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RFK: His Words for Our Times
by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.An inspiring collection of Robert Francis Kennedy’s most famous speeches accompanied by commentary from notable historians and public figures.Twenty-five years after Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, RFK: His Words for Our Times, a celebration of Kennedy’s life and legacy, was published to enormous acclaim. Now this classic volume has been thoroughly edited and updated. Through his own words we get a direct and intimate perspective on Kennedy’s views on civil rights, social justice, the war in Vietnam, foreign policy, the desirability of peace, the need to eliminate poverty, and the role of hope in American politics.Here, too, is evidence of the impact of those he knew and worked with, including his brother John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cesar Chavez, among others. The tightly curated collection also includes commentary about RFK’s legacy from major historians and public figures, among them Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Eric Garcetti, William Manchester, Elie Wiesel, and Desmond Tutu. Assembled with the full cooperation of the Kennedy family, RFK: His Words for Our Times is a potent reminder of Robert Kennedy’s ability to imagine a greater America—a faith and vision we could use today.“Themes include civil rights, mistrust of large government, citizen participation in local government, eliminating poverty, and ending the Vietnam War. The speeches demonstrate Kennedy’s skill at connecting with large, enthusiastic audiences with promises of hope and equality.” —Library Journal“A blueprint for the future.” —Vital Speeches
Rhetoric and Bricolage in European Politics and Beyond: The Political Mind in Action (Rhetoric, Politics and Society)
by Niilo Kauppi Kari PalonenThis book seeks to develop Rhetoric as a field of knowledge in an important new direction, European Union politics. The authors analyse what could be called a “European style of politics”: textual strategies and rhetorical styles evolving within and around the EU’s supranational and national institutions. By fusing rhetorical and sociological approaches, political thought and culture, the book contributes to the analysis of the ‘political’ as a way of thinking and judging the political aspect of any phenomena.
Rhetoric and Communication Perspectives on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault: Policy and Protocol Through Discourse (Routledge Studies in Technical Communication, Rhetoric, and Culture)
by Amy D. Propen Mary SchusterThis book brings rhetorical, legal, and professional communication perspectives to the discourse surrounding policy-making efforts within the United States around two types of violent crimes against women: domestic violence and sexual assault. The authors propose that such analysis adds to our understanding of rhetorical concepts such as kairos, risk perception, moral panic, genre analysis, and identity theory. Overall, the goal is to demonstrate how rhetorical, legal, and professional communication perspectives work together to illuminate public discourse and conflict in such complicated and ongoing dilemmas as how to aid victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, and how to manage the offenders of such crimes—social and cultural problems that continue to perplex the legal system and the social environment.
Rhetoric And Marxism
by James AuneThis book is the first extended study about the relationship between Marxism and the rhetorical tradition. Aune suggests that the classical texts of Marx and Engels wavered incoherently between positivist and romantic views of language and communication–views made possible by the decline of the rhetorical tradition as a cultural force. Though Western Marxism attempted to resolve this incoherence, it lacked a satisfactory theory of its own. Aune argues that the liberating impulse of Marxist tradition, ultimately, would be better served if we paid closer attention to the rhetorical history of the labor movement and to the role of public discourse in arousing or quieting revolutionary consciousness.
Rhetoric And Reality: Presidential Commissions And The Making Of Public Policy
by Terrence R TutchingsSince 1945, the role of the president in shaping domestic and foreign policy has changed dramatically. Though the prodigious growth of the federal bureaucracy under the Executive Branch reflects much of this change, bureaucratic response to the major issues of the past three decades has been ineffective or nonexistent, and a notable parallel development has been the increasing use of public commissions in the policymaking process. Dr. Tutchings studies more than 100 public commissions using a model of the policymaking process that includes demands, decision and information costs, and policy results and outcomes. Reviewing the results of the commissions as reflected in presidential support of recommendations (via proposed legislation) and in congressional response, he notes that their membership has typically been dominated by government/corporate elites: as this membership has become more pluralistic, there has been a sharp decline in the contributions of the commissions to the policymaking process. Perhaps the most significant contribution of the book is its detailed development of the concept of rhetorical policy as a first step in the policymaking process.
