Rhetorical Situation Research Articles

ChatGPT Literacy for Fostering Language Proficiency and Writing Skills in ESL/EFL Classrooms

Background: The article posits that ChatGPT literacy functions as a pedagogical imperative to foster the writing skills of English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students. The goal of the article is to explore key literacy skills that are crucial for the ethical and responsible use of ChatGPT in enhancing the teaching of writing skills to ESL/EFL students. Method: Drawing upon the theory of Artificial Intelligence (AI) literacy (Dobrin, 2023) and ESL/EFL pedagogy of microlearning activities (Kohnke, 2023), this study employs a method of qualitative content analysis (Krippendroff, 2019) of 23 ChatGPT-generated texts as responses to given prompts. The qualitative analysis and interpretation of the given prompts and ChatGPT’s responses have been discussed in four rubrics, namely parts of speech, sentence formation, paragraph writing, and genre convention. Result: The result of ChatGPT’s responses led to the findings that four literacy skills—literacy of prompting, literacy of hooking and specifying, literacy of qualifying and quantifying, and literacy of rhetorical situations—are some useful techniques for the use of ChatGPT in advancing ESL/EFL writing skills in various educational contexts. Conclusion: Integrating ChatGPT into ESL/EFL writing classrooms can be productive for both writing instructors and students, provided that microlearning activities are implemented to enhance the effective, ethical, and responsible use of ChatGPT. Novelty: The paper demonstrates innovative strategies for using AI writing technology such as ChatGPT and shows the importance of effective prompting literacy for a productive conversation to happen in the writing classroom of ESL/EFL students.

What, How and Why Academic Writing?

This paper multiple understandings of academic writing, examining the skills involved in writing, and analyzing the structure and context of scholarly writing Academic writing, also known as scholarly writing, demands a serious approach and specific skills Writers proficient in exploring ideas, analyzing information, and organizing data into a formal and comprehensible structure are better equipped to contribute to academic writing. The scientific writer emphasizes reasoning and evidence in relevant papers. The aim of this article is to inform, motivate, and educate readers about writing in general and academic writing in particular. Through qualitative analysis, this research investigates the rhetorical situation, which encompasses the writer, reader, occasion, subject, and source of information, and how these elements influence academic writing.

Vector Rhetoric: GPT’s Rhetorical Agency

ABSTRACT The growing capabilities of large language models (LLMs) pose important questions for rhetorical theory and pedagogy. This article offers an overview of how LLMs like GPT work and a consideration of whether they should be considered rhetorical agents. To answer this question, the article considers structural and argumentative similarities in classical theorizations of rhetoric and the philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars. GPT’s particular method of encoding statistical patterns in language gives it some rudimentary semantics and reliably generates acceptable natural language output, so it should be considered to have a degree of rhetorical agency. But it is also badly limited by its restriction to written text, and an analysis of its interface shows that much of its rhetorical savvy is caused by the highly restricted rhetorical situation created by the ChatGPT interface.

Homiletical Theory as a Pedagogical Paradigm

Every preacher has a unique homiletical theory evident in their preaching, regardless of whether it is understood through scholarly examination. Homiletical theory is the academic examination of disciplines in the understanding of the methodological functionality in preaching. Historically, theology and rhetoric constitute frames of reference in homiletical theory. However, as the field evolves, other frames of reference emerge, including pastoral care. In this paper, I argue that homiletical theory is a pedagogical paradigm in which the lead partner, either rhetoric or theology, determines the point of departure for teaching, with emphasis on the rhetorical situation or the theological implications. Therefore, understanding one’s homiletical theory can lead to a pedagogical experience that translates to more effective preaching by developing a coherent delineation from theory to praxis. As a case study, I use my approach to teaching students how to preach funerals with a rhetorical point of departure that focuses on answering the existential question: how then shall we live now that our loved one has died?

