Rhetorical Transformation Research Articles

The Issue of Indirect Meaning: On the Rhetorical Modifications in Fine Arts

The article proposes to adapt the experience of rhetorical understanding of the text to the aesthetic issues of trope in the fine arts. Differentiating the rhetoric of figures and the rhetoric of the text as a whole, author proves the determination of the rhetorical (poetic) function in the fine arts as a means of self-detection of work’s artistic language involved in creation of meaning and as a set of operations leading to the semantic changes and to the integration of text semantics. Significance of metalogism as a type of rhetorical transformation in the fine arts has been revealed. A thesis that the category of visual metalogisms includes operations associated with the deviations from visual perceptual and logical codes present in a work, which is the specificity of the fine art systems of the modern art, has been put forward. Regarding the analysis of metalogisms, author concludes that the refusal from the principles of mimesis, the reduction of the optical illusion and the beginning of scene, which were typical for the art of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, are the ways to realize poetic (rhetorical) function of language in the fine arts. The article reveals the functional heterogeneity of the various types of intertextual relations, suggested by the rhetoric of text. It has been accented that one of the sources, that generate indirect meanings in art, is a communicative situation, given by the presence of the centers of semantic uncertainty in a work and leading to activation of autocommunication acts. Taking into account the distinguishing between linguistic and extralinguistic symbolism, the proposed model can become a methodological basis for the differentiation of historical types of symbolism in art, including non-classic specific for art.

A Parallel case?: The Irish in abolitionist thought and the emergence of white labor in the United States

ABSTRACT This article traces the rhetorical transformation from the Irish as an exemplum to the Irish as a historically situated demographic in U.S. abolitionist writings from the early to mid-nineteenth century. Through close readings of polemical essays, speeches, and newspaper articles, I argue that abolitionist writers such as David Walker, Samuel Cornish, Gerrit Smith, and Frederick Douglass begin to transition away from conceiving of the exploitation of Irish workers as a fraught, though generative comparative case to chattel slavery once a new demographic of native Irish Catholic emigrants are interpellated into the emergent category of “white labor.” The Irish are thus initially used by abolitionist writers to contrast chattel slavery with other forms of labor exploitation under capitalism until the political utility of those comparisons began to wane as the Irish-American laborer proved socially and conceptionally antagonistic to free and enslaved black laborers.

Rhetorical Vessels: Public Womanhood as Visual Warrant in World War II Venereal Disease Campaigns

This article considers how venereal disease campaigns during World War II offered a warrant through public health discourse for the mass incarceration of American women in an era of shifting gender expectations. During the war years, at least 30,000 American women detained without documentation were held in domestic quarantine camps under suspicion of transmitting venereal diseases to unsuspecting soldiers and thereby undermining the war effort. Analyzing public health campaign posters from this period, I argue that the U.S. government achieved the rhetorical transformation of allegedly promiscuous white women into state enemies through visual tropes of the “public woman.” The conclusion considers how analyzing less prevalent detainment discourses, such as those embedded in public health, may aid in understanding contemporary detainment issues.

A Phenomenology of Selected Postproverbial Poetry of Jack Mapanje

Abstract Studies on Jack Mapanje’s poetry are largely postcolonial and on the poet’s use of Malawian lore but hardly on his use of proverbs. Yet Mapanje deploys proverbs sufficiently in his poetry for the deployment to merit study. Therefore, this study examines the deployment of the umbilical-cordage-of-peculiar-hounds proverb in selected poems from Mapanje’s Skipping Without Ropes. It adopts phenomenology. The choice of the theory is to allow the critic to move with aplomb between the four selected poems in a resolute hunt for the essence of the proverb in the poetry. The study reveals that Mapanje ruptures the original meaning of the proverb which is about choice and thirst to see the wonder and beauty of creation as cause to travel to a distant land but deploys it to treat flight from barbarous tyranny. The poetry describes state abuse of dissenters, peine forte er dure, imprisonment and death, and threats to life as cause enough to flee one’s country. The rhetorical transformation of the proverb in semantic terms makes the idiom behind the poetry postproverbial. The study also advances Mapanje’s penchant for “rhetoric of animality”, ritual aesthetics and pit-death symbolism and recommends that Mapanje’s deployment of proverb in other poetry merits further study.

