Rhetoric And Social Relations

This volume explores the constitutive role of rhetoric in socio-cultural relations, where discursive persuasion is so important, and contains both theoretical chapters as well as fascinating examples of the ambiguities and effects of rhetoric used (un)consciously in social praxis. The elements of power, competition and political persuasion figure prominently. It is an accessible collection of studies, speaking to common issues and problems in social life, and shows the heuristic and often explanatory value of the rhetorical perspective.

In Inessential Solidarity, Diane Davis examines critical intersections of rhetoric and sociality in order to revise some of rhetorical theory’s basic presumptions. Rather than focus on the arguments and symbolic exchanges through which social relations are defined, Davis exposes an underivable rhetorical imperative, an obligation to respond that is as undeniable as the obligation to age. Situating this response-ability as the condition for, rather than the effect of, symbolic interaction, Davis both dissolves contemporary concerns about linguistic overdetermination and calls into question long-held presumptions about rhetoric’s relationship with identification, figuration, hermeneutics, agency, and judgment. Spotlighting a rhetorical “situation” irreducible to symbolic relations, Davis proposes quite provocatively that rhetoric—rather than ontology (Aristotle/Heidegger), epistemology (Descartes), or ethics (Levinas)—is “first philosophy.” The subject or “symbol-using animal” comes into being, Davis argues both with and against Emmanuel Levinas, only inasmuch as it responds to the other; the priority of the other is not a matter of the subject's choice, then, but of its inescapable predicament. Directing the reader’s attention to this inessential solidarity without which no meaning-making or determinate social relation would be possible, Davis aims to nudge rhetorical studies beyond the epistemological concerns that typically circumscribe theories of persuasion toward the examination of a more fundamental affectability, persuadability, responsivity.

Increasingly, scholars in language studies, sociology, media studies, cultural studies, communication, and other disciplines are turning to the analysis of everyday texts to understand how they shape and are shaped by social relationships, structures, and systems in various communities. Analyzing Everyday Texts provides a comprehensive and well-illustrated framework for the analysis of everyday texts by outlining and integrating three different perspectives: discoursal, rhetorical, and social. First, the tools of each perspective are carefully explicated in chapters on the resources of discoursal, rhetorical, and social theory. These three perspectives are then brought together in extensive analyses of various everyday texts. Finally, the book examines on the principles and consequences of conducting theoretically informed critical textual analysis. This book will be a valuable resource for researchers analyzing everyday texts and for scholars teaching theories and methods of analysis.

The first-ever thorough exploration and discussion of the rhetorical model of social invention [RSI] (initially conceived by rhetorical theorist William R. Brown) for today's students and scholars.

In today's society, everything is in question. The reflexive questioning of modernity has fundamentally problematized society, including philosophy, which has experienced a crisis of metaphysics. Michel Meyer's problematology answers this crisis by questioning questioning, unfolding a new way of doing philosophy, with special relevance for the study of society. In this first-ever extended treatment of Meyer's work, Nick Turnbull examines the main features of problematology, including the principle of questioning and the deduction of an original conception of difference, based on the question-answer relationship. Turnbull shows how these concepts produce new perspectives in the philosophy of the emotions, history, meaning, politics, rhetoric and science. He applies Meyer's ideas to key questions in the philosophy of social science, showing how problematology offers important insights for understanding contemporary society. The book compares problematology with the work of well-known thinkers, including Bourdieu, Castoriadis, Collingwood, Derrida, Dewey, Gadamer, Heidegger and Lyotard. Turnbull uses problematology and rhetoric to explain how meaning is constructed through practice in the negotiation of social distance.

`This is an admirable book which can be recommended to students with confidence, and is likely also to become an indispensable source of reference for those researching fact construction′ - Discourse & Society How is reality manufactured? The idea of social construction has become a commonplace of much social research, yet precisely what is constructed, and how, and even what constructionism means, is often unclear or taken for granted. In this major work, Jonathan Potter offers a fascinating tour of the central themes raised by these questions. Representing Reality overviews the different traditions in constructionist thought. Points are illustrated throughout with varied and engaging examples taken from newspaper stories, relationship counselling sessions, accounts of the paranormal, social workers′ assessments of violent parents, informal talk between programme makers, political arguments and everyday conversations. Ranging across the social and human sciences, this book provides a lucid introduction to several key strands of work that have overturned the way we think about facts and descriptions, including: the sociology of scientific knowledge; conversation analysis and ethnomethodology; and semiotics, post-structuralism and postmodernism.

This volume is the first to illustrate the application of rhetorical theory and critical perspectives to explain public relations practices. It provides a systematic and coherent statement of the critical guidelines and philosophical underpinnings of public relations and as such should guide pedagogy and practice. It also supplies pedagogic and critical standards with which to meet the needs of an increasingly sophisticated society that tends to reject all of public relations as propaganda. With the enormous amount of money spent on product publicity and public policy debates, this book gives practitioners a sense of whether their public relations campaigns make a contribution to the organizational bottom line by means of achieving the timeless standards of the art of rhetoric.