Handling protracted crises: Communication challenges, constraints and opportunities

AbstractRecent research on crisis communication has focused on the challenges of complex and protracted crises. In this essay, it is argued that such crises must be handled communicatively by putting the communication challenges, constraints and opportunities at the centre. To this end, the combination of the notions of the rhetorical situation and kairos is suggested as a keystone that provides a bottom‐up, context‐sensitive approach needed to cope with the fluid and changing situations of such crisis. Importantly, the life cycle of a protracted crisis can not only be understood in terms of physical factors (e.g., infection rates in a pandemic) but is also formed through the public's perceptions and the communicative choices of crisis communicators calling for action to mitigate or end a crisis. The rhetorical situation and kairos highlight the importance of spatial temporality, the uniqueness of the situations and the constitutive dimension of communication in a crisis. This implies the identification of the opportune moments to present a response and recognising the important ‘spaces’ between typical crisis situations.

Is Genre Enough? A Theory of Genre Signaling as Generative AI Rhetoric

ABSTRACT OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM) that excels at generating text and public controversy. Upon its release, many marveled at its ability to author intelligible and generically responsible texts (Herman). Writing about his students’ experiences using artificial intelligence (AI) writing assistants, S. Scott Graham remarks that the results were “consistently mediocre—and usually quite obvious in their fabrication.” Why might this be true? How can an LLM succeed in some respects and fail in others? We argue that the discrepant reactions to human and AI rhetoric are a question of genre, specifically that AI rhetoric is only generic; AI rhetoric represents a new enactment of “writing degree zero” (Barthes) that is disengaged from immediate rhetorical situations and knowledge bases. AI text generators (currently) have a more difficult time simulating the positioned perspectives that human writers bring to situations and communicate to audiences through their genre usage. Drawing on the work of Bakhtin, we treat this problem as a question of generic form and audience addressivity. We describe the interplay of form and addressivity as genre signaling and offer it as a construct for the analysis of AI rhetoric and genre as a cultural form (Miller). Genre signaling (Hart-Davidson and Omizo) describes a feature of communicative behavior as it occurs over time that can help both humans and machines evaluate written discourse as it exhibits certain stabilized formal features. When texts contain specific genre signals at expected frequencies and intensities, it may be recognized as being generally accurate, reliable, trustworthy. Without these signals, a text with a similar topical focus might fail to be taken as credible or useful. In this essay we propose to quantify genre signaling based on three measures: (1) stability, (2) frequency, and (3) periodicity.

Vocal Configurations of Friday: Six Audiobook Versions of Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe is a novel obsessed with voice. Shipwrecked on his island, Crusoe teaches a parrot to speak and engages in silent conversations with God and himself and, when he finally meets Friday, he communicates in the discourses of master, educator, and companion. In silent reading of the print text, the reader subvocalises and dramatises the grammar, syntax, and pronunciation of Friday’s speech and more or less unconsciously creates a cohesive whole out of the dialogue sections and the passages narrated by Crusoe. In audiobook narration this process is externalised in the actual vocalisation of the text. The performing narrator has to make conscious choices depending on how he construes the Crusoe-Friday relationship and in what genre conventions he places it. Moreover, since Friday does not appear until two thirds into the text, the performing narrator needs to fit the last third into the overall vocal profile to produce a cohesive effect. This article focuses on the vocal configurations of Friday as manifest in six audiobook recordings of the novel. Material voice characteristics, such as quality, rhythm, and diction, as well as contextualising aspects of ethnicity, age, and nationality are taken into account. The rhetorical situation in which the performing narrator intensifies intentionality is also foregrounded.

