Search

An essay is presented on rhetoric and engaged scholarship. The authors examine the combination of theory, practice, and production, presenting Kansas State University Professor Tim Steffensmeier as an example of an engaged rhetorician. Invention and disposition are also explored. The authors argue that engagement should not be considered a trend, and they encourage collaboration with stakeholders on campuses and in communities.

The article focuses on a generic model which can settle some of the challenges when discussing dystopian literature. It notes that such model designates dystopia in an ethical continuum established on the open or closed existence of the rhetorical strategy. It sets a rhetorical examination of dystopia's form which presents that dystopias utilize what rhetoricians name a "fear appeal" in an effort to sway readers on the need of intervention in the present to refrain the horrors in the future.

Abstract: Bakhtin tells us that speech genres organize speech similar to the way that grammatical forms do. This essay takes Bakhtin at his word, and it explores the way this idea works out in one contemporary theory of grammar. The essay draws an analogy between the way rhetoricians have considered generic form in action-based theories of genre and the formal idiom constructions—i.e. form-meaning-function complexes—of construction grammar. It concludes that the constructional analogy provides a clear empirical guide for discussion of generic form that is both shared and unique and stable and unstable, in addition to facts regarding the learning and acquisition of generic form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis of the issue of conjecture (στoχασμóζ in Greek) as described in the treatise "On Issues" ("Sobre los estados de las cosas" in Spanish) by 2nd century Greek rhetorician Hermogenes of Tarsus (Hermógenes de Tarso in Spanish). The author explores early commentaries (scholia) by classical philosophers Syrianus, Sopater and Marcellinus and considers their contribution to tracing the history of rhetorical traditions up to, and contemporary with, Hermogenes of Tarsus.

The article focuses on the friendship between philosophers Socrates and Thrasymachus. It states that the friendship does not imply the persuasion of rhetoricians for the multitude to consider philosophers as rulers. It also mentions that the friendship was formed due to the agreements shared by the two philosophers regarding the attitude that a best speaker must possess.

Purpose - This paper explores strategic change communication, framed by the idea that managers can be viewed as rhetoricians. The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss senior managers' subjective experiences of rhetorical aspects of change management. Design/methodology/approach - The paper draws on a case study from ABB Sweden (a power and automation technology company). In-depth interviews with senior managers, with vast experience of change management, constitute the empirical source. Findings - The most important finding is the managers' overall reluctance towards rhetoric. According to the managers in this study, a rhetorician is an over-enthusiastic person who "waves his arms when speaking". To master the art of rhetoric is not believed to be of particular importance when managing strategic change. Research limitations/implications - Senior managers' potentially negative attitude concerning rhetoric should be taken into account when researchers situate change management within a rhetorical frame. Practical implications - Given the large interest in "efficient" communication, generally managers should be encouraged to overcome their reluctance towards rhetoric to improve their ability to "manage meaning" constructively. Originality/value - This paper contributes to change management communication insofar as it gives voice to the individual manager. This voice indicates; in a time when rhetoric, storytelling, and charismatic leadership are making ground; that the understanding of rhetoric is much more limited than the general impression might suggest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the curious and significant role played by the Queen Mother of the West, the most powerful female deity in the Daoist pantheon, in political rhetoric crafted by Wu Zhao and her capable team of rhetoricians. As Gaozong's empress, Wu Zhao offered a sacrifice at a shrine to the Queen Mother of the West on Mount Song. This unique female sovereign developed a repertoire of symbols and ceremonies that were associated with the Daoist goddess. Wu Zhao also cast her image in the same mold of timeless beauty as Xiwangmu. Finally, in her later years, surrounded by perfumed youths, Wu Zhao theatrically transformed her inner court into a Daoist fairyland, styling herself a latter.day Queen Mother of the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's views on the social relevance of the contemporary rhetorical critics who are engaging themselves in productive criticism by fulfilling their civic and emancipatory functions through teaching and scholarship. It notes that critics have become proficient in analyzing social issues which serves as their starting point for the development of their rhetorical theories.