Rhetoric and Reality on the U.S.—Mexico Border: Place, Politics, Home
by K. Jill FleurietStemming from four years of ethnographic research, media analysis of over 750 national news articles published in the 2010s, and decades of the author’s professional and personal immersion in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, Rhetoric and Reality illuminates a place at the heart of our national conversation: the U.S.-Mexico border. K. Jill Fleuriet contrasts the rhetoric of national political and media discourse with that of local border leaders in economics, health care, politics, education, law enforcement, philanthropy, and activism. As she deconstructs the common narrative of a border in need of external intervention to control corruption, poverty, sickness, and violence, Fleuriet engagingly illustrates the range of regional organizing, local development strategies, and community responses in the borderlands that ultimately situate the Rio Grande Valley as the “true North” of the U.S. national compass—where the Valley goes, the rest of the country soon will follow. Rhetoric and Reality asks us to question our own assumptions, especially about those areas that drive national decisions about resource allocation, economic development and national security.“Rhetoric and Reality is an important ethnographic study of the deeply misunderstood, increasingly vilified, Rio Grande Valley located on the Texas-Mexico border. Fleuriet presents a balanced counter-narrative that that shows the region as one of growth, innovation, complexity, and rich with meaning. Rhetoric and Reality is an excellent example of place-based, reflexive scholarship appropriate for use in courses on border theory, applied anthropology, and research methods. Written clearly and crisply with a wide readership in mind, Rhetoric and Reality is mandatory reading for those wanting to better understand the US-Mexico border region and the people who live there.”--Margaret A. Graham, Professor and Chair, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, USA“This is an important book, as it describes life in the Rio Grande Valley rather than ‘on the border.’ The notion of ‘the border’ as an open range in need of external help is challenged, as the author illustrates the wide range of leadership and programmatic change occurring in the Rio Grande Valley.”--Roberto R. Alvarez, Professor Emeritus of Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego, USA
Rhetoric in British Politics and Society
by Judi Atkins Alan Finlayson James Martin Nick TurnbullAlthough the art of rhetoric is central to the practice of politics it also plays an important role in civic and private life. Using Aristotelian notions of ethos, pathos and logos, this collection offers engaging discussions on everything from Prime Minister's Questions and Welsh devolution to political satire and the rhetoric of cultural racism.
Rhetoric, Media, and the Narratives of US Foreign Policy: Making Enemies (Routledge Studies in US Foreign Policy)
by Adam LuskRhetoric, Media and the Narratives of US Foreign Policy: Making Enemies studies the process of communicating threats to the US public and explores when and why the American public believes another country or regime is a threat. Through a comparative and historical study, the author focuses on how the media environment enables and constrains rhetorical strategies deployed to construct, reproduce, and change narratives about a threat. Recent literature on threat inflation, securitization, and critical security studies returned to the concept of "threat." Building on this renewed conceptual attention, this book examines why and how policy makers and other public figures, in particular the President, convince the public about a threat and will be of interest to students and academics in the disciplines of political science, international relations, foreign policy, security studies and contemporary history.
A Rhetoric of Aesthetic Power: Moving Forms (Rhetoric, Politics and Society)
by Christian KockThis book offers a theory of those formal properties of art that are apt to afford strong aesthetic experience – a project resembling Aristotle’s in the Poetics, where he analysed structures in tragedies that condition the “peculiar pleasure” of tragedy. However, the book’s scope cuts across all genres of literature and also includes classical music – the formal art par excellence. Drawing on a wide array of recent theoretical work and empirical evidence, the book closely analyses dozens of examples of both art forms. Besides Aristotle, major inspiration comes from two modern master thinkers: the linguist Roman Jakobson, who defined the “poetic function” of language, and the rhetorician Kenneth Burke, who proposed a “psychological” concept of form. Throughout, the book argues for aesthetic experience as an end in itself and a component of quality of life, one to which everyone should have access – rather than just a means to other ends.
