Poroi
Not a member yet
250 research outputs found
Sort by
From Turns to Networks: Multiplicity in Rhetorical Agency
No full textThis article examines rhetorical agency by using advanced bibliometric methods, arguing for a refined approach that recognizes multiple forms of rhetorical agency. By employing methodologies from information science, this study also illuminates often-overlooked infrastructural dynamics among scholars, specifically in how scholarship has materialized and enforced through textual citations. The analysis supplements traditional historical narratives of theory, introducing a dynamic conceptualization of rhetorical agency as an interconnected network. This paper forwards a multifaceted understanding of rhetorical agency, envisioned as comprising at least five intertwined networks. This article consequently provides a novel approach for analyzing disciplinary history by considering how citationality carries material traces of the past
Collaboration as a Form of Institutional Critique
Get PDFHow do we move forward when the legality of teaching and learning about social justice research is called into question by the state? This article demonstrates the efficacy of collaboration as a form of institutional critique that made it possible to provide a comprehensive graduate education following the emergence of anti-DEI legislation in Florida. To teach and learn in a tumultuous legal landscape without sacrificing rigor, eliding DEI-oriented scholarship, or violating state law, we piloted a collaborative disciplinary meta-analysis project that enabled students to study social justice research along with the field’s other major research topics. This portable approach allowed us to meet the professional and ethical imperative to engage research that has been targeted by state officials but remains foundational for disciplinary expertise. It also demonstrates the futility of removing politically unfavorable scholarship from curricula. After sharing an overview of the results of our meta-analysis project, with a special focus on our field’s take on social justice and collaboration, we reflect on the rhetorical strategies those of us working in highly politicized educational climates have deployed to manage increased oversight from zealous state legislatures challenging the legitimacy of disciplinary expertise
Where Did the Rhetoric of Science Go? A Double Review of Landmark Essays on Rhetoric of Science, Case Studies and Issues and Methods, a Two Volume Edited Collection by Randy Harris.
Get PDFIn this review essay, we look back at the evolution of the rhetoric of science by reviewing the Case Studies and Issues and Methods volumes edited by Randy Harris. We conclude by reflecting on the past, present, and future of the discipline
Seeing as Making: Mediation, Rhetoric, and the Ultrasound Informed Consent Act
Get PDFHow do material and discursive arrangements, technologies and rhetoric, shape the subjects and objects of medical discourse (Scott & Melonçon, 2017; Selzer & Crowley, 1999)? How are the affordances of material and discursive arrangements seized by political actors? Tackling these and similar questions has been a growing preoccupation in the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine, where researchers have sought better ways of understanding the entanglements of the symbolic and material (Booher & Jung, 2018; Graham, 2009; Jack, 2019; Propen, 2018). A perspicuous case for this research is the Ultrasound Informed Consent Act (UICA), an amendment to the Public Health Service Act mandating that women receive an ultrasound and have its images described to them before having abortions. Three US states have a version of this law, with over twenty others having laws similar to the UICA (Guttmacher Institute, 2019, n.d.). Through this law, antiabortionists are able to construct a kairotic situation through the mediating capacity of ultrasound where they can use the actual state of affairs (a woman seeking an abortion) to argue through images for a possible future (a woman foregoing abortion). This article analyzes the UICA to understand how the political speech of antiabortionists enrolls the moralizing capacity of ultrasound to construct a kairotic situation to intervene in women’s pregnancies. Starting from studies of actor-networks (Latour, 1983;1999a) and technological mediation (Verbeek, 2011; 2015), and departing to feminist rhetorical science studies (Booher & Jung, 2018; Frost & Haas, 2017) and rhetorical approaches to imagery and visualization (Propen, 2018; Roby, 2016; Webb, 2009), I argue that not only do translation processes and technical mediation distribute agencies; they construct the very situations where agencies are constituted. This study can widen our understanding of how political entities appropriate the rhetorical capacities of technology and discourse to translate their politics into legislature
Binding Brain, Body and World: Pattern as a Figure of Knowledge in Andy Clark’s Work on Predictive Processing
Get PDFOver the past two decades, the predictive processing (PP) framework has emerged as an immensely influential research paradigm in cognitive science and beyond. This article analyzes the critical role that the notion of ‘pattern’ plays in the agenda-setting work of philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark on PP and considers the project to develop the framework into a unified theory of the embodied mind. It argues that pattern contributes to this project not primarily as a full-fledged concept but rather as a figure of knowledge that shapes PP theory at a rhetorical and aesthetic level. The article offers a definition of figures of knowledge as a critical concept and suggests to apply it more broadly to the study of pattern as “keyword of our times” (Franco Moretti)