Popular narratology as the swivel of death’s door: rhetoric as transition and transcendence to life’s end

ABSTRACT The history of the two primary institutions of thought and belief, scientific philosophy and theology, center their discourses on addressing the human inevitability of death. Crucial is how moments of death, as rhetorical situations that enable narrative and technical forms for assigning and responding to death, manifest in rhetorics that work to transition humanity away from fear and are followed by either rhetorics of transcendence of or comfort that embraces an afterlife. Rhetoric is a swivel moment between differentiated treatments of death – one seeking to avoid it, but when it finally arrives, the former embraces and assigns it meaning. Borrowing from both religious and secular illustrations, I argue for a conception of rhetoric as a moment of transition in spontaneous thought as death is permanently accompanied by fear. I demonstrate the case through analysis of two contemporary productions that explore the pre- and post-death narratives as transitions and transcendences: The Third Man Factor and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

Justice for whom? A dynamic interpretation of Isaiah 51.1–8

This article offers an analysis of Isaiah 51.1–3, 4–6, 7–8. These units contain multiple similarities that emphasize the fundamental tension between the units, primarily regarding the nature of divine tidings and the identity of their beneficiaries. The first part of the article demonstrates the unique content and design of each unit through a literary analysis; however, since the reading process constantly reveals new content, the underlying tension is further intensified in the second part of the article, which leads to the conclusion that the units are deliberately ambiguous and multivalent. The multifaceted content facilitates an understanding of the units, and Deutero-Isaiah as a whole. The article demonstrates that the dynamic literary-rhetorical design and its interpretive consequences reflect the existence of various groups (which serve as the ‘rhetorical situation’ of these units), the prospective connections between these groups, and their potential for social, geographical, and ethnic mobility.

‘Cracking the teacher’s code’ – an ethnographic study of students preparing for oral exams

ABSTRACT This paper explores students’ preparatory processes for high-stakes exams using Danish oral exams as an example. To graduate, students must convince two teacher-examiners as the state’s representatives that they deserve to pass. Average grades determine students’ admission into tertiary education. Fieldwork data following students transitioning from teaching to exams show students ‘cracking teachers’ codes’ instead of delivering the curriculum requirement of independent critical interpretations of text material. norms of subjects called ‘super-addressees’ (Bakhtin sss1986 [“The Problem of Speech Genres.” In Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, edited by Carol Emerson and Michael Holquist, 60–102. Austin: University of Texas Press]) are not transparent to students despite an almost symbiotic interrelationship between teaching and exams. Students identify ‘Fitting responses’ (Bitzer 1968 [“The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy & Rhetoric 1 (1): 1–14]) for exams by navigations named 1: Disciplinary seduction in a transparent exam system, 2: Physically observing the teacher’s reactions in an opaque exam system, or 3: Jotting down an encyclopaedia of teacher’s keywords. Researching students anticipating exams illuminates their notions of what it takes to succeed in education.

Birthing Genre: Conventions of Rhetorical Situation and Accessibility of Information in Midwifery Manuals

We ask, “What genre conventions are shared in 18th- and 21st-century midwifery manuals?” The article responds to this question by situating manuals as cultural arbiters and defining genre in a cultural context. The article identifies parallels between 18th-century and 21st-century midwifery manuals that focus on the rhetorical situation (via front matter, including title pages and prefaces) and accessibility of information (via design, definitions, and step-by-step procedures). Midwifery practices have changed drastically in the modern era, but the underlying goals—safety and health for the birthing person and child—remain constant. Increased publication of manuals dedicated to midwifery in the 18th century suggests a heightened focus on practices leading to successful outcomes in childbirth that highlight the value of examining manuals as a genre reflecting humanistic elements in technical documents. We argue that midwifery manuals emphasize underlying ideologies in the production and reproduction of socio-cultural consciousness still present today.

Die Beredsamkeit bereden

Abstract Rhetorical features in a text are integral to its aesthetic and persuasive quality. They prefigure its oral, or indeed oratory, character. However, with their inevitable exaggeration of a discursive point they often run contrary to any claim of truthfulness. This very fact has given ‚rhetoric‘ a negative flair. Around 1800, in the aftermath of the French Revolution and in the course of Napoleon’s occupation of most of Europe, discourses on rhetoric as a liberating, or at least emancipatory force regained a politically charged prominence. Adam Müller, for one, argued that in Germany in particular, a proper culture of the rhetorical would be crucial whilst Heinrich von Kleist examined the emergence of thought from rhetorical situations. This contribution discusses the far-reaching implications of these discourses in terms of their aesthetic and political implications.