The Rhetoric Of Agitation And Control
by John W. Bowers Donovan J. Ochs Richard J. Jensen David P. SchulzThe Rhetoric of Agitation and Control provides a framework for the study of agitation and responses to that agitation. The third edition offers a profile of past and current movements, such as the street theatre of Chicago in 1968 and the innovative and technological rhetorical techniques found in the Battle in Seattle. The modus operandi of today's protests continues to evolve from that of the 1960s and 1970s.
The Rhetoric of Agitation and Control (2nd edition)
by John Bowers Donovan Ochs Richard JensenThis text provides students with the basis for understanding the instrumental and symbolic acts underlying agitation and control.
The Rhetoric of Inquiry in International Relations: A Hermeneutic Investigation into the Forms of Argumentation in International Relations Meta-Theory (New International Relations)
by Torsten MichelThis book argues that our current lack of recognising and understanding the different forms meta-theorising takes hampers the ways in which fruitful engagement between meta-theories can be conducted. It proposes a radical break with the ways in which meta-theorising in International Relations (IR) has so far been understood, and instead suggests a dyadic approach: a rhetoric of inquiry that investigates the diverging forms of argumentation currently present in IR meta-theorising and a conversational ethic that can help steer meta-theoretical engagements across existing divides in more productive ways. The central questions are as follows: where meta-theorising should go from here in order to contribute to the analysis of an ever more complex world? Can we develop ways that allow the practice of meta-theorising to channel and consolidate the multiplicity of its debates and contentions to strengthen our understanding of world politics, and if so, how? It will be of general interest in all theory and methodology courses offered at undergraduate and postgraduate levels as well as to academics working in the area of meta-theory, international political thought, normative theory as well as IR theory in its various manifestations.
Rhetoric of InSecurity: The Language of Danger, Fear and Safety in National and International Contexts (Law, Language and Communication)
by Victoria BainesThis book demands that we question what we are told about security, using tools we have had for thousands of years. The work considers the history of security rhetoric in a number of distinct but related contexts, including the United States’ security strategy, the "war" on Big Tech, and current concerns such as cybersecurity. Focusing on the language of security discourse, it draws common threads from the ancient world to the present day and the near future. The book grounds recent comparisons of Donald Trump to the Emperor Nero in a linguistic evidence base. It examines the potential impact on society of policy-makers’ emphasis on the novelty of cybercrime, their likening of the internet to the Wild West, and their claims that criminals have "gone dark". It questions governments’ descriptions of technology companies in words normally reserved for terrorists, and asks who might benefit. Interdisciplinary in approach, the book builds on existing literature in the Humanities and Social Sciences, most notably studies on rhetoric in Greco-Roman texts, and on the articulation of security concerns in law, international relations, and public policy contexts. It adds value to this body of research by offering new points of comparison, and a fresh but tried and tested way of looking at problems that are often presented as unprecedented. It will be essential to legal and policy practitioners, students of Law, Politics, Media, and Classics, and all those interested in employing critical thinking.
The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation (Studies in Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy #1)
by David JohnstonThe description for this book, The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation, will be forthcoming.
The Rhetoric of Mao Zedong: Transforming China and Its People (Studies in Rhetoric & Communication)
by Xing LuA thorough examination of the Chinese leader's speeches and writings that reshaped a nation's cultureMao Zedong fundamentally transformed China from a Confucian society characterized by hierarchy and harmony into a socialist state guided by communist ideologies of class struggle and radicalization. It was a transformation made possible largely by Mao's rhetorical ability to attract, persuade, and mobilize millions of Chinese people. Xing Lu's book, Rhetoric of Mao Zedong, analyzes Mao's speeches and writings over a span of sixty years, tracing the sources and evolution of Mao's discourse, analyzing his skills as a rhetor and mythmaker, and assessing his symbolic power and continuing presence in contemporary China. Lu observes that Mao's rhetorical legacy has been commoditized, culturally consumed, and politically appropriated since his death.Applying both Western rhetorical theories and Chinese rhetorical concepts to reach a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of his rhetorical legacy, Lu shows how Mao employed a host of rhetorical appeals and strategies drawn from Chinese tradition and how he interpreted the discourse of Marxism-Leninism to serve foundational themes of his message. She traces the historical contexts in which these themes, his philosophical orientations, and his political views were formed and how they transformed China and Chinese people. Lu also examines how certain ideas are promoted, modified, and appropriated in Mao's rhetoric. Mao's appropriation of Marxist theory of class struggle, his campaigns of transforming common people into new communist advocates, his promotion of Chinese nationalism, and his stand on China's foreign policy all contributed to and were responsible for reshaping Chinese thought patterns, culture, and communication behaviors.
