Muscle spasticity in functional aphonia and dysphonia

Gains Suetonius Tranquillus, Roman historian and biographer of the first and second centuries A.D., wrote De Rhetoribus,the only Latin treatise concerned directly with pre‐Ciceronian rhetoricians and providing information on the strong opposition to rhetoric, the radical changes in the educational system of Rome, and the influence of otherwise unknown rhetoricians. After placing Suetonius in the rhetorical tradition of the early Roman Empire, a translation of De Rhetoribus and an extensive commentary on the major points are presented. The major significance of Suetonius's De Rhetoribus in the history of rhetoric was its demonstration that transplanted Greek rhetoric survived the dark ages of the early Roman Republic because rhetoric was a source of political power.     

The rise and fall of Progymnasmata in sixteenth and seventeenth century grammar schools

Viewing pro‐war rhetorical discourse directed to the general public as a genre, the author suggests that three basic appeals— those to territoriality, ethnocentrism and optimism—pervade the genre, though the appeals are developed differently under various historical circumstances. He further suggests that stated war aims, though usually expressed ambiguously, tend to change as a war progresses. These points are amplified by a close examination of New England rhetoric during the last French war and a general consideration of some other war rhetoric.     

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.     

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.     

An experimental study of the effect of three speech variables on listener comprehension

Though the scope of Aristotle's Rhetoric is at once broader and more limited than Bacon's theory, the Englishman owes most of his primary rhetorical doctrines to his predecessor. The two philosophers agree on the nature and general function of rhetoric, its place among the arts and sciences, its psychological basis, and the use to which it puts logical, ethical, and pathetic proofs. Some of Aristotle's hints are expanded by Bacon, mainly those regarding the philosophical style, and Bacon often corrects what he takes to be inconsistencies and errors in Aristotle's work. Moreover, because he looks to the past only for material to change and augment, Bacon does original and important new things to Aristotle as he re‐works him for a new English rhetoric.     

The metaphor in public address

Despite long interest in the subject, certain important problems concerning metaphor in public address remain to be explored. After stating these problems, the authors propose a number of theoretical formulations which may contribute toward their solution. They consider, in turn, a rhetorical definition of metaphor, the elements, structure, and process of metaphor, degrees of metaphor, and hypotheses suggesting the nature of the characteristic metaphor of oral rhetoric.     

A study of voice change in boys between the ages of eleven and sixteen∗

Disclosing creative possibilities of thought and action is an important function of communication, especially of narrative rhetoric. This essay describes some of the problems which must be addressed in developing a rhetoric of possibility. Then it examines how rhetors disclose the human capacity for various states of mind. After showing why such possibilities are significant, it explores two ways of disclosing them. Rhetors may tell stories of deeds which reflect characters’ states of mind, or they may enable or challenge people to perform such acts themselves, with striking consequences for their own life stories. Often, however, performances disclose specific states of mind only when rhetors make them revealing through commentary or the careful stipulation of narrative details. While both methods are useful, they have different rhetorical implications.     

Making settler colonialism concrete: agentive materialism and habitational violence in Palestine

ABSTRACT

Through home sealing in Palestine, the Israeli state utilizes the agentive materialism and political valence of concrete as settler colonial state building tools. By rendering the home uninhabitable, the walls of the home are transformed into border walls, while the sealed home rhetorically functions as a relic of collective punishment. Home sealing is an expression of the Israeli state's permanent anxiety surrounding Palestinian compositional power. This essay demonstrates the urgency for approaching settler-colonial state logics through a lens rooted in decolonial approaches to materialist rhetoric and rhetorical studies of space and place.     

In the company of citizens: the rhetorical contours of Singapore's neoliberalism

ABSTRACT

This essay explores how the language and priorities of the corporate world seep into the halls of government, and the ensuing implications of such rhetoric. Situating my analysis in Singapore's National Day Rally addresses from 1960 to 2018, I uncover two rhetorical signatures unique to Singaporean neoliberalism: the location of national character in economic performance, and the act of packaging and selling the nation to its people. I conclude by examining the implications of a corporate constitution of the nation for evoking affective ties to the nation, and by considering the value of Singapore's case to broader critiques of neoliberalism.     

Critically fun: Analyzing humor in political comedy

Courses: Critically fun is a single-class activity for communication classes discussing persuasive messages, the effects of mass media, or rhetorical analysis (e.g. public speaking, communication theory, mass media, and rhetoric).

Objectives: By the end of the activity, students should be able to analyze critically the rhetorical significance of the setting, visual features, message content, humor, persuasive elements, and impact of a humorous, political artifact. This activity was designed to help students engage in critical thinking, evaluation, and assessment of humor. Although this can function as a non-graded, in-class activity, it could be modified into an out-of-class assignment for traditional, hybrid, or online courses.     

Teaching ethos from the dumpster: Dive and food waste rhetoric

Courses: Rhetorical Criticism, Composition, Environmental Communication

Objectives: This unit activity, for which students view a documentary to identify and evaluate persuasive ethos and then create their own rhetorical messages for reducing food waste, serves as a platform for teaching both the critique and practice of rhetoric, as well as familiarizing students with the complexities of the global food system and food waste.     

AIDS,Perspective by incongruity,and gay identity in Larry Kramer's “1,112 and counting”

AIDS activist Larry Kramer's 1983 essay, “1,112 and Counting,” was a key rhetorical event in the development of AIDS activism by gays. This analysis relies on perspective by incongruity to explain Kramer's attempts to stimulate AIDS activism by altering gays’ perceptions of the disease and its implications for their lives and identities. The author argues that the power of perspective by incongruity in this case is linked to its facilitation of genuine argument, a personalized form of persuasion that forces both arguer and audience to confront an argument's implications for their own identities and behavior as moral human beings. The conclusion suggests that “1,112 and Counting” functions as a variant of constitutive rhetoric that de‐constructs and re‐constructs audience identity.     

