This paper responds to Trohler's charge that my paper "As if by Machinery: The levelling of educational research" takes Francis Bacon's vision of scientific research out of context. I distinguish four senses of "decontextualisation": as ignorance, as belief in "timeless truths", as comparison of contexts, and as genealogy. I argue that Trohler has…

This article reports the findings of a study examining the social/discursive construction of an author (Brenda Dervin) by an international community of researchers (information behavior researchers). A crucial conceptual starting point for the study was Michel Foucault's work on the discursive construction of power/knowledge. The study represents…

This article explores sites of tension and influence between the New Mexico land grant movement and Chicano nationalism. While these efforts diverged often in terms of aims and strategies, they nonetheless found common ground, shaping arguments and providing support to each other during critical years. Moreover, central to their convergence was a…

Until recently, the notion of a "rhetoric of science" may have sounded oxymoronic. Traditional conceptions of science as the embodiment of disinterested, objective knowledge of nature, coupled with perceptions of rhetoric as empty verbiage, subterfuge, or stylistic embellishment, made science and rhetoric appear quite incompatible. However, recent…

A large body of research has shown that verbal phrases such as "move the pen" are better remembered when they are physically enacted than when the same phrases are studied under standard verbal learning instructions (e.g., Engelkamp & Krumnacker, 1980). More recently, a non-literal enactment effect was discovered in which verbal material that was…

This study investigates brain responses to violations of information structure in wh-question-answer pairs, with particular emphasis on violations of focus assignment in it-clefts (It was the queen that silenced the banker). Two types of ERP responses in answers to wh-questions were found. First, all words in the focus-marking (cleft) position…

In this article, 6 key texts from the literature of the learning college movement are examined with the technique of critical discourse analysis. The rhetorical strategies found in the literature are discussed from the standpoint of critical linguistics, and excerpts from the texts are presented as examples of the discursive practices favored by…

This article aims to demonstrate how the use of an online journal, a bilingual blog, can contribute to filling in the language and cultural gaps of foreign language learners. This case study focuses on the participation, interaction, motivation, language acquisition, feedback and cultural input improved by students of Spanish as a Foreign Language…

The uncritical acceptance of Plato's treatment of sophistic doctrines (specifically in Plato's dialogue the "Gorgias") in the university has resulted in an impoverished contemporary view of sophistic rhetoric. Since Socrates' foundational epistemology allows for the knowledge of immutable truth and Gorgias' relativistic epistemology does…

Argues that, by returning to the rhetorics of killing and love, the Rogerian rhetoric of love represents a rhetoric of collective repression because it precludes the social, the principle of which is a dialectic of division and unity. Contrasts the Burkean and Rogerian views on the subject. (JD)

Considers the state of the avant-garde film movement. Contends that for those who are convinced of the potential importance of the broadest articulation of cinema, it is necessary to demonstrate the excitement and value of using avant-garde films in a wide range of academic contexts and as one of academic film activity's essential components. (MS)

Describes some of the factors that influence critical judgments regardless of operative theoretical stance. Identifies several factors which may contribute to effective performance criticism. (MS)

This article examines the interpretive process of social representations of bilingualism by means of discourse and conversational analysis. Representations are to be understood as an interpretive set of assumptions conveyed by discourse, creating recurrent and habitual systems of dispositions and expectations. The article shows how discourse is…

Reviews what rhetorical theorists and critics typically mean when they discuss rhetoric as an event. Explains Michel Foucault's philosophy of incorporeal materialism. Illustrates the contrast between Foucault's conception of event and that of rhetoricians with reference to a representative rhetorical event. (MS)

Examines Shakespeare's use of thou forms to individual ghosts, witches, and spirits. The proposition is advanced that there is a role-governed rule in the use of this pronoun to individual supernatural beings. (31 references) (GLR)