In the last 15 years, writing center scholars have increasingly called for more evidence to validate writing centers' practices. Work by Paula Gillespie (2002), Neal Lerner (2009), and Isabelle Thompson et al. (2009) underscore this need. Missing from these discussions, however, is a thorough understanding of the past and current research…

Literally defined, topoi are places in the mind where items of information (ideas, arguments, etc.) may be stored. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a critical analysis of a number of studies which have appeared in communication literature on the concept of topoi and to discuss the function of topoi in communication. Utilizing the…

Reviews "Choices Made, Worlds Created: The Rhetoric of AERJ" by Margaret J. Marshall and Loren S. Barrett, on how the rhetoric employed in a given group influences its members' thoughts and practices and applies the analysis to the teacher-researcher relationship. (SR)

The article is an exploration of the meanings and worthiness of criticism as a significant phenomenon in the evolution of educational research during the 1990s. While drawing on an overview of the vast amount of documents expressing criticisms of educational research in the UK, western and eastern continental Europe and the USA, it summarises the…

With the rebirth of rhetoric has come a revival of interest in rhetorical invention. The emphasis on writing as a process initiates a controversy between those rhetoricians who advocate the use of a topical system, which can supply a writer with lines of reasoning for the support of his proposition, and those who advocate the use of the discovery…

Examines the compositional attributes which characterize Christian sermons as generically distinctive. (MH)

Considers how the history of rhetoric is taught currently and has been taught in the past. Provides data from surveys of historians in rhetoric and composition concerning their methods. Describes how the history of rhetoric is taught at the University of Arizona. Shows how rhetoric can be taught as a social praxis. (HB)

Dominant features of the rhetoric used in the "American Educational Research Journal" (AERJ) are discussed to illustrate how arguments are constructed and how a conception of the world of education is formed. These features include conventions of format; impersonalized and passive sentence constructions; and references to prior research.…

National reports on higher education are seen as a form of democratic propaganda whose aim is participation. Their progress is described through content analysis of media responses. "Aesthetic judgment" is seen as the key to participation in reform by college faculty and administrators. (Author/MLW)

To investigate the rhetorical relations between oral and written texts in adolescents' academic discourse, a study examined oral and written language samples of three high school juniors in a San Francisco area middle class suburban community (two males and one female) participating in an English literature class. Discourse analytic techniques…

Provides a brief overview of the uses of rhetoric in the history of writing about music. Discusses Aristotle's topology of the three different kinds of rhetoric: deliberative, judicial, and epideictic (demonstrative). Includes excerpts from past music criticism, copious notes, and a 27-item bibliography. (MJP)

The teaching of English as a developing concept extending from kindergarten through graduate study is discussed in this book. The goal is to define the fundamental structure of English as a discipline and to develop a theory of structured integration for the curriculum which is sufficiently standard for all English planning but flexible enough to…