Rhetorical Tactics Research Articles

The “Single S”: Desire for Subjectivity and Story in Zoë Wicomb’s “When the Train Comes”

In this essay on Zoë Wicomb’s “When the Train Comes” from the collection You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town (1987), I read the short story as exemplary in its engagement at both the level of representation and the level of genre in the formation of the subjectivity of the central character, Frieda Shenton. The textual strategies and rhetorical tactics – which include delay, ellipsis, postponement and stoppage – fissure narrative discourse with its dependence on the conventions of time (story) and causality (plot) that ensures the smooth operation of a well-wrought fictional or literary text. The rupture of the traditional components of narrative curiously unconceals the originary moment of subject formation primarily based on Jacques Lacan’s concept of desire, the notion of the story as a unique and singular element, Deleuze and Guattari’s distinction between the genre of the novella and the tale, and Judith Butler’s term “gender performance”.

Against the devil’s metal: Christian public discursive strategies against metal concerts and festivals in Czechia and Slovakia

In the context of a process of return of religion to the public sphere, this article deals with Christian discursive strategies in public struggles against selected metal concerts and festivals since 2013 in highly secularized Czechia and in Slovakia with a close connection of religion (especially the Catholic Church) to the state. Membership categorization analysis identified three main categories used in the construction of metal as an enemy: ‘religious struggle’, ‘danger for society/state’ and ‘danger for morality and health of individuals’. Christian opponents of metal use in their discourse sets of rhetorical tactics with both religious (i.e. fight against Satan) and secular pieces (i.e. supposed extremism of some bands) to mobilize Christian community and also to attract politics and the public. In Czechia it was targeted mainly to the Christian minority and local politics, while in Slovakia religious actors were able to mobilize broader networks against metal concerts/festivals, including nation-wide politics.

Varieties of Ambiguity: How do Voters Evaluate Ambiguous Policy Statements?

Scholars voice increasing interest in strategic ambiguity—a strategy whereby parties intentionally conceal their positions on divisive issues. Scholars contend that strategic ambiguity can help European parties broaden their electoral appeals. Although they identify several tactics and styles of position-blurring, the observational literature has yet failed to capture different variants of ambiguous rhetoric, let alone evaluate their effect on the vote. In this article, I rely on cross-country survey experiments that utilize representative samples of around 22,000 respondents from 14 European countries to evaluate the effect of four varieties of ambiguity: vagueness, ambivalence, flip-flopping, and negative messaging. I investigate the impact of ambiguous rhetoric vis-a-vis the context of competition facing the party. The findings reveal that the consequences of ambiguity vary by the actual form it takes and the context of competition facing the party. First, among the varieties, vague and ambivalent variants were superior to negative messaging or flip-flopping. Second, ambiguity helped the party in the absence of popular policy offers in the party system, while it backfired when competitors explicitly agreed with the voter. The findings imply that ambiguity is generally a useful strategy, but its benefits do not extend to rhetorical tactics that harm the party’s valence image.

Epistemic Rhetoric in Virtual Reality Interactive Factual Narratives

The turn to Interactive Digital Narratives to understand complexity offers a new model for creating, developing, and maintaining knowledge. At the same time, storytellers have turned their attention to Virtual Reality (VR). The confluence of these trends draws attention to how non-fiction practitioners can use the technical and aesthetic affordances of VR to create knowledge about complex subjects through the IDN form. This article explores the epistemic rhetorical nature of using narrative discourse in VR to create knowledge about a non-fiction subject. The IDN community has not addressed this rhetorical aspect in their proposed epistemological process. Clarifying the epistemic rhetorical aspect inherent in producing knowledge on complex subjects through IDN provides insights into practitioners’ persuasive and political design and development choices. These intentional choices, in turn, impact the kind of knowledge produced. This rhetorical approach to knowledge production can be grounded in a Neo-sophist epistemic tradition wherein aesthetic choices are used rhetorically. I will present and discuss the Sophist rhetorical tactics of antithesis, the rhetoric of the possible; enargeia, the rhetoric of vivid details; kairos, the rhetoric of opportune timing; and mêtis, the rhetoric of the body. Their implementation by practitioners, how these aesthetic choices rhetorically create knowledge in the System-Process-Product model is presented. The article clarifies these rhetorical processes and choices and analyzes the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival’s Best Immersive Narrative, The Changing Same: An American Pilgrimage: Episode 1. This VR factual IDN allows interactors to experience historical moments of racial injustice in the United States. The production team was interviewed about how they used the technical and aesthetic qualities of VR and IDN rhetorically to produce knowledge about the complex and violent history of racial injustice in the United States. Their responses indicate their active use of epistemic rhetorical tactics that capitalize on the technical and aesthetic affordances of VR and IDN to create knowledge.

