Rhetoric and Human Understanding

Rhetoric and Human Understanding PDF Author: Ann Gill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book introduces basic concepts of human signification, explains both primal & contemporary rhetoric experience, & offers challenges to common-sense understandings.

Rhetoric and Human Understanding

Rhetoric and Human Understanding PDF Author: Ann Gill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book introduces basic concepts of human signification, explains both primal & contemporary rhetoric experience, & offers challenges to common-sense understandings.

Rhetoric and Human Consciousness

Rhetoric and Human Consciousness PDF Author: Craig R. Smith
Publisher: Waveland Press
ISBN: 1478635665
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 518

Get Book Here

Book Description
For two decades, students and instructors have relied on award-winning author Craig Smith’s detailed description and analysis of rhetorical theories and the historical contexts for major thinkers who advanced them. He employs key themes from important philosophical schools in this well-researched chronicle of rhetoric and human consciousness. One is that rhetoric is a response to uncertainty. The modern philosophers, like the naturalists of ancient Greece and the Scholastics who preceded them, tried to end uncertainty by combining the discoveries of science and psychology with rationalism. Their aim was progress and a consensus among experts as to what truth is. However, where modernism proved ineffective, rhetoric was revived to fill the breach. Another significant theme is that different conceptions of human consciousness lead to different theories of rhetoric, and for every major school of thought, another school of thought forms in reaction. Classic and contemporary examples demonstrate the usefulness of rhetorical theory, especially its ability to inform and guide. By providing probes for rhetorical criticism, discussions also demonstrate that rhetorical criticism illustrates, verifies, and refines rhetorical theory. Thus, the synergistic relationship between theory and criticism in rhetoric is no different than in other arts: Theory informs practice; analysis of successful practice refines theory. Smith’s absorbing study has been expanded to include thorough treatments of rhetoric in the Romantic Era, feminist and queer theory, and historical context for the creation of rhetorical theory and its use in public address.

Rhetoric in Human Rights Advocacy

Rhetoric in Human Rights Advocacy PDF Author: Richard K. Ghere
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739193945
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines the rhetoric of various “exemplars” who advocate for causes and actions pertaining to human rights in particular contexts. Although some of these exemplars champion human rights, others are human rights antagonists. Simply put, the argument here is that concern for how particular individuals advocate for human rights causes—as well as how antagonists obstruct such initiatives—adds significant value to understanding the successes and failures of human rights efforts in particular cultural and national contexts. On one hand, we can grasp how specific international organizations and actors function to develop norms (for example, the rights of the child) and how rights are subsequently articulated in universal declarations and formal codes. But on the other, it becomes apparent that the actualmeaning of those rights mutate when “accepted” within particular cultures. A complementary facet of this argument relates to the centrality of rhetoric in observing how rights advocates function in practice; specifically, rhetoric focuses upon the art of argumentation and the various strategies and techniques enlisted therein. In that much of the “reality” surrounding human rights (from the standpoints of advocates and antagonists alike) is fundamentally interpretive, rhetorical (or argumentative) skill is of vital importance for advocates as competent pragma-dialecticians in presenting the case that a rights ideal can enhance life in a culture predisposed to reject that ideal. This book includes case studies focusing on the rhetoric of the following individuals or groups as either human rights advocates or antagonists: Mary B. Anderson, Rwandan “hate radio” broadcasters, politicians and military officials connected with the Kent State University and Tiananmen Square student protest tragedies, Iqbal Masih, Pussy Riot, Lyndon Johnson, Julian Assange, Geert Wilders, Daniel Barenboim, Joe Arpaio, and Lucius Banda.

Understanding Scientific Prose

Understanding Scientific Prose PDF Author: Jack Selzer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Get Book Here

Book Description
Studies one scientific essay - The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme, by evolutionary theorists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard C. Lewontin - as an example, to demonstrate and test new analytical approaches to scientific rhetoric.

Human Communication as Narration

Human Communication as Narration PDF Author: Walter R. Fisher
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1643362429
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 219

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book addresses questions that have concerned rhetoricians, literary theorists, and philosophers since the time of the pre-Socratics and the Sophists: How do people come to believe and to act on the basis of communicative experiences? What is the nature of reason and rationality in these experiences? What is the role of values in human decision making and action? How can reason and values be assessed? In answering these questions, Professor Fisher proposes a reconceptualization of humankind as homo narrans, that all forms of human communication need to be seen as stories—symbolic interpretations of aspects of the world occurring in time and shaped by history, culture, and character; that individuated forms of discourse should be considered "good reasons"—values or value-laden warrants for believing or acting in certain ways; and that a narrative logic that all humans have natural capacities to employ ought to be conceived of as the logic by which human communication is assessed.