On vibrations: cosmographs

ABSTRACT Vibrations have emerged as a construct within cultural theory, intersecting significantly with sound studies, discourses on materiality and concepts of music qua music. This paper pulls two paragraphs from this literature that picture an idealised cosmic continuity as a means to examine some general features of the theory. These cosmographs are framed in historical and rhetorical contexts, across considerations of elementary physics and figurations of other energies, based upon the substances that mechanical vibrations require and theoretical vibrations imagine. Rhetorical transformation from vibrations to rhythms, with their inscriptive capacity for ordering beyond material immediacies, is questioned, as is the reliance of both upon a naturalisation of cycles given that a unity of circadian and seasonal cycles has long been broken by climate change.

The Military Grammar of Agrarian Reform in Peru

AbstractThis article places the 1969 Peruvian agrarian reform as a defining moment in the history of Latin American militarism and rural capitalism. By unpacking agrarian reform and the rhetorical transformation of indios into campesinos, this article reveals how General Juan Velasco’s military government (1968–75) enforced economic, ideological, and social discipline through a seemingly empowering language of revolution. Capitalizing on enduring radical demands for land redistribution, Velasco’s military-controlled state co-opted claims for land and social justice promoting a revolutionary message against imperial and oligarchic domination while drawing rural populations into more exploitative social relations. The same social and economic reforms meant to benefit thousands of campesinos through access to land facilitated an unprecedented scenario of rural and agrarian capitalism. Once the military garnered social consent, lands and lives fell under state surveillance, decimating communal autonomies, threatening family subsistence, and unleashing mounting degrees of violence against campesino dissidence and resistance.

Constituting the Kazakhstani Nation: Rhetorical Transformation of National Belonging

Since Kazakhstan became an independent state in 1991 the state apparatus has pursued various processes of nation-building intended to establish a cohesive civic identity among the multiethnic population of the state. We assess the interplay between the civic nation building policies of the Kazakhstani state since the early 2000s and ordinary Kazakhstanis through media analysis and ethnographic interviews. We find that, while Kazakhstan’s official civic nation-building policies shape how Kazakhstanis perceive their attachment to the state, there remains no widespread evidence of the decoupling of ethnicity from nationality as suggested by official rhetoric. Ethnonational identity remains salient in Kazakhstan.

The “Pepper-Spraying Cop” Icon and Its Internet Memes: Social Justice and Public Shaming Through Rhetorical Transformation in Digital Culture

Within hours of its publication online, the “pepper-spraying cop” image from the Occupy Wall Street movement at the University of California–Davis became an Internet meme. The outraged public manipulated key signifiers of the famous picture, creating hundreds of digital derivatives that offered new takes on what happened. With the use of iconographic tracking and visual rhetorical analysis, the study argues that Internet memes are more than silly jokes or social commentary. Through rhetorical transfigurations, they can deliver social justice and launch public shaming campaigns, serving as online instruments to respond to an off-line event.

Rhetorical Transformations of the Pragmaticmatrix of the Genre of Newspaper Literary Criticism

This paper examines the structural principle of the genre of newspaper literary criticism (NLC) based on the rhetorical motivation of textual structures and discourse functions developed on the basis of a communication purpose of literary-critical commentary. This having been established as a scientific research goal, the concept of genre (Swales 1990) and the theoretical and methodological practice of the Rhetorical Structure Theory (Mann and Thompson 1988) were applied, providing a semantic/pragmatic interface where text propositions of global significance are interpreted on the basis of discourse functions (DF) with matrix motivation ( NLC genre pragmatic matrix: informing – interpretation of meaning – significance of a literary work ), and in the domain of textual structure by abstract entities of nucleus and/or satellite , in the form of explicit and implicit propositions between which coherent relations of rhetorical nature are established. Within the framework of the theoretical and methodological analysis, the paper indicates the problem of compatibility of the sequential interpretative models (the macrostructure model) and schematic prototypical superstructures in the analysis of rhetorical motivation discourse; an additional section of the paper focuses on the comparative analysis of an NLC text, based on a sequential and rhetorical model. The final part of the paper presents the analysis of two literary-critical reviews of the same literary work from the standpoint of the theoretical-methodological practice of the RST and the concept of genre, where the presented rhetorical transformation of the pragmatic matrix of NLC genre enabled proposing a hypothesis on the genre rhetorical variation of NLC.

