Franklin D. Roosevelt,the holocaust,and modernity's rescue rhetorics

This essay provides a rhetorical analysis of the third FDR administration's handling of information on the Holocaust during World War II, and the memories that we have of those events. The author contends that a study of key rhetorical histories shows how President Roosevelt and his advisers had a great deal of information about Hitler's Final Solution, and that they were not as indifferent as we have made them out to be. Between 1940 and 1944, FDR's administrators decided to treat the winning of the war as the ultimate form of rescue, but the purveyors of today's rescue rhetorics contend that Roosevelt's supporters neglected to consider alternate plans for massive rescue missions or negotiations with the enemy.     

Sun‐zi and the art of war: The rhetoric of parsimony

Daoist (Taoist) philosophical rhetoric is an integral part of China's magnificent cultural heritage, and analysis of Daoist rhetoric offers the potential to enhance understanding of human communication and inform rhetorical theory and practice. While studies of Daoist rhetoric are increasing, a masterpiece of Daoist thought, Sun‐zi's (Sun‐tzu's) Art of War, has not been examined for its rhetorical implications. This study suggests that war is a useful metaphor for rhetoric, and that Art of War provides a comprehensive, insightful, and unique rhetorical theory based on parsimony: extreme economy in the expenditure of resources.     

Barack Obama,the Exodus Tradition,and the Joshua Generation

This essay explores Barack Obama's invocation of the Exodus during his 2008 presidential campaign. It argues Obama's turn to Exodus, his rare embodiment of Joshua, and his renewal of the American covenant nicely addressed major rhetorical problems that he faced. Of equal importance, his campaign oratory opens an important line of inquiry into the relationship between social order and critique in this idiom. Obama's discourse induces us to examine anew the possibilities for social and political change suggested by the Exodus.     

Women's issues,women's place: Gender‐related problems in presidential campaigns

This essay is a feminist rhetorical analysis of recurring gender‐related problems in presidential campaigns, focusing particularly on the 1992 campaign. I examine 39 speeches from the Democratic and Republican National Conventions (1972–1992) for discussion of women's issues, women's roles, and men's roles, and conclude that the anti‐feminist “backlash”; of the 1980s has taken a serious toll on public attention to women's issues. When politicians spoke of women's concerns, they largely ignored actual issues, and instead focused their attention on women's roles in society. Men's roles were also a central focus, as each presidential candidate sought to convince the voting public to cast him as the Leading Man.     

ACT UP,Haitian Migrants,and Alternative Memories of HIV/AIDS

In 1786, backcountry Massachusetts farmers, fed up with government policies favoring aristocratic elites, marched on courts to bar the entry of judges and juries. Enacting a long-standing tradition known to colonists as a “Regulation,” the farmers’ movement became known as Shays's Rebellion. Erupting in the turbulent days following the War for Independence, yet predating the formation of the national Constitution, Shays's Rebellion was understood as a crucial post-war attempt to deploy state violence to manage popular dissent; thus, Shays's Rebellion produced deeply problematic yet lasting rhetorical conventions for justifying the compromised forms of republicanism that mark the early republic.     

Training four minute men at Vassar

The rhetorical appeal of Styron's novel as a symbolic response to contemporary American racial tensions is explicated through an examination of its strategic ramifications as a “meditation on history” and its sociopsychological implications with respect to violence, self‐definition, and social reform.     

Ecologies of Deception in Psychology and Rhetoric

This article explores deception through the lenses of rhetorical theory and experimental social psychology, thus performing an important interdisciplinary gesture. It argues that deception is emergent in experimental conditions as it likewise is in rhetorical encounters. In so doing, it builds toward an understanding of human agency outside the bounds of the subject/object split. Examining work on rhetorical ecologies and ambience on the one hand, and experimental social psychology on the other, the article argues that deception is not something that one person does to another, but rather is an emergent phenomenon within moments of encounter, whether they be rhetorical interactions or psychological experiments.     

