Suchergebnisse

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Advances in the History of Rhetoric on March 1st, 2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/15362426.2019.1569416. ; Two disciplinary stories that take place in mid-eighteenth-century Scotland omit an important plotline. One story is that university teaching of rhetoric transformed into belletristic criticism; another is that ideology and culture transformed to reorient rhetorical theorizing toward everyday practices by non-elites. Untold is a story of how familiar protagonists, such as Hugh Blair, clashed with antagonists, such as John Witherspoon, in the Church of Scotland. Telling that story from the antagonists' perspective shows that they reflected on how rhetoric ought to be practiced to manage disagreement in a democratic institution, and used what amounted to Kamesian belletrism as a foil.

Political humor is ubiquitous in some contexts and forbidden in others, and yet scholars have described political humor as unreliable and attempts to control its meaning as futile. How do speakers design political humor to influence audiences, and why do they expect those designs to work? We argue that speakers design persuasive political humor by making visible their intent and undertaking obligations to act in accord with specific norms. We explain how designs constrain audiences from discounting the message as just a joke and create reasons to scrutinize arguments.

This is the author's accepted manuscript, made available with permission of the American Forensic Association. ; How do crying foul strategies, such as saying opponents are trying to "terrify" into a decision, pressure opponents to argue well? I submit that crying foul strategies work by making a norm determinate, and by making manifest the badness of the tactic and that the speaker is exercising forbearance. I explain why they generate pressure to repair or abandon questionable tactics, particularly when the norms they bring to bear in a situation converge with those of a broader political culture.

How do crying foul strategies, such as accusing an opponent of trying to "terrify" into a decision, pressure arguers to argue well? I submit that they work by (1) making a norm determinate and (2) making manifest the badness of the tactic. I explain why they generate pressure to repair or abandon questionable tactics, particularly when the norms converge with those of a broader political culture.

I inquire into the issue of how to evaluate fear appeals. I propose modifications to Douglas Walton's position in Scare Tactics: Arguments that Appeal to Fear and Threats that will help improve assessment of fear appeals in complex argumentation such as political discourse. Walton has argued for attending to the underlying practical inference structure involved in fear appeals as well as the type of dialogue in which they occur. I propose, first, that theorists understand the practical reasoning not in terms of an underlying inferential structure but rather as an account of how discourse strategies give fear appeals force; and, second, that theorists not deduce norms and standards from so-called dialogue types but rather explain how discourse strategies engage norms of argumentation that give fear appeals force. This approach generates a normative pragmatic theory of fear appeals that has more explanatory power than Walton's theory, because it explains how discourse strategies agents actually use engage norms of argumentation and are therefore compelling. I submit that compelling fear appeals are designed to show addressees (1) risks to themselves of not carefully assessing the fearful circumstances and (2) risks to the arguer of misjudging whether circumstances merit fear.