Autism is a profoundly rhetorical phenomenon. And all--parents, educators, caregivers, policymakers, the public, and autistic people themselves--would be significantly empowered to understand and respond to it as such. In the continuing absence of stable scientific or medical knowledge about autism, one needs to shine a bright and insistent light…

It is hard to think of a writer whose work has been more prominently upheld as an example of bad academic writing than the philosopher and literary theorist Judith Butler. In 1998, Butler was awarded first prize in the annual Bad Writing Contest established by the journal "Philosophy and Literature," and early in 1999, was lampooned in an…

The history of American imperialism, as well as China's strong presence on the contemporary global scene, should encourage American scholars of rhetoric to look beyond the nation-state and study other rhetorical traditions such as Chinese practices of argument. A debate during the Western Han dynasty over the country's economic policies…

The study of bullshit, what the author calls "taurascatics", has been making a splash of late. It was Harry Frankfurt who tossed the stone: his essay "On Bullshit" came out in "Raritan" in 1986, hit the "New York Times" best-seller list as a book in 1995, and has been adopted, adapted, and criticized across the academy since. The ripples spread…

Analyzes the power of fiction to override fact in politics and in commercial advertising. (DD)

A symposium in the November 2006 issue of "College English" addresses the question, "What should college English be?" In this article, the author presents his answer to this question--it should be a functional approach to English studies. By English studies he means everything that is done in English departments. Most English departments teach…

Discusses students' obligation to fairly state positions antagonistic to their own (the "toto" principle) when writing argument essays, and suggests ways to help students recognize their obligation. (DD)

Presents rhetorical invention as the process of finding the best available means of persuasion, not as generating the chaos upon which to make order. (DD)

Presents a definition for a formalist approach to teaching argument and discusses limitations and serious problems with this approach. Discusses "Antigone" as a representative text for teaching argument because it challenges the very possibility of argument. Proposes that literary texts such as "Antigone" be taught as…

Argues that Kenneth Burke used "The Interpretation of Dreams," as well as other works by Sigmund Freud, as a lesson on reading, taking over the central tropes of dreamwork and making them broadly dialectical rather than strictly psychoanalytic terms. Suggests that Freud's "tropology" of dreaming is crucial for reading Burke.…

Describes an assignment for an argumentation paper which helps students define their own position on controversial topics. (DD)

Discusses rhetoric as mirroring psychology. Examines Aristotle's three "pisteis"--the pathetic, logical, and ethical proofs, paralleling them to Freud's id, ego, and super-ego. Explores an adequate feminine psychology and a corresponding rhetoric. Outlines two models of persuasive discourse, the rational world paradigm and the narrative…

The Watergate tapes reveal that Nixon and his aides were the prime victims of their own rhetoric in that they began to believe what they tried to sell the public. (JH)

Argues that Sylvia Plath not only perceives the world as competing male and female languages, but attempts to write in the feminine. Discusses how "The Bell Jar" might define, as a solution to sociological and psychological problems of women, a language and art to secure women against male domination. (MS)

Argues that assignments to write about literature can help teach rhetoric" only if administered with emphasis on the special rhetorical problems they pose." (Author/RD)