The article reflects on the article "A Question of Significance" by Robert L. Ivie which discusses the significance of the rhetorical criticism of an argument. It notes that the question of significance lies in the performances of rhetorical critics and in the experience of both the reader and the critics. The relationship of metaphor performance with the idea of significance.

The article reflects on the article "Productive Criticism" by Robert L. Ivie which discusses the practice of rhetorical criticism as an endeavor in adopting the praxis of rhetoric and civic engagement. The author argues that productive criticism motivates rhetorical critics to infuse humane and charitable living in their researches and writings. Social justice activism and the heuristic of productive criticism are also discussed.

Twelve currently popular technical communication textbooks are analyzed for their treatment and discussions of the types of writing that engineers produce. The analysis reveals a persistent bias toward humanities-based styles and genres and a failure to address the forms of argument and evidence that our science and engineering students most need to master to succeed as rhetoricians in their fields. The essay ends with recommendations and calls upon instructors to reenvision the service course in technical communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rhetorical invention is the principal source of politics and ethics as contemporary theories from various disciplines demonstrate. The complex reflexive relationship among politics, ethics, and invention demands ethical responsibility, requiring rhetoricians (who hold a key to this subject) to acknowledge and attend to their ethos, used here in the classical sense of ethos as "gathering place." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the programmatic and philosophical changes that resulted from a collaboration between a librarian and a composition and rhetoric professor. In particular, this article examines the ways in which a focus on research as a process arose from this ongoing dialogue and how the collaboration itself put two disciplines in conversation, thereby transforming thinking beyond this one relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on border pedagogy. It notes that the margins are significant to critical pedagogy and a significant critical space for non-tenure-line instructors. It cites the tenure attrition and increasing teaching loads and the impact of the 2009 economic crisis. The author implies that compositionist should become better rhetoricians and that contingent faculty need to enter the public discourse and define the factors that will develop viability for a professional career.

The article discusses the Roman "Declamationes maiores" and rhetoric. The author explains how Roman philosopher Aristotle approached oration. How to create emotions during a public speech is talked about. The article cites the "Institutio oratoria," by Roman rhetorician Quintilian. The differences between a true court orator and a declaimer are examined. The author discusses the three types of declamations in the "Declamationes maiores." Subjects of the article also include the framework of a declamation, elegies, and different roles within the "Declamationes maiores."

This essay argues that 1 Cor 13:4-7 is a rhetorical set piece developed in the wisdom school Paul assembled in Ephesus in the years immediately following his departure from Corinth. Paul might have composed it himself, but its vocabulary and structure suggest that a colleague created it, and Paul borrowed it as the center piece of his encomium on agape in 1 Corinthians 13. The fact that Paul and other members of the school devoted themselves to disciplined reflection on agape signals an importance and prominence to this concept that is often overlooked in Pauline scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the two kinds of criminal justice theory of Lawrence Sherman. It highlights the realist as Sherman1 and Sherman2 as the rhetorician. It explores the underlying tensions between the two Shermans as well as the deal of common good between them. It outlines the concept of the Sherman1 which is concerned with conducting applied criminological research which relates to the real diverse conditions in delivering criminal justice theories. Moreover, Sherman2 serves as an advocate of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), the winner of the Campbell Collaboration, and the promoter of medical model for developing improvements in criminal justice policy and practice.