The Rhetoric of Plato's Republic: Democracy and the Philosophical Problem of Persuasion
by James L. KastelyPlato isn't exactly thought of as a champion of democracy, and perhaps even less as an important rhetorical theorist. In this book, James L. Kastely recasts Plato in just these lights, offering a vivid new reading of one of Plato's most important works: the Republic. At heart, Kastely demonstrates, the Republic is a democratic epic poem and pioneering work in rhetorical theory. Examining issues of justice, communication, persuasion, and audience, he uncovers a seedbed of theoretical ideas that resonate all the way up to our contemporary democratic practices. As Kastely shows, the Republic begins with two interrelated crises: one rhetorical, one philosophical. In the first, democracy is defended by a discourse of justice, but no one can take this discourse seriously because no one can see--in a world where the powerful dominate the weak--how justice is a value in itself. That value must be found philosophically, but philosophy, as Plato and Socrates understand it, can reach only the very few. In order to reach its larger political audience, it must become rhetoric; it must become a persuasive part of the larger culture--which, at that time, meant epic poetry. Tracing how Plato and Socrates formulate this transformation in the Republic, Kastely isolates a crucial theory of persuasion that is central to how we talk together about justice and organize ourselves according to democratic principles.
The Rhetoric of Plato's Republic: Democracy and the Philosophical Problem of Persuasion
by James L. KastelyPlato isn’t exactly thought of as a champion of democracy, and perhaps even less as an important rhetorical theorist. In this book, James L. Kastely recasts Plato in just these lights, offering a vivid new reading of one of Plato’s most important works: the Republic. At heart, Kastely demonstrates, the Republic is a democratic epic poem and pioneering work in rhetorical theory. Examining issues of justice, communication, persuasion, and audience, he uncovers a seedbed of theoretical ideas that resonate all the way up to our contemporary democratic practices. As Kastely shows, the Republic begins with two interrelated crises: one rhetorical, one philosophical. In the first, democracy is defended by a discourse of justice, but no one can take this discourse seriously because no one can see—in a world where the powerful dominate the weak—how justice is a value in itself. That value must be found philosophically, but philosophy, as Plato and Socrates understand it, can reach only the very few. In order to reach its larger political audience, it must become rhetoric; it must become a persuasive part of the larger culture—which, at that time, meant epic poetry. Tracing how Plato and Socrates formulate this transformation in the Republic, Kastely isolates a crucial theory of persuasion that is central to how we talk together about justice and organize ourselves according to democratic principles.
The Rhetoric of Reaction
by Albert O. HirschmanWith engaging wit and subtle irony, Albert Hirschman maps the diffuse and treacherous world of reactionary rhetoric in which conservative public figures, thinkers, and polemicists have been arguing against progressive agendas and reforms for the past two hundred years. Hirschman draws his examples from three successive waves of reactive thought that arose in response to the liberal ideas of the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, to democratization and the drive toward universal suffrage in the nineteenth century, and to the welfare state in our own century. In each case he identifies three principal arguments invariably used: (1) the perversity thesis, whereby any action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order is alleged to result in the exact opposite of what was intended; (2) the futility thesis, which predicts that attempts at social transformation will produce no effects whatever--will simply be incapable of making a dent in the status quo; (3) the jeopardy thesis, holding that the cost of the proposed reform is unacceptable because it will endanger previous hard-won accomplishments. He illustrates these propositions by citing writers across the centuries from Alexis de Tocqueville to George Stigler, Herbert Spencer to Jay Forrester, Edmund Burke to Charles Murray. Finally, in a lightning turnabout, he shows that progressives are frequently apt to employ closely related rhetorical postures, which are as biased as their reactionary counterparts. For those who aspire to the genuine dialogue that characterizes a truly democratic society, Hirschman points out that both types of rhetoric function, in effect, as contraptions designed to make debate impossible. In the process, his book makes an original contribution to democratic thought. The Rhetoric of Reaction is a delightful handbook for all discussions of public affairs, the welfare state, and the history of social, economic, and political thought, whether conducted by ordinary citizens or academics.