Imitation of the Plot and Rhetorical Transformation : Focused on the movie

드라마를 기반으로 하는 연극 및 영화와 관련한 본 연구는 대중문학에 대한 움베르토 에코의 논문 가운데 플롯에 관한 언급을 단서로 시발되었다. 움베르토 에코는 어떤 플롯이 수용될 수 있는 가능성 또는 불가능성의 기준이 플롯 자체에 있지 않고 사회적 삶을 지배하는 견해들의 체 계 안에 있다는 점을 아리스토텔레스가 잘 알고 있었으리라고 주장한다. 이러한 그의 견해는 작 품의 수용자와 연관된 커뮤니케이션의 입장을 기반으로 하는 동시에 견해들의 체계에 대한 상호 텍스트적 관점을 기반으로 하는 것으로 보인다. 그의 논의는 플롯 자체가 개연성을 만들지는 않고, 개연성의 힘은 수사학에 있다는 논지를 담고 있다. 본 논문은 이 논의를 보다 넓혀서 구체 작품에 적용하여 살펴보는 방식을 취한다. 에코의 논의를 발전시켜 질문해보는 바, 그렇다면 서사적 연쇄인 플롯은 그 자체로서 무엇을 담보ㆍ성취하며, 또한 어떤 한계를 지니는가. 또한 사회적 삶을 지배하는 견해들의 체계는 플롯 이라는 요소를 통해 어떠한 방식으로 작품을 규정하고 형성하는데 기여하는가. 이러한 물음에 대한 답은 다채로운 관점과 프레임을 통한 접근을 요구한다. 본 논문은 이러한 측면을 상호텍스트적 관점을 통해 접근한다. 특히 아리스토텔레스 이후 드라마 장르에서 가장 중요시 되어왔던 플롯이 모방되고 변용되는 것을 지적함으로써 그 기능의 한 측면을 살펴본다. 본 논문은 라스 폰 트리에Lars Von Trier(덴마크, 1956~ ) 감독의 극영화 <도그빌Dogville>(2003) 의 고찰을 통해 에코의 지적에서 확장해 나온 질문에 대한 ‘하나의’ 답변을 구체화해 본다. 이 영화가 드러내는 경계적 성격은 한 작품이 지니는 특정한 정체가 삶을 지배하는 견해들의 체계 및 플롯과 어떻게 연관되어 있는지 드러내는 좋은 예시가 된다. 이 고찰을 통해 본 연구는 서사와 드라마 장르처럼 스토리를 기반으로 하는 예술 작품들에서 플롯이 갖는 의미와 역할의 측면을 살펴보고자 한다. 본 연구의 논지에 따르면 플롯은 형식의 모방과 변용을 통해 관객의 관습적 기대를 넘나들게 된다. 이러한 기대치의 경계선에 작품의 성격이 놓이게 될 수 있다. 이것은 ‘하나의’ 답변이 된다. 그 경계의 틈에는 수사학 또는 문체라고 부를 만한 것이 있다. 영화 <도그빌>을 통해 살펴보는 바, 이 영화의 독특한 성격은 상호텍스트적인 관점, 보다 구체적으로 말하면 과거로부터 이어 내려온 형식을 어떻게 모방하고 변용했는가에 의해 설명되는 것이다. 본 연구가 취하는 이러한 입장의 고찰은 드라마 방식을 표방하는 연극과 영화 및 극적인 작품을 창작하는 이들뿐만 아니라 드라마 작품을 분석하는 이들에게 창의적인 암시를 줄 수 있으리라 생각한다.Umberto Echo argued that Aristotle knew that the standard of the possibility or impossibility of accepting a plot is in the system of views dominating social life rather than in the plot itself. I have developed his argument and asked, so what does the plot, which is a narrative chain, guarantee and fulfill itself, and what limits do it have? How does the system of views that dominate social life contribute to defining and shaping works? The answer to this question may require access through a variety of perspectives and frames. This paper looks for an answer to the questions that have expanded from the Echo point of view through a review of Lars Von Trier (Denmark, 1956 ~) in the film Dogville (2003). The boundary character that this film reveals is a good example of how a certain identity of a work is related to the system and plot of views dominating life. Through this review, this study examines the meaning of plot and rhetoric in story -based works of art such as narrative and drama genres. I think that these insights can give creative suggestions to those who create dramatic works at the same time.

