Eighteen essays by leading scholars in English, speech communication, educa­tion, and philosophy explore the vitality of the classical rhetorical tradition and its influence on both contemporary dis­course studies and the teaching of writing. Some of the essays investigate the­oretical and historical issues. Others show the bearing of classical rhetoric on contemporary problems in composition, thus blending theory and practice. Com­mon to the varied approaches and view­points expressed in this volume is one central theme: the 20th-century revival of rhetoric entails a recovery of the clas­sical tradition, with its marriage of a rich and fully articulated theory with an equally efficacious practice. A preface demonstrates the contribution of Ed­ward P. J.Corbett to the 20th-century re­vival, and a last chapter includes a bibli­ography of his works.

Lawyers, law students and their teachers all too frequently overlook the most comprehensive, adaptable and practical analysis of legal discourse ever devised: the classical art of rhetoric. Classical analysis of legal reasoning, methods and strategy is the foundation and source for most modern theories on the topic. Beginning with Aristotle's Rhetoric and culminating with Cicero's De Oratore and Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria, Greek and Roman rhetoricians created a clear, experience-based theoretical framework for analyzing legal discourse. This book is the first to systematically examine the connections between classical rhetoric and modern legal discourse. It traces the history of legal rhetoric from the classical period to the present day and shows how modern theorists have unknowingly benefited from the classical works. It also applies classical rhetorical principles to modern appellate briefs and judicial opinions to demonstrate how a greater familiarity with the classical sources can deepen our understanding of legal reasoning.

Berlin here continues his unique history of American college composition begun in his Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century Colleges (1984), turning now to the twentieth century. In discussing the variety of rhetorics that have been used in writing classrooms Berlin introduces a taxonomy made up of three categories: objective rhetorics, subjective rhetorics, and transactional rhetorics, which are distinguished by the epistemology on which each is based. He makes clear that these categories are not tied to a chronology but instead are to be found in the English department in one form or another during each decade of the century. His historical treatment includes an examination of the formation of the English department, the founding of the NCTE and its role in writing instruction, the training of teachers of writing, the effects of progressive education on writing instruction, the General Education Movement, the appearance of the CCCC, the impact of Sputnik, and today’s “literacy crisis.”

Jasper Neel analyzes the emerging field of composition studies within the epistemological and ontological debate over writing precipitated by Plato, who would have us abandon writing entirely, and continued by Derrida, who argues that all human beings are written. This book offers a three-part exploration of that debate.

First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

"Building on the ideas of philosophers and literary theorists such as Donald Davidson, Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Mikhail Bakhtin, Thomas Kent investigates in Paralogic Rhetoric the role that interpretation plays in the acts of writing and reading. Kent argues that both writing and reading - as kinds of communicative interaction - constitute thoroughly hermeneutic activities that cannot be reduced to discreet conceptual frameworks or to systemic processes of one kind or another. Kent calls his view of communicative interaction paralogic hermeneutics, and he employs this notion to critique some of our most influential contemporary approaches to the study of writing and reading." "Kent develops his argument in two general stages. In the first stage - chapters one through four - he discusses the meaning of the term paralogy and defines the concept of paralogic hermeneutics. In addition, he attacks in these chapters the claim endorsed by many rhetoricians and literary theorists that language conventions control the meaning of utterances, and in place of the conventionalist formulation of communicative interaction, Kent advocates an externalist account of meaning that attempts to move beyond the old Cartesian opposition of mind and world. In stage two of his argument - chapters five through seven - Kent draws out some of the practical implications of a paralogic hermeneutics for the disciplines of rhetoric and literary criticism. One of Kent's most provocative and important claims in these chapters concerns his assertion that the traditional disciplinary boundary existing between composition studies and literary studies evaporates once writing and reading are regarded as hermeneutic endeavors." "Finally, Paralogic Rhetoric represents a frontal assault on some of the fundamental assumptions about writing and reading held by many of our most important contemporary rhetoricians and literary theorists. Kent argues persuasively that the time has arrived for a reconsideration of our current conceptions concerning both the production and the reception of discourse, and in these pages, he proposes a description of communicative interaction that serves as a large first step toward a radical redescription of writing and reading."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The SAGE Handbook of Rhetorical Studies surveys the latest advances in rhetorical scholarship, synthesizing theories and practices across major areas of study in the field and pointing the way for future studies. Edited by Andrea A. Lunsford and Associate Editors Kirt H. Wilson and Rosa A. Eberly, the Handbook aims to introduce a new generation of students to rhetorical study and provide a deeply informed and ready resource for scholars currently working in the field.