The Rhetoric of Reason

The Rhetoric of Reason PDF Author: James Crosswhite
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299149543
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Get Book Here

Book Description
Responding to skeptics within higher education and critics without, James Crosswhite argues powerfully that the core of a college education should be learning to write a reasoned argument. A trained philosopher and director of a university-wide composition program, Crosswhite challenges his readers—teachers of writing and communication, philosophers, critical theorists, and educational administrators—to reestablish the traditional role of rhetoric in education. To those who have lost faith in the abilities of people to reach reasoned mutual agreements, and to others who have attacked the right-or-wrong model of formal logic, this book offers the reminder that the rhetorical tradition has always viewed argumentation as a dialogue, a response to changing situations, an exchange of persuading, listening, and understanding. Crosswhite’s aim is to give new purpose to writing instruction and to students’ writing, to reinvest both with the deep ethical interests of the rhetorical tradition. In laying out the elements of argumentation, for example, he shows that claiming, questioning, and giving reasons are not simple elements of formal logic, but communicative acts with complicated ethical features. Students must learn not only how to construct an argument, but the purposes, responsibilities, and consequences of engaging in one. Crosswhite supports his aims through a rhetorical reconstruction of reason, offering new interpretations of Plato and Aristotle and of the concepts of reflection and dialogue from early modernity through Hegel to Gadamer. And, in his conclusion, he ties these theoretical and historical underpinnings to current problems of higher education, the definition of the liberal arts, and, especially, the teaching of written communication.

Subjects of the World

Subjects of the World PDF Author: Paul Sheldon Davies
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226137635
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Get Book Here

Book Description
Being human while trying to scientifically study human nature confronts us with our most vexing problem. Efforts to explicate the human mind are thwarted by our cultural biases and entrenched infirmities; our first-person experiences as practical agents convince us that we have capacities beyond the reach of scientific explanation. What we need to move forward in our understanding of human agency, Paul Sheldon Davies argues, is a reform in the way we study ourselves and a long overdue break with traditional humanist thinking. Davies locates a model for change in the rhetorical strategies employed by Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species. Darwin worked hard to anticipate and diminish the anxieties and biases that his radically historical view of life was bound to provoke. Likewise, Davies draws from the history of science and contemporary psychology and neuroscience to build a framework for the study of human agency that identifies and diminishes outdated and limiting biases. The result is a heady, philosophically wide-ranging argument in favor of recognizing that humans are, like everything else, subjects of the natural world—an acknowledgement that may free us to see the world the way it actually is.

Rhetoric as a Posthuman Practice

Rhetoric as a Posthuman Practice PDF Author: Casey Andrew Boyle
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780814213803
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Get Book Here

Book Description
Reconsiders persuasion as a process of embodied information, arguing that rhetorical practice is irreducible to categories of humanism and must now exercise its posthuman capacities.

Deep Rhetoric

Deep Rhetoric PDF Author: James Crosswhite
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022601634X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 422

Get Book Here

Book Description
Chapter by chapter, 'Deep Rhetoric' develops an understanding of rhetoric not only in its philosophical dimension but also as a means of guiding and conducting conflicts, achieving justice and understanding the human condition.

The Available Means of Persuasion

The Available Means of Persuasion PDF Author: David M. Sheridan
Publisher: Parlor Press LLC
ISBN: 1602353115
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 215

Get Book Here

Book Description
From the beginning, rhetoric has been a productive and practical art aimed at preparing citizens to participate in communal life. Possibilities for this participation are continually evolving in light of cultural and technological changes. The Available Means of Persuasion: Mapping a Theory and Pedagogy of Multimodal Public Rhetoric explores the ways that public rhetoric has changed due to emerging technologies that enable us to produce, reproduce, and distribute compositions that integrate visual, aural, and alphabetic elements. David M. Sheridan, Jim Ridolfo, and Anthony J. Michel argue that to exploit such options fully, rhetorical theory and pedagogy need to be reconfigured.