Showing papers in "Quarterly Journal of Speech in 2015"
TL;DR: The impact of new materialism on the study of rhetoric is indefinite, but one cannot deny the fact that it is having an impact as mentioned in this paper, and the impact of materialism has been studied extensively in the literature.
Abstract: The impact of new materialism on the study of rhetoric is indefinite, but one cannot deny the fact that it is having an impact. Simple but important questions, such as how new materialism differs f...
784 citations
TL;DR: Rhetoric is one of the oldest liberal arts, and for millennia it has been understood as the things that people say to persuade or advocate change as discussed by the authors. But it has also been used as a tool to resist change.
Abstract: Rhetoric is one of the oldest liberal arts, and for millennia it has been understood as the things that people say to persuade or advocate change. My work, like that of many readers of this journal...
510 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that much rhetorical theory works to uphold the value and ideal of citizenship, while often ignoring or reframing appeals that challenge the very bases of citizenship and the nation state.
Abstract: In this paper, the author reconsiders the historical narrative of Rhetorical Studies as a citizenship narrative and thus argues that much rhetorical theory works to uphold the value and ideal of citizenship, while often ignoring or reframing appeals that challenge the very bases of citizenship and the nation-state This account of Rhetoric's intellectual history reveals the very parameters for what deserves attention in disciplinary history The author suggests that this account also reveals the necessity to break from that history, not in order that Rhetoric become more inclusive but so that Rhetoric may be something entirely different, something constituted through non-normative, non-citizen, non-Western perspectives and ways of knowing and being
131 citations
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TL;DR: The authors reflect on the last 100 years of sensation in the journal to figure out where and when scholars in the field have concerned themselves with sensuous activity, how that activity is seen to interact with language, knowledge, and speech.
Abstract: This essay reflects on the last 100 years of sensation in the journal to figure out where and when scholars in the field have concerned themselves with sensuous activity, how that activity is seen to interact with language, knowledge, and speech. The past can serve to some extent as a “rough guide,” showing gaps and leaps as well as modeling specific approaches.
84 citations
TL;DR: Talk Like TED is not the kind of book normally reviewed in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, nor should it be as mentioned in this paper, since it is a trade book published for a nonacademic audience, not for scholars of rhetoric.
Abstract: Talk Like TED is not the kind of book normally reviewed in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, nor should it be. This is a trade book published for a nonacademic audience, not for scholars of rhetoric...
54 citations
TL;DR: Dissent is a double-sided discourse with both a solid footing in public culture and a sharp edge for cutting through political orthodoxies as discussed by the authors, and the viability of their democratic interventions depends on the invention of legitimizing gestures.
Abstract: Dissent, in its distinctive contribution to democratic practice, neither reduces to protest nor advances toward consensus. It is a double-sided discourse with both a solid footing in public culture and a sharp edge for cutting through political orthodoxies. Rhetorical invention is its dynamic. Dissenters must maneuver, like mythical tricksters, to sustain the vitality of democracy. The viability of their democratic interventions depends on the invention of legitimizing gestures. The topos of complementary differences—a pivotal term for articulating points of interdependency between dissenters and the broader public—illustrates the kind of inventive resource to which the field could productively turn its attention.
46 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that light war cultivates social acquiescence to violence through boring visual rhetoric that subverts the capacity to sense the material consequences of war, and assesses the prospects of peace and outlines future directions for rhetorical scholarship in a post-9/11 landscape.
Abstract: This essay theorizes a transformation in twenty-first-century war rhetoric in which obstructions in public sensation insulate war from opposition. In contrast to overt persuasive appeals for the mass mobilization of society characteristic of “total war,” “light war” is a mode of violence that operates more freely by placing fewer demands on public reception, participation, and approval. Through an analysis of U.S. drone imagery between 2008 and 2011, I argue that light war cultivates social acquiescence to violence through boring visual rhetoric that subverts the capacity to sense the material consequences of war. In the process of theorizing the anesthetizing force of boring rhetoric, this essay assesses the prospects of peace and outlines future directions for rhetorical scholarship in a post-9/11 landscape.
41 citations
TL;DR: The authors synthesize briefly some of the contributions their scholarship has made to understanding televised presidential debates, telegraph some major findings about three topics, learning from debates, factors that mediate audience response, and the ways in which candidate debate communication forecasts the presidency of the eventual winner, and note questions about each of these three areas that invite additional inquiry.
