Rhetorical Criticism

Much work has been done on rhetoric and rhetorical theory in the 20th century, with scientists discussing the rhetoric of the scientific method and philosophers debating the rhetoric of the metaphysical tradition. This reference summarizes major trends in rhetoric during the last hundred years. Included are alphabetically arranged entries on 40 20th- century rhetoricians, such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Edward P. J. Corbett, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Walter J. Ong, and I. A. Richards. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and provides a brief biography, an analysis of the figure's rhetorical theory, and a bibliography of primary and secondary works. The volume concludes with extensive bibliographical material.

Kuypers, King, and their contributors explore the conception of rhetoric of eleven key American rhetoricians through analyses of their life's work. Each chapter uncovers the innate mode of perception that guided the rhetorical understanding of a particular critic. In so doing, this work dispels the myth that the discipline of Speech Communication was spawned from a monolithic and rigid center that came to be called neo-Aristotelianism.

Previously unpublished writings by and about Kenneth Burke plus essays by such Burkean luminaries as Wayne C. Booth, William H. Rueckert, Robert Wess, Thomas Carmichael, and Michael Feehan make the publication of Unending Conversations a significant event in the field of Burke studies and in the wider field of literary criticism and theory.

Editors Greig Henderson and David Cratis Williams have divided their material into three parts: "Dialectics of Expression, Communication, and Transcendence", "Criticism, Symbolicity, and Tropology", and "Transcendence and the Theological Motive".

In the first part, Williams's textual introduction and Rueckert's essay analyze the genesis and composition of Burke's A Symbolic of Motives and Poetics, Dramatistically Considered. Henderson opens part two by showing how these two essays' concerns with literary form hearken back to Burke's first book of criticism, Counter-Statement.

Thomas Carmichael discusses Burke's relationship to thinkers such as Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Stanley Fish, Fredric Jameson, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Richard Rorty. Wess analyzes the relation between Burke's dramatistic pentad of act, agent, scene, agency, and purpose and his four master tropes -- metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony.

In the third part, Booth mines his unpublished correspondence with Burke to demonstrate that Burke is a coy theologian. Michael Feehan discusses Burke's revelation in a 1983 interview that rather than rebounding from a naive kind of Marxism in Permanence and Change, he was rebounding from what he had "learned as a Christian Scientist".

Whether politically, socially, economically, or psychologically, postmodern institutions attempt to influence their environments through the use of rhetoric in their public relations campaigns. As corporations increasingly dominate the public discourse we experience daily, it becomes increasingly important to understand how that discourse operates, and to become more informed creators and consumers of institutional rhetoric. This volume examines the theoretical bases and practical effects of a variety of public relations campaigns. The contributors demonstrate that rhetorical inquiry is a viable and underrated approach to explaining the influence of public relations campaigns. Cases analyzed in the book range from those of national scope (e.g., Mobil Oil's "Observations" campaign of the 1970s and 1980s), to studies of targeted influence (e.g., corporate recruitment videos), to cases of internal relations (e.g., issues management during corporate mergers), to studies of local situations (e.g., theanatomy of,a local ballot issue campaign). While the various contributors employ a broad range of rhetorical methods and analysis, the discussions remain approachable and understandable for students and professionals alike.

In this lucid and innovative work, Krista Ratcliffe successfully extrapolates rhetorical theories from three feminist writers not generally thought of as rhetoricians. Ratcliffe's skillful use of her methodology demonstrates a new model for examining women's texts. Her work situates Woolf's, Daly's, and Rich's feminist theories of rhetoric within current conversations about feminist pedagogies, particularly the interweavings of critical thinking, reading, and writing. Ratcliffe concludes with an application to teaching. This well-reasoned and convincing study will appeal to a widely varied audience: women in rhetoric and composition who feel that traditional theories do not speak to them; teachers of rhetorical history who want to explore gender concepts; composition teachers who want to become more aware of gender differences and pedagogical strategies to accommodate these differences; literary theorists and speech communication scholars who wish to track new methodologies for examining gender concerns; women's studies scholars who want to continue the examination of how language constructs and reflects patriarchy; and other students and scholars who simply are interested in theories of rhetoric, feminism, and pedagogy.

Johnson demonstrates that after the Civil War, non-academic or "parlor" traditions of rhetorical performance helped to sustain the icon of the white middle-class woman as queen of her domestic sphere by promoting a code of rhetorical behavior for women that required the performance of conventional femininity.