Culture And Rhetoric

Download or read book Culture and Rhetoric written by Ivo Strecker and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Culture, Rhetoric and the Vicissitudes of Life written by Michael Carrithers and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Rhetoric in European Culture and Beyond written by Jiří Kraus and published by Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press. This book was released on 2015-03-01 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, Rhetoric in European and World Culture, defines the position of rhetoric in the cultural and educational systems from ancient times through the present. It examines the decline of its importance in a period of rationalism and enlightenment, presents the causes of why rhetoric (reduced to a system of rhetorical tricks) came to have negative connotations, and explains why rhetoric in the 20th century was able to regain its position. It demonstrates that the prestige of rhetoric sharply falls when it is reduced to a refined method for deceiving the public, and increases when it is seen as a scientific discipline that is used throughout all of the fields of the humanities - philosophy, logic, semiotics, literary science, linguistics, the science of media and others. In this sense, rhetoric strives for universal recognition and the cultivation of rhetorical expression, spoken and written, including not only its production but also reception and interpretation. In such a renaissance of interest, rhetoric appears not merely as a guide to language skills, but as a complex theoretical field examining human behaviour in social communication. Chapters 1-9 describe the development of rhetoric from its Greek, Hellenic and Roman beginnings to rhetoric in the context of medieval Christian culture, later during the periods of humanism, Enlightenment, baroque. The final chapter is concerned with rhetoric in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. It takes into account geography, including the history of rhetoric in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, England, Scotland, Poland, Russia, the Czech Lands, Moravia, Slovakia and from the 19th century in the United States. The final chapter presents an answer to the question of whether corresponding systems of rhetorical knowledge have been formed beyond the borders of Mediterranean antiquity. The selected examples of theoretical works on "the art of speech" from India, the Middle East, China, Korea and Japan show that each language community forms its own concept, theory and practice of persuasive and suggestive speaking behaviours. Often such findings, instead of being used as manuals for the stylization and presentation of speeches, rather concentrate on analyzing written documents, in which we can find not only specific categorical devices of the given culture (as is the case with comments on the Vedic texts of ancient India) but also tropes and figures characteristic of Greek and Roman rhetoric, e.g., the Hebrew and Aramaic texts of the Old Testament.

Download or read book Visual Rhetoric written by Lester C. Olson and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2008-03-20 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Visual images, artifacts, and performances play a powerful part in shaping U.S. culture. To understand the dynamics of public persuasion, students must understand this "visual rhetoric." This rich anthology contains 20 exemplary studies of visual rhetoric, exploring an array of visual communication forms, from photographs, prints, television documentary, and film to stamps, advertisements, and tattoos. In material original to this volume, editors Lester C. Olson, Cara A. Finnegan, and Diane S. Hope present a critical perspective that links visuality and rhetoric, locates the study of visual rhetoric within the disciplinary framework of communication, and explores the role of the visual in the cultural space of the United States. Enhanced with these critical editorial perspectives, Visual Rhetoric: A Reader in Communication and American Culture provides a conceptual framework for students to understand and reflect on the role of visual communication in the cultural and public sphere of the United States. Key Features and Benefits Five broad pairs of rhetorical action—performing and seeing; remembering and memorializing; confronting and resisting; commodifying and consuming; governing and authorizing—introduce students to the ways visual images and artifacts become powerful tools of persuasion Each section opens with substantive editorial commentary to provide readers with a clear conceptual framework for understanding the rhetorical action in question, and closes with discussion questions to encourage reflection among the essays The collection includes a range of media, cultures, and time periods; covers a wide range of scholarly approaches and methods of handling primary materials; and attends to issues of gender, race, sexuality and class Contributors include: Thomas Benson; Barbara Biesecker; Carole Blair; Dan Brouwer; Dana Cloud; Kevin Michael DeLuca; Anne Teresa Demo; Janis L. Edwards; Keith V. Erickson; Cara A. Finnegan; Bruce Gronbeck; Robert Hariman; Christine Harold; Ekaterina Haskins; Diane S. Hope; Judith Lancioni; Margaret R. LaWare; John Louis Lucaites; Neil Michel; Charles E. Morris III; Lester C. Olson; Shawn J. Parry-Giles; Ronald Shields; John M. Sloop; Nathan Stormer; Reginald Twigg and Carol K. Winkler "This book significantly advances theory and method in the study of visual rhetoric through its comprehensive approach and wise separations of key conceptual components." —Julianne H. Newton, University of Oregon

Download or read book Making Camp written by Helene A. Shugart and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rhetorical power of camp in American popular culture Making Camp examines the rhetoric and conventions of “camp” in contemporary popular culture and the ways it both subverts and is co-opted by mainstream ideology and discourse, especially as it pertains to issues of gender and sexuality. Camp has long been aligned with gay male culture and performance. Helene Shugart and Catherine Waggoner contend that camp in the popular media—whether visual, dramatic, or musical—is equally pervasive. While aesthetic and performative in nature, the authors argue that camp—female camp in particular—is also highly political and that conventions of femininity and female sexuality are negotiated, if not always resisted, in female camp performances. The authors draw on a wide range of references and figures representative of camp, both historical and contemporary, in presenting the evolution of female camp and its negotiation of gender, political, and identity issues. Antecedents such as Joan Crawford, Wonder Woman, Marilyn Monroe, and Pam Grier are discussed as archetypes for contemporary popular culture figures—Macy Gray, Gwen Stefani, and the characters of Xena from Xena: Warrior Princess and Karen Walker from Will & Grace. Shugart and Waggoner find that these and other female camp performances are liminal, occupying a space between conformity and resistance. The result is a study that demonstrates the prevalence of camp as a historical and evolving phenomenon in popular culture, its role as a site for the rupture of conventional notions of gender and sexuality, and how camp is configured in mainstream culture and in ways that resist its being reduced to merely a style.

Download or read book Culture, Catastrophe, and Rhetoric written by Robert Hariman and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution written by Xing Lu and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2020-08-05 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A startling look at revolutionary rhetoric and its effects Now known to the Chinese as the "ten years of chaos," the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–76) brought death to thousands of Chinese and persecution to millions. In Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution Xing Lu identifies the rhetorical practices and persuasive effects of the polarizing political language and symbolic practices used by Communist Party leaders to legitimize their use of power and violence to dehumanize people identified as class enemies. Lu provides close readings of the movement's primary texts—political slogans, official propaganda, wall posters, and the lyrics of mass songs and model operas. She also scrutinizes such ritualistic practices as the loyalty dance, denunciation rallies, political study sessions, and criticism and self-criticism meetings. Lu enriches her rhetorical analyses of these texts with her own story and that of her family, as well as with interviews conducted in China and the United States with individuals who experienced the Cultural Revolution during their teenage years. In her new preface, Lu expresses deep concern about recent nationalism, xenophobia, divisiveness, and violence instigated by the rhetoric of hatred and fear in the United States and across the globe. She hopes that by illuminating the way language shapes perception, thought, and behavior, this book will serve as a reminder of past mistakes so that we may avoid repeating them in the future.