Rhetorical Turn Research Articles

The Sacred Text and the Language of the Leader: “Cultured Language” and the Rhetorical Turn in North Korea

Abstract This article examines the emergence of munhwaŏ (“Cultured Language”) in relation to the primacy of the leader in the DPRK. The articulation of the linguistic and cultural policies of munhwaŏ was inseparable from the development and formalization of the political leadership. The active translation, reception, and development of the Stalinist and Soviet linguistic tradition by North Korean intellectuals, together with the death of Stalin in 1953, importantly shaped the state’s quest for linguistic modernity. By tracing the “rhetorical turn” in North Korean linguistics in the 1960s, the author explores the development of munhwaŏ and its relation to the distinctive development of a charismatic oratory and a linguistic etiquette for the leader. One significant feature of North Korea’s quest for linguistic modernity is the way in which it diverges from its Soviet counterpart. By meticulously theorizing the language to be used of and for the leader, or what the author describes as the linguistic ritualization of charisma, North Korea offered an original contribution to the field of charismatic rhetoric. A comprehensive manual describing this rhetoric was developed, serving as a guide to the “sacred text” of the leader and describing how to articulate and express the presence of the leader in the public sphere.

The Work of Youth Homelessness Prevention in Ontario: Points of Frustration, Points of Potential

Despite a rhetorical turn towards prevention in homelessness policy and research, the work of youth homelessness prevention continues to be frustrated by persistent structural barriers. In this article, we examine how youth homelessness prevention is being implemented in the province of Ontario, with a focus on targeted provincial support programs and local shelter diversion practices. Drawing on interviews with workers in the homeless-serving sector, we describe the implementation of these initiatives and identify points of frustration and potential that workers encounter as they try to prevent experiences of homelessness for youth. We contend that these points of frustration illuminate persistent structural barriers that continue to forestall the work of youth homelessness prevention. Meanwhile, points of potential demonstrate the importance of empowering workers to creatively adapt and offer responsive services. Taken together, these signal the critical importance of two aspects of contemporary homelessness prevention typologies—primordial prevention and empowerment. We end by offering aspirations for action, a political reframing of the policy recommendations sections more typical of social science research articles. We do so to affirm our commitment to advancing the work of structural transformation that is required to achieve the right to housing for all, including youth.

Constructing the enemy: the evolution of Podemos’ populist discourse from anti-system movement to power (2014–2021)

ABSTRACT Podemos has been the object of extensive attention since its foundation in 2014. However, most of the academic works focus on its initial rise, which prevents a broader analysis of the evolution of its populist discourse after they reached the Spanish government in 2020. Covering this gap, this paper argues that Podemos’ populism operates as a discursive logic aimed at constructing the political by spreading antagonisms. Following the post-Marxist theories of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Podemos’ leaders understand politics as a cultural exercise whose essential component is a permanent redefinition of the people and anti-people categories according to context. Based on this framework, the paper develops a qualitative analysis of Podemos’ discourse in the period 2014–2021. By focusing on the discursive manifestations of its main leaders, the paper shows the rhetorical turns that try to reconcile the contradictions between an initial street-level populism and a subsequent populism in power. Thus, the original people/caste antagonism is replaced by the classical left/right divide, which shows the difficult coexistence of two different approaches to populism within Podemos. Once in government, the reframing of the left/right dichotomy as democracy/fascism will lend continuity to a populist understanding of politics.

Ежен Дюпреель і Хаїм Перельман: нормативно-критичні засади «риторичного повороту» в сучасній філософії. Частина ІІ

