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Compelling case studies and criticism of rhetorical practices aimed at social change

Xing Lu examines language, art, persuasion, and argumentation in ancient China and offers a detailed and authentic account of ancient Chinese rhetorical theories and practices within the society's philosophical, political, cultural, and linguistic contexts. She focuses on the works of five schools of thought and ten well-known Chinese thinkers from Confucius to Han Feizi to the the Later Mohists. Lu identifies seven key Chinese terms pertaining to speech, language, persuasion, and argumentation as they appeared in these original texts, selecting ming bian as the linchpin for the Chinese conceptual term of rhetorical studies.Lu compares Chinese rhetorical perspectives with those of the ancient Greeks, illustrating that the Greeks and the Chinese shared a view of rhetoric as an ethical enterprise and of speech as a rational and psychological activity. The two traditions differed, however, in their rhetorical education, sense of rationality, perceptions of the role of language, approach to the treatment and study of rhetoric, and expression of emotions. Lu also links ancient Chinese rhetorical perspectives with contemporary Chinese interpersonal and political communication behavior and offers suggestions for a multicultural rhetoric that recognizes both culturally specific and transcultural elements of human communication.

Speaking for the Polis considers Isocrates' educational program from the perspective of rhetorical theory and explores its relation to sociopolitical practices. Illumining Isocrates' efforts to reformulate sophistic conceptions of rhetoric on the basis of the intellectual and political debates of his times, Takis Poulakos contends that the father of humanistic studies and rival educator of Plato crafted a version of rhetoric that gave the art an important new role in the ethical and political activities of Athens.Poulakos demonstrates how Isocrates adopted, transformed, and put to new tasks Protagorean and Gorgianic notions of rhetoric and how he used rhetoric to resolve tensions between political equality and social inequality. Poulakos suggests that Isocrates' rhetorical endeavors gained stability through narratives of values and shared commitments, credence through seasoned arguments about plausible solutions to political discord, and weight through the convergence of the speaker's words and quality of character.

At the same time a reading of Kenneth Burke and of tourist landscapes in America, Gregory Clark's new study explores the rhetorical power connected with American tourism. Looking specifically at a time when citizens of the United States first took to rail and then highway to become sightseers in their own country, Clark traces the rhetorical function of a wide-ranging set of tourist experiences. He explores how the symbolic experiences Americans share as tourists have helped residents of a vast and diverse nation adopt a national identity. In doing so he suggests that the rhetorical power of a national culture is wielded not only by public discourse but also by public experiences.Clark examines places in the American landscape that have facilitated such experiences, including New York City, Shaker villages, Yellowstone National Park, the Lincoln Highway, San Francisco's 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and the Grand Canyon. He examines the rhetorical power of these sites to transform private individuals into public citizens, and he evaluates a national culture that teaches Americans to experience certain places as potent symbols of national community.Invoking Burke's concept of "e;identification"e; to explain such rhetorical encounters, Clark considers Burke's lifelong study of symbols-linguistic and otherwise-and their place in the construction and transformation of individual identity. Clark turns to Burke's work to expand our awareness of the rhetorical resources that lead individuals within a community to adopt a collective identity, and he considers the implications of nineteenth- and twentieth-century tourism for both visual rhetoric and the rhetoric of display.

Robert E. Terrill argues that, to invent a robust manner of addressing one another as citizens, Americans must learn to draw on the delicate indignities of racial exclusion that have stained citizenship since its inception. In Double-Consciousness and the Rhetoric of Barack Obama, Terrill demonstrates how President Barack Obama's public address models such a discourse.Terrill contends that Obama's most effective oratory invites his audiences to experience a form of "e;double-consciousness,"e; famously described by W. E. B. Du Bois as a feeling of "e;two-ness"e; resulting from the African American experience of "e;always looking at one's self through the eyes of others."e; It is described as an effect of cruel alienation that can also bring a gift of "e;second-sight"e; in the form of perspectives on practices of citizenship not available to those in positions of privilege. When addressing fellow citizens, Obama is asking each to share in the "e;peculiar sensation"e; that Du Bois described. The racial history of U.S. citizenship is a resource for inventing contemporary ways of speaking about race.Through close analyses of selected speeches from Obama's 2008 campaign and first presidential term, this book argues that Obama does not present double-consciousness merely as a point of view but as an idiom with which we might speak to one another. Of course, as Du Bois's work reminds us, double-consciousness results from imposition and encumbrance, so that Obama's oratory presents a mode of address that emphasizes the burdens of citizenship together with the benefits, the price as well as the promise.

