face value

Rather than seeing the proliferation of advice manuals on women’s conduct as evidence of women’s oppression, we can see them, amongst other things, as indicators of women’s resistance to those discourses.
from Sara Mills’ Discourse (Routledge, 2004), p. 81
Interesting. Seems an important principle — not to take discourses at face value.
Addendum 1-21-08, for Michael :-):
Mills says,
The [...]

“Why Harvard Destroyed Rhetoric”

Read this later: Why Harvard Destroyed Rhetoric by Jay Heinrichs. http://www.figarospeech.com/harvard/

some definitions of rhetoric

Found this at Andrea Lunsford’s site for her “Gender and the History of Rhetoric” course at Stanford. (Sounds like a great course.)
Some Definitions of Rhetoric
Plato: Rhetoric is “the art of winning the soul by discourse.”
Aristotle: Rhetoric is “the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion.
Cicero: “Rhetoric [...]

Link to “New Testament, Byzantine, Patristic and Early Medieval Rhetoric: Selected Sources”

For future reference, a short bibliography from Wake Forest University: New Testament, Byzantine, Patristic and Early Medieval Rhetoric: Selected Sources.

creating a world of complexities and continuums

Spring break week, so I’m off work (though no pay :-() and I get some juicy reading and writing time. I should be doing some laundry or picking up this cluttered office, but it’s almost noon and I’m still sitting, reading blogs and articles and “playing with” my own blog.
I just came across Michael Faris [...]

three examples of reverse rhetoric

For some reason, I’m fascinated with how effective reverse rhetoric is — when one group takes something racist or sexist or homophobic that another group says and turns it back on them.
The first one — at least the first one that made me start to think about the phenomenon — was when Petra and I [...]

Monty Python’s Argument Clinic sketch

Josh has been writing questions on the whiteboards the last few weeks.  Just now he wrote this week’s question: ”What is an academic argument?”  That made me think of the argument clinic and posting a shortened version of it on the whiteboards (as a way to get students to comment).  We may or may not do [...]

what’s the use of adding “tension” to a thesis?

I think one reason that adding “tension” to a thesis — or, in other words, making a thesis sufficiently nuanced — is important is simply because it makes the thesis more interesting right off the bat. It supplies an implicit reason why the thesis is important. And, like I said, it enables the thesis to [...]

exquisite theses… with tension to boot!

After my explanation, at the Staff Meeting, of what adding “tension” to a thesis was, we played a round of exquisite corpse… or, in this case, exquisite thesis.  I think the first two are the best.
Although several pink pick-up trucks scream that bags are wooden, the frog people quickly drink smoldering manure. (!!!oooh!!!)
Although beautiful dry-erase boards say [...]

“thesis tension”

The other day, Gail arrived for her consultation upset that she had failed a test in her English 101 class.  She showed me that in one part she had totally misunderstood what adding “tension” to a thesis was.  At that moment, I realized that I didn’t know what it was either.  (Turns out no one else [...]