Search results for "rhetorica"

Rhetorical Criticism as an Advanced Literacy Practice: A Report on a Pilot Training

2015

This paper sets out to advance the notion of critical literacy in view of the growing shortage of critical analytic skills even among college students. Critical literacy is defined as a disposition for critical reflection and critical practice. It is employed in the academic context in the systematic interrogation of discursive practices which are sometimes ideologically motivated. Being skilled at critiquing in the advanced EFL context is derivative of a certain general level of critical literacy. It is claimed here that this can be attained through introducing students to categories and procedures of the main rhetorical traditions: neo-Aristotelian rhetoric, the New Rhetoric and Burkean d…

Reproductive rights or duties? The rhetoric of division in social media debates on abortion law in Poland

2019

This study explores the argumentative schemas used in claimmaking and the rhetorical resources for stance-taking in the online abortion law debate in Poland in late 2016. It shows how these discursive devices were used to divide and discredit the opponent in the social media by two social movements: the Stop Abortion coalition of conservative and religious organizations that sponsored the legislative proposal to considerably restrict abortion, and the Save Women committee that stood behind the ‘black’ protests opposing the project. The textual material is drawn from social media profiles of the two movements following a week of intense street protests and publicity activities (19–26 October…

On the Turkic Origin of Hungarianigen'yes'

2004

The present paper discusses the origin of the Hungarian particle igen 'yes', for which no convincing etymology has been presented so far. It is suggested that it is a selective copy of Turkic egen ~ igen (< erken), an indirective and/or emphatic rhetorical particle ('evidently', 'obviously', 'apparently', 'as it appears', 'it turns out that', 'indeed'), derived from er- 'to be' and used as part of the predicate core and/or as a postpredicate element to convey consenting or admitting answers.

Rhetoric of academic applications : Perspectives from Quentin Skinner’s Forensic Shakespeare

2019

The tools of classical and Renaissance rhetoric that Quentin Skinner uses in his Forensic Shakespeare (2014) are here applied to a contemporary context. Skinner’s discussion might have a fairly direct value for a genre of writing that most academics today must master, namely the rhetoric of applications. They have been seldom discussed from a rhetorical perspective, although knowledge of rhetoric is highly valuable for applicants, evaluators and those deciding between applications. Skinner’s book contains both advices for applicants and discussions on both the criteria of application and the possibilities of their revisions in case of innovative applications. peerReviewed

Toolan, Michael. 2016. Making Sense of Narrative Text: Situation, Repetition, and Picturing in the Reading of Short Stories

2017

Invention and Imagination in Sixteenth-Century English Literature

2014

This article discusses the all-important concepts of invention and imagination within the literary terminology of sixteenth-century England, viewing the former as a concept in transition associated with the rhetorical notion of ‘finding’ within a topical system as well as with ideas on the imagination, and connecting the latter with theories on the workings of the human mind. The conceptual discussion revolves around a selection of extracts taken from early modern dictionaries, works on rhetoric, and poetics, poems, and plays.

Autoficción, historia y mito en la narrativa del subcomandante Marcos

2018

The uprising of 1994 by the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) in Mexico, represented not only a political and military event but also a discursive one. In this study, I analyse the ways in which historical and factual dimensions are intertwined with the personal accounts written by  Subcomandante Marcos ; military leader and spokesperson of the EZLN. The deputy commander’s writing poses specific difficulties, given that he wrote directly from the frontline and under the urgency of this historical period. Such writing conditions stimulate us to examine the transitional modalities between live memory and textual representation, and to look at the genres and rhetorical devices that are…

Evaluation of Status as a Persuasive Tool in Spanish and American Pre-electoral Debates in Times of Crises

2018

The evaluative function of language is explored from the point of view of the expression of “status,” or how the world is presented, and its persuasive potential in pre-electoral debates in the US and Spain. The types of statements used in two comparable corpora in Spanish and English are examined using Hunston’s model (2000; 2008) for the evaluation of “status”—the degree of alignment of a proposition and the world—to discover similarities and differences between them. The results show that, in general, all politicians prefer to use statements that refer to the actual world—“world-reflecting statements” in Hunston’s classification—rather than “world-creating propositions” in an attempt to …

Describing the voice of online bullying: An analysis of stance and voice type in YouTube comments

2022

Abstract In this article, I analyze the expression of stance in YouTube comments responding to a speech by Greta Thunberg addressing the 2019 United Nations Climate Action Summit. I use quantitative and qualitative analysis of explicit stance features (including attitude markers, boosters, hedges, self-mentions, and reader addresses) in order to characterize the voice type that commenters construe and examine how this voice type potentially functions as a tool for social influence. The analysis shows that the comments include continual emphatic and emotive attitude marking, almost exclusively evaluating Thunberg herself (e.g., her authenticity, cognitive ability, gender and youth), rather t…

Oratory and Classicism: a Valencian speech of the 16th century in its classical sources

2006

Este artículo estudia un discurso pronunciado solemnemente en el acto de apertura del curso académico 1531-1532 en la Universidad de Valencia a partir del examen de sus fuentes clásicas y del análisis de sus recursos retóricos. Se trata de la Oratio parenetica de óptimo statu reipublicae constituendo, el único de los escritos que sepamos que se ha conservado del oriolano Cosme Damián Çavall, primer catedrático de griego del Estudi General de la ciudad, discípulo de Elio Antonio de Nebrija y Juan Andrés Strany y maestro de Miguel Jerónimo Ledesma. This article studies a solemn discourse pronounced at the University of Valencia in 1531 after its classical sources and after its rhetorical reso…