Rhetorical theory as message reception: A cognitive response approach to rhetorical theory and criticism

Traditional rhetorical theory tends to adopt the rhetor's point of view, emphasizing invention of rhetorical messages, rather than the audience's reception and interpretation of messages. The audience is ordinarily conceptualized in humanistic rhetorical theory as a target, a source of expectations to guide the rhetor's invention, a means to accomplish the rhetor's ends, or even an obstacle. We argue that a more complete view of rhetoric should include the audience as a potentially active part of the process of persuasion. Accordingly, we propose to supplement our traditional theories of rhetoric by sketching a complementary view of rhetoric as the process of an auditor's processing and responding to messages. The inspiration for this conception, Petty and Cacioppo's Elaboration Likelihood Model, is sketched, and implications for rhetorical theory and criticism are discussed.     

The Good Will Hunting Technique

“The Good Will Hunting Technique” analyzes and enacts rhetorical paradigms present in popular culture. The main objects of examination are Gus van Sant's film, Good Will Hunting, and Eminem's music video “Mosh.” The author extracts positive aspects of popular culture to feature a rational-affective approach to rhetoric. The notion of mind–body rhetorical collaboration, which stems from Behavioral Doctrine developed during Germany's Weimar era, combines an emphasis on exteriority with traditional notions of rhetoric to establish a method for progressive action in lived reality.     

Public Libraries as Rhetorical Devices: Reimagining Print,Dewey, and Memory as Invention in the Digital Age

This article frames the public library and its system of organization as rhetorical tools. By providing an historic overview of libraries and their formation, the author recognizes the severed connection between library systems and the field of rhetoric, specifically the rhetorical canon of memoria. He seeks to reconnect memoria to the public library by recognizing the place-based nature of both classical memoria and library classification systems. The implications, he contends, run deep in libraries as seemingly neutral entities shape collective memory and education. Finally, the author provides a section that focuses on how digital-age libraries could be shaped, maintained, and managed in a way that recognizes memory as a rhetorical tool that aids in knowledge formation.     

Defining the scientific community: A rhetorical perspective on demarcation

Long traditions of philosophical and sociological research have addressed questions of the demarcation of science, i.e., how to identify the “unique and essential” characteristics of science which are taken as ostensibly distinguishing it from other forms of human conduct. In contrast, this essay argues that demarcation is most usefully viewed as a practical matter, rhetorically negotiated by scientists (and other social actors) in particular interest‐driven rhetorical contexts. A case study of the 1989 cold fusion controversy illustrates an implicit demarcation rhetoric which grew out of the professional physics community's interest‐driven need to provide a plausible explanation for the errors committed by the Utah cold fusion team. Close analysis of the discourses in the controversy reveals the active construction of working definitions of science and suggests that those definitions ultimately circumscribed the evidential grounds on which the ontological status of cold fusion was a judicated by the scientific community.     

“The FEMEN body can do everything”: Generating the agentic bodies of social movement through internal and external rhetorics

ABSTRACT

Recent theorizing recognizes the body’s importance in resistant performances characterizing the streets and screens of contemporary activism. In this essay, we examine how the transnational feminist organization FEMEN constructs embodied agencies through material and mediated means. Rather than focusing only on public appearances, we draw from fieldwork with FEMEN, utilizing participatory critical rhetoric to also examine the internal rhetorics shaping protest activities. Analyzing how FEMEN’s training prepares and produces individual, collective, and entangled bodies extends the communicative study of social movements by attending to corporeal molding behind the scenes. FEMEN constructs a gestural routine that enables activists to reexperience their bodies through rhetorics of powerful vulnerability, challenging gendered discourses while increasing rhetorical agency through enacted resistance and embodied solidarities.     

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.     

News Media's Rhetoric on Facebook

ABSTRACT

While Facebook is an important distribution channel for today's media houses, there is a lack of research on how news outlets choose to present their stories in social media. The present study aims to narrow this gap by analysing two weeks of Facebook updates by the Norwegian tabloid Dagbladet and the public-service broadcaster NRK and comparing them to the corresponding stories on their news sites. An important objective is to uncover if and how the Facebook updates depart from established text norms for online papers. The method is triangulated. A quantitative content analysis reveals that newsrooms tend to utilize a wider range of speech acts when writing presentations specifically for Facebook. A follow-up qualitative analysis identifies five rhetorical strategies for unique promo texts on Facebook: adding emojis, posing questions, making requests, expressing emotions and stating subjective points of view. Qualitative interviews with responsible journalists confirm that these strategies are more common the less controversial the stories are. However, the newsrooms have few explicit guidelines for when it is acceptable to transgress traditional journalistic text norms. The findings are summarized in a model that connects the continuum of decreasing story controversy to a corresponding continuum of increasingly interpretative and subjective rhetoric.     

Readers theatre bibliography

Several recent developments in rhetorical theory display a disturbing tendency to overemphasize change at the expense of enduring elements of the rhetorical tradition. These tendencies, which include attention to symbolism as an end in itself and accentuation of rhetorical methodology over substantive considerations, obfuscate the core concepts of rhetoric and detract from the purposes of a fully humane rhetoric. In contrast, a renewed sense of the permanent aspects of the rhetorical tradition is found in the centrality of language in human experience and is manifest in several key dimensions. Language as a means of exploration and education, as a form of social transformation, and as a means of vision and valuation are discussed as constituting a permanent core in rhetorical theory and forming the basis of rhetoric as a humane and, substantive art.