三次解放昌黎及其历史意义

昌黎是北宁线上一个主要县城,在解放战争中,由于特殊的军事地理位置,昌黎城成为国共两党反复争夺的战略要地,曾在一年多时间内被先后三次解放,显示出这座古城在冀东地区解放战争中的独特性。昌黎解放战争不仅扭转了冀东区的战略态势,还有效支援了东北解放战争,在我国解放战争史上具有不容忽视的历史意义。文章在论述抗战后昌黎的革命形势、三次攻克昌黎战役经过的基础上,探究了三次攻打昌黎县城的军事历史意义。     

Rhetorical counteraction in Kenneth Burke's A Rhetoric of Motives and The War of Words

However esoteric Kenneth Burke's A Rhetoric of Motives seems at first glance, it remains highly relevant to our contemporary moment. As a philosophy of rhetoric that centers on the nature of human conflict, it helps audiences interpret the vicissitudes of political warfare with greater precision and insight. The value of A Rhetoric of Motives becomes even more apparent in light of its recently discovered second volume, The War of Words. Together, these two volumes offer a novel method of rhetorical counteraction that helps specialist and non-specialist audiences redress the threat of nationalistic war. Burke's approach to rhetorical counteraction is distinguished by the study of rhetorical devices across history. By approaching these devices systematically, Burke believed he could help his audience reframe their attitude toward evolving political events. The purpose of this article is to present a thorough account of Burke's method so that it can enrich how we teach and engage in public deliberation today.     

A dilemma‐centered analysis of Clinton's August 17th apologia: Implications for rhetorical theory and method

In his apologia following a day of grand jury testimony on August 17th, 1998 President Clinton faced a number of rhetorical dilemmas stemming from his illicit relationship with Monica Lewinsky and his subsequent, ill‐fated attempts at covering it up. This essay offers a dilemma‐centered analysis of Clinton's rhetorical situation and provides an assessment of the strategic appropriateness of the speech in light of a theory of the rhetorical event. In so doing it makes frequent reference to the extensive CRTNET commentary on the speech, this both for purposes of assisting in the assessment and for illuminating problems with rhetorical theory and method.     

The militant‐moderate agitator: Daniel O'Connell and catholic emancipation in Ireland

An analysis of O'Connell's campaign for Catholic civil rights in the early nineteenth century demonstrates the use of antithetical, militant‐moderate, agitational strategies. By provocation and coercion he induced Parliament to accede to Catholic demands, while at the same time he controlled his turbulent followers with moderate strategies. O'Connell's rhetorical choices were effective because 1) he personified Irish needs and attitudes, and 2) his militancy coincided with English images of Irish disloyalty.     

Black power in Berkeley: Postmodern constructions in the rhetoric of Stokely Carmichael

In the speech at Berkeley, Carmichael revealed a potential in discourse that enabled him to develop, from out of the confines of a tactical rhetoric, a strategic rhetoric of blackness. Close analysis of Carmichael's speech, grounded in Burke's paradox of purity, illuminates the internal logic of Black Power, as well as Carmichael's use of reflexivity, reversal, deconstruction and re‐construction of dialectical terms and relationships. Contemporary discursive practices addressing issues of civil rights and race are then examined in light of the principles and purposes developed by Carmichael. The results challenge rhetorical scholars and critics to disrupt reliance on dialectical constructions within discourses of race.     

“We Are Not Free”: The Meaning of <Freedom> in American Indian Resistance to President Johnson's War on Poverty

This essay examines how the ideograph <freedom> was crafted through dialectical struggles between Euro-Americans and American Indians over federal Indian policy between 1964 and 1968. For policymakers, <freedom> was historically sutured to the belief that assimilation was the only pathway to American Indian liberation. I explore the American Indian youth movement's response to President Johnson's War on Poverty to demonstrate how activists rhetorically realigned <freedom> in Indian policy with the Great Society's rhetoric of “community empowerment.” I illustrate how American Indians orchestrated counterhegemonic resistance by reframing the “Great Society” as an argument for a “Greater Indian American.” This analysis evinces the rhetorical significance of ideographic transformation in affecting policy change.     

