Most every writing teacher can relate to the curse of reading yet another incoherent essay, the contents of which resemble an unorganized junk drawer of thoughts. Such essays cry out for a main idea. The remedy is a thesis, and teachers rightly take pains to help students discover this. Yet in spite of this, writing teachers ought to bear in mind…

This essay examines women's commencement addresses presented from 1910 to 1915 at Vassar College. These addresses are significant because they reveal the students' rhetorical education and the "available means" upon which these women drew in developing a public voice. By prompting reflection and the potential for change, the commencement…

This study investigates the outcomes of two novice preservice teachers' (PSTs') attempts at taking up the roles of critical guides (Damico & Apol, 2008) to mediate discussions about racism in response to President Barack Obama's (2008) campaign speech "A More Perfect Union." With the objective of teaching for social justice, these…

Parody and related forms of political humor are essential resources for sustaining democratic public culture. They do so by exposing the limits of public speech, transforming discursive demands into virtual images, setting those images before a carnivalesque audience, and celebrating social leveling while decentering all discourses within the…

This article presents a public speaking assignment that takes the study of rhetoric seriously. First, it shifts the approach from the common typology of informative, persuasive, and ceremonial speeches toward forensic, deliberative, and epideictic rhetoric. Second, this assignment takes rhetoric seriously by generating the understanding that all…

For generations, critics have dismissed James Forman's "Black Manifesto" as a rhetorical failure. Such judgments tend to focus on the prophetic and retributive registers of the speech and fail to account for the full range of its ironic structuration. By examining the complex interchange of prophetic, retributive, and tragic registers through…

This article presents the text of the author's address at the fifty-ninth annual convention of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) in March 2008. In her address, the author picks up strands of previous Chairs' addresses and weaves them through the fabric of her remarks. What she hopes will give sheen to the fabric is her…

Presents an edited transcript of a panel discussion on ghostwriting. Discusses the process of ghostwriting books and speeches; the relationship between writer and "client"; the ghostwriter's influence on policy; ethics and professionalism of ghostwriting; differences between ghostwriting and speech writing; the authenticity of…

Public memorial services held in New York City on September 11, 2002, marked the most important U.S. civic commemoration of the present era. Numerous popular and academic critics excoriated speakers on that day for commemorating the occasion with commemorative declamations instead of offering original speeches. This essay contends that assessing…

Examines Mario Cuomo's keynote address at the 1984 Democratic National Convention as a case study in rhetorical interaction. Argues that the keynote setting presented both generic and immediate constraints, which Cuomo resolved through a rhetorical strategy rooted in metaphor as an argumentative technique. (MM)

Analyzes speeches in which Reagan challenges the following convention: science will continue to create technologically advanced weapons against which no effective defense will be developed, making deterrence through an assured retaliatory capability the only possible defense. Textual analysis reveals how public discourse can achieve unities of…

Views Reagan's "Star Wars" address as part of the culturally evolving myth of the New Frontier. Discusses how the speech creates the illusion of both preserving and transcending science by (1) subordinating technical reasoning to prevent nuclear holocaust and (2) using technoscience to rescript history and remove temporal and spacial…

Reproduces portions of the first lecture given to the Philosophical Society of Aberdeen, Scotland--George Campbell's discussion of eloquence of 1758. Explains the importance of this document, asserting that it reveals the "belletristic" roots of Campbell's theory, and proves that his differentiation on the "ends" of speaking…

Analyzes selected speeches by feminists active in the early Afro-American protest, revealing differences in their rhetoric and that of White feminists of the period. Argues that a simultaneous analysis and synthesis is necessary to understand these differences. Illustrates speeches by Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, and Mary Church Terrell. (JD)

On June 11, 1962, President John F. Kennedy addressed the economy at Yale University. This essay explains the symbolic charge of his economic rhetoric, a persuasive campaign that enjoyed considerable success and marked the first time that a president took explicit responsibility for the nation's economic performance. I argue that the president…