The Rhetoric of Ghanaian Religious Communication

Abstract This paper examines the rhetoric of Ghana’s religious communication. Meta-analysis of the rhetorical situation of Ghanaian religious communication was conducted to examine how rhetoric has been used in Ghanaian society. Thus, the paper analyzed the effectiveness of religious rhetoric as a tool for religious propagation. It examined various forms of communication such as preaching, singing, dancing and selling of souvenirs in churches from the perspective of rhetoric. The theoretical framework included popular varieties of rhetoric, religious communication, content analysis of the rhetoric of religious situations in Ghana, and a semiotic analysis of souvenirs sold by some Ghanaian pastors. Suppression, avoidance, adjustment, and accommodation were examined as rhetorical tools of religious control. The study also postulated that religion and communication through the media are interwoven due to the rhetorical aspects that bind the two concepts in shaping the authority, dominance and ideologies of religious identities in Ghana.

Rhetoric, Research, and Revolution: Analyzing Cultural Rhetorics to Rethink Pedagogical Frameworks

This essay explores the results of a dissertation research project on the effective communication and rhetorical practices of sommeliers and wine professionals. Through rhetorical analysis of this industry’s discourse, frameworks for teaching communication in the Humanities have been reenvisioned in light of recent cultural revolutions. Potential methods for recomposing teaching and learning structures are discussed to illuminate more opportunities for reflection on the rhetorical situation and enjoyment of the process of developing ourselves as communicators. The overarching goal of this research is to show how Humanities researchers can use the affordances of cross-disciplinary education to revitalize learning about traditional concepts by pairing unconventional and sometimes contrasting perspectives & to reveal new ways of thinking.

Pointing out persuasion in Philemon

This informative and insightful work reveals the vast field of the history and life of the Letter to Philemon after it was written. This approach to biblical texts has received greater attention in recent years when the reader’s contribution to the meaning of textswas first recognised. This attention to the reception of biblical texts is the special subject of the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR), which started in 2009 and of which 20 volumes have already been published. This encyclopedia surveys not only sermons and commentaries, but also the various ways in which biblical texts have been received, such as in the creative arts, including paintings, sculptures, novels, films and music. Professor Tolmie’s study, however, focuses on how commentators and preachers have “pointed out persuasion” in this Pauline letter. He has selected, as the subtitle indicates, 50 readings of Philemon from three periods, the early church (starting with Ambrosiaster in chapter 1), the Middle Ages (chapter 2), and the period from the 16th to the 18th century (Chapter 3). For each of these interpreters, Tolmie offers a brief introduction and then focuses on the way they explain the rhetorical situation. He then focuses on the way each author explains the rhetorical strategy by moving through the letter, section by section. Chapter 4, the conclusion, is actually a synthesis, in which Tolmie looks for tendencies in the interpretation of Paul’s letter by focusing first on the way the rhetorical situation is imagined and then on Paul rhetorical strategies in the different literary units of Philemon.

Lecture as an adventure

Philologist Olga Alieva studied the formation and development of the protreptic and parenese genres in ancient Greek and early Christian literature within her PhD thesis. Later, she taught ancient languages at the Yuriy Shichalin's Museum Graeco-Latinum Classical School, and since 2013 she has been working at the HSE School of Philosophy. The book under the headline “Philosophical text in antiquity” is a continuation of the research that took place from 2014 to 2017, revised for publication in this form in 2022. The book is composed of seven lectures covering the form and content of the ancient philosophical text, the dichotomy of written and oral word in ancient Greek culture, the relationship between ancient science and philosophy, poetry and prose, myth and logos, the features of the rhetorical situation and the object of the text, its purpose, the status of the author and the publisher. Of course, a much longer list of problems is addressed, but let's not forget that the main content of the work, without the preface, the appendix, which is also very interesting in itself, a nominal index and list of references, occupies only one hundred and thirty-three pages. And here the question arises: how suitable is the lecture genre for disclosing such extensive material in a very limited framework? The solution is the lecture genre itself, which always assumes that what the author is going to tell will be too voluminous and one will have to deal with the management of available facts, evidence and data. This review shows that Olga Aliyeva's style of data composition is a worthy example of such work, which turns a lecture into an adventure.

