Parson Yorick’s Vis-à-vis

This chapter illustrates the radical strand of eighteenth-century print-cultural rhetoric that rejected the personal room and pictured it as the twisted heart of a stagnant manuscript culture that could only inhibit the modern drive toward sharing feelings and ideas. It considers the original spin that Laurence Sterne put on “A Sentimental Journey,” a semifictional travelogue that he wrote in a flush of pleasure from the international success of his first novel Tristram Shandy. The chapter describes coaches that had sometimes been characterized as “moving closets” since the seventeenth century. It explains how previous writers of the eighteenth century tended to represent enforced mingling in carriages as a source of social anxiety. In Sterne's travelogue, he explained closet and carriage symbolism in order to celebrate a small post-chaise called the vis-à-vis as the ideal vehicle of intimacy between strangers.

El posicionamiento del “ethos” como estrategia retórica en la comedia de “stand-up” de Valladolid

El presente trabajo pretende mostrar un análisis del género de la comedia de stand-up desde una perspectiva retórica. Se propone un análisis de actos y rutinas de artistas vallisoletanos de stand-up con el objetivo de explicar la influencia que tiene el posicionamiento del ethos del comediante respecto a la audiencia y respecto al asunto con el que se pretende el humor. Se trata, por tanto, de una estrategia retórica con una evidente influencia cultural, por lo que es posible abordarla desde los principios de la Retórica cultural propuestos por Tomás Albaladejo.This study aims to show an analysis of the stand-up comedy genre from a rhetorical perspective. A review of the actions and habits of some stand-up artists from Valladolid is proposed in order to explain the influence of the position of the comedian ethos has with regard to the audience, and to the matter which is the subject of the humour. Therefore, this is a rhetorical strategy which has an evident cultural influence that could be addressed from the principles of the cultural rhetoric suggested by Tomás Albaladejo.

A cross-cultural study of English and Chinese online platform reviews: A genre-based view

Regardless of the increasing research attention paid to peer-to-peer accommodation worldwide, our understanding of consumer experiences across different languages and cultures is limited. Extant research tends to support the view that consumer experiences are homogeneous, while overlooking possible cultural divergence across cultures. To fill this gap, this study uses a cross-cultural perspective based on genre analysis and cross-cultural rhetoric study to compare English and Chinese reviews about users’ peer-to-peer accommodation experiences in two popular platforms in China, Airbnb and Xiaozhu (China’s Airbnb platform). Through analyzing 584 online reviews (256 in Chinese and 328 in English), we found similar moves in both sets of data, including reviews about the accommodation and about the host, expressing feelings, and making a recommendation. However, we found significant differences in expressing these moves in communication styles. We found that there was a stronger sense of a close and family- like relationship between the guest and the host in the Chinese reviews, while English reviews stressed the importance of space and privacy.

Over the Borderline

This chapter surveys clinicians’ integrating religion approaches to Buddhist traditions. Here psychotherapists seek to incorporate Buddhist and psychotherapeutic elements in such a way that both remain recognizable. Some believe that common elements or shared ultimate aims make Buddhist and psychotherapeutic “compatible.” Others design methods to overcome what they otherwise portray as fundamental incommensurables (e.g., dissonances between Buddhist and therapeutic conceptions of the self). At times, therapists explain their integrative efforts to be what they call “hybrids” consistent with those of previous locations of Buddhist transmission (e.g., medieval China). The chapter considers whether scholarly concepts such as hybridity or religious repertories used to describe historical religious mixing could be useful in describing these contemporary activities. Or, alternatively, whether the combinativeness here is unique and without historical precedent: the bricolage of the religious and the not-religious, scientific or biomedical. To some therapists, integrating Buddhist and psychotherapeutic frames necessitates asking questions of definition (whether Buddhist traditions are properly classified as religious; psychotherapy as not-religious, etc.). Some take up cultural rhetoric surrounding the term “spirituality” in this context to argue that their activities are neither religious or not-religious.

Falling

This chapter explores the interconnected realms of the theoretical and the practical by tracing the physical experience of moving from up to down, as well as the cultural rhetoric which equates falling with failure. What can the intentional practice of falling teach us about how to survive personal and national crises in this time of social instability and political uncertainty? Instead of nervously trying to avoid falling in a world in which so many aspects of our lives are being turned upside down, we can take a lesson from the contemporary movement form of Contact Improvisation, and practice ways in which to feel more comfortable with falling, failure, the ground, and gravity. Indeed, falling can teach us a great deal about resiliency—physical as well as emotional and even financial resiliency—helping us, in turn, mitigate the effects of panic about falling behind that seems to have permeated almost everyone’s being these days.

Cross Cultural Rhetoric Awareness of Undergraduate Thesis Introduction Section Written by Acehnese EFL Students

This study investigated cross cultural rhetoric awareness of introduction section by Acehnese EFL students. This study aimed at describing the rhetorical pattern and determine the cross cultural rhetoric awareness by looking at the rhetorical pattern in Introduction section. A qualitative method and content analysis were used in this study which analyzed the Introduction section. The data of this research was English undergraduate thesis written by ten Acehnese students as the documentation was applied as the instrument. The data were collected from two Islamic institutes in Aceh. The research was conducted by using documentation analysis. The result of the analysis demonstrated that the English writings by Acehnese students maintained the inductive style and the idea of the paragraph is circular. However, the use of markers is enough to be considered. The conclusion led to the rhetorical pattern of the Acehnese students which is in oriented style. Indeed, the implication of the finding showed that the students’ cross cultural rhetoric awareness toward English writing convention, especially in academic writing, is low