Rhetorical Resources Research Articles

Infirmus loquor, infirmioribus loquor. Efficacia retorica e progresso spirituale nei discorsi al popolo di Agostino

The interaction between rhetoric and preaching is evident in St. Augustine in his sermons ad populum or sermons to his congregation. He expresses himself with care with the aim of achieving true spiritual progress in his hearers. Their reactions encourage him to make an attentive use of the rhetoric resources his authoritative experience has given him, and to exploit any possible means of raise his level of discourse. Signs of agreement from his congregation indicate an ongoing relationship with them. At any rate Augustine, in his preaching, is happy to make the best possible use of his rhetorical powers and leave the rest to God. The formation of a long-standing congregation requires him to go beyond customary limits so as to become a notable model of a Christian orator.

New Ways of Working in Academia: Maneuvering in and with Ambiguity in Workspace Design Processes

As a result of growing financial pressures and changing space demands, universities are increasingly looking to modernize and rationalize their workspaces through projects of New Ways of Working (NWoW). So far, extant research has mostly investigated the managerial construct of NWoW and its outcomes on organizational members, leaving the design process leading NWoW to be implemented in local contexts understudied. By contrast, the present study sets out to redefine NWoW as open-ended projects of organizational change that are unavoidably ambiguous and conflictual, hence seeking to overcome the tendency to conceal tensions arising at early stages of the change process under the abstract black-box of ‘resistance to change’. It is shown that ambiguity, simultaneously understood as an organizational problem causing tensions and as a rhetorical resource enabling collective action, plays a major role in the design process of such equivocal projects. This paper further advances our understanding of ambiguity as a multifaceted concept to bridge between individual rationalities and collective decision-making in the course of complex design processes.

Jane Jacobs’ Smart-Home Enthymemes: Ambiguous Urban Appeals in Google’s Toronto Smart City

This article examines how appeals to the urbanist legacy of Jane Jacobs were deployed by both supporters and opponents of a proposed smart city development in Toronto. The analysis indicates how these contrasting allusions to Jacobs’ urban ideals were facilitated by a longstanding ideological fluidity in Jacobs’ writings and an enthymematic exploitation of ambiguities around the interpretation of her ideas. I argue that the enthymematic status of Jacobsian concepts provides a productive ambiguity and strategic rhetorical resource for problematizing hegemonic planning agendas that are presented as post-political.

“Better never means better for everyone”: White feminist necropolitics and Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale

ABSTRACT This article builds on those who have critiqued Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale along racial lines and calls into question the esteemed status the show holds as a rhetorical resource for contemporary feminist activism. By drawing attention to the parasitical relationship that the archetype of the vulnerable (but resilient) white woman has to Black pain and death, I argue that the series further calcifies the dominance of white feminism, enacting what I term “white feminist necropolitics.” To illuminate this theory, the essay presents a close analysis of The Handmaid's Tale. Specifically, I demonstrate how the show deploys post-racial logics to center a white feminist heroine whose story of saviorism relies on the cooptation of Black pain and the exploitation of Black death. Ultimately, this critical reading of the series points to the ways in which white feminism and necropolitics are intricately entangled.

The Activist Potential of Networked Satire: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and the Struggle for Net Neutrality

In the fifth episode of Last Week Tonight,John Oliver satirized an FCC proposal to alter net neutrality leading to a surge in public comments, a groundswell of media attention, and the proposal’s defeat. In 2017, the FCC considered the proposal again and, despite Oliver’s redoubled efforts, voted against net neutrality. These engagements illustrate how satire like Oliver’s leverages the inventional resources of networked rhetoric to captivate audiences and direct shared sentiments toward activism by drawing attention to, creating, and extending moments for activism, revealing and engaging adversaries, and challenging discursive barriers that can foster engagement with public policies.

Embracing the subjunctive voice: An analytic for ecologically uncertain times

ABSTRACTIn this article, I assess viral videos depicting environmental crises and species loss, theorizing the “eco-subjunctive voice” as a rhetorically productive perspective for engaging extinction imagery. Building on Barbie Zelizer's notion of the “subjunctive voice” in images, I explore how viral videos of a polar bear and a sea turtle in jeopardy unite despair and hopefulness, strategically deploy “about-to-die” moments, and make the “hyperobjects” of climate catastrophe more intelligible. Additionally, an eco-subjunctive reading of each video demonstrates the limits of the synecdochic logic commonly employed in ecological discourse. The eco-subjunctive voice is an analytic useful for academics, activists, and audiences. Its capacious character and ability to accommodate contingency and complexity make the eco-subjunctive voice a powerful rhetorical resource in the effort to combat ecological disaster.

