Studies in Rhetoric and Commun – serie

The speeches in this collection are examples of the powerful expressions of both famous and lesser-known African Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries on issues including slavery and racial equality, women's rights, education, religion, immigration, socialism and war.

Reconstructing Argumentative Discourse analyzes argumentation in ordinary disputes. The analysis begins with an ideal model: a theoretical structure of discourse that might be used to resolve a dispute about the merits of two opposing cases. The ideal model does not describe actual argumentative practice. Argumentative discourse does not always seek genuine resolution and, when it does, the participants may not perform as ideal arguers. A central challenge for argumentation theory is to give an account of argumentation occurring under less-than-ideal conditions and conducted by less-than-ideal participants. The authors offer detailed analysis of argument in such contexts as ordinary conversation, third party dispute mediation, and religious confrontation. An adequate analytic approach to such forms of discourse, the authors argue, must offer critical insight into actual practice; must begin with a defensible normative standard against which practice can be compared; and must also offer an applicable analytic machinery for making the comparison, so its methods can be tailored to empirical circumstances. The authors position their study of argumentation within a general 'normative pragmatics' characterized by a dual commitment to usefulness and adequacy in description. A distinctive set of practical applications and a distinctive view of practicality follow from this approach, characterized not by the search for generalizable means-end relationships but by the development and testing of plans for making real argumentation look as much as possible like ideal argumentation. This book integrates for the first time the normative interest of dialectical theories of argumentation with the descriptive interests of the empirical study of everyday language use. This ambitious project is achieved by adopting a distinctively social and pragmatic view of argumentation - by seeing argumentation as a language activity structured for the function of resolving disagreements. The authors examine argumentation in a wide variety of contexts - including everyday conversation, campus evangelism, political speeches, newspaper letters to the editor, and the formal mediation of disputes. In doing so, they illustrate how to analyze the details of actual argumentation and tackle a variety of theoretical and methodological puzzles encountered in the effort to apply normative models to real life argumentation.

This collection argues that rhetorical history, both as a methodology and as a perspective, offers insights that are central to the study of communication and unavailable through other approaches. The current field of communication derives from the historical study of rhetoric. Over the last few decades, however, as the trend toward theoretical conceptions has driven analysis and as a host of \u0022isms\u0022 has defined criticism, communication studies have moved away from a predominantly historical perspective. Yet many scholars in the field continue to find benefits in rhetorical history. In the thirteen essays gathered here, eminent scholars address the ongoing dialogue over the regrounding of rhetorical study and the relationship between theory and history as well as history and criticism in the field. Some examine the conceptual issues involved in the juncture of rhetoric and history; others offer case studies, often based on research with primary documents, to illustrate the process and promise of rhetorical history. Collectively, their work tests theory and complements criticism while standing as a distinct and valid approach in and of itself. The conceptualizations and methodologies of rhetorical history will increase in significance during the burgeoning \u0022Communication Age\u0022 as we seek to cope with the present and prepare for the future by better understanding the past. This volume serves as an excellent overview of a recently neglected methodological approach and acts as the first step in ending that neglect.