Leadership Performance And Rhetoric

This book examines both the rhetorical content of contemporary public leadership and the leadership methods pioneered by early English statesman Sir Francis Bacon. In particular, it considers the use of public rhetoric to defend leadership legitimacy in six case studies, drawing on leadership contests in recent Australian political history. The authors map out the complex language of leadership in contemporary politics through chapter-length portraits of the inter-related political rhetoric of prime ministers Rudd, Gillard, Abbott and Turnbull, plus former foreign minister Bob Carr and indigenous leader Noel Pearson. The process is a novel application of leadership analysis derived from the political philosophy of Francis Bacon, who emerges as a founder of the study, and indeed practice, of political and public leadership. The book will appeal to students and scholars across the fields of political science, communication and rhetorical studies, and political history.

Successful presidential leadership depends upon words as well as deeds. In this multifaceted look at rhetorical leadership, twelve leading scholars in three different disciplines provide in-depth studies of how words have served or disserved American presidents. At the heart of rhetorical leadership lies the classical concept of prudence, practical wisdom that combines good sense with good character. From their disparate treatments of a range of presidencies, an underlying agreement emerges among the historians, political scientists, and communication scholars included in the volume. To be effective, they find, presidents must be able to articulate the common good in a particular situation and they must be credible on the basis of their own character. Who they are and what they can do are thus twin pillars of successful rhetorical leadership. Leroy G. Dorsey introduces these themes, and David Zarefsky picks them up in looking at the historical development of rhetorical leadership within the office of the presidency. Each succeeding chapter then examines the rhetorical leadership of a particular president, often within the context of a specific incident or challenge that marked his term in office. Chapters dealing with George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton offer the specifics for a clearer understanding of how rhetoric serves leadership in the American presidency. This book provides an indispensable addition to the literature on the presidency and in leadership studies.

Political leadership has returned to the forefront of research in political science in recent years, after several years of neglect. This Handbook provides a broad-ranging and cohesive examination of the study of political leadership.

This book recovers Aristotle's understanding of the roles of rhetoric and prudence in public leadership, comparing it to the other major political theories of leadership: utilitarianism, as advocated by J.S. Mill, and duty-ethics, as advocated by Immanuel Kant.

While personal variables like age, education, and gender are often thought to contribute to a person’s distinctive speech pattern, corporate environments often develop its own way of communication which include larger scale variables like the economy and organizational traditions. Communication and Language Analysis in the Corporate World provides insight into the verbiage of the corporate world and the influence of this environment for a person’s speech pattern, language, and terminology. This book will provide a guide for language researchers and business leaders alike so that they may find a way to communicate with everyone – customers, colleagues, and CEOs – effectively.

At its very center, The Cultivation of Character and Culture in Roman Rhetorical Education: The Available Means is a study of the subtle, organic ways that rhetoric can work to cultivate a particular character. This is an extension of the current work in composition studies, which focus on the ways that writing instruction contributes to the development of individual power and agency in students, combined with an ancient understanding of the ways that students learned to act within a particular, accepted cultural framework. It recognizes and reclaims a lost dimension of rhetoric, a dimension that is conceptually linked to the martial culture of the ancient world, to show how ancient rhetorical theory framed the discipline as an education in thinking, speaking, and acting in ways that were necessary to be both a persuasive speaker and an effective leader. Through close readings and analysis of particular rhetorical exercises, the book shows how rhetorical education shaped characters that were appropriate in the eyes of the dominant culture but were also capable of working independently to progressively alter that culture. In showing the ways that rhetorical education shaped a particular character, the book demonstrates the ways that the combination character, culture, and virtue are vital to leadership in any time.

This timely book details the theoretical and practical elements of political rhetoric and their effects on the interactions between politicians and the public. Expert contributors explore the issues associated with political rhetoric from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including political science, linguistics, social psychology and communication studies. Chapters examine what makes a speech effective, politicians’ use of moral appeals in political advertising, political attacks on social media, and gender and emotion in political discourse.

Why are some political leaders stronger than others? How do we make sense of the interaction between the leader's personality and the context that the leader faces? This book provides a unique way of approaching these questions, identifying the very different philosophical foundations that underpin the contemporary study of political leadership.