In the last three decades ordinary Americans launched numerous grassroots commemorations and official historical institutions became more open to popular participation. In this first book-length study of participatory memory practices, Ekaterina V. Haskins critically examines this trend by asking how and with what consequences participatory forms of commemoration have reshaped the rhetoric of democratic citizenship. Approaching commemorations as both representations of civic identity and politically consequential sites of stranger interaction, Popular Memories investigates four distinct examples of participatory commemoration: the United States Postal Service's "e;Celebrate the Century"e; stamp and education program, the September 11 Digital Archive, the first post-Katrina Carnival in New Orleans, and a traveling memorial to the human cost of the Iraq War. Despite differences in sponsorship, genre, historical scope, and political purpose, all of these commemorations relied on voluntary participation of ordinary citizens in selecting, producing, or performing interpretations of distant or recent historical events. These collectively produced interpretations-or popular memories-in turn prompted interactions between people, inviting them to celebrate, to mourn, or to bear witness. The book's comparison of the four case studies suggests that popular memories make for stronger or weaker sites of civic engagement depending on whether or not they allow for public affirmation of the individual citizen's contribution and for experiencing alternative identities and perspectives. By systematically accounting for grassroots memory practices, consumerism, tourism, and rituals of popular identity, Haskins's study enriches our understanding of contemporary memory culture and citizenship.

In this groundbreaking examination of the symbolic strategies used to prepare troops for imminent combat, Keith Yellin offers an interdisciplinary look into the rhetorical discourse that has played a prominent role in warfare, history, and popular culture from antiquity to the present day. Battle Exhortation focuses on one of the most time-honored forms of motivational communication, the encouraging speech of military commanders, to offer a pragmatic and scholarly evaluation of how persuasion contributes to combat leadership and military morale. In illustrating his subject's conventions, Yellin draws from the Bible, classical Greece and Rome, Spanish conquistadors, and American military forces. Yellin is also interested in how audiences are socialized to recognize and anticipate this type of communication that precedes difficult team efforts. To account for this dimension he probes examples as diverse as Shakespeare's Henry V, George C. Scott's portrayal of General George S. Patton, and team sports.

Breast or Bottle? is the first scholarly examination of the shift in breastfeeding recommendations occurring over the last half century. Through a close analysis of scientific and medical controversies and a critical examination of the ways in which medical beliefs are communicated to the public, Amy Koerber exposes layers of shifting arguments and meaning that inform contemporary infant-feeding advocacy and policy. Whereas the phrase "e;breast or bottle"e; might once have implied a choice between two relative equals, human milk is now believed to possess unique health-promoting qualities. Although it is tempting to view this revision in medical thinking as solely the result of scientific progress, Koerber argues that a progress-based interpretation is incomplete. Epidemiologic evidence demonstrating the health benefits of human milk has grown in recent years, but the story of why these forms of evidence have dramatically increased in recent decades, Koerber reveals, is a tale of the dedicated individuals, coalitions, and organizations engaged in relentless rhetorical efforts to improve our scientific explanations and cultural appreciation of human milk, lactation, and breastfeeding in the context of a historical tendency to devalue these distinctly female aspects of the human body. Koerber demonstrates that the rhetoric used to promote breastfeeding at a given time and cultural moment not only reflects a preexisting reality but also shapes the infant-feeding experience for new mothers. Koerber's claims are grounded in extensive rhetorical research including textual analysis, archival research, and interviews with key stakeholders in the breastfeeding controversy. Her approach offers a vital counterpoint to other feminist analyses of the shift toward probreastfeeding scientific discourse and presents a revealing rhetorical case study in the complex relationship between scientific data and its impact on medical policy and practices. The resulting interdisciplinary study will be of keen interest to scholars and students of rhetoric, communication, women's studies, medical humanities, and public health as well as medical practitioners and policymakers.

In Democracy and Rhetoric, Nathan Crick articulates from John Dewey's body of work a philosophy of rhetoric that reveals the necessity for bringing forth a democratic life infused with the spirit of ethics, a method of inquiry, and a sense of beauty. Crick relies on rhetorical theory as well interdisciplinary insights from philosophy, history, sociology, aesthetics, and political science as he demonstrates that significant engagement with issues of rhetoric and communication are central to Dewey's political philosophy. In his rhetorical reading of Dewey, Crick examines the sophistical underpinnings of Dewey's philosophy and finds it much informed by notions of radical individuality, aesthetic experience, creative intelligence, and persuasive advocacy as essential to the formation of communities of judgment. Crick illustrates that for Dewey rhetoric is an art situated within a complex and challenging social and natural environment, wielding influence and authority for those well versed in its methods and capable of experimenting with its practice. From this standpoint the unique and necessary function of rhetoric in a democracy is to advance minority views in such a way that they might have the opportunity to transform overarching public opinion through persuasion in an egalitarian public arena. The truest power of rhetoric in a democracy then is the libertyfor one to influence the many through free, full, and fluid communication. Ultimately Crick argues that Dewey's sophistical rhetorical values and techniques form a naturalistic "e;ontology of becoming"e; in which discourse is valued for its capacity to guide a self, a public, and a world in flux toward some improved incarnation. Appreciation of this ontology of becoming-of democracy as a communication-driven work in progress-gives greater social breadth and historical scope to Dewey's philosophy while solidifying his lasting contributions to rhetoric in an active and democratic public sphere.