The purpose of the article is, firstly, to explicate and give a critical assessment of the methodological, epistemological, and philosophical foundations that led to the “rhetorical turn” in modern philosophy, and, secondly, to answer the question of how justified the grounds for such a “rhetorical turn” are. The answer proposed is based on a reconstruction of Eugene Dupréel’s critical arguments that were directed against the “classical philosophy” and their reception in Chaim Perelman’s works during his “turning point” period (1947 – 1949). The article proves that these two scholars’ critique of classical philosophy proceeds from a realistic position, therefore it does not apply to the epistemological principles of idealistic philosophy. Their criticism of the classical theory of progress and the ideal of universally valid knowledge is “axiological” in nature and boils down to a reassessment of all traditional values. As a result of this reassessment, the methodological principles of sophistry (subjectivism, pragmatism, pluralism, relativism, conventionalism, etc.) are actually rehabilitated. The criticism of philosophy that appeals to spoken language and everyday knowledge, is not justified, since it is based on a misunderstanding of the conceptual and constructive nature of the philosophical language. Although the rhetorical analysis of philosophical texts should be recognized as fruitful and useful, rhetoric cannot be an instrument of philosophizing, since the interpretation of values depends on their understanding, which is given by “classical philosophy”.

The rule of unreason: Analyzing (anti‐)democratic regression

The rule of unreason: Analyzing (anti‐)democratic regression

”Tänk om Egon tar min cykel”

Concentrating on Doris drar (Doris Leaves, 2015), Pudlar och pommes (Poodles and Fries, 2016), and Vitvivan och Gullsippan (Vitvivan and Gullsippan, 2021), this article explores how Pija Lindenbaum utilizes the artistic possibilities of the picturebook medium to communicate with the child reader. Following James Phelan, my investigation goes beyond a static and universal understanding of narratives to seeing them as context-determined and composed in relation to a rhetorical audience. Mike Cadden points out that this rhetorical turn is particularly striking when it comes to children’s literature, as the targeted reader by definition is a child and narratives for children often use specific strategies for more or less well-defined purposes. Taking my cue from rhetorical approaches to literature, I argue that a focus on plots and conflicts enhances our understanding of reading as ethical meaning-making. Conflicts in modern children’s literature are regularly perceived from the child’s point of view in ways that are essential for the transaction of meaning. In my terminology, the conflict constitutes an aesthetic-pedagogical node connecting the reader with the evaluative perspective of the narrative. Addressing the dynamics between text, image, and medium in Lindenbaum’s picturebooks, this article argues that plots and conflicts are pivotal for the reader’s involvement, directing interest and emotional engagement. The plot not only invites the reader to the fictional world, but it also stimulates a context-bound meaning-making involving thoughts, feelings, and values.

Arguing with Numbers: The Intersection of Rhetoric and Mathematics

Arguing with Numbers: The Intersection of Rhetoric and Mathematics

Ежен Дюпреель і Хаїм Перельман: нормативно-критичні засади «риторичного повороту» в сучасній філософії. Частина І

The purpose of this article is to give a critical assessment of the methodological, epistemological and philosophical principles of the “rhetorical turn” as a historico-philosophical phenomenon in contemporary philosophy. The first part offers a reconstruction and a critical assessment of the methodological and epistemological foundations of Eugène Dupréel's critique of the key features of “classical philosophy”, namely, the concept of necessary knowledge and the concept of progress. These are supplemented by a brief analysis of Chaїm Perelman’s reception of Dupréel's theses in his works of the so-called “turning point” period (1947–1949). It is shown that Dupréel's critique is “axiological” in nature and consists in his reassessment of the principles of classical methodology and epistemology. In his critique of the doctrine of necessary knowledge from the standpoint of humanism, Dupréel wittingly vindicates the methodological and epistemological principles of sophistry (critical realism, subjectivism, pragmatism, pluralism, relativism, conventionalism, etc.), but endows these, as well as other concepts of classical epistemology, with a new, humanistic, meaning. Perelman generally supports the main points of Dupréel's criticism, strengthening their social and humanistic orientation. This article demonstrates that the criticism of classical philosophy offered by both thinkers is limited in terms of both its subject and its principles. After all, it (1) provides a simplified image of “classical philosophy”, (2) is based on a misunderstanding of the fundamentally conceptual and constructive nature of philosophical knowledge, (3) is carried out from the standpoint of “socially oriented realism”, and, therefore, (4) has no bearing on the epistemological principles of idealistic and religious movements,(5) leading to the separation of philosophy from scientific and religious knowledge.