Clinton and Vietnam: A case for amnestic rhetoric

Bill Clinton's 1993 Memorial Day speech at the Vietnam Wall is an example of amnestic rhetoric, which seeks to discourage public debate and to diminish public memory. In this essay I argue that Clinton's epideictic discourse camouflages an act of apologia in which he defends his controversial opposition to the Vietnam War. Second, I argue that Clinton simultaneously directs his audience's attention away from the past and toward the future, urging them to remember the buried, but to bury the memory of Vietnam. Third, I argue that the speech culminates with an act of rhetorical investiture for Clinton as commander in chief. Finally, I propose the concept of amnestic rhetoric as an addition to public memory scholarship.     

PROTECTing the figure of innocence: child pornography legislation and the queerness of childhood

In US v. Williams (2008), the Supreme Court upheld the PROTECT Act; this law's “pandering provision” prohibits the distribution and solicitation of child pornography, but does not distinguish between real child pornography and “virtual” child pornography (images that are digitally created or manipulated and do not depict a real child). Situating this case at the intersection of rhetorical studies of the law and queer studies, I read the Court's opinions as rhetorical and cultural texts that circulate a strategic figuration of the child that emphasizes its sexual purity, vulnerability, and whiteness, and disavows the queerness of childhood desires. I argue that the Court's decision virtualizes the figuration of the child through the performative “collateral speech” act, ultimately conflating virtual materials with real children. Furthermore, I contend that the language of the law, as it taxonomizes and disciplines illicit desires, also expresses desire through its passionate figurations of childhood innocence and adult sexual morality.     

Muhammad Ali's Fighting Words: The Paradox of Violence in Nonviolent Rhetoric

While Muhammad Ali has been the subject of countless articles and books written by sports historians and journalists, rhetorical scholars have largely ignored him. This oversight is surprising given both the tradition of social movement scholarship within rhetorical studies and Ali's influential eloquence as a world renowned celebrity espousing nonviolence. Ali's rhetorical performances played a pivotal role in radicalizing the civil rights movement as it (d)evolved into twin forces: Black Power and anti-Vietnam war movements. Ali's rhetoric conjoins messages of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, enabling critics to re-envision civil rights texts. Ali's enduring rhetoric provides a model for analyzing texts and social movements invoking the paradox of the violence in nonviolent civil disobedience.     

The Rockefeller rhetoric: Writing speeches for the 1970 campaign

The author of this article is Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller's chief speech writer. The article deals with professional speechwriting both generally, and specifically, with regard to the 1970 New York State gubernatorial campaign. It describes the qualities sought in speech writers, how the speech writing effort proceeds, some rhetorical effects sought, and provides somewhat more detail about the typical procedure in preparing one speech.     

孙子军事欺骗思想对美国情报理论研究的影响

"兵者诡道"与"兵以诈立"思想是《孙子兵法》指导思想出发的原点,也是贯穿全书始终的权谋思想的核心,不仅在《孙子兵法》的思想体系中起着无可替代的重要作用,而且对今日美国情报理论研究领域也产生了极为深远的影响。其思想精髓已远远超越了时间与空间的局限,在新的时代背景下得到了进一步的拓展并不断焕发出熠熠光彩。     

叙事的修辞——Arnesen在海湾紧急峰会上演讲的叙事修辞批评

以Walter Fisher创立的叙事范式为理论框架,对墨西哥湾漏油事件发生后Kindra Arnesen在海湾紧急峰会上的演讲进行叙事修辞批评。Arnesen演讲中的修辞情景因素以及它的修辞运作揭示了该演讲旨在影响听众,说服他们积极自救的"以叙事行事"的修辞行为的本质。     

A footnote in the psychology of persuasion

The rhetorical problem of concretizing the ideal is explored via the relationship between form and fact in Richard Weaver's theory of truth. The investigation reveals that reliance on analogic form permits Weaver's arguments to function externally as if empirically grounded and internally in the analytic fashion of logico‐mathematical reasoning. Explication of Weaver's rhetorical method suggests that analogic structure, example, and analogy are fundamental ways of rhetorical knowing.