In The True Story of the Novel, Margaret Doody explains that among the Greek rhetoricians of the Second Sophistic, ekphrasis had acquired the specialised sense of 'exploring and explaining (supposed) graphic works' (1998). This paper will explain how Daphne du Maurier's The Flight of the Falcon (1965) could be said to be a modern variant of this ancient device. In du Maurier's novel, Armino Donati becomes haunted by two Renaissance paintings. These have been fixed in his imagination from childhood by the force of personality of his elder brother Aldo. The Flight of the Falcon thus becomes, in effect, an extended ekphrasis on two works of art-the 'Raising of Lazarus' and the 'Temptation of Christ'. This essay will explore the novel as a whole through the overt (Christian) themes provided by these paintings, but will also draw on the hidden subtext of Greek archetypal images (in particular Apollo, Dionysus and Hermes) that the novel seems to imply. It will become apparent that I am viewing these imagined paintings (and the novel itself) as palimpsests, whereby a heterodox, pagan message has been obscured by a dual layer of heterodox and orthodox Christian ideas. My analysis will utilise ideas from Plato's The Republic concerning the parable of the cave, Luce Irigaray's criticism of 'Plato's Hystera' in Speculum of the Other Woman and the thoughts of Nietzsche on Greek mythology as expounded in The Birth of Tragedy. By way of conclusion, I will raise some of the metatextual ideas hinted at by the subtext, which can be gleaned if we view the (supposed) artworks as substitutes for du Maurier's own literary output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To claim that Charles Darwin was a "rhetorician" may seem to confuse the provinces of rhetoric and science. Their juxtaposition, however, is not only warranted; it is also inescapable. Even scientific discourse must be persuasive to rescue insight from indifference, misunderstanding, contempt, or rejection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the power of persuasion in motivating one's own mind to complete their work successfully. Michael Billig, a rhetorician mentions that the arguments which people use in persuading others are being used by them deliberately in their thoughts. Another intellectual reveals that persuasion contributes in motivating the intellect and will power. It informs that professor Christopher Johnstone has linked persuasion and deliberation in his work and revealed that competing alternative uses a kind of internal rhetoric.

The article discusses anamorphoses and rhetoric. The anamorphic shapes of language are characterized in terms of art, technical common sense, and rhetorical culture. Topics include: the intrinsic and extrinsic goals in the work of Thomas B. Farrell; the concept of resistance in the cause-object of a rhetorician's melancholy; rhetorical practice related to the sports business, ethos, and athletic performance; the 1984 Winter Olympic Games; the 1988 apology for the Jewish genocide that was delivered by the German Federal Diet president Philipp Jenninger; and Farrell's perspective on paradoxes.

The article focuses on rhetorical theory and its role in history as well as ways that rhetoric can influence invention and judgment. The article discusses three distinct construals of rhetorical practice: productive art, constitutive art, and inventional art. Topics include the context of rhetoric in the Second World War, Aristotle's definition of rhetoric, rhetoric and socialism, the proficiency of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt as a rhetorician during the Great Depression, war culture and propaganda, the internment of Japanese Americans, and anti-Semitism and Jewish emigration.

This article presents the results of a 2007 survey of doctoral programs offered in the area of rhetoric and composition, examining changes and trends occurring to such programs. The study represents the fourth survey on the topic between 1987 and 2007. Topics include the different options available for obtaining a degree in the subject matter, the changes in the number of dissertations written between 1999 and 2007, and reflections on educational practices. Also discussed are the difficulties encountered in collecting the survey's data.

Many medieval women mystics undermined misogyny with persuasive eloquence. This essay does a comparative rhetorical analysis of Julian of Norwich's "Showings" and the "Ancrene Riwle," positing that the fourteenth-century English mystic knew the twelfth-century text and developed her theology, in part, as a corrective to its Augustinian dogma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the changes made by several French rhetoricians including François Fénelon and René Bary to their rhetorical and music discipline during the seventeenth century in France. The changes made by the rhetoricians include emphasis on Cartesian taxonomy and quest for natural representation. It mentions that the changes help in explaining the idea that music imitates rhetorical conventions and structures, and that the disciplines have hierarchy. It also notes that rhetorical practices depicts music discourse and aesthetic eloquence.

