In January 2015, President Obama captured headlines in the US by announcing America's College Promise (ACP), a policy that would reverse four decades of privatisation in higher education by making community colleges 'tuition-free'. This research explores the conversation that unfolded across the Facebook pages of various media sources. Key phrases…

Drawing from a social constructionist perspective to written scholarly communication, this paper argues that training in academic writing for students in higher education especially in second language contexts should go beyond emphasis on grammatical correctness and paragraphing strategies, and also focus on the rhetorical character of academic…

Public rhetoric pedagogy can benefit from an ecological perspective that sees change as advocated not through a single document but through multiple mundane and monumental texts. This article summarizes various approaches to rhetorical ecology, offers an ecological read of the Montgomery bus boycotts, and concludes with pedagogical insights on a…

This paper deals with interpersonality in research article abstracts analysed in terms of interactional metadiscourse. The evolution in the distribution of three prominent interactional markers comprised in Hyland's (2005a) model, viz. hedges, boosters and attitude markers, is investigated in three decades of abstract writing in the field of…

Is it feasible to hold concurrent, small-group, peer-managed discussions in large elementary school classes? We sought an initial answer to this question in a fifth-grade class in Hefei, China. The 52 students in the class were divided into seven small groups. The seven groups held four simultaneous discussions without immediate supervision or…

Argues that rhetorical theory needs to keep alive competing concepts of discourse communities, so that alternatives exist in the description and analysis of discourse practices. Proposes distinguishing between two kinds of discourse communities--the local and the global--so that rhetorical analysis can achieve the necessary critical edge,…

Research articles and research theses constitute two key genres used by scientific communities for the dissemination and ratification of knowledge. Both genres are produced at advanced stages of individuals' enculturation in disciplinary communities present original research aim to persuade the academic community to accept new knowledge claims,…

A discourse analysis of a user-centered library and information science text determined that users and librarians were positioned in an unequal power relationship. Calls for critical reflexivity in how scholars and practitioners of library and information science construct the identities of people as information seekers and users. (59 references)…

Recounts an earlier case analysis describing ethical differences in collectivist and individualistic rhetorics experienced by a writer in a literature seminar and a public relations office. Examines how this analysis is problemmatized by alternative interpretations demonstrating how collectivist rhetoric practiced by researchers involves the…

In this paper the archeology of social justice is described as discourses of practices concerning Swedish ways of dealing with gender equality in compulsory school. The paper begins with some recent developments in Sweden that are important for the theme; it continues with the rhetoric in some relevant acts, government bills, and national…

An updated version of a 1984 publication, this 49-item annotated bibliography focuses on rhetorical analysis of American feminist rhetoric published in communication journals. The selections date from 1962 to 1988. (NKA)

Describes students' attempts to use rhetorical analysis to study the professional communities they intend to enter. Asks whether analyzing discourse conventions can help students feel like initiates in their chosen profession, and explores how such analyses might contribute to writing-across-the-curriculum as a whole. (RS)

This paper contends that rhetoric is a force for social change. It also contends that the study of persuasive discourse--how it works, what gives it force--is rhetoric. Pointing out that in the past "persuasive discourse" has meant public discourse of various kinds but that nowadays scholars usually expand the category to include…

The category of the social increasingly informs the way people think about rhetoric. The foregrounding of the social has a two-fold origin in an uneasy relationship between poststructuralism and sociolinguistics. Poststructuralism has provided a strong version of the hypothesis that language is determinative. Sociolinguistics has established that…

A study of the discourse of book reviews in several academic disciplines examines how interaction of text and context varies across disciplines. Sixty academic book reviews in linguistics, chemistry, and economics were analyzed for rhetorical structure and for the communicative goal of the genre, that of evaluating knowledge production. The book…