Dialogic Civility In A Cynical Age

Dialogic Civility in a Cynical Age offers a philosophical and pragmatic response to unreflective cynicism. Considering that each of us has faced inappropriate cynical communication in families, educational institutions, and the workplace, this book offers insight and practical guidance for people interested in improving their interpersonal relationships in an age of rampant cynicism.

Dialogic Civility in a Cynical Age offers a philosophical and pragmatic response to unreflective cynicism. Considering that each of us has faced inappropriate cynical communication in families, educational institutions, and the workplace, this book offers insight and practical guidance for people interested in improving their interpersonal relationships in an age of rampant cynicism.

Forgiveness in a Cynical Age taps into a rich fountain of ideas from religion and communication to explore how we can forgive others that wrong us. Using communication as a point of departure, the author challenges readers to take a journey with those who offend us. By accepting the wrongdoer and walking with them, we can forgive them—and it is in forgiving that we are also forgiven. Steeped in wisdom from the Old and the New Testaments, the book considers questions such as: How can we define forgiveness? What do we gain by forgiving others? How did the people in the Bible and other religions view forgiveness? We all know that it takes a lot out of us to truly forgive someone, whether it is a small or heinous offense. By reading this book, readers will be better equipped to forgive those who have wronged them, offering wrongdoers the immeasurable love that comes out of forgiveness.

Social Media and Integrated Marketing Communication: A Rhetorical Approach explores social media in the areas of corporate identity, brand narratives, and crisis response from a rhetorical perspective. Key ideas in this text are social media as epideictic rhetoric—the rhetorical setting that deals with the present and matters of virtue and education—and how rhetorical decorum, a component of Cicero’s third Canon of Style, can guide organizations and their audiences toward more ethical and effective integrated marketing communication (IMC). This strategy emphasizes changing behavior, not just attitudes. Because social media leaves traces of communication that may be with us for the foreseeable future, Social Media and Integrated Marketing Communication frames the conversation about social media and IMC to move away from a risk/reward or a return on investment orientation and toward a focus on social media as communicative action that is attentive to this historical moment, to organizations and their audiences, and to communication ethics. Through this, Persuit asks how organizations can engage in decorum in their online IMC efforts while at the same time considering how their audiences can engage in decorum as well. Neither romanticizing nor demonizing the areas of social media and IMC, instead, this text offers a pragmatic understanding of these areas that finds a place in the theory of the communication discipline.

The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have seen a renaissance in the study of virtue -- a topic that has prevailed in philosophical work since the time of Aristotle. Several major developments have conspired to mark this new age. Foremost among them, some argue, is the birth of virtue ethics, an approach to ethics that focuses on virtue in place of consequentialism (the view that normative properties depend only on consequences) or deontology (the study of what we have a moral duty to do). The emergence of new virtue theories also marks this new wave of work on virtue. Put simply, these are theories about what virtue is, and they include Kantian and utilitarian virtue theories. Concurrently, virtue ethics is being applied to other fields where it hasn't been used before, including bioethics and education. In addition to these developments, the study of virtue in epistemological theories has become increasingly widespread to the point that it has spawned a subfield known as 'virtue epistemology.' This volume therefore provides a representative overview of philosophical work on virtue. It is divided into seven parts: conceptualizations of virtue, historical and religious accounts, contemporary virtue ethics and theories of virtue, central concepts and issues, critical examinations, applied virtue ethics, and virtue epistemology. Forty-two chapters by distinguished scholars offer insights and directions for further research. In addition to philosophy, authors also deal with virtues in non-western philosophical traditions, religion, and psychological perspectives on virtue.

Understanding Everyday Incivility delves into the day-to-day annoying behaviors that color our interactions with other people, such as the use of crude language in public, family members who claim that they’re “just teasing” and we’re “too sensitive,” coworkers who constantly interrupt us, and inflammatory remarks posted on social media sites. Shelley D. Lane explores what is considered uncivil behavior, why we label some acts as crude or selfish while others are deemed polite and proper, and how these labels often change from one context to the next. She highlights the power dynamics at play in our interactions and explains how “rude” behavior can sometimes be beneficial—and “polite” behavior can be detrimental. Rather than a simplistic manual of manners, Lane provides the tools to understand everyday incivility and strategies for responding effectively and appropriately.

In this landmark volume of contemporary communication theory, Ronald C. Arnett applies the metaphor of dialogic confession--which enables historical moments to be addressed from a confessed standpoint and through a communicative lens--to the works of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who pointed to an era of postmodern difference with his notion of "a world come of age." Arnett's interpretations of Bonhoeffer's life and scholarship in contention with Nazi dominance offer implications for a dialogic confession that engages the complexity of postmodern narrative contention. Rooted in classical theory, the field of communication ethics is abstract and arguably outmoded. In Dialogic Confession: Bonhoeffer's Rhetoric of Responsibility, Arnett locates cross-cultural and comparative anchors that not only bring legitimacy and relevance to the field but also develop a conceptual framework that will advance and inspire future scholarship.

Practicing Communication Ethics provides a theoretical framework for developing a personal standard of ethics that can be applied in real world communication situations. Through an examination of specific ethical values including truth, justice, freedom, care, and integrity, this first edition enables the reader to personally determine which values they are ethically committed to upholding. Blending communication theory, ethics as practical philosophy, and moral psychology, this text presents the practice of communication ethics as part of the lifelong process of personal development and fosters the ability in its readers to approach communication decision-making through an ethical lens.