Multimodality in the Technical Communication Classroom: Viewing Classical Rhetoric Through a 21st Century Lens

The authors provide a robust framework for using rhetorical foundations to teach multimodality in technical communication, describing a pedagogical approach wherein students consider the rhetorical canons—invention, arrangement, style, delivery, and memory—when developing texts beyond print. Students learn to assess their own work, reflecting on how each canon contributed to the rhetorical effectiveness of their multimodal projects. The authors argue for using the canons as a rhetorical foundation for helping students understand technical communication in the digital age.     

“Slaves to a Debt”: Race,Shame, and the Anti-Obama Jeremiad

This essay examines the language of shame and honor in the jeremiads of Barack Obama and the anti-Obama right. The jeremiad imagines America at a crossroads between the path of shame—where we become “a story and a by-word through the world”—and the path of honor. A brief history of the American jeremiad shows that the anti-slavery jeremiad transformed its dynamic of shame from an instrument of socialization into an indictment of hypocrisy against the defenders of slavery. Paradoxically, in the Age of Obama it is the anti-Obama right that has appropriated this rhetorical innovation of the anti-slavery jeremiad.     

The Women Take Over: Oral argument,rhetorical skepticism,and the performance of feminist jurisprudence in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt

Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt was the most important abortion case to come before the United States Supreme Court in 25 years. It was also the first time that three women were seated on the high court to hear a case that challenged the fundamental right to choose abortion. I investigate the questioning by Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan at oral argument for Whole Women’s Health as a rhetorical enactment of feminist judging and argue that the rhetorical skepticism of the SCOTUS women—their persistent questioning, defiant expressions of doubt, and incredulous style—challenged the discursive boundaries of abortion jurisprudence and advanced a feminist demand that regulations to abortion rights receive heightened scrutiny from the courts. Importantly, Whole Women’s Health demonstrates how rhetorical skepticism may operate as a powerful mode of feminist legal invention—to disrupt the norms of legal reasoning and draw the traditions of legal discourse into doubt in order to authorize a discursive space for feminist legal judgment.     

Scientific Literacy: The Role of Goal-Directed Reading and Evaluation in Understanding Scientific Information

In this article, we examine the mental processes and representations that are required of laypersons when learning about science issues from texts. We begin by defining scientific literacy as the ability to understand and critically evaluate scientific content in order to achieve one's goals. We then present 3 challenges of learning from science texts: the intrinsic complexity of science phenomena, the need to coordinate multiple documents of various types, and the rhetorical structure of the texts themselves. Because scientific information focuses on models, theories, explanations, and evidence, we focus on how explanatory and argumentative texts are processed. Then we examine 2 components of executive control in reading—goal-directed guidance and evaluation of content—that readers can acquire and adopt to deal with these challenges. Finally, we discuss 3 implications that these theories and empirical findings have for interventions intended to improve laypersons’ understanding of scientific information.     

Signs of protest rhetoric: From Logos to logistics in Luther's Ninety-Five Theses

Our paper conceptualizes protest rhetoric in order to theorize the underlying relationship between communication and subjectivity. We do this by highlighting how rhetorical protest challenges the sovereignty of voice. Our argument is that Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses is an example of a sign that protests. To make this argument, we use a materialist method from media studies that simultaneously examines the formal capacities of a sign that protests and maps its historical transformation. Our analysis opens with the two prevailing accounts of Luther's theses: disputation and dissemination. We extend both disputation and dissemination by placing them in a “universal history” of protest rhetoric that grounds many accepted critical rhetorical theories in specific systems of representation. Drawing together our findings, we conclude by urging the replacement of logos and logocentrism with the logistics of protest rhetoric in order to link together disputation and dissemination as a mechanism for both change and subjection.     

Do parenting advice books help or harm? Critiquing ‘common-sense’ advice for mothers raising boys

Educationalists lament the resilience of the so-called ‘boy crisis’, despite research that demonstrates only some boys are in crisis, as well as some girls. The boy crisis in New Zealand shows no sign of abating, partly due to popular rhetorical literature in the form of parenting advice books. In particular, authors Celia Lashlie and Nigel Latta have garnered a strong following among parents and educators. In this article we argue their texts not only continue to inflame the boy crisis, they are harmful in the ways they inform narrow ‘de facto’ education policies and practices focused on boys. Our analysis of He’ll be ok and Mothers raising sons found each author privileged particular combinations of classic rhetorical strategies with discourses of essentialist masculinity and mother blame to position their parenting advice as common sense. Our critique highlights the vital importance of examining intersections between parenting advice books and education.     

