scholarly journals Memetic rhetorical theory: an analytic model for the spread of information online

Res Rhetorica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 40-53
Author(s):  
Carleigh Davis
Keyword(s):  
Rhetorical Theory ◽  
Analytic Model ◽  
Alternative Facts

Modern discourse is often characterized by such extreme polarization that participants operate from entirely different sets of facts. These alternative facts represent a new line of inquiry for rhetoricians, who must determine how false facts gain credibility. This article outlines Memetic Rhetorical Theory (MRT), a model for understanding how information evolves to become credible in a given environment.

A Distinction No Longer of Use: Evolutionary Discourse and the Disappearance of the Trope/Figure Binarism

1993 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirley Sharon-Zisser
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Rhetorical Theory ◽  
Common Part ◽  
The Way

Abstract: The concem with progress and utility is shared by nineteenth-century scientists, philosophers, and rhetoricians, leading to significant correspondences among their discourses. This concern is manifest, for example, in the way in which several rhetorical treatises of the nineteenth century regard the distinction between a figure and a trope, which had been a common part of rhetorical theory since the time of Quintilian, as useless and anachronistic. By examining three nineteenth-century articulations of the justifications for erasing the trope/figure distinction from the cultural repertoire, this essay reveals structural and semantic parallels between these rhetorical treatises and the discourses of evolution and utilitarianism. Thus, the essay locates the source of the synonymity which the terms “trope” and “figure” have acquired in contemporary critical metalanguage in Victorian ideologies of progress and of the unprofitability and consequent discardability of the ancient.

Garden-Variety Formalist

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-60
Author(s):  
Colin Lang
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Constructivism ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Bret Easton Ellis ◽  
Literary Achievement ◽  
Alternative Facts ◽  
Media Spectacle ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Complex Relationships

Recently, the effort to counter Fake News faced a counter attack: academic »postmodernism « and »social constructivism« it was said—because they say that facts are soaked in prior interpretations—are either purveyors of Fake News or set the cultural context in which it flourishes. They do so by undermining confidence in inquiry governed by simple facts. That is erroneous, argues William E. Connolly, because postmodernism never said that facts or objectivity are ghostly, subjective or »fake«. However, that what was objective at one time may become less so at a later date through the combination of a paradigm shift in theory, new powers of perception, new tests with refined instruments, and changes in natural processes such as species evolution. But the emergence of new theories and tests does not reduce objectivity to subjective opinion. Facts are real. Objectivity is important. But as you move up the scale of complexity with respect to facts and objectivity, it becomes clear that what was objective at one time may become subjective at another. Not because of Fake News or postmodernism. But because the complex relationships between theory, evidence and conduct periodically open up new thresholds. Colin Lang in turn rhetorically asks if »fake news« or »alternative facts« are a new carnival and Trump its dog and pony show? The idea of »fake news« and »alternative facts« as a carnival could not only help to see the constructedness of the media spectacle, but also provides a new perspective on Trump as an actor who is playing a particular role in this carnival, and that role is not one that any of us would describe as presidential. Many in the popular press have assumed it is just what it looks like, an infantilized narcissist, a parody of some Regan-era New York real estate tycoon straight out of a Bret Easton Ellis novel. The problem is that this description is all too obvious, and misses something fundamental about alternative facts, and the part that Trump is playing. A central assumption is, then, that the creation of alternative facts is one symptom of a more structural, paradigmatic shift in the persona of a president, one which has few correlates in the annals of political history. The closest analogy for his kind of performance is actually hinted at in the title of Trump’s greatest literary achievement: The Art of the Deal. Trump is playing the part of an artist, pilfering from the tactics of the avant-garde and putting them to very different ends.

An Analytic Model for Aerodynamic Shapes

1988 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Vrabel
Keyword(s):  
Analytic Model

A Factor Analytic Model of College Studen Development

NASPA Journal ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Lavelle ◽  
Bill Rickford
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
College Student ◽  
Student Development ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
College Student Development ◽  
Analytic Model ◽  
Model Based ◽  
Factor Analytic Model ◽  
Factor Analytic ◽  
Self Discovery

Models of college student development have demonstrated an insensitivity to the differences that exist among various students, although such differences are very important in a world where student bodies in higher education are increasingly diverse. The authors present a model based on The Dakota Inventory of Student Orientations, which may be useful for program developmen that fosters reflection, self discovery, perspective-taking, and collaboration among students with varying orientations towards learning.

Arguing over Texts

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Camper
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Rhetorical Theory ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Textual Interpretation ◽  
Ambiguous Words ◽  
And Behaviors ◽  
Textual Meaning

Arguing over Texts presents a rhetorical method for analyzing how people disagree over the meaning of texts and how they attempt to reconcile those disagreements through argument. The book recovers and adapts a classification of recurring types of disagreement over textual meaning, invented by ancient Greek and Roman teachers of rhetoric: the interpretive stases. Drawing on the rhetorical works of Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, and Hermogenes, the book devotes a chapter to each of the six interpretive stases, which classify issues concerning ambiguous words and phrases, definitions of terms, clashes between the text’s letter and its spirit, internal contradictions, applications of the text to novel cases, and the authority of the interpreter or the text itself. From the dispute over Phillis Wheatley’s allegedly self-racist poetry to the controversy over whether some of Abraham Lincoln’s letters provide evidence he was gay, the book offers examples from religion, politics, history, literary criticism, and law to illustrate that the interpretive stases can be employed to analyze debates over texts in virtually any sphere. In addition to its classical rhetorical foundation, the book draws on research from modern rhetorical theory and language science to elucidate the rhetorical, linguistic, and cognitive grounds for the argumentative construction of textual meaning. The method presented in this book thus advances scholars’ ability to examine the rhetorical dynamics of textual interpretation, to trace the evolution of textual meaning, and to explore how communities ground their beliefs and behaviors in texts.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document