The Excellence Award at the Fonds Ricœur’s Summer Workshop 2021 - “Ricœur rhétorique. The Missed Encounter with Chaïm Perelman in The Rule of Metaphor”

This paper argues that Ricœur’s philosophy operates on the basis of a more expansive conception of rhetoric than it first appears. To show this, I reread The Rule of Metaphor through the “new rhetoric” of Chaïm Perelman. First, I survey Ricœur’s understanding of rhetoric in the 1950s and 60s. Second, I examine Ricœur’s relation to Perelman within the context of the broader “rhetorical turn” of the 1970s. After examining their respective positions, I argue that Ricœur fails to appreciate the full significance of Perelman’s conception of audience. In doing so, I draw attention to the central role that Ricœur himself ascribes to the audience or reader in the “work of meaning.” I conclude by proposing that the rhetorical triad of logos/ethos/pathos may serve as a conceptual matrix with which the rhetorical aspects of Ricœur’s philosophy can be interpreted.

Advancing citizenship through language arts education: conceptions of rhetoric in Scandinavian national curricula

ABSTRACT Scandinavian countries have a long tradition of widespread public schooling linked to civic education. In the most recent curriculum reforms, concepts from rhetoric appear in various forms in language arts subject curricula from primary to upper-secondary school. In this article, we examine how current Scandinavian curricula reflect rhetoric and rhetorical education through content analysis based on David Fleming’s update of the classical triad in rhetorical education. We examine explicit and implicit references to rhetorical art, practice, and inquiry to gain insight into how rhetoric is reflected and conceptualized in national curricula, thereby providing a nuanced outlook for future research on the rhetorical turn of education. The analysis shows that the curricula for language arts subjects in all Scandinavian countries include several key components of contemporary rhetorical education, and in Swedish and Norwegian curricula, rhetoric is also explicitly linked to the development of democratic citizenship. However, references to rhetoric in curricula documents are sometimes implicit, and the explicit references that are present might give the impression that rhetoric should be taught only as a technical skill devoid of context or as critical text analysis.

Rhetoric Turn and Medieval History. A look into Europe and USA

Rhetoric Turn and Medieval History. A look into Europe and USA

Rome-sacking and barebacking: longing, rhetoric, and revolution in Augustine and queer theory

ABSTRACT Augustine’s sermon on ‘The Sacking of the City of Rome’ appears to lack the pastoral rhetoric that readers of his Confessions are so familiar with. This paper recovers the pastoral dimension of Augustine’s discourse by reading it alongside recent reinterpretations of barebacking subculture in queer theory. Maia Kotrosits argues that the rhetorical turn in the categorization of HIV/AIDS produced senses of asynchrony, and that barebacking responds to these by rooting the individual in an irreversible timeline of HIV-positivity. Barebacking can therefore be read as ‘pastoral’ rhetoric that resolves the agony of uncertainty. Augustine’s sermon is pastoral in this sense; Augustine imposes an historical ending that resolves the temporal anxiety he and his contemporaries felt after the sack of Rome in 410. Nevertheless, writing an ending – pastoral as that may be – can be a violent process if it negates or replaces the revolutionary work of making history.

Piezas owenianas en el rompecabezas darwiniano

En este trabajo discutimos la extensión de la influencia que el pensamiento de Richard Owen tuvo sobre el de Charles Darwin. Además, se intentará mostrar lo heterogéneo de tal influencia, que va desde teorías específicas a giros retóricos. Esta influencia es en muchos casos subestimada, dando la sensación de que la novedad darwiniana consistió únicamente en mirar con ojos desprejuiciados lo que los otros no habían visto. Esta visión resulta injusta con Owen, y también con el esfuerzo conceptual llevado adelante por Darwin con las piezas brindadas por sus precursores. Finalmente, este es un caso interesante para entender el tipo de novedad aportada por las revoluciones científicas y el modo sofisticado en que tal novedad se sustenta sobre el trabajo de los enfoques previos.