The Writing-to-learn Dimension of L2 Writing: Towards Rhetorical Hybridity and Flexibility

This study investigated how two Korean EFL college students, who were taught the five-paragraph essay in their college writing classes, drew upon rhetorical resources in their writing for learning content (WLC). Using a multiple-case study design, the study examined how the students consciously manipulated all of their rhetorical resources to make meaning and used L2 writing to learn content. It also explored how they differed in their enactment of rhetorical practices and deployment of rhetorical resources in WLC. During their engagement with WLC, they developed rhetorical strategies that reflected the structure of their evolving text rather than the structure of the five-paragraph essay. Their rhetorical choices in WLC have provided invaluable insight into the rhetorical challenges they faced while writing. Overall, they produced texts that better portrayed the multiple nuances inherent in a translingual approach. An implication is that more L2 writing teachers and scholars should pay attention to the rhetorical sensibility promoted by the translingual movement

ANÁLISIS INTERDISCURSIVO DE COMENTARIOS REALES (1964) DE ANTONIO CISNEROS

Antonio Cisneros writes Comentarios reales (1964), as part of a poetic initiative of the Generation of 60, which consists of reviewing the official history through irony and demystification (Fernández, 2016). In this article, the rhetorical and comparative analysis is done by interdiscursive analysis (Albaladejo, 2008) in the comparison of two pairs of poems from Comentarios reales, as well as between a poem of said work and another from Marco Martos’ Biblioteca del mar (2012). The development of the analysis will prove the following hypothesis: the two central rhetorical resources in Comentarios reales are demystifying irony and colloquial language.

Not now! Construction of the “now-is-not-the-time” discourse of Theresa May and Boris Johnson vis-à-vis the second Scottish independence referendum

Between 2016 and 2021, in response to calls for a second Scottish independence referendum, two British Prime Ministers—Theresa May and Boris Johnson—adopted a holding position, at the core of which was the “now-is-not-the-time” argumentative scheme. As a particular expression of strategic ambiguity, this delay discourse was intended to fulfil a specific political function: to postpone the second plebiscite sine die. As such, it marked a stark difference to the 2014 Scottish referendum campaign and provided the anti-independence camp with a new rhetorical resource. Having adopted the general orientation of the Discourse-Historical Approach to discourse analysis, and working with a dataset of May’s and Johnson’s public utterances on the second Scottish referendum, this article investigates how exactly this discourse of referendum delay was constructed in prime ministerial rhetoric. It concludes that some differences notwithstanding, the two PMs managed to create a largely consistent argumentative scheme.

Disciplinary and Move Analyses of Hedging in Abstracts of DIPES II Dissertations of the Higher Teachers’ Training college of Maroua

This paper examines hedging as a rhetorical resource employed by fifth year (DIPES II) students of the Higher Teacher Training College of Maroua in Cameroon to show politeness, respect, humility and tentativeness in presenting their arguments or stating facts and subjective opinions. A specialized corpus of 46.368 tokens was used and hedges were retrieved using AntConc 3.4.4. Data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The analysis shows that there is generally an unsatisfactory representation of hedges in the abstracts. The findings further reveal that markers of intentional vagueness, accuracy hedges and writer-oriented hedges are the most common hedging strategies. Students seemingly rely on relatively simpler types of hedging like some, few, may, could, a number of. Conversely, more complicated constructions such as it appears that, it is possible that seem virtually inexistent. Students in the Department of Bilingual Letters were found to be more tentative than their counterparts of other disciplines. It is equally observed that more hedging strategies are used in stating research findings than in any other communicative purpose of the abstracts. In substance, the innovation in this paper may lie on its artful combination of disciplinary investigation with move analysis of hedging in a seemingly ‘marginalized’ academic genre, and its exclusive focus on novice writing in a non-native professional academic institution. This has led to the conclusion that the use of hedging can now be regarded as not only discipline-specific but also move-specific.