#Wegotthis: queer parrhesia in the register of parodic paranoia

ABSTRACT Queer parrhesia is an activist mode of speaking truth to power that destabilizes dominant societal positions and their opposition. We develop this concept and illustrate one of its registers, parodic paranoia, through a close reading of the whistleblower and transactivist Chelsea Manning’s bid to run for U.S. Senate in the 2018 Democratic primaries. Hacktivism and transactivism, we show, constitute rhetorical manoeuvres by which Manning performs (as) a subject position that combines an ethics of paranoia with an aesthetics of parody to enact politics as unusual. Beginning from Manning’s parodic paranoia, we conceptualize queer parrhesia as an inherently transgressive political style and discuss its performative potential for dismantling current social orders and imagining less orderly alternatives. The productive potential of queer parrhesia, we conclude, can only be realized when the subject position of the parrhesiastes is put at risk, gaining strength from its performative vulnerability and, indeed, failure.

Reworking the Brochure of Radya Pustaka Museum Surakarta: The Rhetorical One to Attract Locals

Background: 
 Increasing tourists’ interest to visit museums can be accomplished through various promotional strategies. However, the Radya Pustaka Museum brochure falls short of successfully informing potential visitors about the museum's potency.
 Methodology: 
 The brochure of Radya Pustaka Museum was first studied. Four locals were asked to review the brochure for naturalness and clarity. An open questionnaire was used, in which the respondents marked the expressions they perceived were unnatural or difficult to comprehend. In using content analysis, the primary data were gathered from the Indonesian descriptive texts in the brochure.
 Findings: 
 Some of the information in the previous brochure of the Radya Pustaka museum was vague and confusing. Grammar mistakes, the frequent use of local cultural words, and overly complex sentences are all factors that contribute to this problem. To begin, all the grammatical errors and typos must be fixed. The museum's name should no longer be miswritten. Capitalization should also be considered when writing names and address forms. Additionally, each sentence must start with a subject.
 Conclusion: 
 The proposed new concept brochure of the Radya Pustaka Museum in Surakarta is projected to increase the locals' interest in having a museum that they are eager to visit. The Appraisal theory was discovered to be useful in assisting the museum with these efforts because it is conceptually similar to rhetorical devices that effectively produce a promotional medium or message to engage the locals in embracing the museum.
 Originality: 
 This study attempts to get the picture of the link between rhetorical strategies and Appraisal resources, as never been previously done, and make the best use of them to attract locals’ desire in visiting Radya Pustaka Museum. Due to the small number of studies looking into rhetorical tactics in brochures, this research also intends to fill the gap to shed more light on how the strategies can serve as valuable resources in making intended effects more impactful in communication using brochures.

Media users’ and professionals’ responses to personal data receipts: A mixed methods study

European General Data Protection Regulation requires organisations to request the data subject’s consent for personal data processing. Data controllers must be able to demonstrate valid consent was obtained (‘transparency’). Media often struggle to meet GDPR requirements in practice. We identified several issues with existing consent procedures amongst which a need for trustworthy approaches to record and track consent. In this article, we evaluate a specific transparency initiative: a Personal Data Receipt (PDR) for news personalisation. We investigated how European media users and media professionals evaluated the PDR. We conducted qualitative surveys and interviews to explore and describe individuals’ viewpoints on/responses to the PDR. The main strengths highlighted in this study are: GDPR compliance and improved data processing transparency which leads to more control and user trust. PDR weaknesses are mainly related to users not reading the receipt, lack/overload of information, and design issues. Based on our findings, we identified missing elements and formulated recommendations for PDR improvement to optimise consent strategies. By examining how individuals responded to this specific transparency tool, and rhetorical tactics connected to it (placation, diversion, jargon, and misnaming), our study provides informed suggestions for ways out of digital resignation (Draper & Turow, 2019).