From Imperial Persecution to Colonial Situation: Alternatives to Persecution Theories in Revelation Studies

For centuries the idea that John wrote the Book of Revelation to comfort Christians suffering Roman imperial persecution dominated the interpretation of the text's social setting. Due to the lack of archaeological and literary evidence, scholars have abandoned such a view and offered alternatives ranging from prophetic rivalries to Christian complacency to account for the Revelation's crisis rhetoric. However, these depoliticizing views assume that an absence of persecution amounts to a lack of systemic oppression and reflect the limitations and strengths of competing interpretation paradigms in biblical studies as well as the guild's Eurocentric ethos. Framing Revelation's rhetorical situation as a colonial situation, new approaches explore how John and his interlocutors turned idol food into a site for negotiating power, identity, and wealth.

Life as Prime Minister: A Genre Study of Speeches Made by Australian Prime Ministers Following Leadership Spills

ABSTRACT Between 2010 and 2018, four Australian prime ministers were removed from office outside of a federal election, by leadership spills initiated by their party colleagues. Each of the prime ministers—Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull—delivered a televised speech shortly after the leadership spill. The speeches provided an early opportunity, long before the preparation of any book-length political memoir, for each departing prime minister to narrate their political life and affirm their political legacy and identity. The speeches can be conceptualised as a rhetorical genre of life narrative in an Australian context. Applying Carolyn R. Miller’s theory of genre as social action (“Genre as Social Action.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 70: 151–167. 10.1080/00335638409383686.) confirms the speeches as a rhetorical genre, not because of their similarities in form and content but because they respond to the same recurring rhetorical situation—the leadership spill—and have shared social functions in their assertion of the rhetor’s (speaker’s) achievements, integrity and authenticity. All address the past, present and future; project a defining aspect of character; refer to significant others; and place life as prime minister in other contexts. In doing so, the speeches resemble but differ from some other forms of life narrative.

Rhetorical situation of the COVID-19 public briefings on national response measures in Namibia

This paper analyses the rhetorical situation of the COVID-19 public briefings on national response measures in Namibia presented to the Namibian nation by the Namibian government. The rhetorical situation by Bitzer (1968) is a combination of people, events, objects, and contexts, as well as the nature in which specific discourse is created and how it shapes reality. The COVID-19 public briefing statements on the national response measures that Namibia had to follow during the different stages of COVID-19 established by the Namibian government are qualitatively analysed in this paper to describe the rhetorical situation during COVID-19 in Namibia. The analysis is based on Bitzer’s constituents of any rhetorical situation: the exigence, audience, constraints as well as the fitting response. While COVID-19 was presented as the exigence, the Namibian nation at large was the audience for whom the briefings were prepared. These statements were made through the media by the President and complemented by selected ministers. The media, which were always present at these briefings, were given a platform to ask questions on behalf of themselves and the nation, at times, presented as constraints.

Revealing indexicality in specialized writing

Writing proficiently in any language requires knowing about much more than grammar, lexis, register, genres, audience and rhetorical situation. It also requires that writers call upon implicit sociocultural and contextual inferences made via indexes. Indexes convey a wide range of sociocultural information about social background, professional and cultural identity, affective and epistemological positioning, gender and ethnicity. The ways in which this information is indexed, however, can vary significantly from one language to another, making indexicality a significant concern for international writers as they negotiate their positions through writing. This paper describes a novel method in writing research, indexical analysis, which is used to identify how French politeness norms are indexed in application letters written in English by first-language (L1) French students. It was found that although their writing was considered grammatically correct, divergences in terms of where and how politeness was expressed resulted in a negative evaluation by readers. Developing more conscious awareness of the implicit norms that organize thoughts and attitudes for both writers and readers may allow for better recognition of how indexes may differ across languages.