The Rhetorical Mediator

The Rhetorical Mediator reveals how and why scholars and user experience (UX) researchers can include Indigenous technical communicators and oral interpretation practices in their interdisciplinary conversations. Nora Rivera analyzes the challenges that Indigenous interpreters and translators face in Peru, Mexico, and the United States as a means of understanding their agency and examines the various ways in which technical and professional communication, translation and interpreting studies, and UX research can better support the practices of Indigenous interpreters and translators. In places where Indigenous language translation and interpretation are greatly needed, Indigenous language mediators often lack adequate systems to professionalize their field while withstanding Western practices that do not align with their worldviews. Through a “design thinking” methodology based on her work organizing and participating in an Indigenous-focused interpreter and translator conference, Rivera examines testimonios and semi-structured interviews conducted with Indigenous interpreters and translators to emphasize dialogue and desahogo (emotional release) as Indigenous communication practices. The Rhetorical Mediator advocates for Indigenous language practices that have been sidelined by Western scholarship and systems, helping to create more equitable processes to directly benefit Indigenous individuals and other underrepresented groups. This book benefits specialists, including UX researchers, technical and professional communicators, interpreters and translators, and Indigenous professionals, as well as academics teaching graduate and undergraduate methods, Indigenous rhetoric and translation, and UX courses.

For over thirty years, Steven Mailloux has championed and advanced the field of rhetorical hermeneutics, a historically and theoretically informed approach to textual interpretation. This volume collects fourteen of his most recent influential essays on the methodology, plus an interview. Following from the proposition that rhetorical hermeneutics uses rhetoric to practice theory by doing history, this book examines a diverse range of texts from literature, history, law, religion, and cultural studies. Through four sections, Mailloux explores the theoretical writings of Heidegger, Burke, and Rorty, among others; Jesuit educational treatises; and products of popular culture such as Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran and Star Trek: The Next Generation. In doing so, he shows how rhetorical perspectives and pragmatist traditions work together as two mutually supportive modes of understanding, and he demonstrates how the combination of rhetoric and interpretation works both in theory and in practice. Theoretically, rhetorical hermeneutics can be understood as a form of neopragmatism. Practically, it focuses on the production, circulation, and reception of written and performed communication. A thought-provoking collection from a preeminent literary critic and rhetorician, Rhetoric’s Pragmatism assesses the practice and value of rhetorical hermeneutics today and the directions in which it might head. Scholars and students of rhetoric and communication studies, critical theory, literature, law, religion, and American studies will find Mailloux’s arguments enlightening and essential.

Exploring key concepts and metaphors, Bernard Faure guides readers to an appreciation of some of the more elusive aspects of the Chinese traditions of Chan Buddhism and Japanese Zen. Faure focuses on Chan's insistence on "immediacy"--its denial of all traditional meditations, including scripture, ritual, good works--and yet shows how these mediations have always been present in Chan.

In this powerful book, Walter Brueggemann moves the discussion of Old Testament theology beyond the dominant models of previous generations. Brueggemann focuses on the metaphor and imagery of the courtroom trial in order to regard the theological substance of the Old Testament as a series of claims asserted for Yahweh, the God of Israel. This provides a context that attends to pluralism in every dimension of the interpretive process and suggests links to the plurality of voices of our time.

The context of mediation immediately highlights the importance of argumentation as a means to reasonably handle conflict. "Argumentation in dispute mediation" tackles this topic providing both theoretical insights and detailed empirical argumentative analysis. Its goal is twofold: to explore mediation as a real-life context of argumentation and to show how an increased argumentative awareness could improve conflict resolution.Particular emphasis is accorded to mapping mediation through an interdisciplinary reasoned review of existing accounts. The outline of a conceptual framework of mediation constitutes a solid basis for the study of argumentation in mediation. The argumentative analysis of a corpus of mediation cases, based on the pragma-dialectical account and the Argumentum Model of Topics, shows the mediator s moves which actually help conflicting parties discuss reasonably. The mediator s topical potential plays a crucial role in this relation at the levels of issue selection, evoking of cultural-contextual premises and choice of argument schemes."

Papers presented at the Fifteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2007 (sse also Studia Patristica 44, 45, 46, 47 and 48). The successive sets of Studia Patristica contain papers delivered at the International Conferences on Patristic Studies, which meet for a week once every four years in Oxford; they are held under the aegis of the Theology Faculty of the University. Members of these conferences come from all over the world and most offer papers. These range over the whole field, both East and West, from the second century to a section on the Nachleben of the Fathers. The majority are short papers dealing with some small and manageable point; they raise and sometimes resolve questions about the authenticity of documents, dates of events, and such like, and some unveil new texts. The smaller number of longer papers put such matters into context and indicate wider trends. The whole reflects the state of Patristic scholarship and demonstrates the vigour and popularity of the subject.

A detailed study of one theological concept (divine mediation) that was central to the Christological controversy of the early fourth century. By analysing the views of three participants at the Council of Nicaea (325), Jon M. Robertson demonstrates the variety of perspectives in a way that questions popular approaches to the period that see the controversy as having only two sides. His analysis constitutes a new approach to the early Arian controversy, as well as showing the theological backdrop of Athanasius' insight on Christ as mediator. It further demonstrates the contemporary relevance of the issue by giving an Athanasian critique of the modern Christology of Roger Haight.

The Age of Information has spawned a critical focus on human communication in a multimedia world, particularly on theories and practices of writing. With the worldwide web impacting increasingly on academic and business communication, the need has never been greater for advanced study in writing, communication, and critical thinking across all genres, sectors, and cultures. In recent decades, the definitions of 'new rhetoric' have expanded to encompass a variety of theories and movements, raising the question of how rhetoric is understood and employed in the twenty-first century. The essays collected here represent variations on these themes, with each attempting to answer the title?s deliberately provocative question, addressing particularly: -How the classical art of rhetoric is still relevant today; -How it is directly related to modern technologies and the new modes of communication they have generated; -How rhetorical practice is informing research methodologies and teaching and learning practices in the contemporary academy.