Teaching intersectional rhetorical criticism with second-wave feminist music

Intersectionality is core to contemporary feminist rhetorical criticism. It is also a complex concept with great potential for promoting social change by shifting discourses about identity in the public sphere. Therefore, communication scholars have a vested interest in teaching the basics of intersectional criticism to undergraduate and graduate students across the humanities, especially in upper-division undergraduate communication courses that deal with rhetorical criticism, feminist rhetorical theory, women and or gender studies, social movements, critical cultural studies, media studies, or other related topics. I recommend teaching intersectionality as an analytic framework for rhetorical criticism with second-wave feminist music. The unit begins by briefly overviewing the key goals and rhetorical tactics of second-wave feminists. Students then read intersectional criticism of second-wave rhetoric and criticism of rhetorical theory that fails to consider the intersectional experience of identity. The unit culminates with students working in groups to conduct an abbreviated rhetorical criticism of popular music associated with the United States’s second wave of feminist movements. The abbreviated rhetorical criticism asks students to analyze the embodied and situated components of musical argumentation. They present their findings to the class in a multimedia presentation that engages many sensorial and rhetorical possibilities, much like music does. Courses Rhetorical Criticism, Feminist Rhetorical Theory, Women/Gender Studies, The Rhetoric of Social Movements, Critical Cultural Studies, Media Studies. Objectives In this unit, students will learn how to analyze second-wave feminist rhetoric through an intersectional lens using musical case studies. First, students will study the history of second-wave feminist movements. They will then read about the core tenants of intersectional thinking before exploring how rhetorical critics use intersectionality as an analytic framework. Next, students will engage popular music with feminist messages that emerged during the second wave in an abbreviated rhetorical criticism textured with historical context and focused on embodied experiences of musical appeals. They will present their findings in a multimedia format for their classmates. By the completion of this unit, students should learn to apply intersectional theory to an analysis of a musical rhetorical tactic and to identify the strengths and weaknesses of that tactic.

Seeking Justice in Plato's Gorgias

In this paper I argue that Socrates’ description of a rhetorician capable of using rhetoric in the service of justice in Plato’s Gorgias should be read as a reference to Socrates himself. A critical examination of the passage in which Socrates argues that rhetoric should be applied to legally protecting one’s enemies (480e–481a) reveals Socrates’ willingness to use rhetorical tactics, even the ones he criticizes, such as making misleading statements and manipulating his audience’s emotions, in order to persuade his audience of the benefit of correction and that it is better to be done wrong than to wrong another.

The use of collective memory in the populist messaging of Marine Le Pen

Globally populist movements are on the rise, which is why it is essential to examine this phenomenon more closely. In France, 50 years ago, Jean-Marie Le Pen founded a populist party, le Front National (now renamed Rassemblement National or RN). However, it was not until his daughter Marine Le Pen took over the Party in 2012 that it began to see significant electoral gains. This is despite the fact that the underlying political message remained the same. By changing her rhetorical tactics and relying on references to collective memories and the unconscious associations they evoke, Marine Le Pen mainstreamed the RN and found more national support. This article examines the rhetorical tactics she deploys and how collective memories can effectively convey political messages.

Taming the People: Comparing Protests and Populism in Arab and American Politics

The rise of populism has been an uncontested global reality in recent years. However, it is unclear exactly how culturally distinct populist movements imitate or mirror each other, especially given the different rhetorical, political, ideological, and cultural contexts within which they operate. This article addresses this issue by comparing recent manifestations of populism across contemporary Arab and American contexts, with a special focus on former United States President Donald Trump’s response to the George Floyd protests and Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s handling of demonstrations in his country. We argue that each leader deployed common rhetorical tactics as a populist strategy to undermine the protestors’ attempts to articulate the people’s will. At the same time, our analysis shows how the different contexts in which Trump and Sisi operate also impact their ability to successfully translate their populism into political effectiveness. By conducting this analysis, our article shows how similar populist tactics across different cultural contexts may lead to divergent outcomes, revealing the importance of institutional as well as popular bases of support for would-be populist politicians.

