Figures of Speech as Persuasive Strategies in Early Commercial Communication: The Use of Dominant Figures in the Raleigh Reports About Virginia in the 1580s

During the mid-1580s Sir Walter Raleigh, operating under letters patent of Queen Elizabeth, supported two major voyages to establish an initial colony in Virginia. These two voyages produced three major commercial reports that evaluated the economic potential of the region for English colonists and merchants. The reports, written by Arthur Barlowe, Ralph Lane, and Thomas Hariot, represent the beginnings of American commercial communication in English. Using Kenneth Burke's idea of the four major tropes, this article develops the notion of the “dominant figure”—a figure of speech that serves to focus a report's rhetorical power—to analyze the persuasive effects of these reports.     

UNIVERSITIES AS CENTRES OF CULTURE: AN HISTORICAL APPROACH TO HIGHER EDUCATION IN CENTRAL ASIA

Although numerous Russian intellectuals and academics had travelled to and had settled in Central Asia and in Kazakhstan prior to 1917, institutionalized higher education came to the region only as a result of the Great Socialist October Revolution of 1917. First came the State University of Tashkent in 1924 followed by universities in other parts of Soviet Central Asia. These universities had to face a number of special problems due to the backwardness of the societies in which they were located and to the multiethnic and multilingual student populations which they served and are still serving today. They also had to give special attention to the emancipation of women in what were predominantly Moslem societies. Yet the new institutions have successfully risen to the challenge and today are contributing to the spreading of culture, creativity, and socialist development in the parts of the Soviet Union where they are situated.     

气候·人类·地球

随着工业化进程脚步的加快,现代化痕迹遍布生活的每个角落,同时人类也不得不面临现代化生产给自然气候带来的不容忽视的严重影响。我们在渐渐失去冬天……