Post-Crisis Assurance and the ‘Tests of Life’ Reading of 1 John

10.53521/a247 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-154
Author(s):  
Matthew Payne
Keyword(s):  
Rhetorical Strategy ◽  
1 John

1 John has often been read as advocating a series of personal ‘tests of life’, by which individuals can evaluate the genuineness of their conversion. This article argues that framing 1 John’s teaching on assurance in this way distorts its teaching by failing to recognise the epistle’s rhetorical strategy. It argues that this epistle was intended to positively cultivate assurance in its original recipients by highlighting that they had already proven their possession of salvation by their perseverance in their confession, whereas others had recently abandoned it. This invites reflection on the role of pastoral evaluation and exhortation in cultivating assurance rather than on individualistic strategies alone.

scholarly journals Recontextualising partisan outrage online: analysing the public negotiation of Trump support among American conservatives in 2016

AI & Society ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Right Wing ◽  
Rhetorical Strategy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Commercial Media ◽  
Media Institutions ◽  
Political Talk ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
Contemporary United States ◽  
Creative Construction

AbstractThis article conceptualises the role of audience agency in the performance of American conservative identities within a hybridised outrage media ecology. Audience agency has been under-theorised in the study of outrage media through an emphasis on outrage as a rhetorical strategy of commercial media institutions. Relatively little has been said about the outrage discourse of audiences. This coincides with a tendency to consider online political talk as transparent and "earnest," thereby failing to recognise the multi-vocality, dynamism, and ambivalence—i.e., performativity—of online user-generated discourse. I argue the concept of recontextualisation offers a means of addressing these shortcomings. I demonstrate this by analysing how the users of the American right-wing partisan media website TheBlaze.com publicly negotiated support for Donald Trump in a below-the-line comment field during the 2016 US presidential election. These processes are situated with respect to the contested, dynamic, and creative construction of partisan identities in the contemporary United States.

The rhetoric of New Zealand's COVID-19 response

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Binh Bui ◽  
Olayinka Moses ◽  
John Dumay
Keyword(s):  
Critical Role ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Response Strategy ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Rhetorical Strategy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Government Documents ◽  
The Right ◽  
Public Policy Decisions

PurposeThe authors unpack the critical role of rhetoric in developing and justifying the New Zealand (NZ) government's coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown strategy.Design/methodology/approachUsing Green's (2004) theory of rhetorical diffusion, the authors analysed government documents and media releases before, during and after the lockdown to reconstruct the government's rationale.FindingsThe blending of kairos (sense of urgency and “right” time to act), ethos (emphasis on “saving lives”), pathos (fear of disruption and death) and selective use of health-based logos (shrinking infection rates), prompted fast initial adoption of the lockdown. However, support for the rhetoric wavered post-lockdown as absence of robust logos became apparent to the public.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors implicate the role of rhetoric in decision-makers’ ability to successfully elicit support for a new practice under urgency and the right moment to act using emotionalisation and moralisation. The assessment of the NZ government's response strategy provides insights decision-makers could glean in developing policies to tame the virus.Practical implicationsThis study’s analysis demonstrates the unsustainability of rhetoric in the absence of reliable information.Originality/valueThe authors demonstrate the consequences of limited (intermittent) evidence and disregard for accounting/accountability data in public policy decisions under a rhetorical strategy.

scholarly journals PLATO'S PILOT IN THE POLITICAL STRATEGY OF JULIAN AND LIBANIUS

2017 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 607-616
Author(s):  
David Neal Greenwood
Keyword(s):  
Golden Age ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Philosophical Concept ◽  
Rhetorical Strategy ◽  
Constantius Ii

The rhetorical career of Libanius of Antioch (a.d.314–c.393) spanned the reigns of a number of fourth-century emperors. Like many orators, he used the trope of the emperor as a pilot, steering the ship of state. He did this for his imperial exemplar Julian and in fact for his predecessor Constantius II as well. Julian sought to craft an identity for himself as a theocratic king. He and his supporters cast him as an earthly parallel to the Christ-like versions of Heracles and Asclepius he constructed, which was arguably a co-opting of Christian and particularly Constantinian themes. In a public oration, Julian even placed himself in the role of Christ in the Temptation in the Wilderness. This kind of overtly Christian metaphor was not Libanius’ preferred idiom, however, and he wrote of Julian as another kind of chosen and divine saviour-figure, one with its roots in the golden age of Greek philosophy. The figure of the κυβερνήτης, the ‘pilot’ or ‘helmsman’, is a philosophical concept with roots in the thought of the pre-Socratics but most familiar from Plato. The uses of this metaphor by Julian and Libanius highlight the rhetorical strategy and self-presentation the emperor employed during his reign.