Abstract: After arguing that our disciplinary origins and aptitudes equip us to understand the practice and potential of political debate, this essay will synthesize briefly some of the contributions our scholarship has made to understanding televised presidential debates, telegraph some major findings about three topics—learning from debates, factors that mediate audience response, and the ways in which candidate debate communication forecasts the presidency of the eventual winner—and will then note questions about each of these three areas that invite additional inquiry.
40 citations
TL;DR: I have never been quite so conscious of the tone of a book review as I was writing this one, which is both to say that I liked this book quite a lot and learned a great deal from it.
Abstract: I have never been quite so conscious of the tone of a book review as I was writing this one, which is both to say that I liked this book quite a lot and learned a great deal from it. In taking on t...
34 citations
TL;DR: Rhetoric is fixated on a bounded nation-state, and what often reads as an addiction with the West as mentioned in this paper, and awareness of these obsessions is not new.
Abstract: Rhetoric is fixated on a bounded nation-state, and what often reads as an addiction with the West. There: I've said it. Awareness of these obsessions is not new.1 What does seem to be unloosening t...
32 citations
TL;DR: The authors conceptualized "toxic portraits", close-up, in situ photographs of people in toxically assaulted places, and argued that these images invite an ethically inflected response to the dangers of living in a polluted world.
Abstract: This essay conceptualizes “toxic portraits,” close-up, in situ photographs of people in toxically assaulted places. Toxic portraits articulate the multiple invisibilities attending environmental injustice through a series of visible indexical signs. As a result, toxic portraits enable spectators to see the precariousness of life as dramatized in human relationships to the environments in which we live. Drawing on the “subjunctive voice of the visual” as a rhetorical heuristic, I conceptualize the productive space created by toxic portraits and ultimately argue that these images invite an ethically inflected response to the dangers of living in a polluted world.
TL;DR: In this paper, a novel rhetorical theory of secrets is proposed, which suggests that the means by which subjects figure the secret, to be understood as knowledge in the fact that the subject cannot know.
Abstract: Covering a wide range of public discourse from 2003 to 2010 about CIA agent Valerie Plame, this essay contributes a novel rhetorical theory of secrets. By contrast to other critiques of the Bush-era secrecy that focus on policies the administration kept concealed from the public, I suggest that rhetoric is the means by which subjects figure the secret, to be understood as knowledge in the fact that the subject cannot know. To make this argument, I draw on the theoretical tools of psychoanalysis and the rhetorical tropes of repetition, caesura, and synecdoche.
TL;DR: In an era of increasingly polarized political speech, citizens of the United States are well accustomed to heated discourse and vitriol as mentioned in this paper, and elections feature more mud than ever, as negative campaigns...
Abstract: In an era of increasingly polarized political speech, citizens of the United States are well accustomed to heated discourse and vitriol. Elections feature more mud than ever, as negative campaigns ...
TL;DR: The authors investigate the rhetoricity of progenic tattooing through semiotic, affective, and pedagogical registers, arguing that shifting conditions of discourse across time alter decorum about public memory of the Holocaust.
Abstract: Facing the loss of the last generation of Holocaust survivors, progeny of survivors have begun to tattoo their ancestors’ Auschwitz numbers on their own bodies. We investigate the rhetoricity of progenic tattooing through semiotic, affective, and pedagogical registers. We argue that shifting conditions of discourse across time alter decorum about public memory of the Holocaust. Further, the progenic practice, constituting a distinct form of trauma tattoo, enacts a mode of postmemory through a resignification of the original sign that makes visible the intergenerational trauma of the Holocaust.
TL;DR: The authors reviewed past research in rhetorical theory and criticism and then turned to an examination of two present issues, big rhetoric and the critique of postmodernism, that influence rhetoric's prospects.
Abstract: This essay begins with a brief review of past research in rhetorical theory and criticism. Attention then turns to an examination of two present issues—big rhetoric and the critique of postmodernism—that influence rhetoric's prospects. The essay closes with a consideration of the vibrancy and vitality represented by recent scholarship in the Quarterly Journal of Speech. The diversity and sophistication of current scholarship bode well for rhetoric's future.
TL;DR: The authors argue that the publicity of soldier sufferance ironically mitigates the need for a more complex socialization to the pain of war that might be animated by a more nuanced emotional response rooted in the disruption of common narratives about sacrifice, service, and heroism.
Abstract: Post-traumatic stress disorder among returning veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has invoked all manner of public responses, not least of which is a sense of pity that begins and ends with the moment of recognition. As such, the publicity of soldier sufferance ironically mitigates the need for a more complex socialization to the pain of war that might be animated by a more nuanced emotional response rooted in the disruption of common narratives about sacrifice, service, and heroism. This essay argues for the potential of Garry Trudeau's trilogy of cartoons, collected under the titles of The Long Road Home, The War Within, and Signature Wound, to depict a dialectic of pity and compassion while underscoring the inadequacies of discourses of trauma through the use of bathos—a verbal–visual descent that emphasizes the commonplace in the seemingly extraordinary through the trope of the ridiculous.