The future of writing studies is fundamentally tied to advancing technological development—writing cannot be done without a technology and different technologies mediate writing differently. In Rhetorical Speculations, contributors engage with emerging technologies of composition through “speculative modeling” as a strategy for anticipatory, futural thinking for rhetoric and writing studies. Rhetoric and writing studies often engages technological shifts reactively, after the production and reception of rhetoric and writing has changed. This collection allows rhetoric and writing scholars to explore modes of critical speculation into the transformative effect of emerging technologies, particularly as a means to speculate on future shifts in the intellectual, pedagogical, and institutional frameworks of the field. In doing so, the project repositions rhetoric and writing scholars as proprietors of our technological future to come rather than as secondary receivers, critics, and adjusters of the technological present. Major and emerging voices in the field offer a range of styles that include pragmatic, technical, and philosophical approaches to the issue of speculative rhetoric, exploring what new media/writing studies could be—theoretically, pedagogically, and institutionally—as future technologies begin to impinge on the work of writing. Rhetorical Speculations is at the cutting edge of the subject of futures thinking and will have broad appeal to scholars of rhetoric, literacy, futures studies, and material and popular culture. Contributors: Bahareh Brittany Alaei, Sarah J. Arroyo, Kristine L. Blair, Geoffrey V. Carter, Sid Dobrin, Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Steve Holmes, Kyle Jensen, Halcyon Lawrence, Alexander Monea, Sean Morey, Alex Reid, Jeff Rice, Gregory L. Ulmer, Anna Worm

Composition studies is a rapidly growing and constantly changing field. At present, however, graduate students new to the field and writing teachers who want to make new connections between theory and practice have little choice of current reference works that define key terms in composition studies and provide information about the scholars and researchers who have shaped and are shaping the discipline. This book supplies this information in an easily accessible format and places both scholars and terms in the context of the field's development. Included are alphabetically arranged entries for 108 individuals who have developed the field and 128 terms central to the discipline. The first part of the book provides entries for leaders in composition studies. Each entry identifies the areas in which the scholar has contributed most influentially to the field and provides both a chronological overview of the person's contributions and a bibliography of representative works. The second part includes entries for terms that are problematic both for newcomers and for those already familiar with the discipline. The entries for the terms show how the disciplinary context has shaped the ways in which they have been used. The entries also indicate how established thinkers in composition studies and other disciplines have explained or defined the terms, provide examples of the terms in context, and list scholars often associated with them. An appendix includes entries for scholars from other disciplines who have contributed to the field.

The topic of negotiation has turned out to be of crucial interdisciplinary interest for our understanding of what we are doing in language use. Are we exchanging meanings defined in advance and presupposing equal understanding on the basis of a rule-governed system, or are we negotiating meaning and understanding in the framework of an open dialogic universe? Negotiation, on the one hand, can be taken as the name of a specific dialogue type or action game of bargaining. On the other hand, it represents a methodological concept for describing and explaining dialogic interaction which replaces the orthodox view of pattern transference. The papers collected in this volume deal with both versions of the concept of negotiation. This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the International Conference on Pragmatics and Negotiation at Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in June, 1999. The dialogic aspect was taken as the key concept to guide the present selection.