(Re)Bordering the Civic Imaginary: Rhetoric,Hybridity, and Citizenship in La Gran Marcha

Though the drive to limit US citizenship often takes shape through the symbolic and material exclusion of “aliens,” immigrants also engage in rhetorical struggles over the limits of the US civic imaginary. This essay examines one such challenge to the bordering logics of US citizenship—La Gran Marcha, one of the largest immigration protests of 2006. Rather than see the protest as wholly “alien,” as it was conceived of by anti-immigrant forces, or as purely “American,” as an attempt for mere recognition, La Gran Marcha can best be understood as performing a hybrid US citizenship. This hybrid rhetoric problematizes contemporary understandings of citizenship and elucidates immigrants' agency within US democracy.     

From in loco parentis to Student-Citizens: The 1964 Berkeley Protests as Détournement

By employing one kind of a materialist rhetorical analysis, this article demonstrates that the 1964 Berkeley student protests functioned as détournement, resituating college students from a life governed by in loco parentis to becoming “student citizens.” This study has implications for the political activism of American college students today and rhetorical studies of materiality.     

Rhetorical analysis in critical policy research

Rhetorical analysis, an approach to critical discourse analysis, is presented as a useful method for critical policy analysis and its effort to understand the role policies play in perpetuating inequality. A rhetorical analysis of Character Matters!, the character education policy of a school board in Ontario, Canada, provides an illustrative example of the method’s contributions to the field. I identify rhetorical appeals of Character Matters! texts that aim to persuade the policy’s audience to support a predominantly traditional approach to character education. I then present contributions of rhetorical analysis for critical policy research and possibilities of rhetorical analysis for democratizing policy processes. I conclude by considering possible implications for York Region if the rhetoric of Character Matters! successfully convinces its audience to support the traditional approach to character education it advocates.     

Stitching texts: gender and geography in Frankenstein and Patchwork Girl

This paper considers how two related texts—one in print and one in hypertext—are locations for adolescents to undertake the work of ‘literary anthropology’ in considering questions of gender and subjectivity. The first text is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which invites readers to grapple with questions of how adolescents negotiate relations with their parents and others, of how masculinity and femininity are produced and construed, and of how cultural mores inform both processes. The second is Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl, a hypertext novel that parodies the former. Both texts offer a multilayered reading experience for adolescents juxtaposing print and digital technologies, themes of boundary and displacement, and issues of identity and sexuality.     

Growing up in the Federal Republic of Germany: chance and risk in a modern Sozialstaat 1

This paper seeks to extend work previously published that points to the importance of rhetorical analysis to policy studies. It argues against the notion that policy can be dismissed as ‘spin’ and explores further the work of rhetoric within the UK government’s policy texts of lifelong learning. For the authors, rhetorical analysis helps to point to the politics of discourse that is at play in policy‐making processes. This paper points to some of the conceptual resources upon which one can draw in undertaking rhetorical deconstructions of policy texts and discourses, in this case, of lifelong learning, and one’s own role, as analysts and sultans of spin.     

Peirce’s Rhetorical Turn: Conceptualizing education as semiosis

Abstract

The later works of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1913) offer an extended metaphor of mind and a rich conception of the dynamics of knowledge and learning. After a ‘rhetorical turn’ Peirce develops his early ‘semiotics’ into a more general theory of sign and sign use,while integrating his pragmatism, phenomenology, and semiotics. Therefore, in this article I bring Peirce’s notion of semiosis—the sign’s action—to the forefront. In doing so, I hope to disclose how Peirce’s rhetorical turn not only opens up towards a richer conception of the dynamics of knowledge and learning, but also invites a shift of perspective from the psychological processes of learning to the semeiotic processes that characterizes the very dynamics of knowledge production.     

Integrating Skills and Wills Instruction in Self-Regulated Science Text Reading for Secondary Students

This study investigated the effectiveness of cognitive-metacognitive versus motivational components of the IMPROVE self-regulatory model, used while reading scientific texts, for 10th graders’ scientific literacy and self-regulated learning (SRL). Three treatment groups (N?=?198) received one type of self-addressable questions while reading scientific texts: cognitive-metacognitive (CogMet), motivational (Mot), or combined (CogMetMot). Control group received no self-addressed questions (noSRL). One measure assessed scientific literacy, and two measures assessed SRL: (a) as an aptitude—pre/post questionnaires assessing self-perceived SRL, and (b) as an event—audiotaping participants’ thinking-aloud SRL behaviors in real-time learning experiences and data coding illustrating SRL changes. Findings indicated that treatment groups significantly outperformed the non-treatment group. No differences emerged between CogMet and Mot, whereas fully combined SRL support (CogMetMot) was most effective. Theoretical and practical implications of this preliminary study are discussed.     