Ronald Reagan’s rhetorical re-invention of conservatism

ABSTRACTIn this article I focus on Ronald Reagan’s rhetorical re-invention of the conservative movement. First, I briefly examine the historic roots of American conservatism. Second, I review how conservatism evolved in Republican presidential politics. Third, I explore Ronald Reagan’s political and rhetorical transformation of the conservative movement from 1961 to 1966. Fourth, I argue that Reagan continued to re-invent the movement during his presidency thereby creating a popular vision of conservatism that lasted into the twenty-first century. I conclude by showing how, in 2016, Donald Trump fragmented Reagan’s vision.

Rhetorical transformation in Estonian political discourse during World War II

AbstractThis article considers the transformations of political rhetoric in Estonian public discourse from the eve of World War II to the retreat of German troops from Estonia in August 1944. Thus, the period under analysis contains the 1940 coup d’état in June, Estonia’s “accession” or “acceptance” to the Soviet Union, and the German occupation of Estonia. The article will analyze how the Estonians’ political and cultural public identity was shaped in political speeches. The analysis will concentrate on the texts that employed the signs important for previous regimes to the introduction and consolidation of new (Soviet and National Socialist) ideological discourses. Using the methods of semiotics and discourse theory, the article will shed light on the metaphorical and metonymical principles of text and meaning construction in the context of power relations. The material of analysis consists of the speeches of the political elite from the 1938, 1939, and 1940 issues of Päevaleht; 1940–1941 issues of Rahva Hääl, and the 1941–1944 issues of Eesti Sõna, and finally, of articles that have been coordinated by the state (published in 1934–1940) in order represent the identity of the Estonian.

Power and Carbon Sovereignty in a Non-Traditional Capitalist State: Discourses of Carbon Trading in China

Carbon markets devolve governance to external institutions and displace power from sovereign states. Major producers in these markets, notably China, have expressed concern about the adverse implications for national interests and sovereignty associated with selling off the rights to emit carbon emissions abroad. This article suggests that such concern has shaped the discursive context in which emission trading schemes have gained popularity in the country. Our discourse analysis shows that notions of market power are made manifest as a powerful storyline. In the Chinese language, “power,” “sovereignty,” and “rights” all use the same character. The storyline captures all these expressions and allows for a positive view about active engagement in carbon trading as a way to protect development rights and redeem carbon sovereignty. Thus, the contested policy of emissions trading becomes embedded in the more appealing narrative of national development and made politically attractive, despite unfavorable realities against it.

Brand Equity Planning with Structuralist Rhetorical Semiotics: A Conceptual Framework

This paper furnishes a structuralist rhetorical semiotic conceptual framework for brand equity planning. The main source of brand equity that is employed for exemplification purposes is the advertising filmic text. The conceptual framework assumes as its general blueprint Greimas’s generativist model of the trajectory of signification. Structuralist operations and operations of rhetorical transformation are posited as the basis for the generation of superior brand associations. The conceptual model put forward challenges the Greimasian assumption that a depth semantic structure is reducible to a binarist rationale, while adopting a connectionist approach in the form of associative networks. At the same time, the proposed framework deviates from the application of conceptual graphs in textual semiotics, while portraying in the form of associative networks how the three strata of a brand’s trajectory of signification interact with view to generating brand associations.

