Western teachers working in China often experience cultural conflicts arising from, for instance, the ways that Chinese students perceive face and express criticism. To better understand these face-concerned conflicts, this paper explores the role and significance of email for a group of Chinese students to communicate pedagogical criticism with…

This essay discusses Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's choice to foreground arguments from due process rather than equal protection in the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas. Kennedy's choice can realize constitutional legal doctrine that is more consistent with radical queer politics than arguments from equal protection. Unlike some recent…

At the turn of the twentieth century, the sound of presidential address changed from an orotund style to an instructional style. The orotund style had featured the careful pronunciation of consonants, elongated vowels, trilled r's and repeated declamations. The instructional style, on the other hand, mimicked the conversational lectures of the…

This article excavates how style in writing was represented and taught in the under-investigated mid-twentieth century. I trace four editions of the textbook "Modern Rhetoric" (1949-1979), authored by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren; I detail how the book was surprisingly innovative for the time, despite its eventual re-entrenchment to a…

Although Namibia has been independent for more than two decades (1990--2014), the school curriculum remains essentially Eurocentric despite rhetoric on educational reform. Similar to other African countries, Western ideological power continues to dominate postcolonial education, even though political power rests in the hands of African leaders.…

For learners of Japanese, a conundrum arises at university level as they are expected to be able to shift between direct and indirect language in various writing tasks. The apparent indirectness in inductive language is required of regular writing tasks such as response essays and e-mails, while the directness of deductive academic writing, a…

This article presents a critical rhetorical analysis of the governing and reform ideology of the Norwegian school system of the 1990s. It uses Karl Popper's "The Open Society and its Enemies" as a critical resource in the reading of the reforms, and discusses some of the consequences of the regime's models of leadership and public…

Colleges and universities currently face challenges in the form of calls for increased accountability, clear economic outcomes and return on investments in education. These challenges emanate from many sectors, including students and families, employers in industry, and state and federal governments. The language of these calls for accountability…

This article explores policy development for under-fives and its implementation in nursery schools in the first two decades of the twentieth century and draws parallels with current policy initiatives such as Sure Start and the "Troubled Families" programme. It interrogates how discourse on British racial health shaped policy and…

The rhetorical history of Ecuador is rife with examples of politicians, intellectuals, and artists promoting visions of national identity through images of Ecuador's indigenous population. Between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, such depictions became common and displayed increasing emphasis on the physical characteristics of…

Teaching logic typically falls under the areas of argumentation and research, as students are taught the importance of "logos," or logical appeals, in their pursuit of an original point. Cohesive, cogent arguments--devoid of logical fallacy--produce more compelling points, and teachers take great strides in pointing to the problems of…

A recent book that appeared a few years ago, "How Early America Sounded" by historian Richard Cullen Rath, connects well with much of the new, exciting, interdisciplinary and rhetorical research that the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) have supported, promoted, and…

Debates regarding higher education's relevance and responsiveness to societal exigencies have in the past three decades resulted in the development of programs with leitmotifs such as "service learning," "problem-based learning," and "civic engagement" (e.g., "Scholarship on Teaching and Learning," McNair…

I propose that we think about what a paragraph is by considering its "function," what it does in a piece of writing, whether in a popular novel, a newspaper article, an e-mail, a business report, or a lofty piece of literary criticism. We might think about a paragraph as a "rhetorical dwelling."

In this article, the author offers cautionary advice to help avoid some tempting morasses to unwittingly fall into as well as some more solid ground to stroll along when composing institutional prose. Ultimately, drawing on concepts from the fields of business, linguistics, social psychology, and professional writing, the author wishes to…