Industrial Strategies

By emphasizing the rhetorical processes integral to arts entrepreneurship, this study hopes to open up a rhetorical vocabulary that will simultaneously expand arts entrepreneurship discourse and bridge the gap between its constituent terms. Likewise, the abstract processes of rhetoric offer an insightful perspective on the specific processes of entrepreneurship in the arts. The first wave of Industrial Music in the late 1970s and early ‘80s is taken as a case study in order to articulate how a group of artist-entrepreneurs used information, attention and sound itself as rhetorical tactics to engage in an emancipatory form of arts entrepreneurship. In step with these objectives, my rhetorical model tethers notions of socio-aesthetic attack and emancipation to a critical rhetoric informed by poststructuralist thought. The resulting analysis shows how Industrial artists used rhetorical tactics as entrepreneurial bricolage to both span and challenge the divide between business, artistic and social practice.

Portrayal by Inappropriate Interaction

A close reading of three different profiles of Danish-Palestinian poet Yahya Hassan (1995-2020) showcases how interactions between journalists and subjects may become a mutual performative challenge and how, on such occasions, the personas of both parties may serve as a multi-layered journalistic resource in both an ethical and aesthetic sense. Applying the concept of “rhetorical maneuvers” (Phillips 2006) to describe reporters’ uses of an understated ‘first-person minor’ versus a demonstratively responsive ‘first-person major’ perspective (Phillips 2019), we highlight a principle that may reorient interview situations that are tense or out of control. The principle entails continuous shifts of subject form that are potentially inappropriate but enable both contextual transparency and a distinct textual structure or narrative style. By considering the mutual constitution and reconstitution of personas as rhetorical maneuvering we hope first to expand the analytical perspective of persona studies at the level of form while also, secondly, motivating journalists to explore the relational and interactive aspects of persona performances as a resource for occasional, productive disruption of their professional practice.

Core and supplemental elements of hospitality in the sharing economy: Insights from semantic and tonal cues in Airbnb property listings

Advances in peer-to-peer sharing, made popular by platforms like Airbnb, have altered previous conceptualizations of the lodging hospitality product. This study performs semantic and tonal analyses on a large-scale dataset collected from Airbnb. Our results support a concept of lodging hospitality that comprises core products and services, supplemental customer care, and a third factor we term ‘host sharing.’ Furthermore, the study offers insight into the topics and rhetorical tactics currently defining lodging hospitality marketing on the Airbnb platform. These findings can be used to provide guidance for Airbnb hosts to provide suitable information in their listings. • The disruption of the hospitality industry in the era of peer to peer sharing or the “gig” economy is explored. • Conceiving a new conceptualization of hospitality is argued for. • Semantic and tonal analyses on a large scale and rich dataset collected from Airbnb is performed and results are presented. • A philosophical shift away from the dominant position of the consumer in defining the concept of hospitality is revealed. • Establishes a different balance of rights, and possibly power, between hosts and guests.

The Modern‐Day Cicero: An Alternative Interpretation of the Work of Ronald Dworkin

AbstractRonald Dworkin is one of the most frequently cited legal philosophers. His work, notably his attack on H. L. A. Hart's positivist theory of law, has received considerable attention, earning him praise as well as trenchant criticism. Instead of discussing the analytical validity of Dworkin's claims, though, we propose an alternative reading of his jurisprudential writings that emphasises their rhetorical nature. After delineating the rhetorical context of his work, we provide several illustrations of his use of rhetorical strategies and, with the help of sentiment‐analysis techniques, emotional language. While resorting to classical rhetorical tactics, Dworkin's rhetoric, we argue, appealed to the emotional power of rights talk at a time when the notion of rights enjoyed greater resonance with his audience.

Waiting for advice that is beyond doubt: uncertainty as Australia’s reason to join the invasion of Iraq

ABSTRACT A dominant theme across examinations of the intelligence used to justify invading Iraq in 2003 is that political decision-makers amplified the clarity of their evidence. What has been missed is that Australia did exactly the opposite: here, the political leadership channelled uncertainty, inconclusiveness and doubt into highly effective rhetorical manoeuvres that embraced the imperfection of evidence and, with it, sufficiently weakened arguments that an invasion could take place only with absolute proof. This article examines the role of Australian intelligence amid a complex mix of factors that facilitated those manoeuvres.

