The dissertation focuses on three academic programs at Tarrant County College, Northeast Campus, specifically the documents used to create and sustain these programs. The purpose of this study includes the following: first, to identify the terminology specific to each program and/or the documents used within the program; second and third to…

The ethics and efficacy of explicitly teaching disciplinary discourse conventions to undergraduate students has been hotly debated. This quasi-experimental study seeks to contribute to these debates by focusing on the conventional special "topoi" of literary analysis--conventions that previous Writing in the Disciplines (WID) research indicates…

Using rhetorical analysis in the form of an autoethnographically informed biocritique, this study applies and expands the concept of rhetorical plasticity to examine the popular museum exhibit "Bodies: The Exhibition," which is arguably the most controversial of a series of contemporary museum exhibits that feature deceased human bodies…

The risk posed by explicit instruction in composition is that the reduction of writing to stock moves and effective devices may diminish the writer's agency and guarantee reproduction of the teacher's. The advantage of explicit instruction is power: overt and recursive attention to selected strategies can help students imagine the public agency…

The English teaching profession, spurred on by media and federal politics, has tended to construct aesthetic reading and political reading within a dichotomous conceptual framework (Morgan, 1997; Devine, 2004; Donnelly, 2007). The article argues that this need not be so, and that the two apparently opposed modes of reading can be performed not…

This publication contains three articles centered on the theme of philosophy and rhetoric. In the first article, "Rhetorical Probability and the Search For Truth," Ruth McGaffey submits that in a free society, decision-making is more often than not based on probability, the subject matter of rhetoric, rather than certainty. Robert F. Holton in the…

An increasingly popular form of mass media persuasion is the "docudrama," a hybrid of the informative documentary and the dramatic film. The docudrama format presents viewers with a purposive viewpoint or value-laden interpretation of reality and contains some degree of historical accuracy and factual authenticity. The docudrama also…

Explores Paulo Freire's work from a rhetorical point of view suggesting that kairos is an important component of critical consciousness. Discusses three basic modes of disclosure: moods; understanding; and dialogic discourse. Notes that "being" is made known through these basic modes. Argues that kairos is a qualitative moment of…

Presents a redefinition of the concept of ethical appeal as an appeal that asks an audience for full and careful appraisal of both the meaning and the intent of what is being said. The audience must determine for itself whether or not the appeal should be accepted or rejected. (JMF)

Contemporary rhetorician Richard M. Weaver believes that values are inseparable from rhetoric. For him, to be a rhetorician is to direct toward good or evil and to be a rhetorical critic is to determine whether that direction is the "right one" and/or judge whether the rhetorician "is a master of his art." To determine if the…

Takes up criticisms directed at Jurgen Habermas's conception of the self or moral agency, his assumptions about the generalizability of human interests, and the supposed utopianism of his theory. Argues that in each case more charitable and attractive readings of his position are possible and desirable. (SR)

Investigates the "ethics of criticism" as an attempt to disrupt the political practices of academic agonists based in a combative rhetoric which seeks to annihilate rather than to stimulate conversation. Proposes an adaptation of Nietzsche's psychology of self-overcoming and ethical pedagogy. (RS)

There are two views of the rhetorical principle of "kairos," or timeliness: first, the deterministic notion of "kairos" as a preordained "right" time in which certain activities are appropriate, and second, the relativistic notion of "kairos" as an exercise "in the nick of time." A satisfactory…

Analyzes President Johnson's casting of political policy into evocative symbols, the invention and operation of those rhetorical forms, the resulting conflict over the symbolization of the Vietnam War, and the theoretical and ethical implications of those rhetorical choices. (PD)

Contends that the mission of contemporary rhetoric is fundamentally humanistic and more specifically epistemic inasmuch as the humanistic value to which rhetoric must be committed is the generation of humane knowledge. (PD)