The Historical Method: From Genesis to Revival (From the Civil Science to the Modal Rhetoric)

This study deals with two strategies of approaching the early modern epistemology of Gesteswissenschaften, the first of which sees in them the anticipation of historicism in the 19th – early 20th centuries, and the second — a precedent for turn to rhetoric and contingency, similar to the rhetorical turn in some areas of the theory of humanities in the mid-20th century. The starting point of the study is Benedetto Croce's view of the philosophy of the Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) as a prelude to romanticism (“the nineteenth century in nuce”; “il romanticismo fu vichiano”): Croce's conception is considered as a representative sample of the presentist appropriation of the Baroque civil science. This concept is contrasted with the theoretical historiography of the early modern times, which seeks in the “sciences of contingency” a resource of the renewal of the topical theory of humanities: a special emphasis is placed on Nancy S. Struever's modal rhetoric. It is demonstrated that this latter strategy contributed to free the philosophy of the Neapolitan thinker from anachronistic readings in the vein of romanticism and to replace it in its own time.

The Language of Women's Pain: Ideology and Critical Cultural Competencies in Pain Literacy

This manuscript is concerned with a key tension in health communication: How women’s pain is rhetorically constructed and culturally consumed. To date, there has been much research devoted to communicating the language of pain, rather, pain’s expressibility (Scarry, 1985), as well as the construction of health narratives from private pain into public action (Kimball, 2000). Building on that literature, we make a rhetorical turn, and argue for a more critical rhetorical approach to pain literacy. To that end, the primary goal of this essay is to explore the rhetorical nuances and ideological limitations in pain literacy and pain response, from the point of when pain is expressed to how that expression is perceived. Through a critical cultural lens, we critique dominant narratives of pain, and argue for an intersectional heuristic of rhetorical care that promotes cultural competency and awareness to bridge gaps in the expression and perception of pain literacy.

The Critical Performative Turn in Intercultural Communication

ABSTRACT This essay argues that the performative turn in intercultural communication was a natural movement that follows the interpersonal, interpretative, critical, and rhetorical previous turns. The critical edge performance studies bring to intercultural communication through the re-centring of the (Othered) body and critical performative reflexivity is necessary if intercultural communication as a field is going to move beyond histories of Otherizing, exclusion, and speaking for the Other. The performative turn additionally allows us to understand identities more intersectionally, challenging dominant approaches to identity in intercultural communication.

The Invention of ‘Harmful Cultural Practices’ in the Era of AIDS in Malawi

The AIDS epidemic in Malawi and elsewhere has brought sexual and cultural practices under scrutiny for their potential role in transmitting the HIV virus. The discourse of ‘harmful cultural practices’ – a capacious phrase inclusive of practices like initiation ceremonies or widow inheritance that carry connotations of rurality and tradition – has circulated widely as a domain of intervention, actual or potential, by law and public health in Malawi. The discourse, finding expression in media representations, AIDS conferences, and policy and legal discussions, has generated significant attention; yet, there is no empirical evidence that conclusively supports a link between participation in such practices and elevated risk of contracting HIV. In this regard, I employ ethnographic discourse analysis to understand how cultural practices associated with tradition or village life became cast as harmful. I track how ‘harmful cultural practices’ took form as a domain of intervention across scales ranging from policy forums to villages to public health to media. I show how a melange of ‘evidence’, rhetorical turns and public discourse have stabilised ‘culture’ as a realm of risk fit for public health intervention and endless study. In illustrating how ‘evidence’ in these discussions becomes a highly compelling aesthetic prop that takes on a life of its own and aligns with multiple agendas, I depart from arguments that any distinct set of actors with specific interests or intentions (for example, elite Malawians) propagated or authored this discourse. This paper has wider relevance in its interest in how and why certain narratives in the context of African AIDS – particularly those about bodies, risk, sexuality and modernity – gain legitimacy over others. The ‘harmful cultural practices’ narrative finds resonance in postcolonial contexts within a global health–human rights nexus that elevates protection of the individual as property or bearer of rights.