“Are They Here Legally?” Institutional Intersectionality in Migrant Advocacy Coalition Work

Based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews with resettlement agencies, volunteer organizations, and refugees, this study examined the rhetorical tactics of outreach and advocacy as well as the dynamics of inter-organizational collaboration. Organizations supporting international migrants have different institutional priorities which face pressures by multiple socializing institutions. These operate intersectionally, such that the status of migrants and rhetorical support for them are circumscribed by a recursive relationship between government policies and linguistic labels. The article addresses an important contemporary social problem and articulates an expansion of intersectionality theory within the communication discipline, as well as its implications for coalition work.

One of the Good Ones: Rhetorical Maneuvers of Whiteness

Drawing on the literature on white habitus, colorblindness, diversity ideology, and happy talk, I argue that rhetorical maneuvers are key aspects of white habitus that allow whites to construct a non-racist self by drawing on colorblind discourses. To explore how white habitus influences interview dynamics when the respondent and interviewer are of a different race, I conducted 48 interviews with whites from rural and urban areas of the Greater Buffalo Area. Specifically, I examine the relationship between white habitus, a non-racist presentation of self, and rhetorical maneuvers that whites deploy when talking about race and immigration. I also introduce two new frames of colorblindness: differentiation and civility. The civility frame conflates friendliness and civility with anti-racism and is used as evidence that everything is fine. The differentiation frame attempts to draw distinctions between themselves (“non-racist white people”) and other whites (“bad apples”).

“Did Augustine Win?” Another Look at an Old Question about the Contra Fortunatum

The article examines Augustine’s rhetoric, and specifically his strategy of commenting on the responses of his opponent, throughout the Contra Fortunatum. Taking into account both the dialectical and the rhetorical dimensions of the debate, we regard this study, with its narrow focus on only one aspect of Augustine’s rhetoric (the continuous comments on the opponent’s responses to create a powerful subtext that permeates the debate), as the beginning of a more in-depth investigation of the rhetorical devices used by the two participants in the debate. The aim is to complement BeDuhn’s compelling case for the dialectical superiority of Fortunatus’s arguments in the debate with some perspectives on Augustine’s rhetorical tactics, and to argue that Augustine may have lost on the basis of his arguments, but still may be regarded as “winning” on the strength of his rhetorical strategies. The handful of studies on the Contra Fortunatum to date have, like BeDuhn’s, focused on the content and Manichaean background of the debate, but investigations of the rhetorical devices employed by the participants are, to our knowledge, absent. The question of whether Augustine won does not have a simple answer, but we believe that this and future studies of the rhetorical devices employed by the two participants in the debate will provide an important additional perspective on Augustine’s claim in his Retractationes that he won the debate.

Negotiating French Social Citizenship in Early Twentieth-Century Letters to a Representative for the Rhône Department

Taking the distinction made by Patrick Hassenteufel between statutory and identity-based citizenship as a starting point, this article investigates expressions of the latter citizenship in early twentieth-century France. More specifically, this article focuses on how ‘ordinary’ men and women from a rural area in the Rhône department perceived their place in French republican society shortly before and during the First World War. The war years were a time when (claims to) social policies were continuously renegotiated, in relation to men and women’s commitment to the Republic. Whether they had political voting rights or not, ‘ordinary’ citizens took part in these negotiation processes, yet in an informal (and therefore still underexposed) way, through written communication with a parliamentary representative (<em>député</em>). Men and women who shared the same social background used similar rhetorical tactics in their requests for help, support, or a favour. Men’s expressions of gratitude towards ‘their’ <em>député</em> could, however, entail a promise of a vote, whereas women were still not enfranchised. Though reminiscent of the image of a clientelist rural France at first sight, neither men’s nor women’s letters were characterised by mere trade-offs. Instead, they were increasingly revealing of how the letter-writers (re)imagined the notions attached to their citizenship. The connections between those concepts, such as (social) rights, duties, and knowledge (and the impact of the war on rhetorical constructions of these aspects of citizenship) are analyzed from the letter-writers’ viewpoints. Focusing on such a micro-level allows for insights into the mutually educational nature of the common practice of sending letters to a French Third Republican parliamentary representative.