Living photography and anamorphosis as equipment for public dying in a pandemic

ABSTRACT This essay consists of a critical and creative encounter with WWI visual propagandist Arthur Mole’s “living photography,” a technique to create images by configuring thousands of subjects to form silhouettes of culturally relevant symbols only discernable from an elevated vantage point. I argue that Mole’s visual rhetoric offers important equipment for public dying, which in this case refers to rhetorical resources for managing collective mortality amidst the lethal concoction of pandemic, anti-Black racism, and war. As I theorize how living photography inventively encapsulates the enormity of multiple pandemics via anamorphosis, I make frequent departures between 1917–18 and 2019–21 by foregrounding Mole’s most technically sophisticated image – a human assemblage resembling the Statue of Liberty taken at Camp Dodge in Des Moines, Iowa on August 23, 1918. Mole’s rhetoric remains an aesthetically innovative, ethically perplexing, and historically neglected case that vivifies the opportunities and challenges of collectivist aesthetics to democratically address global cataclysm.

Arguments linked to logos related to immigration in Obama and Biden's campaign discourses

As host to more immigrants than any other country, the United States has been shaped by immigration over the centuries, and illegal immigration is a constant problem, so is a topic to deal with in political campaigns. This research will show some rhetorical resources used in the political speeches given by Democratic leaders Barack Obama and Joe Biden when dealing with the issue of immigration in their campaigns. We will focus specifically on the different mechanisms related to logos or means of persuasion through the demonstration of logical proof, real or apparent, which can also be defined as the strategy of arguments that point directly to reason. Using Aristotle's Rhetoric, we will analyze how politicians try to convince, and we will compare the resources of both to see the similarities and differences. We selected four political speeches made by each Democratic candidate during the electoral campaigns to do this.

Transgressive Spatialities: Mapping Identity and Liminality in Contemporary Queer Narratives from Assam

From Descartes’ cogito to the postmodern fluidity, the notion of identity has acquired newer dimensions. Identity remains an important rhetorical resource for non-heterosexual people. Butler’s notion of gender as performative has been fundamental in this discourse on the queer people who debunk compulsory heterosexuality as a given. An exploration of the spaces that the non-heteronormative people occupy is pertinent to understanding the lived realities of these people. Using the Foucauldian notion of heterotopia, this study tries to understand the liminal and all kinds of alternative spaces that they inhabit which is intense and disruptive. They are also sites of resistance and transgression. In Assamese literature, the heterosexual ideology dominates the hegemonic knowledge production spaces. The non-heteronormative people occupy the spaces in crevices, and peripheries and cannot claim a distinct positionality. Queer narratives from Assam reflect a new direction in this regard. The Narratives under study by Moushumi Kandali, Aruni Kashyap and Panchanan Hazarika present how these narratives from Assam present the lived realities of the queer population and how they explicate the spatial dimension of the same-sex desire, and in the process how they negotiate the ontological authenticity of the non-heteronormative people to form their identity.

Fragmentos de identidad canaria. el «texto en el texto» como recurso retórico en el proceso de redefinición presente en calima y las espiritístas de Telde

In the literary works that make up the New Canarian Narrative we find a large influx of symbols linked to Canarian identity: Fortunatae Insulae, Atlantis, San Borondón, the Guanches, migration, etc. Among the rhetorical resources employed by this generation, the use of the “text in the text” allows these authors to confront the symbols that have historically been poured over the Islands with a vision of their own, which is in clear confrontation with the preceding system, thereby generating a whole process of redefinition of regional identity. What we propose to do is, by means of the analysis of two literary works —Calima (1978) and Las espiritistas de Telde (1981)— belonging to the New Canarian Narrative, to delve into the new generation of meaning produced by means of the “text within the text”, in order to highlight the limits and changes in the symbols inherent to the identity of the Canarian cultural sphere.

The internationalism of stateless nations: The case of Hong Kong

AbstractNationalism is often associated with xenophobia and isolationism in academic literature. The negative image of nationalism has been further strengthened by the electoral success of far‐right political figures across the world. However, treating all nationalism as a uniformly negative phenomenon risks over‐simplification, as nationalism might manifest differently given different social context and rhetorical resources available. Taking Hong Kong as a case, this paper theorises Hong Kong as a stateless nation and examines the alleged negative association of nationalism. It moves beyond the traditional ‘Hong Kong vis‐a‐vis China’ framework and explores the relationship between Hong Kong nationalists and non‐Chinese international actors. Drawing on data from major Hong Kong political parties' Facebook page, this paper shows that Hong Kong nationalism exhibits a high level of internationalism in both inward and outward dimensions, theorised, respectively, as the willingness to accept foreign influence and to invite international cooperation, and therefore offers a nuanced understanding about the relationship between nationalism, xenophobia and isolationism.

