A recurring puzzle in Aristotle's "Rhetoric" is the book's ethical stance; Aristotle gives practical advice on the use of persuasive discourse and intends it to be used in association with virtue, although the two seem to be separable. However, persuasion and virtue in Aristotle's theory of rhetoric have connections deriving from the…

Like other political speakers who have drawn on the personification, identification, and dramatic encounter images of mythology to pressure and persuade audiences, Jimmy Carter evoked the myths of the hero, the American Dream, and the ideal political process in his presidential nomination acceptance speech. By stressing his unknown status, his…

Because children are exposed to highly professional sales pitches on television and because the old material produced by the Institute of Propaganda Analysis is outdated and in error, a new tool for the analysis of propaganda and persuasion is called for. Such a tool is the intensify/downplay pattern analysis chart, which includes the basic…

An important area for communication researchers has been the relationship between persuasive messages and their impact on attitudes, beliefs, and behavior. A model is presented to clarify the relationship between persuasive messages and attitudes. In an effort to establish the validity of the model, six hypotheses are set forth concerning the…

Carl Rogers' approach to communication has implications for the rhetorician and the teacher of college composition. The qualities of respect, restraint, neutrality, and understanding, when applied to written and oral discourse, can provide an effective alternative to polemical argumentation. The detatchment and empathy of the Rogerian style is…

Robert G. Ingersoll exerted considerable social impact on American culture, employing rhetorical persuasion to champion the free thought movement of the late 1880's. Primarily concerned with advocating the principle of individual freedom of thought and expression in religious life, he enraged his contemporary churchmen who were devoted to group…

The Johnson Administration rationale for commitment to Vietnam was supported by a series of claims about the nature of the Vietnam war and the logic of U.S. involvement in it. This paper states and supports the thesis that the exaggerated tone of certainty in the administration case for commitment had a dual effect, undermining both the rhetorical…

The purpose of this study was to determine the predicted differences in the effectiveness of social approval and disapproval cues. Three hypotheses were tested to determine what the effect on communication is if the source of the cue is a peer, family member, or society and what the response will be when a message advocates a position discrepant…

Every art and discipline must accept competition as a natural condition of life growing from the variant interests and aptitudes of different kinds of men. This competition may lead to the identification of "natural enemies" and, for the discipline of rhetoric, some of these are (1) the business man, who debases rhetoric by using fear and false…

Genre studies are offered as a needed alternative to the historical approach to the study of public speaking. Five ways to classify rhetorical genres are suggested: (1) by the changes which messages produce in audiences, (2) by the dominant methods or characterizing strategies of a message, (3) by style, (4) by culture or world view, and (5) by…

Given that subjects are exposed to a non-sex-biased and counter-attitudinal message from a highly credible source, this study hypothesized that lowly ego-involved subjects would experience significantly greater attitude change than highly ego-involved subjects, regardless of their sex. The variable of ego-involvement was controlled by equalizing…

A study of communication efforts by the Indiana State Police to improve the organization's "image" with the public included a history of the force based on documents and interviews with retired and active members. The study also examined information officers' perceptions of the image of the Indiana State Police, as well as the different…

Little empirical research has been done on the subject of argumentation, especially in the area of refutation, or "disproof," even though some research on debate indicates that refutation constitutes a significant predictor of a team's success. A recent study investigated the effects of eight forms of refutation against five major categories of…

In an effort to determine whether instruction in the tagmemic discovery procedure significantly improves the student's ability to inquire into ill-defined problems and to communicate the results clearly and persuasively, an experimental course based on the first half of Richard Young, Alton Becker, and Kenneth Pike's "Rhetoric: Discovery and…

The author reports a recent study on humorous and non-humorous speeches on two topics: the meaning of totalitarianism and an explanation of the Whorf hypothesis. Student subjects listened to two recorded speeches--the humorous version of one speech and the non-humorous version of the other speech--and later responded to a multiple-choice test of…