Proposes an alternative interpretation of imperial responsibility, founded upon Edmund Burke's rhetorical denunciation of the East India Company in 1783. Shows how Burke constructed a new understanding of imperial responsibility, in which the need to protect foreign peoples from unscrupulous Britons was stressed instead of any sense of racial…

Examines the close formal relationship between the Renaissance rhetoric of letter-writing and the common law system of "writs." Traces a forensic urge reflected in structural and stylistic preferences of two letter-writing exemplars. Compares the graphic form of instructional aids in both systems to illustrate methods for examining their…

Explores how influential works of one culture are adapted to the needs, circumstances and thought patterns of another. Analyzes as a case study Yan Fu's "Heavenly Evolution," a rhetorical translation of Thomas Huxley's "Evolution and Ethics," whose publication resulted in a rapid spread of a version of Darwinism in Confucian…

Reports on exploratory empirical investigations on the performances of Dutch secondary education students in identifying unexpressed premises and argumentation schemes. Finds that, in the absence of any disambiguating contextual information, unexpressed major premises and non-syllogistic premises are more often correctly identified that…

Contributes to scholarship advancing the understanding of human communication by examining a powerful set of imperialist symbols that have a lingering impact on the British national psyche. Investigates the Queen's Diamond Jubilee speech and the performative rhetoric of the Jubilee celebration itself, to illustrate how rhetorical depiction may…

The 2003 annual meeting of Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) opened in New York concurrently with the US invasion of Iraq on March 18, and many conference participants discussed the relation between rhetoric, the teaching of writing, and the war. This article presents some of the more memorable reflections on rhetoric and…

Examines some of the rhetorical choices of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev which dramatize Soviet calls for nuclear weapons de-escalation. Speculates that Gorbachev's peace efforts are sincere, because they are motivated by twin crises of a failing economy and a threatened world community. (MS)

Examines the rhetoric of Margaret Thatcher, indicating how Thatcherism intensified existing ideological tensions within the British context; how Thatcherism constructed the public issue of "terrorism" in Northern Ireland as an "epic tragedy"; and how such a construction materially shifted and ensnared commitments to…

Explores the narrative construction of Israeli symbolism by tracing the tellings and retellings of the story of the 1936-39 settlement operation known as "Tower and Stockade." Highlights the dialogical process in which such high profile, multivocal national narratives participate and considers the rhetorical role they play in the larger…

Noting that rhetorical critics have ignored the study of nonwestern movements and have failed to construct theories that help to explain and interpret the rhetorical form of such movements, this paper synthesizes concepts from rhetorical theory and anthropology to explain the linguistic process that made up the 1978 Israeli peace movement. The…

Argues that the legitimacy crisis in Iran in 1978-79 arose from the contrasting views of authority espoused by the Shah and the Ayatollah over 25 years and describes how their rhetoric expresses the two impulses of the progressive and the traditionalist orientation of authority. Employs a critical perspective to analyze various rhetorical…

Examines samples from public discourse during the period 1961-1989, which reveal several different symbolic uses of the Berlin Wall. Suggests these differences reflect the never-completed struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. (KEH)

Contributes to scholarship on the role of discursive rhetoric for providing a context for visual messages. Analyzes how the American print media, in the summer of 1963, contextualized M. Browne's photographs of a Vietnamese Buddhist monk's self-immolation in two competing frames of either religious oppression or a war for freedom against the…

The seventh in a series dealing with intercultural communication, this volume is organized around the theme of theorizing in intercultural communication. Papers in the introductory section of the book discuss theory building, cultural assumptions of East and West, and an overview of theorizing in intercultural communication. The second section…

Analyzes, rhetorically, the concept of otherness, a central element in Mexican culture. Argues that the themes of otherness in the writings of Ohio Mexican Americans are symbolic representations of the pervasive ambivalence with which Mexican culture views its history and anticipates its future. (SR)