scholarly journals When “We Believe that ...”: The Role of Collective “we” in the Dialogic Negotiation in Hard News Discourse

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-196
Author(s):  
Zuzana Nádraská
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Rhetorical Strategy ◽  
News Reports ◽  
News Discourse ◽  
Reader Engagement ◽  
Strong Statement ◽  
The Difference ◽  
First Person Plural ◽  
The Individual

AbstractThe present paper examines the occurrence of collective self expressed by the first person plural “we” in British broadsheet hard news reports. Given that “we” typically embraces “I” and the “non-I”, and is viewed in contradistinction to “others”, it is subjective and dialogic (inter-subjective) in nature (Baumgarten et al.; Benveniste). This study, grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics and the theory of engagement, examines the coupling, i.e., co-occurrence, of one dialogic signal “we” with other dialogic meanings (entertain, proclaim and disclaim) used for the dialogic negotiation of content and writer-reader engagement (Martin, “Beyond Exchange”; Martin and White). Couplings are interpreted from the point of view of the overall rhetorical strategy they are put to, referred to as syndromes of meaning (Zappavigna et al., “Syndromes”; Zappavigna et al., “The Coupling”). The rhetorical functions of syndromes reflect the basic dialogic meanings of the examined engagement categories such as a tentative suggestion of an opinion (entertain), a strong statement of an opinion (proclaim) and a rejection of a dispreferred opinion (disclaim). Finer variations within the individual rhetorical strategies are related to the difference in the source of dialogic positioning (an individual versus collective voice) and the referential scope of the pronoun (a precisely defined reference versus reference with a more general and diffused scope).

scholarly journals Religion without fear. Plutarch on superstition and Early Christian Literature

1997 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-126
Author(s):  
H-J Klauck
Keyword(s):  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
1 John ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
Life Values ◽  
Fear Of God ◽  
Biblical Teaching ◽  
Oskar Pfister

After some introductory remarks on the role of fear in religious discourse. Plutarch’s treatise On Superstition is analysed according to its rhetorical outline. Questions of authenticity are discussed and answered by locating the essay in Plutarch’s early career. Then we ask for the place of “fear of God” in biblical teaching and theology, compare it to Plutarch and show some limits in Plutarch’s youthful thinking, which doesn't yet pay due respect to the life values of myth. We conclude with two New Testament passages, Romans 8:15, masterfully interpreted by Martin Luther, and 1 John 4:17f excellently explained by 20th century’s Swiss theologian and psychologian Oskar Pfister, and we show that these texts are propagating “belief without fear”.

scholarly journals ESCHINE E IL PROGETTO DI SOLONE SULL’EDUCAZIONE DEI GIOVANI: L’INTERPRETAZIONE DELLE LEGGI SOLONIANE NELL’ORAZIONE CONTRO TIMARCO

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Loddo
Keyword(s):  
Rhetorical Strategy ◽  
Educational Project

This article analyses the role of Solon’s laws in the discourse Against Timarchus with particular reference to the educational project that the speaker attributes to this ancient legislator. After explaining the historical and juridical context of the trial (§ 1), firstly, I describe what laws the speaker calls into question (§2); then, I discuss the issue of the reliability of the attribution of these laws to Solon (§ 3); finally, I present some considerations on Aeschines’ rhetorical strategy and I argue that not only his laws, but also his poems, his role as political speaker and the very character of Solon form an integral part of this strategy (§ 4).

scholarly journals Hell as “Eternal” Punishment? On the Depiction of Hell in Vīlhojī’s Kathā Gyāncarī

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-362
Author(s):  
Susanne Kempe-Weber
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Close Connection ◽  
Rhetorical Strategy ◽  
Religious Doctrine ◽  
Unique Composition ◽  
Eternal Punishment