The Rhetorical Transformation of the Masses from Malthus’s “Redundant Population” into Marx’s “Industrial Reserve Army”

This article examines the rhetorical transformation of Malthus’s concept of the “redundant population” into what Marx and Engels relabeled the “surplus population” and the “industrial reserve army.” Three rhetorical functions can be observed in this transformation. First, the altered terminology served as a rhetorical marker for a place of theoretical disagreement about economic causality. “Rhetorical marker” refers to a subtle terminological modification that has manifold ramifications for meaning and understanding. Second, this reconstitution of the masses reinforced opposed assumptions about the relationship of people to technology, and third, it provided a type of embodied material proof for Marx’s and Engels’s revolutionary politics.

The Rhetorical Transformation of the Masses from Malthus’s “Redundant Population” into Marx’s “Industrial Reserve Army”

ABSTRACT This article examines the rhetorical transformation of Malthus’s concept of the “redundant population” into what Marx and Engels relabeled the “surplus population” and the “industrial reserve army.” Three rhetorical functions can be observed in this transformation. First, the altered terminology served as a rhetorical marker for a place of theoretical disagreement about economic causality. “Rhetorical marker” refers to a subtle terminological modification that has manifold ramifications for meaning and understanding. Second, this reconstitution of the masses reinforced opposed assumptions about the relationship of people to technology, and third, it provided a type of embodied material proof for Marx’s and Engels’s revolutionary politics.

Born Again: Arendt's “Natality” as Figure and Concept

Hannah Arendt introduces “natality” as a conceptual moment when one is born into the political as the sphere where acting together can create the truly unexpected. I argue that this new conception of freedom in The Human Condition draws its strength from a philosophical and rhetorical transformation of the question of the definition of man in theology and the natural sciences. I follow the lead of scholars who highlight Arendt's relation to Heidegger and Augustine, but my method of close reading—I offer the first examination of each appearance of the term “natality” in The Human Condition—leads me to show how Arendt's engagement with philosophical anthropologist Arnold Gehlen opens the space for alternative conceptions of freedom. The figurative and corporeal insistence of her writing, enacted in an embrace of the materiality of language, not only indicates liberation from the strictures of the empirical (as one expects from a philosophical concept) but also demonstrates ways in which the unexpected can arise both in this sphere of freedom and as a fundamental shift of this sphere.

Predicting push-button warfare: US print media and conflict from a distance, 1945–2010

In the more than 50 years following World War II, the concept of ‘push-button warfare’ has continually metamorphosed in media discourses as a symbol of technological warfare from a distance. This rhetorical transformation has occurred within the context of complex social, cultural and historical shifts, and along the way news sources have played a key role in framing debates for readers. Acting as a translator of uncertainty and future scenarios, journalists and others have deliberated on values of and risks posed by automated forms of war and their potential impact on the United States and the world. This article examines nearly 500 print media stories in order to make sense of the shifting dialogue around push-button warfare both in times of tumult and relative calm. The longitudinal study investigates how reporters frame predictions, prophecies, forecasts and expectations when trying to assess future technologies for war and peace.

Calculating the Weather: Deductive Reasoning and Disciplinary Telos in Cleveland Abbe's Rhetorical Transformation of Meteorology

This paper explores the rhetorical basis of a major paradigm change in meteorology, from a focus on inductive observation to deductive, mathematical reasoning. Analysis of Cleveland Abbe's “The Physical Basis of Long-Range Weather Forecasts” demonstrates how in his advocacy for a new paradigm, Abbe navigates the tension between piety to tradition and dissent necessary for innovation through the rhetorical imagination of and appeal to a disciplinary telos. This strategy allows him to dismiss the traditions of meteorology while simultaneously creating common ground between a new paradigm and an audience of contemporary scientists whose traditions he rejects.

Citizenship as Salvation: The 1963 Mississippi Freedom Vote

Abstract This essay is an attempt at primary resource recovery to inform an under-studied moment from the Civil Rights Movement—the 1963 Mississippi Freedom Vote. Analysis of these primary texts reveals how the campaign used religious narratives and discourse to create political efficacy and agency among disenfranchised voters in Mississippi. It is this rhetorical transformation that holds the key to understanding how and why over 80,000 blacks who had never before participated in any sustained and organized political campaign chose to do so in the fall of 1963. Exploring these texts and events with a nuanced eye for religious and political discourse reveals how a rhetorical transformation from religious believers to political agents came about, and why it was successful in an overshadowed moment from the Civil Rights Movement.