Metamorphosis from exalted person to cultural symbol: A case study of the GOAT in tennis

In this article, we suggest that our semiotic understanding of embodiment could be expanded to include a socially exalted individual, who embodies a symbol. To illustrate this argument, we draw on an ongoing research project that examines fandom rhetoric and debates around the ‘Greatest of all time’ or the GOAT symbol in Tennis. Grounding Bakhtin’s tri-distinctions of identity, I-for-myself, I-for-other and other-for-me, in a Kantian hermeneutic tradition, we perform a theoretically informed analysis of the GOAT debate. None of the three tri-components exists in isolation; rather, they interact in a reflexive dialogue which continually shapes and re-shapes individual consciousness and experiences of embodiment. We apply a ‘romanticism aesthetic activity’ analytical framework to the tri-distinctions of identity, that consists of ‘creative’ and ‘critical’ rhetoric, within which we found genres of ‘myth’, ‘art’ and ‘science’. Each genre functions through disparate means to exalt or metamorphise an individual (our focus is on Roger Federer) into a cultural symbol, and that the symbolic form of GOAT reflexively organises the emotional field and identities for those fans deeply invested in it. This article contributes to the current cultural psychological literature on understanding the mediation of people to symbols in a new digital age.

Critical rhetoric and Critical Discourse Analysis in a critical pandemic world

This paper introduces the potentials of crossing critical rhetoric and Critical Discourse Analysis in analyzing public discourse concerning one of the “corona topics”, namely institutional communication about the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. The application of two complementary theoretical frameworks reveals discourse negotiation and naturalization of power and ideology in a persuasive discursive practice of issuing successive contradictory messages regarding the vaccine’s safety.

Domestic matters will determine Mexican foreign policy

Significance The move follows Mexico’s hosting of a Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) summit last month, and provides an opportunity to expand the country’s international profile. However, AMLO generally disregards foreign policy, except as a tool for advancing domestic interests and building public support. Impacts US relations will continue to dominate foreign policy, despite AMLO’s critical rhetoric about rich nations. In the short term, Mexico will frame its foreign policy around calls for increased access to COVID-19 vaccines. Mexico’s energy policy could become a source of international tension, given its potential implications for foreign investors.

The problem of demarcation of modernity and social reality after modernity philosophical dialogue)

This article discusses the conditions for delimitation of modernity and futureculture, as well as the concept of modernity. Vadim Belyaev claims that what the author refers to as futureculture, in fact does not go beyond the boundaries of modernity; these are rather the processes of promodernity and countermodernity. Vyacheslav Maracha polemicizes with Belyaev’s statements. Belyaev substantiates his critical rhetoric, gives characteristics to his interpretation of modernity, and claims that the author did not explain the thesis on the completion of modernity and the establishment of futureculture. The author partially agrees with the criticism and provides additional arguments: characterizes the definition of modernity used by him; distinguishes between the new worldview, semantic reality of culture, and projects of modernity, realization of these projects and objective reality results from implementation of the projects of modernity and responses to new challenges of the time, as well as construction of the social institutions of modernity. The latter statement is illustrated on the example of the formation of state institution, the study by Martin van Creveld “The Rise and Fall of the State”. The conclusion is made that all plans and fundamental structures of modernity (worldview, semantic reality of culture, projects of modernity, social institutions) can no longer ensure normal flow of modern life, but rather generate problems and social destructions. Objectively, modernity has been reborn and is nearing completion. The author formulates certain ideas and meaning that reveal the formation of the future culture.

Participatory Rhetorics at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and Legacy Museum

This chapter analyzes the participatory rhetorics of Montgomery’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Using participatory critical rhetoric as a methodology for criticism, we show how this place of memory uses affective, visual, and embodied appeals to create participatory spaces for remembering lynching pasts (and presents) in U.S. counties where lynchings occurred. As a supplement to the Legacy Museum, which exists down the street from the memorial, this memorial provides a dark tourist countermemorial that powerfully ruptures dominant civil rights memories.

The Rise of the Conspicuously Young Novelist

This essay illuminates the history of what David Foster Wallace dubbed the “conspicuously young” novelist (CYN), drawing on a series of brief case studies (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Radiguet, Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, Sylvia Plath, and James Baldwin) that demonstrate how certain CYNs were marketed and represented in advertising and journalistic discourse. In the process, it traces the construction of a number of ostensibly meritocratic—but in practice highly inequitable—institutions that functioned to identify, sponsor, and promote young writers. Finally, this essay examines the pervasive critical rhetoric of “promise,” which offers the key to understanding the dynamic of hype and disappointment immanent to each “younger generation” of CY writers.

The Effect of Critical Rhetoric in Teaching English as a Foreign Language

The present paper represents an attempt so as to examine and analyze texts in terms of the context and its relation to cultural, political and social issues. It also provides theoretical and practical information which are used in classroom to facilitate learning foreign language. Rhetorical analysis is essential to be used and incorporated into EFL classroom because it is an important field which is not isolated from other disciplines like critical thinking and learning process. Special emphasis is laid upon the role of contrastive rhetoric in facilitating the process of learning foreign languages. Some pedagogical implications for studying L2 correctly and effectively are also tackled. Furthermore, the major role of pragmatics in analyzing the Second and Foreign Language text is also highlighted. This is accomplished within a pedagogical point of view. It is hoped that the paper will be of value to EFL teachers, syllabus designers, applied linguists and specialists in ethnography of communication.

POLITICAL SENTIMENTS OF WESTERN UKRAINIANS DURING ELECTION CAMPAIGNS OF THE POST-WAR PERIOD

The article considers the main manifestations of political sentiments of the population of Western oblasts of Ukraine concerning election campaigns of the post-war period. The factors determining the voting behavior of voters and causes of social deviations are analyzed. It is emphasized that the attitude of the Western Ukrainians to the Soviet election campaigns was primarily determined by the electoral experience they gained while participating in parliamentary structures of Austria-Hungary, interwar Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. The scheme of stratification of electoral sentiments of the local population by quantitative, social, and political, gender, and other indicators are presented. The dominant anti-Soviet views that were caused by the rejection of Soviet totalitarianism by Western Ukrainians, the predatory economic policy of the government, and activities of the national liberation movement are noted. The specific facts of dissatisfaction of the population with the Soviet electoral legislation, forms and methods of its implementation as well as some measures of the Soviet government aimed at the forced Sovietization of the region are stated. It is determined that the largest group of protest voters was the peasantry, which in the postwar period was in difficult material and living conditions and actively supported the participants of OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) and UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army). The geography of critical rhetoric suggests the similarity of electoral sentiments in different regions of the republic. However, if Western Ukrainians were not afraid to protest in public, the residents of Greater Ukraine hid their true attitude towards Soviet democracy because of fear of repression. It is claimed that the study of political attitudes of the population in regions where the Soviet regime has not yet been established, and peoplе’s consciousness was free of the Soviet ideological stamps allows reflecting their real state. Keywords: Western regions of the Ukrainian SSR, post-war period, Sovietization, elections to the Supreme Soviets of the USSR and the Ukrainian SSR, political behavior of the population.