Rhetorical Ethnography and the Virtue of Vulnerability in Transdisciplinary Research Methods
Get PDFThis paper considers some of the ways ethnography has been adopted in transdisciplinary rhetoric and also considers theoretical questions internal to rhetorical ethnography that can help transdisciplinary scholars navigate limitations and potential liabilities inherent in transdisciplinary work. I seek to more carefully consider transdisciplinary features of rhetoric though ethnographic study which, in its position as studying cultures both familiar and foreign to the researcher, mirror many of the disciplinary relations expressed in Marilyn Stember’s topology of disciplinarity. Noting that transdisciplinary rhetoricians engage with scholarship by experts in other fields, an ethnographic approach to transdisciplinary rhetoric recognizes that disciplinary experts might have expert knowledge that they struggle to communicate to non-experts, and rhetoricians should tread carefully in offering solutions to these communicative difficulties. I suggest rhetorical vulnerability and self-awareness expressed through standpoint as two strategies scholars of transdisciplinary rhetoric can use to adopt stances of transparent subjectivity rather than feigning scientific objectivity
Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia As the Fairy Tale of Shock Economy
No full textIn this essay, I examine the film Johanna d’Arc ofMongolia (1989), made by German director Ulrike Ottinger in the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I argue that it can be read as an anti-authoritarian articulation of a desire for radical public spheres better suited to serve minority interests, particularly at a time of drastic transformations of social and political conditions. The film’s narrative ambiguity should be read in the rhetorical situation of radical fairy tales in West Germany and their attempt to develop counterpublic spheres to resist the organization of experiences by the consciousness industry. Ottinger’s film, while shot mostly in Inner Mongolia during the crucial year for the reunification of Germany, is far from being escapist. The shock of the displaced lower-class heroine, so different from the “happy ending” imperative of traditional fairy tales, unveils the fiction of a neoliberal economy that considers people and land as mere commodities. Like Karl Polanyi, Ottinger wants to empower people to question the assumption that they had to accept major displacements and flexibility in the name of a self-regulating market. The fairy tale, as a contested genre related to education, is a primary field for this struggle
The Gendered Ethos of Pseudoscience: Feminized Discourse on Food Safety in the Blogosphere
Get PDFIn this paper, we explore the gendered aspects of scientific controversy in the digital age. This project makes use of Leah Ceccarelli’s seminal work on manufactured scientific controversy by considering its implications for the discourse on GMOs and food additives published on digital food and lifestyle blogs. We perform a discourse analysis of several blogs to look at the ways that gendered online discourse and performance influences modern anti-science rhetoric, particularly that which emanates from the sphere colloquially known as crunchy living. We look at the ways the intimate and personal feminine style of digital platforms offer experiential knowledge as a substitute for science. In the current political climate of alternative facts and fake news, this study leads to broader implications about the impact of gendered discourse on the assessment of credibility in online sources
Representing Rhetoric: Post-truth and the Example of Thank You for Smoking
Get PDFGrounding assumptions about the function of public discourse are critical to the formation and functioning of society. One way of examining those assumptions is through analyzing how public discourse gets represented in popular culture. Patricia Roberts-Miller’s (2004) taxonomy of models of public spheres serves as a template for the analysis of the film Thank You for Smoking (2006). This analysis demonstrates how the film both advocates for and contributes to the evolution of a post-truth public sphere by obscuring the historical controversy over tobacco. Truth and knowledge are not merely hidden or ignored but neutralized, and “spin” is therefore normalized and ultimately justified as a necessary protection of individual rights in a libertarian democracy
The Relevance of Discursive Strategies to Information Evaluation Practices
No full textRecent work across disciplines has examined the current post-truth climate and various types of information disorders which have permeated the internet. Scholars have made significant progress in defining and theorizing information literacy and its various aspects, as well as in designing programs to help students acquire the relevant skills for evaluating information. Nevertheless, further exploration is needed, for example to understand the roles of criteria in information evaluation. The present study draws on scholarship in discourse and rhetoric studies to suggest how discursive strategies, a key concept in these convergent areas, can inform approaches to information evaluation. To illustrate this improved approach, this study explores the case of a recent piece of fake news that involves both text and image and has circulated widely as a digital flyer on social media