TL;DR: This article surveys the breadth of scholarship published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech since its inception in 1915 and argues that many of the areas once regularly published in QJS have slowly migrated to other journals or other fields entirely.
Abstract: This short essay surveys the breadth of scholarship published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech since its beginnings in 1915. I argue that many of the areas once regularly published in QJS have slowly—and rightly—migrated to other journals or other fields entirely. However, there are four areas that have only recently disappeared from the pages of QJS, and these areas—translations of key texts, studies in textual authenticity, rhetorical history, and studies of non-academic rhetorical practitioners—need to be recovered. By recuperating these four areas, QJS will better represent the breadth of rhetorical scholarship and incorporate important voices into the ongoing conversation about the nature and practice of rhetoric.
TL;DR: This article argued that the discipline of Communication Studies began with a tension between contrasting sets of affect and reasoning, and argued that this tension provides opportunities for Communication Studies in the twenty-first century.
Abstract: Using the first five years of the Quarterly Journal of Speech as a record of Communication Studies' founding, I contend that the discipline began with a tension between contrasting sets of affect and reasoning. In the initial volumes of QJS, one reads many recommendations designed to establish the discipline's academic sovereignty and self-determination, but, at the same time, other essays suggest a commitment to cross-disciplinary inquiry and citizenship. I interpret this tension through contemporary theories of nationalism and cosmopolitanism. These concepts highlight the implications of competing visions for the discipline's future, but they also reveal how cosmopolitan and nationalist processes complemented one another in the early years of “Speech.” I argue, finally, that this tension provides opportunities for Communication Studies in the twenty-first century.
TL;DR: A selection of primary sources from this era that defined human fertility as a chemically induced process, rather than, for instance, a characteristic related to the conservation of nervous energy or to moral physiology are analyzed.
Abstract: Chemical theories of human fertility and reproduction first became prevalent in both technical and mainstream media outlets beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, and they have remained prevalent to this day. In this essay, I analyze a selection of primary sources from this era that defined human fertility as a chemically induced process, rather than, for instance, a characteristic related to the conservation of nervous energy or to moral physiology. The resulting rhetorical history demonstrates the ways in which this chemical rhetoric was appropriated to re-envision sex, gender, and reproductive health in light of appeals to biochemical variability, artificiality, and technical expertise. Tracing these appeals sheds light on the rhetorical ecology that supported the widespread medicalization of (in)fertility and demonstrates how public vocabularies of science and medicine are constituted as they move across and interact with broader social discourses.
TL;DR: For instance, the authors proposes a turn-to-the-past approach to rhetorical history, drawing distinctions between making and accounting for LGBTQ history, and imagining the history Obama might tell were the critic to ask.
Abstract: Inspired by this journal's centennial occasion and John Murphy's call to rhetorical history, I queer his reading of Barack Obama's “turn to the past.” Turning to my own critical past, I revive incipient ideas of contextual twilight, critical liminality, and critical self-portraiture to query the operative rhetorical traditions neither Murphy nor Obama voice, to draw distinctions between making and accounting for LGBTQ history, and to imagine the history Obama might tell were the critic to ask. This historical-critical labor strives to expand the reach and grasp of queering rhetorical studies for the next century of the Quarterly Journal of Speech.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors conceptualize the conditions of dissension in dominant discourse and the singular historical circumstances of the Event of Dissension, drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, through the internal gaps and contradictions within dominant discourse.
Abstract: Dissent emerges out of unique prior conditions in which the coherence of dominant discourses is momentarily opened for contest. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, these conditions are conceptualized through the internal gaps and contradictions within dominant discourse—spaces of dissension—and the singular historical circumstances of the Event of dissension. The unique possibilities opened up in the Event of dissension include the prospects for a kind of critical contemplation on the conditions of the present, which Foucault defines as thought. The prospects for thoughtful dissent are considered.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that materialist approaches beginning from a concern for labor position deny potential to those laborers who occupy an indeterminate relationship to capitalism, and argue that educators can cultivate an incipient potential that nimbly negotiates double-binds.
