Law students should be able to fathom the application of legal rules to specific cases and develop a consistent argumentation to support this interpretation by using logic. Different skills and competencies are required for each of these processes. Therefore, effective learning of Law must complement the necessary knowledge of Positive Law with a…

The current article approaches the issue of the persuasiveness of metaphors in The Prophet Muhammad's Tradition. The main concern of the article is to show that the Prophetic metaphors are discursively practiced by the Prophet for the function of persuading his audience to accept Islamic laws, and introduce rites and rituals, and to prohibit the…

A brief review of composition theory shows metaphor is often underused and misrepresented in the composition classroom. Approaches to teaching metaphor in composition courses do not go far enough in acknowledging the key role metaphor can play in argumentation, and very little composition theory heeds Andrea Lunsford's call to teach metaphor as…

Mary Brown recognised that her A-level students were finding extended writing difficult, particularly in terms of guiding the reader through the argument with appropriate "signposting". To help her students manage this, Brown devised a metaphor to represent the construction of a piece of argumentative writing which she deployed over a…

Throughout his administration, FDR engaged in a complex set of arguments that worked together to defend democracy in general as a viable form of government; American democracy as the highest expression of democratic government; the primacy of the federal government as the most efficient and effective locus of democratic power; and the executive…

The logic of political economy depends on a domestic metaphor, using the "oikos" or household as a model for the "polis." Historically, this metaphor has imagined citizens as the children of a paternal state. However during the 2008 housing crisis, this metaphor was turned upside down, depicting citizens as the parents of infantile state…

Faced with a racialized political crisis that threatened to derail his campaign to become the first African American president of the United States, Barack Obama delivered a speech on race titled "A More Perfect Union." He begins by portraying himself as an embodiment of double consciousness, but then invites his audience to share his…

Few contemporary scholars have explicitly discussed the relationship between love and rhetoric. This essay draws on the insights of Lacanian psychoanalysis to argue that rhetoricians have been reluctant to theorize love for two reasons: first, it is already implied in the widely accepted concept of identification; and second, any explicit…

As a rhetorical figure, the example is constitutively split between the structural vocations of the Greek "paradeigma" (emphasizing illumination and belonging) and the Latin "exemplum" (emphasizing detachment and exclusion). This bifurcation enables the example to function as a strategic resource of ambiguity. Christine de…

Leaders in any organization can usually see beyond their immediate surroundings and stir the consciousness, emotions, and energies of others to move in a similar direction. This paper suggests metaphor as a useful construct for understanding how people in schools respond to these elusive, yet persuasive leadership influences. Metaphoric languages…

Researchers studying science communication often examine how texts addressed to different audiences contribute to the formation of knowledge on a given issue. This article examines how arguments on scientific issues travel from text to text by considering how certain figures of speech persist from version to version. It uses a specialized genre of…

The environment is a ready-made subject in writing classrooms, and teachers at all levels are encouraging students to write about nature and environmental issues. Environmental issues provide a equitable meeting place for students from a variety of different backgrounds, interests, and ideologies. There are also many pedagogical advantages to…

In 2000, the Arizona Proposition 203 campaign gained overwhelming public approval by claiming that Arizona's bilingual education programs impeded English-language learning of language-minority students. Established within a context of educational and social antipathy, it is necessary to look at the impetus for language policies like Proposition…