Character as Rhetorical Resource: Mimetic, Thematic, and Synthetic in Fiction and Non-Fiction

This essay updates and extends the model for understanding the concept of character in literary fiction I proposed in Reading People, Reading Plots (1989). That model proposes that character has three simultaneously existing components, the mimetic (character as possible person), thematic (character as representative of a larger group of people and/or a set of ideas), and the synthetic (character as construct within the larger construct of the narrative). The model also specifies that the relations among the components varies from narrative to narrative, depending on the narrative progression. Using Joyce Carol Oates's flash fiction "Widow's First Year" as a test case, I develop three interrelated points: (1) character is a flexible resource that authors can deploy in a diversity of ways; (2) a rhetorical approach to audiences helps clarify the relations among the mimetic, thematic, and synthetic components; and (3) the approach works, with appropriate adjustments, for nonfictional as well as fictional narrative. Along the way, I also suggest how the updated model can address some of the tensions in the nature and functions of character identified by Alex Woloch and John Frow.

Character, Fiction, Formalism: A Response to James Phelan, "Character as Rhetorical Resource: Mimetic, Thematic, and Synthetic in Fiction and Non-Fiction"

This essay updates and extends the model for understanding the concept of character in literary fiction I proposed in Reading People, Reading Plots (1989). That model proposes that character has three simultaneously existing components, the mimetic (character as possible person), thematic (character as representative of a larger group of people and/or a set of ideas), and the synthetic (character as construct within the larger construct of the narrative). The model also specifies that the relations among the components varies from narrative to narrative, depending on the narrative progression. Using Joyce Carol Oates's flash fiction "Widow's First Year" as a test case, I develop three interrelated points: (1) character is a flexible resource that authors can deploy in a diversity of ways; (2) a rhetorical approach to audiences helps clarify the relations among the mimetic, thematic, and synthetic components; and (3) the approach works, with appropriate adjustments, for nonfictional as well as fictional narrative. Along the way, I also suggest how the updated model can address some of the tensions in the nature and functions of character identified by Alex Woloch and John Frow.

Prayer Leads to Advocacy: The Theological Logic in a Bishop's Statement on Comprehensive Immigration Reform

This article contributes to the scholarly discussions about the role of religion in social and political action rhetoric by revealing the complexities of rhetorical resources found in the logic of theology. To this end, I explored rhetorical functions of theology in Bishop Michael Burbidge's 2013 Statement on Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Close textual analysis of the text allows scholars to identify what I call the textual theology—a mediating level of theology between theological traditions and the rhetoric in a text. Analysis of the textual theology in the Bishop's statement provides insights as to how the more abstract levels of theology animate texts in the real world in ways that have implications that reach beyond the particular text.

“a thunderin/lightenin poet-talkin / female / is a sign of things to come”

ABSTRACT Ntozake Shange had a notably complex relationship with her inheritance of the Black Arts project. While she was clearly influenced by the politics of Black nationalism and the aesthetic innovations of the movement in claiming Black language practices as powerful tools of poetic expression, she also struggled to feel accepted and represented within Black nationalist camps. However, this conflict in fact puts her in the company of women writers of the Black Arts Movement, who themselves had been working for years within the movement to move the needle on problematic conceptions of gender and sexuality. In her unpublished early poems written between 1970 and 1972, Shange’s use of Black linguistic and rhetorical resources aligns with the contemporaneous work of other Black Arts women poets and successfully demonstrates the most generative elements of the Black Arts project. But by the beginning of her public career in the mid-1970s, Shange importantly moves independently beyond the Black Arts project to insist on a necessary reckoning with the barriers, within and outside of the Black community, to Black women’s liberation. This article draws upon archival research to reveal the ways Shange’s early work demonstrates both her inheritance and her innovation of the rhetorical and poetic strategies that Black Arts women writers used to make their case that Black women should be central to and vocal within Black nationalist movements.

“Nature needs you”: discursive constructions of legitimacy and identification in environmental charity appeals

Abstract This study traces how discursive constructions of legitimacy and identification are enacted textually and visually with respect to environment-oriented causes, such as landscape or species restoration. Such conservation projects actually clash with human economic priorities typical of the Anthropocene. Drawing on models of social trust and assuming the discursive nature of legitimacy and identification, we explore how environmental charity organizations represent their conservation efforts, reproduce sustainability discourses and advocate self-regulatory practices. We use a sample of mission statements and donation appeals by six prominent environmental charities from the UK. Through keyness and concordance analysis, we identify textual strategies that position the prospective donor as a “beneficiary” of environment-oriented actions. We also analyze rhetorical strategies and visual resources that align the aims of the organization with the social imaginaries and emotional dispositions of prospective donors.