A widespread assumption in the contrastive rhetoric field is the linearity/circularity dichotomy which suggests that Chinese writing is characterized by indirection. This study examines to what extent Chinese university students' writing differs from that of American students. A total of 200 expository essays (50 by American university students in English, 50 by Chinese students in Chinese, and 100 by beginning and advanced English learners in English) were analyzed. Results indicate that Chinese students, like their U.S. counterparts, also prefer directness in text and paragraph organization, but generally U.S. students tend to be significantly more direct than Chinese students. An examination of modern Chinese writing manuals found that Chinese rhetoricians also encourage directness in structuring expository essays. These findings point to a need for greater awareness of the similarities between writing in "contrasting" languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the story of Ambroise Vollard regarding Paul Cézzane's painting. The question of the relationship between vision and touch in Vollard's story had enjoyed a revival at the Congress for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Blind. The story of the servant which describes the canvas to the blind man betrays all the signs of being a classic ekphrasis. It has also twofold prosthetic effect from where the mute object is envoiced and the invisible is rendered visible as the blind man is made to see. Paintings and sculptures which had been popular with Greek rhetoricians are also presented.

Abstract: In this essay, I contrast the conversational model of Habermas and deliberative democrats with that of another model proposed by classical rhetoricians, for whom political deliberation was based on oratory, not conversation. Oratory and conversation differ in their fora, the degree of equality among their participants, the legitimacy of non-rational appeals, and their agonistic or cooperative character. These differences are mirrored, to varying degrees, in the models of deliberation proposed by contemporary defenders of reasoned conversation and classical rhetoricians. I consider why the classical rhetoricians considered deliberative oratory, not conversation, as best suited to political speech, and I suggest that the rhetorical perspective points up problems in some of the fundamental assumptions of deliberative democrats, thus raising questions about whether deliberative democracy should be viewed as a viable political theory. Before contrasting the conversational model with deliberative oratory, however, I first examine the continuities between the conversational model developed by proponents of deliberative democracy and the traditional conception of conversation as expressed, primarily, by Cicero and, later, the Renaissance humanists. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper considers the way in which the term `dvandva' has been applied to compounds by linguists in western traditions. A classification of types based on the analysis of language descriptions is provided, and some types which have similarities to dvandvas but which do not fit under the same general heading are distinguished from dvandvas. It is suggested that the patterns illustrated may have restricted occurrence genetically and/or areally and that a full classification is thus required for typological reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although conventional views about late nineteenth-century rhetoric highlight a shift from oratory to composition and from classical rhetoric to a "new" rhetoric with origins in Scottish rhetoricians (with a loss of scholarship and quality), James M. Hoppin's Homiletics can be grouped with an increasing number of works that complicate such views. Hoppin focuses on oratory; reveals an especially broad and scholarly knowledge of classical, religious, and foreign rhetorics; uses a complex of ideas called "uniformitarianism" to justify his primary focus on classical rhetoric; and achieves high quality. His concept of invention has both classical and Christian roots in a complex relationship reflecting both scope and narrowness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the Y2K bug frenzy, apocalyptic murmurings, and revelation rhetoric smoke have cleared surrounding the new Millennium, it becomes more and more obvious that some significant rhetorical transformations took place in response to the notion of existing in a new millennium. The coming of the year 2000 caused a great deal of angst; commercial exploits raged, media warned of computer doom, people questioned their own destiny, and the occasional religious group warned us that the world would end. Of course, most of this frenzy came to nothing; however, this paper argues that some real events, both legitimate and illegitimate occurred as a response to millennial motives. The first event is NASA's launch of the Mars Polar Lander in 1999 to ‘search for evidence of past or present life’ on Mars. The second event is the Heaven's Gate cult members' mass suicide in 1997. Both events involved groups of people hoping to contact ‘beings’ in outer space on the eve of the millennium. This paper analyzes the ways in which the rhetors, NASA and the Heaven's Gate, use technological millennialism as motive for their actions in very similar ways. It draws on theory from Kenneth Burke, Paul Virilio, John Bozeman, Catherine Wessinger and others to analyze the discourse of the Millennium and arise with statements about motive within two representative texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most commentators on John 12:37-50 label it a "conclusion" or "epilogue." By this they mean that this part of John 12 contains two differing sets of information: a "summary" of (1) the ministry of Jesus and its non-reception or (2) review of major motifs and themes. This study argues that John 12 is a precise rhetorical conclusio/peroratio. Rhetoricians identify two purposes in a conclusion: (1) recapitulation of topics discussed, albeit selectively, and (2) arousal of emotions toward topics or persons. Emotions in rhetoric are binary: love vs. hate, confidence vs. fear, emulation vs. envy, etc. John 12 is recognized as repeating judgment materials from John 3, the critical behavior urged in John 12. Many other topics are also recapitulated. Moreover most of the Johannine characters reappear before the audience a judgment of whom is to be rendered in virtue of the emotion evoked, either love or hate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advertising may be the most pervasive form of modem rhetoric, yet the discipline is virtually absent in rhetorical studies. This article advocates a mutually beneficial rapprochement between the disciplines—both in academe and the workplace. Rhetoric, for example, could help address an enduring lacuna in advertising theory. Persuasive communicators since Aristotle have maintained that rhetoric begins with invention, the generation of compelling ideas. Studies of advertising creativity hold that invention begins with the gathering of facts to fuel an association of disparate ideas at the heart of creativity. However, studies of the fact-gathering heuristic in advertising fail to identify a systematic approach for product analysis. In hopes of advancing a rapprochement between rhetoric and advertising, this article demonstrates that Aristotelian causal analysis, long associated with rhetorical invention, can provide a systematic heuristic for product analysis. Rhetoricians can help advertisers strengthen a crucial element—the invention phase—of advertising copywriting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay shows how medieval and modern master narratives are both wrong and necessary, both limiting and, paradoxically, tremendously enabling. The author begins with a lacuna: it seems at first that medieval rhetoricians lacked a story to tell about their own origins. Second, the author counters the claims of linear histories by invoking the notion of the longue durée from the Annales school of history.