The Spockian Mother: Images of the “Good” Mother in Dr. Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, 1946–1992

Dr. Spock’s, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, one of the best-selling self-help texts of all-time, “second only to the Bible in popularity” (Meakin & Tattersall, 2004) was one of the most influential childcare books in American culture. The author has been both heralded and disparaged as instrumental in the shaping of untold generations. In the present study, we address the rhetorical construction of the Spockian Mother as she is developed during Spock’s tenure from 1946–1992. We employ a feminist rhetorical perspective to examine the progression of Spock’s texts in order to understand how patriarchal images of motherhood are constructed and maintained through Spock’s lifetime and the first 46 years of its publication. We argue that Spock both reinforced and challenged the institution of motherhood; he challenged institutionalized motherhood by encouraging mothers to “trust themselves” while simultaneously conforming to a patriarchal model of motherhood which is at odds with empowered mothering.     

The impact of training students how to write introductions for academic essays: an exploratory,longitudinal study

Successful academic writing requires strong command of the rhetorical moves that orient the reader to the theme and substantive material of an academic essay. Effective control of the introduction leads to better overall writing. The goal of this study was to devise and evaluate a pedagogy for teaching the writing of academic essay introductions. The study employed a pre-, post-, and delayed post-test design in a single university student learning site. Student writing was scored on eight aspects related to (1) structure and content and (2) style. Confirmatory factor analysis reduced the eight scores aggregated into the two scales. A single two-hour workshop increased the participants’ (n = 87) performance in the rhetorical structure and content of their introductions, but not the style. A longitudinal model (n = 20) using three sets of parcelled scores showed that the structure and content of the introduction positively predicted the grade awarded by the student’s faculty. Direct instruction in writing introductions, through a relatively short, low-cost, genre-based training programme, appears to achieve significant student learning.     

Undistributing Work Through Writing: How Technical Writers Manage Texts in Complex Information Environments

This article presents findings from a recent study of mediated writing in a technical writing firm to examine distributed work conditions and how they affect the practices of individual technical writers. Distribution of labor, texts, and technologies for producing documentation creates complex information environments that writers must negotiate. In doing so, they practice two kinds of expertise central to technical writing as a profession—technological and rhetorical skill. This article examines how those skills are affected by distributed work.     

Incorporating Poeticality into the Teaching of Physics

This study examines how focusing on the notion of ‘poeticality’ (poetical forms) can provide functional insights with respect to the narrativeness of physics teaching. From this perspective, through both a meaning-making and aesthetic approach, this article explores how vehicles such as verse and rhetorical figures—metaphor, irony, litotes, hyperbole, antithesis and paradox—can create written and oral texts for the teaching of physics, using a language with poetic significance. This standpoint exists in parallel with an increasingly acknowledged fact in the field of science education, i.e., that the context and particularly the modes of representation potentially affect students’ comprehension. In this way, science education is allowed to escape the dominance of the cognitive paradigm and to concentrate on the study of students’ conceptualisations in relation to the modalities used to shape meanings.     

The achievement ideology of Reading Wonders: a critical content analysis of success and failure in a core reading programme

In the early 1960s, researchers began to conduct content analyses of core reading programmes/basal readers. Although these researchers often adopted a critical perspective, and examined the ideological underpinnings of the texts, they failed to make an explicit connection between ideologies and reader access to the text. The study described here is a critical content analysis of texts contained within the core reading programme Reading Wonders. It addresses these research questions: What vision of success and failure is exemplified by selections in the fourth-grade Reading Wonders textbook?—and—To what extent are selections in this programme accessible to readers? Mobilizing MacLeod’s notion of achievement ideology, the study explores the contrast between the programme’s emphasis on individual success and the inaccessibility of the selections included in it. The analysis demonstrates that the achievement ideology is the foundation for most of the selections. It also shows that the complexity and unengaging quality of the basal reader interferes with the reader’s ability to access the included texts. I argue the Reading Wonders textbook serves to convince readers that personal and professional success is the norm in contemporary society, while failing to allow them to construct more than a surface-level meaning of the included selections.     

Notes on Woodrow Wilson's speeches

“Dialectical disorientation” is a rhetorical form that creates uncertainty and ambiguity through confrontation between two competitive but complementary orientations. This essay examines its dynamics in four films addressing the war in Vietnam: The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket. We argue that the works subvert traditional American war mythology. The films present the war as destructive rather than regenerative and purposeless rather than meaningful. This divisive scene creates a context in which principles governing behavior in war—militarism and moralism—become inoperative. The essay first details the development of disorientation in the films and then examines the rhetorical and social implications of the analysis.     

钟嵘《诗品》“汉都尉李陵”条疏证

李陵诗与楚辞的渊源关系主要表现在:屈原和李陵二人的身世背景和人生遭际相似,诗歌作品都注重怨情,都成功地运用比兴手法。李陵诗在诗歌内容、意象描写和语言表达上体现了"凄怨悲怆"的风格。钟嵘评价李陵诗的理论方法有十分重要的意义。