Realist Poetics in American Culture, 1866–1900 by Elizabeth Renker

Reviewed by: Realist Poetics in American Culture, 1866–1900 by Elizabeth Renker Martin Griffin Elizabeth Renker Realist Poetics in American Culture, 1866–1900 New York: Oxford UP, 2018. 207 pp. Elizabeth Renker begins her study of late nineteenth-century American poetry by energetically discussing how the motif of the "twilight" of poetry moved through the cultural discourse of the late 1880s and 1890s, beginning as an individual judgment and coming to dominate the collective assessment of that era's poetic production. Edmund Clarence Stedman's rhetorical turn in an 1885 essay published in Century illustrated, "twilight" quickly became, as Renker notes, "an instant catchphrase" (17). The trope, suggesting a poetic culture that has almost run its course, became all the more tenacious when allied with George Santayana's languid put-down of the genteel tradition twenty-five years later. Renker suggests in the introduction that Santayana essentially inherited the glib dismissal of poetry in those decades from Stedman's earlier commentary. Renker argues forcefully that more recent generations of critics and scholars have either fully bought into the gentility-and-twilight proposition, or worse, have challenged it by simply moving the Overton window of acceptable literary periodization backward so that selected poets are seen as harbingers of modernism, or at least transitional figures in a teleological process toward poetic liberation from Victorian constraints. Her broader mission in the book is to investigate the arguments over realism in American letters in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, or, more accurately, the multiple approaches that poets took to opening up the available poetic modes and forms in order to represent precisely the struggle over realism and idealism in national literary culture; this struggle also impacted the work of female poets and black poets in specific ways. She closes the study with a chapter on Melville's relationship to realist poetics. Renker is particularly interested in the ways in which the ideological meta-discourse of realism can be used to exclude or include particular voices, and she draws on the British critic Raymond Williams as someone who treated ostensibly consensual literary history as a convenient story rather than an incontestable truth. Elaborating on the complex relationship between cultural [End Page 93] forms and social conflict in which Williams played a major role during the 1960s and 1970s, Renker presents what she calls "reality categories," a cluster of the four terms real, reality, realistic, and realism (10–11). Williams utilized these terms to reveal anew a literary and intellectual struggle that emerged in the latter part of the nineteenth century and is, in many ways, still under way. Now and then, however, it seems that Renker has perhaps not taken Raymond Williams fully to heart, in that he was trying to explore the interaction of culture and society in literature and drama while also nudging people to move on from a fruitless debate over rigid choices between fixed concepts (for example, either the aesthetic investments of British Romanticism or the reformist program of realist fiction) shaped by almost-invisible political agendas. Renker sometimes gives the impression of falling into the trap that she sees others as already in—to fight a terminological war is to endorse the power of terminology, in some obvious way—and she has to redirect Realist Poetics in American Culture toward its true objective: an investigation of the social dynamics underlying literary forms. The achievement of the book is to make a consistent and expert case for a reading of late nineteenth-century American poetry that neither sees it as the last wave of a dying lake of sentimental versifying nor selectively designs an inspirational narrative of earlier-than-thou modernist sensibility to make us feel comfortable with the notion of poets who have the right ideas but are hobbled only by an outdated set of literary fashion choices. As the title suggests, the phrase "realist poetics" is a determining factor in describing the kind of work done between the covers. Renker sets this out as her mission statement, so to speak, but leaves an interesting question hanging in the air. That question, of how to assess the realist poetics of the era, is bound to be focused on...

Proizvodstvo etnichnosti: narrativy o svoey natsionalnoy kukhne u azerbaydzhantsev, armyan i gruzin

This paper is devoted to the analysis of one of the practices of reproducing ethnicity: conversations about national cuisine. Descriptions of national cuisines help articulate a person’s belonging to a certain ethnic group and serve to attribute various cultural characteristics to their “own” group and those of the “other” peoples. This article explores the ways Azerbaijanis, Armenians and Georgians living in St Petersburg think about their national cuisine. The focus of the study is on а comparison of these views as presented in semi-structured thematic interviews conducted by the author. Respondents who identify themselves with the same ethnic group from the South Caucasus generally think about their national cuisine in a way shared by the whole group, while the selection of main dishes differs significantly among the groups of different ethnic origin. It was observed that the general principles for organizing narratives about national cuisine were the same among the different ethnic groups. This includes the basic motifs, rhetorical turns, arguments and presuppositions (among them, ideas that there is a correspondence between ethnicity and eating practices, that national cuisine should be exclusive, family meals are national, etc.). At the same time, while ethnic food is a subject of national pride for Georgians and Azerbaijanis, Armenians do not seem to appreciate their cuisine in the same way.

