Aristotle on psychology and rhetoric

When Aristotle's Rhetoric is viewed in the light of his psychological treatise, De Anima, it becomes evident that the latter work both illuminates his conception of rhetoric and reveals the psychological assumptions underlying his theory of persuasion.     

John Wesley on rhetoric and belles lettres

Students of public address have long admired the rhetorical works of two of the leading ministers of the eighteenth century—Hugh Blair and George Campbell. Little has been said, however, about the rhetorical theory of another eighteenth‐century preacher, John Wesley. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Wesley's views on rhetoric and belles lettres. Since most of the subjects covered by Blair in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres were also discussed by Wesley in his Journal, Letters, and essays, Blair's pattern of organization is followed here. Hence the study considers Wesley's precepts on taste, genius, style, the speaker's content and organization, delivery, poetry, and historical and philosophical writing.     

Jimmy Carter and the rhetoric of charisma

Jimmy Carter's unusual success in the Presidential Primaries of 1976 has been the subject of much discussion. One rhetorical explanation posits that Carter's message may be described in terms of Weber's concept of charisma, and Bormann's theory of rhetorical vision. The charismatic message was caught up in a unique rhetorical situation, the social fantasies attending the Bicentennial Celebration. Carter's rhetoric and the people's fantasies transcended along similar lines. This confluence helped to carry Carter to the White House.     

Whiteness feels good here: interrogating white nationalist rhetoric on Stormfront

ABSTRACT

This essay adopts a critical rhetorical perspective attuned to affect to investigate white nationalist rhetoric on Stormfront, a popular white nationalist message board. My analysis illuminates how Stormfront attempts to appeal to mainstream white audiences by resisting normative expectations and affects articulated with white supremacy and (re)constructing white nationalism as a formation of white racial consciousness articulated with communal belonging, common sense, and pride. On Stormfront, affect is mobilized discursively to challenge colorblindness, construct rhetorical distance between white nationalism and white supremacy, and strategically negotiate white (dis)comfort with direct discourse on race to compel affective investments in white nationalism.     

Printings of Aristotle's rhetoric during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries

This study applies the results of an updated and extended investigation of the printings of Aristotle's Rhetoric between 1477 and 1599 to demonstrate the availability of the Rhetoric during the Renaissance. Four conclusions are drawn: (1) the Rhetoric was widely available, for at least 95 printings occurred during the period examined; (2) the repeated printings of Latin translations by five different humanists indicates a growing demand for the Rhetoric; (3) Victorius's efforts to reconstruct an authentic Greek text had a favorable influence on improving subsequent editions; and (4) the fact that most of the printings appeared in five continental cities indicates that the dissemination of the Rhetoric depended upon its purchase by private scholars and collectors.     

Presidential spectacles: Political illusionism and the rhetoric of travel

This essay explores the rhetorical implications of presidential travel spectacles. A form of political illusionism, travel spectacles enable administrations to marginalize verbal eloquence, visually simplify complex political issues, narratively interpret presidential agendas, synoptically reify presidential personae, and construct or mystify political realities. Discussed are implications of political illusionism for the presidency, citizenry, and rhetorical critic.     

John Franklin Genung and the nineteenth century definition of rhetoric

This article describes Genung's definition of rhetoric in relations to major writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.     

Juan Luis Vives: Tradition and innovation in renaissance rhetoric

Juan Luis Vives, like many sixteenth‐century humanists, sought to reform the arts of rhetoric and dialectic. This essay argues that Vives' efforts to rehabilitate the disciplines of discourse may well have been the most original of his century. Vives' discussion of elecutio—the essence of rhetoric—is considerably more distinguished than that presented by the better known Peter Ramus.     

A bibliography of rhetoric and public address for the year 1967

The purpose of this investigation was to isolate personality correlates of leadership by determining the unique personality profiles associated with autocratic and democratic leadership styles. Based on a multiple discriminant analysis which separated the autocratic from democratic groups on the basis of seven personality variables (of 53 considered), subjects were classified as autocratic or democratic with a 75.66% accuracy. Also, a personality profile emerged from the pattern of scores on the variables from the discriminant analysis which allowed for a useful personality‐based characterization of autocratic and democratic leaders.     

A bibliography of rhetoric and public address for the year 1963

Multiple linear regression analysis was used to determine the relationship of six predictor variables to immediate comprehension and delayed retention of a lecture. Listening comprehension ability and extrinsic motivation accounted for a statistically significant proportion of the variance in immediate lecture comprehension scores; and initial information, aroused interest, and intrinsic interest were found to be the best predictors of ‘delayed retention of the materials. However, intrinsic interest was inversely related to delayed retention. The data suggested that although persons with high initial information and low intrinsic interest did not comprehend the lecture any better than others, they retained more of what they heard. Thus the variables which most influence lecture comprehension may not significantly influence the delayed retention of what was heard.     

A bibliography of rhetoric and public address for the year 1951

Spoken language is encoded extremely rapidly and by exceedingly complex cognitive operations, yet it is amazingly free of errors. In recent years there has been debate on the question of how the speech‐production system guards itself against erroneous output. One explanation is that the system is sufficiently sophisticated and rule‐governed in its early message‐formulation stages so as generally to avoid constructing anomalous plans. The authors have argued elsewhere, however, for an explanation whereby anomalous and other error plans are formulated during early production stages but are vetoed and corrected (i.e., “edited”) during later encoding stages. We have yet to synthesize these arguments into a coherent encoding model, however, and that is our purpose here. An “Editing” model of speech production is presented, featuring prearticulatory evaluations of impending speech segments via feedback to a spreading‐activation lexicon which is susceptible to semantic, syntactic, phonological, and extralinguistic influences.     

Burkean transcendence and ultimate terms in rhetoric by and about James Watt

The essay examines some Burkean theory to show how governments should rhetorically manage the distribution of scarce resources. Interior Secretary James Watt's rhetoric is shown to be flawed because it is based on dialectical rather than ultimate frames of acceptance, and because his persona is inconsistent with his rhetoric.