The author reflects on the influence of the mass media on public opinion. He argues that any public organization, major business or political entity can seek to influence the brutal judgements of public opinion or become their victim. Public relations during the ancient times was called rhetoric and the essence of a Greek or Roman education was the training of rhetoricians. He cites emotion, subversion, fantasy and myth as the propositions about persuasion.

In an early Quattrocento tract, the De tyranno, Coluccio Salutati, Chancellor of the Florentine Republic, defended Dante's damnation of the assassins of Caesar, and offered a thorough condemnation of the flaws of the Roman Republic and a spirited endorsement of the succeeding autocracy. Salutati's apparent conversion to Dante's Christian Monarchism has puzzled scholars and has led to his characterisation as a somewhat outmoded figure. But a more complex picture emerges from an analysis of an overlooked feature of the De tyranno: its extraordinary use of Lucan's historical epic, the De bello civili. While his contemporaries regarded the poem as an anti-Caesarian polemic, Salutati identified and exploited the ironies of this deeply ambivalent work toward the republican ideal it was taken to espouse. Through a strategy of quotation, allusion, and paraphrase, he expressed his own monarchist arguments in the language of the favourite literary authority of Renaissance republicanism. This strategy was apparently original and probably influential, and is detectable, too, in Salutati's other works. These borrowings demonstrate the degree of dexterity with which a Florentine humanist might apply the classical learning of the Trecento to the political debates of the Quattrocento, and also the undiminished powers of the ageing Chancellor as reader and rhetorician. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American physicians are increasingly concerned that they are losing professional control. Other analysts of medical power argue that physicians have too much power. This essay argues that current analyses are grounded in a structuralist reading of power. Deploying Michel Foucault's "care of the self" and rhetorician Raymie McKerrow's "critical rhetoric," this essay claims that medical power is better understood as a way that medical actors take on power through rhetoric rather than a force that has power over medical actors. Through a close reading of an essay by Senator Bill Frist, this paper argues that physicians experience a process of "subjection" wherein they are both agents of and objects of medical power as it is combined with state and corporate power in the American "war on terror." This alternative mode of analyzing medical power has implications for our collective understanding of its operations and the means by which we propose alternative enactments of medical power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay discusses the ideas of William Collins, poet and author of "Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects," and rhetorician Hermogenes on the meaning of sweetness. Hermogenes may have been a source for Collins' ideas of sweetness in his collection of odes. In the book "Ars Oratoria," Hermogenes dedicates a section to the topic of sweetness. For Hermogenes, sweetness produces pleasure, but it is an innocent pleasure that the sensory perception provides to the mind. Sweetness, for Collins, is the expression of contemplative solitude.