The Trope of the Mirror in Contemporary Experimental Literature

The Trope of the Mirror in Contemporary Experimental Literature Saloua Karoui-Elounelli Ever since M. H. Abrams used the metaphor of the mirror in his theorizing of mimetic literature, the trope has been invested in communicating opposed tendencies of literary creativity and largely antithetical conceptions of the literary art. Indeed, from Abrams’ seminal work The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (1953), and up to the theoretical rethinking of mimetic and anti-mimetic literary narrative, in works such as Narcissistic Narrative (1980) by Linda Hutcheon, Silverless Mirrors (1983) by Charles Caramello, or also Postmodernist Fiction (1987) by Brian McHale, the trope of reflection and mirroring have abounded in the critical discourse. Whether in the theoretical delineations of mimetic fiction or avant-gardist metafiction, such tropes have often prompted a questioning of literature’s relation to aesthetic and cultural paradigms, which, in turn, has directed scholarly research to a vital reconsideration of the notion of experimentation. Indeed, the persistent debate, and even controversy, in the discourse of literary criticism, around the idea of the experimental is partly grounded in the divergent approaches to the terms of the relationship that connects literary creativity to an apprehension of its poetics, as well as to the politics of culture. In the context of the modern and postmodern literary production, the debate around the experimental vein in literature has often acknowledged the relevance of the issue of literary self-reflexivity which is not assumed to be a (post)modern invention, but rather to have gained prominence since James Joyce’s Finnegans’ Wake (1939) and Flann O’Brien’s At-Swim Two Birds (1939). The argument that the thematic and aesthetic significance of self-reflexivity in the poetics of experimental literature induces a rethinking of the two concepts of mimesis and representation has contributed a great deal to the critical interest in scrutinizing the metadiscursive, and often self-ironic, quality of such literature. In the context of the present issue, the term “experimental” is conceived of in line with what Joe Bray, Alison Gibbons, and Brian McHale posit when they argue that “all literary experiments share is their commitment to raising fundamental questions about the very nature and being of verbal art itself” [End Page v] (1). Experimentation and avant-gardism are both conceived of as interrelated qualities of the kind of literary texts that question and demystify their own formal constructs as much as they reinvigorate a critique and a skeptical outlook of cultural and ideological discourses alike. The radicalism of such critique and / or skepticism ranges from the aestheticism of literary self-irony—with an invocation of a sense of crisis with regard to the notions of creativity and representation that the verbal art can neither trust nor do without—to the engagement with the politics of representation and the unmasking of the ideological (and, possibly, hegemonic) implications of literary conventions and systems.1 The rhetorical turn in the discourse of literary criticism and in the critical dimension of self-reflexive literature, whereby the trope of the mirror becomes connotative of a metacritical, metadiscursive move, allows the trope to mediate a critical rethinking of literature’s representational processes. As Caramello puts it: “texts have turned their reflecting planes inward, towards one another, and they have skewed these planes even further by incorporating a metalinguistic discourse on that turning” (48). Far from being mere pointless solipsism, or expressing a predilection for aestheticism, the inward move of literary self-reflexive texts tends to be associated with a continuous interest in raising key conceptual questions that hinge upon the paradoxes of the creative process, or pinpoint, in the very play of self-reflexivity, issues of cultural encounter, traumatic experience, or the act of resistance. In fact, the essays gathered in the present volume / issue go each in either one of those directions, arguing either for the substantial metacritical thematics in metafictional narratives (Elounelli, Dridi) or for the significance of cultural and historiographic critique (Bueher, Souissi, Bouhlila, and Fekir). Critical works on self-reflexive fiction in the scene of experimental postmodern and postcolonial literary writing were mostly published in the late 1970s (Robert Alter, Robert Scholes) and the 1980s (Linda Hutcheon, Margaret Rose, Patricia...