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Browsing by Author "Duke, Thomas William"

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    Constitutive rhetoric reexamined: the case of Scottish nationalist discourse
    (University of Alabama Libraries, 2014) Duke, Thomas William; Bennett, Beth Susan; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    Since the critical turn in rhetoric, much has been said about the ways in which identification is accomplished. Not least among those studies concerned with identity, Maurice Charland's constitutive rhetoric has been widely influential in the field of communication. Charland's notion of the origins of identity in discourse has not been significantly challenged since he first described constitutive rhetoric as a process. At the same time, the reemergence of nationalist causes has suggested that we might return to the theory in order to understand the discourse that is influencing debates about the sovereignty of people groups. This study examines conceptions of Scottishness both in contemporary and historical discourse to gain a better understanding of how Charland's constitutive rhetoric functions. However, it also points out crucial flaws in Charland's concept and seeks to reconstruct constitutive rhetoric to be consistent with a more dynamic conception of society and rhetoric's role in it.
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    A topical approach to argument: an un-enlightened paradigm of rhetorical invention
    (University of Alabama Libraries, 2018) Duke, Thomas William; Bennett, Beth Susan; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    In contemporary society, expertise is often a liability for those seeking to persuade the public. This work argues that the contemporary rejection of expertise is caused by a lack of proper rhetorical training, that the lack of rhetorical training is in turn an effect of rhetorical pedagogies rooted in Enlightenment values, and finally that rhetoricians must return to a pre-Enlightenment pedagogy if expertise is ever to obtain the recognition it deserves. Contemporary rhetorical training in argument is examined through a discussion of the argument systems of Stephen Toulmin, Chaïm Perelman, and Aristotle. The important aspects of these argument systems, the Toulmin model of argument, Perelman’s universal audience, and the Aristotelian enthymeme, are reviewed and critiqued. In the latter portion of the work, the study describes a distinctly rhetorical method for inventing arguments and discusses its implications for the problem of popularizing expertise.