Abstract: Teachers unions face a unique set of double-binds when defending their interests as workers and as advocates for students. In this essay, I argue that materialist approaches beginning from a concern for labor position deny potential to those laborers—teachers among them—who occupy an indeterminate relationship to capitalism. To describe these workers’ potential for agency, this essay examines the oscillatory movement that occurs between the conceptions of labor position theorized by Ronald Walter Greene and Dana Cloud. In shifting between these positions, I argue, educators can cultivate an incipient potential that nimbly negotiates double-binds while exacerbating the contradictions of neoliberal reform. I advance this argument through an analysis of three oscillations in the Chicago teachers’ strike of 2012: between conceptions of labor as part of a general or restricted economy; between projects of demystifying and upholding meritocracy; and between competing spatial configurations of the school and soc...
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TL;DR: The authors infer that a mid-century decline of interest in "feelings" is, at least in part, a reaction to the instrumental logics animating the mental hygiene or "speech hygiene" movements, the methods and techniques of which were either unconsciously or silently compared to those of Nazi “science.”
Abstract: In conversation with Debra Hawhee and Jenny Rice on the topic of sensation across a century of QJS research, in this essay I infer that a mid-century decline of interest in “feelings” is, at least in part, a reaction to the instrumental logics animating the “mental hygiene” or “speech hygiene” movements, the methods and techniques of which were either unconsciously or silently compared to those of Nazi “science.”
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the institutional grounding of judicial dissents, focusing specifically on Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissenting opinion in Burwell v Hobby Lobby, and argue that the genre of judicial dissent operates as a supplement to the judicial system that legitimates and reinforces its institutional structure even as individual dissents may challenge majority opinions.
Abstract: Inspired by Robert Ivie's notion of democratic dissent as “limited nonconformity,” this essay examines the institutional grounding of judicial dissents, focusing specifically on Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissenting opinion in Burwell v Hobby Lobby I argue that the genre of judicial dissent, both of the law and in excess of the law, operates as a supplement to the judicial system that legitimates and reinforces its institutional structure even as individual dissents may challenge majority opinions I also consider the ways that Ginsburg's text and image have been deployed by reproductive rights advocates and Hobby Lobby protestors in the immediate aftermath of the decision, suggesting that the rhetorical and political excess of Ginsburg's dissent produces new opportunities for invention beyond the institutional constraints of the law
TL;DR: Beginnings are often anxious times, composed of equal parts hopeful anticipation and powerful dread, likely accompanied by a sense of dislocation as mentioned in this paper, as the nineteenth century came to a close.
Abstract: Beginnings are often anxious times, composed of equal parts hopeful anticipation and powerful dread, likely accompanied by a sense of dislocation. As the nineteenth century came to a close, populat...
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TL;DR: When is epideictic rhetoric? as discussed by the authors offers a theoretical vision of rhetoric's potentiality, in response to a critical review of our past and present, and suggests that it is time to begin.
Abstract: When is epideictic rhetoric? In response to a critical review of our past and present, this essay offers a theoretical vision of rhetoric's potentiality. It is time to begin.
TL;DR: The authors take up Guaman Poma de Ayala's Primer Nueva Coronica y Buen Gobierno as an artifact of early colonial Peruvian rhetoric and an evocative example of American rhetorical theory.
Abstract: This essay takes up Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's Primer Nueva Coronica y Buen Gobierno as an artifact of early colonial Peruvian rhetoric and an evocative example of American rhetorical theory. Our analysis illuminates how Guaman Poma theorizes transcultural colonial communication from an Andean perspective. We highlight three key elements in his theory: its ethical copia, its concern with the insufficiency of the available genres, and its assumption that communication will fail. In the end, we suggest, Guaman Poma provides a generative, if incomplete, theory that helps account for the complexities of colonial rhetorical practice.
TL;DR: The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitu... as discussed by the authors has been invoked by advocates on all sides in recent controversies over marriage equality, police brutality, immigration, and access to contraceptives.
Abstract: Invoked by advocates on all sides in recent controversies over marriage equality, police brutality, immigration, and access to contraceptives, the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitu...
TL;DR: The authors examine the definition and invocation of rhetorical history, a concept central to the work done in this journal, and discuss the uses of history by rhetorical critics, turn to President Barack Obama's theory of (rhetorical) history and social change, examine his deployment of argument from history as a means to manage varied rhetorical problems, and conclude with some thoughts on his rhetorical history and ours.
Abstract: In this essay, I examine the definition and invocation of rhetorical history, a concept central to the work done in this journal. The essay briefly discusses the uses of history by rhetorical critics, turns to President Barack Obama's theory of (rhetorical) history and social change, examines his deployment of argument from history as a means to manage varied rhetorical problems, and concludes with some thoughts on his rhetorical history and ours.