Abstract This paper engages with the literature of the Biśnoī Sampradāya, a religious tradition that emerged in the fifteenth century in Rajasthan and traces itself back to the Sant Jāmbhojī. The paper specifically examines a composition of the sixteenth-seventeenth century poet-saint and head of the tradition Vīlhojī. His Kathā Gyāncarī is a unique composition among the corpus of Biśnoi literature with regard to its genre, style and content. The text revolves around the consequences of one’s actions after death, particularly punishment in hell. This paper aims to illustrate that the Kathā Gyāncarī depicts suffering in hell as the eternal consequence of committing sins or crimes, which is unique not only for Biśnoī literature, but for Sant literature in general. It argues that the depiction of hell as eternal punishment was used as a rhetorical strategy at a time the Biśnoī Sampradāya faced intense difficulties. In another vein, this depiction of hell could indicate the Biśnoīs’ close connection to the Indian Shi’a community of the Nizārī Ismā’īlīs. This is reflected not only in the Kathā Gyāncarī’s function of hell as a eternal punishment for disbelievers and sinners, but also in the soteriological role of the teacher or guru as well as in the appearance of various Nizārī figures and motives in the text. In either way picturing hell as eternal suffering serves to amplify the authority of the Biśnoī teachers and the supremacy of the Biśnoī religious doctrine.

The Rhetoric of Decline and the Rhetoric for Declamatio

2020 ◽  
pp. 201-218
Author(s):  
Christopher S. van den Berg
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Rhetorical Strategy ◽  
Rhetorical Tradition ◽  
The World ◽  
Roman Culture

As an expert observer Seneca avows the decline of declamation, and we are all too ready to believe him. Many imperial practitioners and theorists of eloquentia (‘skilled speech’) appeal to decline as they engage in projects of considerable sophistication. Yet why resort to a proposition that seems to undermine the authority and value of their literary creations? This chapter examines the topos of decline in discussions of Roman imperial rhetoric, with a specific emphasis on Seneca’s first preface, proposing that, despite its paradoxical surface, decline is of a piece with the programmatic introduction to the collection. This chapter begins by briefly surveying how first- and second-century authors rework this theme as part of a larger literary project to justify the continued role of rhetoric in Roman culture. Discussion of decline is a rhetorical strategy that situates an author in relation to contemporaries and to the Roman past, creating a sense of cultural identity and continuity. If Seneca did not invent the topos, he is our first full witness of its workings in the rhetorical tradition, to which the chapter then turns. Seneca’s encyclopedic emphasis naturally falls on memoria, one of the canonical rhetorical departments, which is contrasted with biological metaphors describing cultural growth and decay. By drawing these parallels, Seneca compares memoria—a product of natura—with senectus, thus both recalling his youth and giving new life to the world of declamation.

An Education in Contempt

2021 ◽  
pp. 182-212
Author(s):  
Ross Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Young Women ◽  
Mary Wollstonecraft ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Rhetorical Strategy

This chapter discusses the role of ridicule in the work of one of the century's foremost critics of men and women's subordination. In her Vindication of the Rights of Men, Mary Wollstonecraft, referencing Shaftesbury, accused Edmund Burke of using ridicule to humiliate his political opponents, including her own mentor, Richard Price. Yet she herself showed few qualms about returning like with like. Rather than demonstrating inconsistency, the chapter argues, Wollstonecraft's rhetorical strategy reveals her appreciation for the power of ridicule to expose prejudice and undercut illegitimate claims to authority. Particularly in her two Vindications, Wollstonecraft deployed ridicule as a weapon against haughty elites and made a case for teaching young women to laugh contemptuously at the cultural products (mainly sentimental novels) that contributed to their subordination.

Rhetorical Ethos: an Attempt at Linguistic Pragmatic Perspective on Classical Rhetoric

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2018) (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Janja Žmavc
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Scientific Paper ◽  
Primary Objective ◽  
Classical Rhetoric ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Rhetorical Strategy ◽  
Linguistic Pragmatics ◽  
Roman Rhetoric

Category: 1.01 Original scientific paper Language: Original in English (Abstract in English and Slovenian, Summary in Slovenian) Key words: rhetorical ethos, implicit meaning, early Roman rhetoric, authority, argumentation Abstract: The paper explores the possibilities of the interdisciplinary relationship between classical rhetoric and linguistic pragmatics. It presents one of the most popular rhetorical notions (i.e., rhetorical ethos) and its relation to implicit meaning (i.e., another popular notion of pragmatics). The primary objective is to analyze the rhetorical strategy of a speaker's favorable character presentation in the socio-cultural context of early Roman rhetoric. In the analysis, the Aristotelian and the socio-cultural viewpoint on rhetorical ethos is adopted and combined with Verschueren's model of linguistic pragmatics. Rhetorical ethos is further explored in terms of persuasive strategy in the context of different social roles of the orator in ancient Rome with a particular focus on the identification of ethotic strategies, which are related to the notion of authority. A case study based on the notion of types of implicit meaning is presented, focusing on the role of implicitness in the construction of rhetorical ethos in early Roman rhetoric.

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