In Rhetoric at the Boundaries Bruce W. Longenecker explores the way in which New Testament authors used an ancient rhetorical device to effect smooth transitions, both large and small. His study demonstrates how recognition of this rhetorical technique proves decisive for New Testament interpretation. Longenecker accomplishes this by examining the evidence for chain-link interlocks in a variety of ancient sources, including the Hebrew scriptures, Jewish and Roman authors of the Graeco-Roman world, and the Graeco-Roman rhetoricians. He then applies the results of the survey to fifteen problematic passages of the New Testament. In each case, Longenecker establishes the presence of chain-link interlock and highlights the structural, literary, and theological significance of the rhetorical device for New Testament interpretation.
*HA02, Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries, William A. Covino(University of Illinois at Chicago), David A. Jolliffe(University of Illinois at Chicago), U1581-0, 640 pp., 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, 0-02-325321-5, paperbound, 1995, $22.50nk, August*/RHETORIC provides a comprehensive overview of the major concepts of rhetorical theory, developed throughout history to the present. The text is divided into four parts: an introduction, defining rhetoric conceptually and historically and interrogating the definitions it proposes; a glossary, providing explanations of important concepts, periods, and individuals; a selection of perspectives by major scholars; and a collection of 13 readings and related commentaries, focusing on the relationship of rhetoric to other fields.
With growing anxiety about American identity fueling debates about the nation’s borders, ethnicities, and languages, Crossing Borders, Drawing Boundaries provides a timely and important rhetorical exploration of divisionary bounds that divide an Us from a Them. The concept of “border” calls for attention, and the authors in this collection respond by describing it, challenging it, confounding it, and, at times, erasing it. Motivating us to see anew the many lines that unite, divide, and define us, the essays in this volume highlight how discourse at borders and boundaries can create or thwart conditions for establishing identity and admitting difference. Each chapter analyzes how public discourse at the site of physical or metaphorical borders presents or confounds these conditions and, consequently, effective participation—a key criterion for a modern democracy. The settings are various, encompassing vast public spaces such as cities and areas within them; the rhetorical spaces of history books, museum displays, activist events, and media outlets; and the intimate settings of community and classroom conversations. Crossing Borders, Drawing Boundaries shows how rich communication can be when diverse cultures intersect and create new opportunities for human connection, even while different populations, cultures, age groups, and political parties adopt irreconcilable positions. It will be of interest to scholars in rhetoric and literacy studies and students in rhetorical analysis and public discourse. Contributors include Andrea Alden, Cori Brewster, Robert Brooke, Randolph Cauthen, Jennifer Clifton, Barbara Couture, Vanessa Cozza, Anita C. Hernández, Roberta J. Herter, Judy Holiday, Elenore Long, José A. Montelongo, Karen P. Peirce, Jonathan P. Rossing, Susan A. Schiller, Christopher Schroeder, Tricia C. Serviss, Mónica Torres, Kathryn Valentine, Victor Villanueva, and Patti Wojahn.
Inspired by the Rhetoric Culture Project, this volume focuses on the use of imagery, narrative, and cultural schemes to deal with predicaments that arise during the course of life. The contributors explore how people muster their resources to understand and deal with emergencies such as illness, displacement, or genocide. In dealing with such circumstances, people can develop new rhetorical forms and, in the process, establish new cultural resources for succeeding generations. Several of the contributions show how rhetorical cultural forms can themselves create emergencies. The contributors bring expertise from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology and communications studies, underlining the volume’s wider relevance as a reflection on the human condition.