In Managing Vulnerability, Richard C. Marback analyzes the tension surrounding the transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa through a rhetorical lens. Marback studies the heart of South Africa's desire for reconciliation and contends that this goal could be achieved only through the creation of a language of vulnerability in which former enemies become open to the influence of each other, to the constraints of their respective circumstances, and to the prospects of a shared future. Through a series of informative case studies, Marback illustrates how the cultivation of openness and the management of vulnerability take shape through the circulation of artifacts, symbols, and texts that give empowering expression to virtues of connectedness over the temptations of individual autonomy. Marback discusses the construction and impact of the narrative tours of Robben Island, the silencing of Robert Sobukwe, the debates over a proposed Freedom Monument, a brief gesture of ubuntu from Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela to Eugene de Kock, and the transformation of the title character in the film adaptation of the 1980 novel Tsotsi. Ultimately, Marback contends, finding a means to manage vulnerability is both the immediate success of and the ongoing challenge to South African democracy and is indicative of the nature of rhetoric in democracies in general and in contemporary civic life.

Addresses the role of citizen voices in steering a democracy through an examination of the rhetoric of publics - active segments of society that influence the general climate of public dialogue - and of the associated public spheres and public opinion.

Now known to the Chinese as the ""ten years of chaos,"" the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) brought death to thousands of Chinese and persecution to millions. Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution identifies the rhetorical features and explores the persuasive effects of political language and symbolic practices during the period.

Queerly Remembered investigates the ways in which gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (GLBTQ) individuals and communities have increasingly turned to public tellings of their ostensibly shared pasts in order to advocate for political, social, and cultural change in the present. Much like nations, institutions, and other minority groups before them, GLBTQ people have found communicating their past(s)-particularly as expressed through the concept of memory-a rich resource for leveraging historical and contemporary opinions toward their cause. Drawing from the interdisciplinary fields of rhetorical studies, memory studies, gay and lesbian studies, and queer theory, Thomas R. Dunn considers both the ephemeral tactics and monumental strategies that GLBTQ communities have used to effect their queer persuasion. More broadly this volume addresses the challenges and opportunities posed by embracing historical representations of GLBTQ individuals and communities as a political strategy. Particularly for a diverse community whose past is marked by the traumas of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the forgetting and destruction of GLBTQ history, and the sometimes-divisive representational politics of fluid, intersectional identities, portraying a shared past is an exercise fraught with conflict despite its potential rewards. Nonetheless, by investigating rich rhetorical case studies through time and across diverse artifacts-including monuments, memorials, statues, media publications, gravestones, and textbooks-Queerly Remembered reveals that our current queer "e;turn toward memory"e; is a complex, enduring, and avowedly rich rhetorical undertaking.

Discursive essays that illuminate the interplay between technological innovation and communication

These collected letters of two key figures from the Modernist period span a period of 42 years. The animated exchange between a canonical poet and the leading American rhetorical critic of the 20th century offers a complete vision of their outlooks and contributions to the Modernist scene.

Provides an introduction to the discussion of rhetorical stylistic instruction in the English Renaissance. Nancy L. Christiansen argues that most contemporary characterisations of Renaissance stylistic theory are reductions obscuring the comprehensive composing and reading method taught by Renaissance rhetoricians.

Protagoras and Logos brings together in a meaningful synthesis the contributions and rhetoric of the first and most famous of the Older Sophists, Protagoras of Abdera. Most accounts of Protagoras rely on the somewhat hostile reports of Plato and Aristotle. By focusing on Protagoras's own surviving words, this study corrects many long-standing misinterpretations and presents significant facts: Protagoras was a first-rate philosophical thinker who positively influenced the theories of Plato and Aristotle, and Protagoras pioneered the study of language and was the first theorist of rhetoric. In addition to illustrating valuable methods of translating and reading fifth-century B.C.E. Greek passages, the book marshals evidence for the important philological conclusion that the Greek word translated as rhetoric was a coinage by Plato in the early fourth century. In this second edition, Edward Schiappa reassesses the philosophical and pedagogical contributions of Protagoras. Schiappa argues that traditional accounts of Protagoras are hampered by mistaken assumptions about the Sophists and the teaching of the art of rhetoric in the fifth century. He shows that, contrary to tradition, the so-called Older Sophists investigated and taught the skills of logos, which is closer to modern conceptions of critical reasoning than of persuasive oratory. Schiappa also offers interpretations for each of Protagoras's major surviving fragments and examines Protagoras's contributions to the theory and practice of Greek education, politics, and philosophy. In a new afterword Schiappa addresses historiographical issues that have occupied scholars in rhetorical studies over the past ten years, and throughout the study he provides references to scholarship from the last decade that has refined his views on Protagoras and other Sophists.