The article presents a discussion on the topic of public debate with reference to a community writing project. For participating in public debate, people should constitute as a "counterhegemonic public." A counterhegemonic public refers to a distinct rhetorical to build and express identities, leadership skills and other social movement abilities. Subordinated groups should by supported by activist rhetoricians as they strive to constitute counterhegemonic publics and take part in public deliberation.

Hannah Mather Crocker was the leading American political theorist between 1800 and 1820 to engage the controversial question of sex equality. In the wake of the postrevolutionary backlash against political radicalism, she became a subtle rhetorician of women s rights. She accepted how her cultural context placed limits on the realization of women's rights, yet she did not analytically conflate these temporal limits with women's capacities to contribute to their polity. She sought to normatively defend and gently extend American women's ongoing informal political participation in the postrevolutionary era and challenged the separate spheres discourse that aimed to restrict it. Through the first comprehensive study of Crocker's oeuvre, this article provides new insight into the political role and rhetorical style of women's rights discourse and women's activism in the early republic and uncovers Crocker's philosophical legacies for scholars who seek to reconcile the standpoints of equality and difference feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African-American rhetoric of the early Republic has been largely unexplored by rhetorical scholars. Addressing this gap in the scholarship, this study analyzes two intricately related forms of discourse: late eighteenth-century petitions and speeches celebrating the 1808 abolition of the international slave trade to the United States. Both sets of texts contribute to the expression of an African-American public voice, build upon and critique American ideals while retaining a proud sense of African heritage, exploit the available generic conventions, develop increasingly radical appeals, and feature arguments that transcend local issues to engage general questions of identity and history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay claims that Dietrich Bonhoeffer's discourse ethic, developed most fully in his prison essay "What is Meant by `Telling the Truth'?," reveals rhetoric as a rich ethical approach to communication. Although Bonhoeffer never directly engaged texts belonging to a traditional rhetorical corpus, his theological ontology produced a view of communication that is political, plural, ordered, and democratic, mirroring the broad view of communication found in ancient thinkers like Isocrates, Aristotle, and Cicero. I argue that unlike most contemporary accounts of discourse ethics, Bonhoeffer's concept of ethical communication is dependent upon a model or method only in a secondary sense. It is primarily derived from a vision of the good. Bonhoeffer's dependence upon this vision not only distinguishes his work from most contemporary theory in discourse ethics, but challenges such theories to probe the visions of the good that underlie the various methods and models of ethical communication they offer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marcus Tullius Cicero is one of the more prominent figures in the history of rhetoric. Our resources for studying Cicero are largely dependant upon literary texts that have been transmitted over centuries. This study examines a Greek inscription, housed at a remote archaeological site, that offers new insights into Cicero's contributions to our field. From this inscription we learn of Cicero as a patron of Greek literary and rhetorical arts. As is sometime the case when we examine primary material, new and unanticipated information appears. In this instance the inscription reveals that the name of Cicero's mother as recorded by Plutarch, may be inaccurate. In addition to these specific observations, this work illustrates that archaeological and epigraphical evidence are also valuable resources for studying the history of rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In responding to Gunn and Lundberg's critique of her report on rhetorical agency, Geisler uses their Ouija Board metaphor to undertake an analysis of what it might mean to teach the post-modern rhetor. In particular, once the autonomous agent has been denaturalized, members of the profession of rhetoric have plenty to do in helping students first to engage with and then to participate in a more appropriately theorized rhetoric. Like the Ouija Board player, we may not be able to know how the results of our classroom teaching are related to our intentions. But—like every other rhetor-we need to recognize the costs of walking away from the game. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on rhetorics in reference to the book "Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the End of Knowledge," by Steve Fuller. In this book, rhetoric is invited to participate in the interdisciplinary reconfiguration of "Science and Technology Studies." This hesitant enthusiasm aptly exemplifies how an interdisciplinary invitation is likely to make its addressees squirm as they watch their professional aims being defined and then redefined by a disciplinary outsider who points out a place for them in a novel disciplinary constellation. Moreover, and more specifically, scholar William Keith's comment exemplifies how the book was received by rhetoricians. On the surface, the reviews were glowing. The initial excitement over the book forms a sharp contrast to the quite negligible impact that the book has had on the field of rhetoric in the decade that has passed since it was first published. This article undertake a close reading of the book along with the five reviews of the book itself.