The Rhetoric of Terror: Reflections on 9/11 and the War on Terror
by Marc RedfieldThe terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, did symbolic as well as literal damage. A trace of this cultural shock echoes in the American idiom “9/11”: a bare name-date conveying both a trauma (the unspeakable happened then) and a claim on our knowledge. In the first of the two interlinked essays making up The Rhetoric of Terror, Marc Redfield proposes the notion of “virtual trauma” to describe the cultural wound that this name-date both deflects and relays. Virtual trauma describes the shock of an event at once terribly real and utterly mediated. In consequence, a tormented self-reflexivity has tended to characterize representations of 9/11 in texts, discussions, and films, such as World Trade Center and United 93. In the second half of the book, Redfield examines the historical and philosophical infrastructure of the notion of “war on terror.” Redfield argues that the declaration of war on terror is the exemplary postmodern sovereign speech act: it unleashes war as terror and terror as war, while remaining a crazed, even in a certain sense fictional performative utterance. Only a pseudosovereign—the executive officer of the world’s superpower—could have declared this absolute, phantasmatic, yet terribly damaging war. Though politicized terror and absolute war have their roots in the French Revolution and the emergence of the modern nation-state, Redfield suggests that the idea of a war on terror relays the complex, spectral afterlife of sovereignty in an era of biopower, global capital, and telecommunication. A moving, wide-ranging, and rigorous meditation on the cultural tragedy of our era, The Rhetoric of Terror also unfolds as an act of mourning for Jacques Derrida. Derrida’s groundbreaking philosophical analysis of iterability—iterability as the exposure to repetition with a difference elsewhere that makes all technics, signification, and psychic life possible—helps us understand why questions of mediation and aesthetics so rapidly become so fraught in our culture; why efforts to repress our essential political, psychic, and ontological vulnerability generate recursive spasms of violence; why ethical living-together involves uninsurable acts of hospitality. The Rhetoric of Terror closes with an affirmation of eirenic cosmopolitanism.
Rhetoric, Politics and Popularity in Pre-Revolutionary England
by Markku PeltonenRhetoric, Politics and Popularity in Pre-Revolutionary England provides a completely new account of the political thought and culture of Elizabethan and early Stuart England. It examines the centrality of humanist rhetoric in the pre-revolutionary educational system and its vital contribution to the political culture of the period. Humanism, Markku Peltonen argues, was crucial to the development of the participatory character of English politics as schoolboys were taught how to speak about taxation and foreign policy, liberty and tyranny. A series of case studies illustrates how pre-revolutionary Englishmen used the rhetorical tools their schoolmasters had taught them in political and parliamentary debates. The common people and the multitude were the orator's chief audience and eloquence was often seen as a popular art. But there were also those who followed these developments with growing dismay and Peltonen examines further the ways in which populist elements in political rhetoric were questioned in pre-revolutionary England.
Rhetoric vs. Reality: What We Know and What We Need to Know About Vouchers and Charter Schools
by Dominic Brewer Michael Timpane Karen Ross Brian GillHow can the education of our nation's children be improved? Vouchers and charter schools aim to improve education by providing families with more choice in the schooling of their children and by decentralizing the provision of educational services. While supporters argue that school choice is essential to rescue children from failing schools, opponents claim that it may destroy America's public education system. The authors undertake an exhaustive and critical view of the evidence on vouchers and charter schools. The book is a useful, unbiased primer for all those interested in this controversial topic.
Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation: Rhetorical Citizenship And Public Deliberation (Rhetoric and Democratic Deliberation #3)
by Christian Kock Lisa VilladsenCitizenship has long been a central topic among educators, philosophers, and political theorists. Using the phrase “rhetorical citizenship” as a unifying perspective, Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation aims to develop an understanding of citizenship as a discursive phenomenon, arguing that discourse is not prefatory to real action but in many ways constitutive of civic engagement. To accomplish this, the book brings together, in a cross-disciplinary effort, contributions by scholars in fields that rarely intersect. For the most part, discussions of citizenship have focused on aspects that are central to the “liberal” tradition of social thought—that is, questions of the freedoms and rights of citizens and groups. This collection gives voice to a “republican” conception of citizenship. Seeing participation and debate as central to being a citizen, this tradition looks back to the Greek city-states and republican Rome. Citizenship, in this sense of the word, is rhetorical citizenship. Rhetoric is thus at the core of being a citizen. Aside from the editors, the contributors are John Adams, Paula Cossart, Jonas Gabrielsen, Jette Barnholdt Hansen, Kasper Møller Hansen, Sine Nørholm Just, Ildikó Kaposi, William Keith, Bart van Klink, Marie Lund Klujeff, Manfred Kraus, Oliver W. Lembcke, Berit von der Lippe, James McDonald, Niels Møller Nielsen, Tatiana Tatarchevskiy, Italo Testa, Georgia Warnke, Kristian Wedberg, and Stephen West.
Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation (Rhetoric and Democratic Deliberation)
by Christian Kock Lisa S. VilladsenCitizenship has long been a central topic among educators, philosophers, and political theorists. Using the phrase “rhetorical citizenship” as a unifying perspective, Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation aims to develop an understanding of citizenship as a discursive phenomenon, arguing that discourse is not prefatory to real action but in many ways constitutive of civic engagement. To accomplish this, the book brings together, in a cross-disciplinary effort, contributions by scholars in fields that rarely intersect. For the most part, discussions of citizenship have focused on aspects that are central to the “liberal” tradition of social thought—that is, questions of the freedoms and rights of citizens and groups. This collection gives voice to a “republican” conception of citizenship. Seeing participation and debate as central to being a citizen, this tradition looks back to the Greek city-states and republican Rome. Citizenship, in this sense of the word, is rhetorical citizenship. Rhetoric is thus at the core of being a citizen. Aside from the editors, the contributors are John Adams, Paula Cossart, Jonas Gabrielsen, Jette Barnholdt Hansen, Kasper Møller Hansen, Sine Nørholm Just, Ildikó Kaposi, William Keith, Bart van Klink, Marie Lund Klujeff, Manfred Kraus, Oliver W. Lembcke, Berit von der Lippe, James McDonald, Niels Møller Nielsen, Tatiana Tatarchevskiy, Italo Testa, Georgia Warnke, Kristian Wedberg, and Stephen West.
A Rhetorical Crime: Genocide in the Geopolitical Discourse of the Cold War (Genocide, Political Violence, Human Rights)
by Anton Weiss-Wendt Douglas Irvin-EricksonThe Genocide Convention was drafted by the United Nations in the late 1940s, as a response to the horrors of the Second World War. But was the Genocide Convention truly effective at achieving its humanitarian aims, or did it merely exacerbate the divisive rhetoric of Cold War geopolitics?A Rhetorical Crime shows how genocide morphed from a legal concept into a political discourse used in propaganda battles between the United States and the Soviet Union. Over the course of the Cold War era, nearly eighty countries were accused of genocide, and yet there were few real-time interventions to stop the atrocities committed by genocidal regimes like the Cambodian Khmer Rouge. Renowned genocide scholar Anton Weiss-Wendt employs a unique comparative approach, analyzing the statements of Soviet and American politicians, historians, and legal scholars in order to deduce why their moral posturing far exceeded their humanitarian action.
Rhetorical Criticism, Second Edition: Perspectives In Action (Communication, Media, and Politics)
by Jim A. KuypersThis text provides a thorough, accessible, and well-grounded introduction to the breadth of approaches and perspectives comprising contemporary rhetorical criticism.