In Sophistical Rhetoric in Classical Greece, John Poulakos offers a new conceptualization of sophistry, explaining its direction and shape as well as the reasons why Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle found it objectionable. Poulakos argues that a proper understanding of sophistical rhetoric requires a grasp of three cultural dynamics of the fifth century B.C.: the logic of circumstances, the ethic of competition, and the aesthetic of exhibition. Traced to such phenomena as everyday practices, athletic contests, and dramatic performances, these dynamics set the stage for the role of sophistical rhetoric in Hellenic culture and explain why sophistry has traditionally been understood as inconsistent, agonistic, and ostentatious. In his discussion of ancient responses to sophistical rhetoric, Poulakos observes that Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle found sophistry morally reprehensible, politically useless, and theoretically incoherent. At the same time, they produced their own version of rhetoric that advocated ethical integrity, political unification, and theoretical coherence. Poulakos explains that these responses and alternative versions were motivated by a search for solutions to such historical problems as moral uncertainty, political instability, and social disorder. Poulakos concludes that sophistical rhetoric was as necessary in its day as its Platonic, Isocratean, and Aristotelian counterparts were in theirs.

A collection of rhetorical case studies that fathom the construction and destruction of communities. It considers such contentious issues as how individuals are forged into communities, what sustains constructive communities, how communities become fragmented, and what leads to divisions of race, class, and gender.

Focusing on the works of lesser-known yet influential Deists, the author examines the 70-year polemic between the Church of England and the English Deists, illuminating the rhetorical war which raged between them. He contends that Deism owes its significance to these skilled controversialists.

Kenneth Burke may be best known for his theories of dramatism and of language as symbolic action, but few know him as one of the twentieth century's foremost theorists of the relationship between language and bodies. This title presents him as a major transdisciplinary theorist of the body.

Considers the relationship between the phenomenon of conscience and the practice of rhetoric as it relates to the controversial issues of euthanasia. This study investigates how the practice of rhetoric becomes a voice of conscience and influences the moral standards of individuals and communities.

The 18 essays in this volume seek to retrieve the voices of women who contributed to the rhetorical realm. Beginning by tracing the patriarchal nature of traditional rhetorical histories, the articles then examine exceptional women rhetoricians, their practices and strategies, throughout history.

Of the ancient Greek Sophists, Gorgias of Leontini (c.483-376BCE) has endured more than his share of detractors. Scott Consigny joins the commentators who find merit in Gorgias' thought, but his perceptions of Gorgias differ from those of the two most influential efforts at rehabilitation.

Examines the origins and rhetorical methods of five civil rights sit-ins of 1960. The book demonstrates how we can read the sit-ins by using diverse rhetorical lenses as persuasive conflicts in which participants deployed arguments and actions to change segregated communities and the attitudes, traditions, and policies that maintained segregation.

In this provocative work, Michael Hyde develops a philosophy of communication ethics in which the practice of rhetoric plays a fundamental role in promoting and maintaining the health of our personal and communal existence. He examines how the force of interruption is a catalyst for moral reflection and moral behaviour.

Prisoners of Conscience continues the work begun by Gerard A. Hauser in Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres, winner of the National Communication Association's Hochmuth Nichols Award. In his new book, Hauser examines the discourse of political prisoners, specifically the discourse of prisoners of conscience, as a form of rhetoric in which the vernacular is the main source of available appeals and the foundation for political agency. Hauser explores how modes of resistance employed by these prisoners constitute what he deems a "e;thick moral vernacular"e; rhetoric of human rights. Hauser's work considers in part how these prisoners convert universal commitments to human dignity, agency, and voice into the moral vernacular of the society and culture to which their rhetoric is addressed. Hauser grounds his study through a series of case studies, each centered on a different rhetorical mechanism brought to bear in the act of resistance. Through a transnational rhetorical analysis of resistance within political prisons, Hauser brings to bear his skills as a rhetorical theorist and critic to illuminate the rhetorical power of resistance as tied to core questions in contemporary humanistic scholarship and public concern.

The essays in this collection, written by sixteen scholars in rhetoric and communications studies, demonstrate American philosopher John Dewey's wide-ranging influence on rhetoric in an intellectual tradition that addresses the national culture's fundamental conflicts between self and society, freedom and responsibility, and individual advancement and the common good. Brian Jackson and Gregory Clark propose that this influence is at work both in theoretical foundations and in Dewey's debates with other public intellectuals.