experiences and account for diverse entities that participate in those experiences. The analysis presented focuses on how entities like “self” and “ostomy” are rhetorically enacted within lived experiences and become meaningfully different. Ultimately, this article advocates rhetorical enactments as a productive way to both understand and intervene in patients’ lived experiences.

The Place of Mental Health Rhetoric Research (MHRR) in Rhetoric of Health & Medicine and Beyond

In sum, unlike some special issues that might be sort of “one off” engagements with interesting fringe topics, this is no “flash in the pan.” This special issue is, of course, imperfect since one issue cannot account for all of the work being done in the area. Instead, it offers notable examples of the range of topics and approaches that scholars are considering in this vibrant arm of RHM work. Readers can expect to see RHM continue to offer researchers in MHRR space to share their important work.