As a rhetorical figure, the example is constitutively split between the structural vocations of the Greek "paradeigma" (emphasizing illumination and belonging) and the Latin "exemplum" (emphasizing detachment and exclusion). This bifurcation enables the example to function as a strategic resource of ambiguity. Christine de…

Examines the symbolic import of Truman's rhetoric of victory in support of U.S. intervention in Korea. (MH)

The rhetorical strategies of the speechmaker become more interesting as the involvement and risk assumed by the audience increase. Battle orations given by military leaders to their troops just before fighting the enemy provide the ultimate in audience involvement and risk. Of some 200 chronicles of northern Europe from the twelfth and thirteenth…

Examines President Johnson's speeches of August fourth and fifth in 1964. The effects of the speeches are analyzed to show support for the propositions that Johnson's rhetoric created an international crisis and that it limited the foreign policy alternatives of the United States in Vietnam. (JMF)

This article attributes the impact of Urban II's call to arms to the events and issues of the times, as well as to Urban's unique shaping of a new image of redemption for an audience saddled by guilt. The address also appears to fit a discernible pattern of war rhetoric. (JMF)

Examines the role of a specific rhetorical form, the protest song, in social movements. Analyzes the content of songs from the labor and anti-war movements of the 1960s. Concludes that these songs--generally negative, simplistic, and expressive--are in-group messages designed to reinforce feelings of solidarity. (PD)

A study of rhetorical behaviors in mass movements. (CH)

Senator Robert LaFollette's speech to the United States Senate on "Free Speech and the Right of Congress to Declare the Objects of War," given October 6, 1917, epitomized his opposition to the war and the Wilson administration's largely successful moves to suppress public criticism of the war. In the speech he asserted his position on…

The symbolic presence of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) has been and continues to be the pivot point in all summitry rhetoric between the American President and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. To examine some of the rhetorical choices made by Gorbachev to dramatize his vision of why Ronald Reagan refuses to…