The article proposes that good, or technical, kind of rhetoric that Socrates advocates in his work "Gorgias," is one that does not exclude, but rather subordinates, certain procedures distinctive of the flattering kind. It is possible to see Socrates himself as some kind of rhetorician who, despite criticizing his interlocutors as practitioners of rhetoric, also imitates many of their procedures in trying to attain persuasion through speech--a goal which he pursues no less than his opponents. On the surface, the "Gorgias," does seem to provide evidence for the contrasts pointed out between philosophy as understood by Socrates and rhetoric as exercised by his interlocutors. The appeal to myth in the Gorgias is indeed novel on the part of Socrates.

This article argues that the category of the Symbolic remains unexplored in Joshua Gunn's paper, Refitting Fantasy: Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity and Talking to the Dead, from a 2004 issue of the Quarterly Journal of Speech. The paper is a significant beginning in the difficult task of thinking out the relationship between Lacanian psychoanalysis and rhetorical interpretation. One interpretation of Refitting Fantasy is that Gunn's primary concern is rhetorical agency and the agent's relation to the text as kind of fantasy or fiction. In this configuration, the fantasmic projection of an agent responding to the nakedness of the real creates the possibility of sustaining a kind of rhetorical interpretation, with the caveat that the relative positions of agent and text are fixed by their status in Imaginary structures. One source of difficulty in Gunn's interpretation of Lacan's Borromean Knot, is the framing of the Real as something akin to an external absolute or as a mind-independent reality. The effect of Gunn's attempt to stabilize interpretation through the fantasy of agency comes at a certain cost. In attempting to alleviate hand wringing over agency, Gunn re-centers Lacan as yet another hand wringer. Framing psychoanalysis as a middle position in debates regarding agency, Refitting Fantasy misses the opportunity to traverse the Imaginary and confront the Symbolic on its own terms. By confronting the Symbolic and restoring its primacy in Lacanian interpretation, rhetoricians can draw on Lacan's suggestive use of specifically rhetorical thematics, especially in terms of tropology.

In relating stories about origins that recall an idealized ‘Primitive’ condition, Vitruvius seeks legitimacy for judgement about architecture. At issue is the problem of authority, and Vitruvius is anxious about authority, and about order. Vitruvius' audience for his story of the Primitive dwelling, as for the rest of his treatise, the Ten Books on Architecture, is the emperor Octavian, introduced in the dedicatory preface as ‘imperator Caesar.’ His book to Caesar asserts a commonplace among rhetoricians, that authority is sought in a distant past, and in exemplars, useful precedents that promise a perfect work. ‘Décor,’ writes Vitruvius, ‘demands the faultless ensemble of a work composed, in accordance with precedent, of approved details. It obeys convention, which in Greek is called thematismos, or custom or nature’ (trans Granger, 1983, I.2.5). The task of the orator was to ‘demonstrate’ (demonstratio) that authority, and so for architecture, in his mythmaking and concern to demonstrate the truth of his opinions, Vitruvius establishes that the task of architecture is the representation of order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the late 1940s and early 1950s a window of opportunity opened briefly for a rapprochement between rhetoricians in Speech departments with teachers of English. Members of these groups Jointly developed first-year courses in communication skills that had a distinct rhetorical flavor. Communication skills programs were short-lived, however, because powerful disciplinary forces put an end to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]