Inspired by the Rhetoric Culture Project, this volume focuses on the use of imagery, narrative, and cultural schemes to deal with predicaments that arise during the course of life. The contributors explore how people muster their resources to understand and deal with emergencies such as illness, displacement, or genocide. In dealing with such circumstances, people can develop new rhetorical forms and, in the process, establish new cultural resources for succeeding generations. Several of the contributions show how rhetorical cultural forms can themselves create emergencies. The contributors bring expertise from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology and communications studies, underlining the volume's wider relevance as a reflection on the human condition.

Rhetoric in Popular Culture, Fifth Edition, shows readers how to apply growing and cutting-edge methods of critical studies to a full spectrum of contemporary issues seen in daily life. Exploring a wide range of mass media including current movies, magazines, advertisements, social networking sites, music videos, and television shows, Barry Brummett uses critical analysis to apply key rhetorical concepts to a variety of exciting examples drawn from popular culture. Readers are guided from theory to practice in an easy-to-understand manner, providing them with a foundational understanding of the definition and history of rhetoric as well as new approaches to the rhetorical tradition. Ideal for courses in rhetorical criticism, the highly anticipated Fifth Edition includes new critical essays and case studies that demonstrate for readers how the critical methods discussed can be used to study the hidden rhetoric of popular culture.

While some scholars have said that there is no such thing as culture and have urged to abandon the concept altogether, the contributors to this volume overcome this impasse by understanding cultures and their representations for what they ultimately are – rhetorical constructs. These senior, international scholars explore the complex relationships between culture and rhetoric arguing that just as rhetoric is founded in culture, culture is founded in rhetoric. This intersection constitutes the central theme of the first part of the book, while the second is dedicated to the study of figuration as a common ground of rhetoric and anthropology. The book offers a compelling range of theoretical reflections, historical vistas, and empirical investigations, which aim to show how people talk themselves and others into particular modalities of thought and action, and how rhetoric and culture, in this way, are co-emergent. It thus turns a new page in the history of academic discourse by bringing two disciplines – anthropology and rhetoric – together in a way that has never been done before.

This volume explores political culture, especially the catastrophic elements of the global social order emerging in the twenty-first century. By emphasizing the texture of political action, the book theorizes how social context becomes evident on the surface of events and analyzes the performative dimensions of political experience. The attention to catastrophe allows for an understanding of how ordinary people contend with normal system operation once it is indistinguishable from system breakdown. Through an array of case studies, the book provides an account of change as it is experienced, negotiated, and resisted in specific settings that define a society’s capacity for political action.

The goal of this book is to formulate a modern theoretical approach for rhetorical studies in a variety of disciplines in the humanities, media research, and other cultural studies. The discipline of rhetoric originally concerned itself with linguistic forms of communication, and its basic theory was developed with such cases in mind. With respect to this ancient tradition, there are numerous books that provide a historical overview of the field. There is also a wide array of introductory works and research contributions that deal with the practice of political rhetoric. On the other hand, only a few 20th century academics have attempted to theoretically rehabilitate rhetoric (after its decline as an academic discipline in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries) and to give rhetorical theory a modern, new, and further reaching perspective. Two notable examples have been Kenneth Burke and Brian Vickers. The book begins with the assumption that rhetoric is not merely limited to linguistic action, but rather is present everywhere in the communicative world. Against this background, this work develops a modern theory of rhetoric, and demonstrates in twelve chapters how methodical rhetorical analysis can be done in selected practical fields of application (Literature, Music, Images, and Film).

Demonstrates the central significance of rhetoric in ancient responses to and receptions of Roman art.

Since Jacob Burckhardt's Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (1869) rhetoric as a significant cultural factor of the renaissance has largely been neglected. The present study seeks to remedy this deficit regarding the arts by concentrating on literary theory and its aspects of imagination (inventio), genre (dispositio of the genera), style (elocutio), mnemonic architecture (memoria) and representation (actio), with illustrative examples taken from Shakespeare's works, but also on the intermedial rhetoric of painting and music. Particular attention is given to the rhetorical ideology of the Renaissance.

Now known to the Chinese as the "ten years of chaos," the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) brought death to thousands and persecution to millions. Xing Lu identifies the rhetorical features and explores the persuasive effects of political language and symbolic practices during the period. She examines how leaders of the Communist Party enacted a rhetoric in political contexts to legitimize power and violence and to dehumanize a group of people identified as class enemies.

Tracing the historical trajectory of the pocho (Latinos who are influenced by Anglo culture) in pop culture, Medina shows how the trope of pocho/pocha/poch@, which traditionally signified the negative connotation of "cultural traitor" in Spanish, has been reclaimed through the pop cultural productions of Latinos who self-identify as poch@.

"The author of Hebrews is arguing that God himself has brought about the fulfillment of these institutions through his Son's priesthood, his once-for-all sacrifice, and the new covenant he inaugurated in the last days. These new institutions are never denied the Jews. In fact, the context of the epistle presumes that these are primarily for the Jews, considering that the author was speaking to a Jewish-Christian community. The author is not arguing for the abandonment by God of the Jewish people, but rather for the abandonment of the shadowy means by which God's people drew near to him. It is here we can speak of a qualified supersessionism. According to the author of Hebrews, the Levitical priesthood, the Mosaic covenant, and the Levitical sacrifices have been superseded by Jesus' priesthood, the new covenant, and Jesus' once-for-all sacrifice. "However, we conclude that the polemical passages in Hebrews do not promote hatred of the Jews, nor do they advocate the destruction of the Jewish people. Rather, the author of Hebrews stresses the fulfillment of specific Jewish institutions for the benefit of the Jews. It is this idea of fulfillment that rules out the charge that the epistle promotes the supercession of the Jewish people. Because of God's great love for his people, he has provided a superior way by which his people can draw near to him." --from the Conclusion