During the 1990s, unprecedented numbers of Americans turned to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), an umbrella term encompassing health practices such as chiropractic, energy healing, herbal medicine, homeopathy, meditation, naturopathy, and traditional Chinese medicine. By 1997, nearly half the US population was seeking CAM in one form or another, spending at least $27 billion out-of-pocket annually on related products and services. As CAM rose in popularity over the decade, so did mainstream medicine's interest in understanding whether those practices actually worked, and how. Medical researchers devoted considerable effort to testing CAM interventions in clinical trials, and medical educators scrambled to assist physicians in advising patients about CAM. In Bounding Biomedicine, Colleen Derkatch examines how the rhetorical discourse around the published research on this issue allowed the medical profession to maintain its position of privilege and prestige throughout this process, even as its place at the top of the healthcare hierarchy appeared to be weakening. Her research focuses on the ground-breaking and somewhat controversial CAM-themed issues of The Journal of the American Medical Association and its nine specialized Archives journals from 1998, demonstrating how these texts performed rhetorical boundary work for the medical profession. As Derkatch reveals, the question of how to test healthcare practices that don't fit easily (or at all) within mainstream Western medical frameworks sweeps us into the realm of medical knowledge-making--the research teams, clinical trials, and medical journals that determine which treatments are safe and effective--and also out into the world where doctors meet patients, illnesses find treatment, and values, practices, policies, and priorities intersect. Through Bounding Biomedicine, Derkatch shows exactly how narratives of medicine's entanglements with competing models of healthcare shape not only the historical episodes they narrate but also the very fabric of medical knowledge itself and how the medical profession is made and remade through its own discursive activity.
Electric discussions of the interplay between technological innovation and communication Recognizing an increasingly technological context for rhetorical activity, the thirteen contributors to this volume illuminate the challenges and opportunities inherent in successfully navigating intersections between rhetoric and technology in existing and emergent literacy practices. Edited by Stuart A. Selber, Rhetorics and Technologies positions technology as an inevitable aspect of the rhetorical situation and as a potent force in writing and communication activities. Taking a broad approach, this volume is not limited to discussion of particular technological systems (such as new media or wikis) or rhetorical contexts (such as invention or ethics). The essays instead offer a comprehensive treatment of the rhetoric-technology nexus. The book's first section considers the ways in which the social and material realities of using technology to support writing and communication activities have altered the borders and boundaries of rhetorical studies. The second section explores the discourse practices employed by users, designers, and scholars of technology when communicating in technological contexts. In the final section, projects and endeavors that illuminate the ways in which discourse activities can evolve to reflect emerging sociopolitical realties, technologies, and educational issues are examined. The resulting text bridges past and future by offering new understandings of traditional canons of rhetoric—invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery—as they present themselves in technological contexts without discarding the rich history of the field before the advent of these technological innovations. Rhetorics and Technologies includes a foreword by Carolyn R. Miller and essays by John M. Carroll, Marilyn M. Cooper, Paul Heilker, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Debra Journet, M. Jimmie Killingsworth, Jason King, James E. Porter, Stuart A. Selber, Geoffrey Sirc, Susan Wells, and Anne Frances Wysocki.
The eleven studies in this volume illustrate and advance the synthesis of discourse analysis with rhetorical studies. Rhetoric in Detail shows how a variety of techniques from discourse analysis can be useful in studying such concerns as agency, legitimation, controversy, and style, and how concepts from rhetoric including genre and figuration can enrich the work of discourse analysts. The authors' research sites range from government commissions, political speeches, newspaper reports and letters to interviews and conversations in beauty salons and online. Methodological overviews interspersed throughout survey critical discourse analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, grounded theory, computer-aided corpus analysis, narrative analysis, and participant observation and provide suggestions for further reading. Rhetoric in Detail is an invaluable source for rhetoricians looking for systematic, grounded ways of approaching new, more vernacular sites for rhetorical discourse and for discourse analysts interested in seeing what they can learn from the tradition and practice of rhetorical analysis.
Chapters on Historicism, the Victorians and Pre-Raphaelites, the Secessionist movements (Art Nouveau, Symbolism), Impressionism, and early Modernism examine the relationship between picture and frame in the years 1850 and 1920.
Rhetoric Across Borders features a select representation of 27 essays and excerpts from the “In Conversation” panels at the Rhetoric Society of America’s 2014 conference on “Border Rhetorics.”
