“Everything Is in the Lab Book”: Multimodal Writing, Activity, and Genre Analysis of Symbolic Mediation in Medical Physics

Writing and genre scholarship has become increasingly attuned to how various nontextual features of written genres contribute to the kinds of social actions that the genres perform and to the activities that they mediate. Even though scholars have proposed different ways to account for nontextual features of genres, such attempts often remain undertheorized. By bringing together Writing, Activity, and Genre Research, and Multimodal Interaction Analysis, the authors propose a conceptual framework for multimodal activity-based analysis of genres, or Multimodal Writing, Activity, and Genre (MWAG) analysis. Furthermore, by drawing on previous studies of the laboratory notebook (lab book) genre, the article discusses the rhetorical action the genre performs and its role in mediating knowledge construction activities in science. The authors provide an illustrative example of the MWAG analysis of an emergent scientist’s lab book and discuss its contributions to his increasing participation in medical physics. The study contributes to the development of a theoretically informed analytical framework for integrative multimodal and rhetorical genre analysis, while illustrating how the proposed framework can lead to the insights into the sociorhetorical roles multimodal genres play in mediating such activities as knowledge construction and disciplinary enculturation.

Manifestations of language awareness in the use of persuasive acts of speech in Middle Polish Sejm diaries

Persuasion as a rhetorical action is the basic indicator of parliamentary speech. Therefore, it seems reasonable to ask whether the diarists describing the course of Sejm proceedings were aware of the use of persuasive acts of speech by MPs. The material analysed — 24 lexemes referring to the verbal acts of the speakers — was extracted from a dozen or so Sejm diaries documenting the proceedings in the Middle Polish period. The research has proven that diarists use verba dicendi, which indicate the result of a verbal act (e.g. namawiać, zagrzewać, pobudzać, obmawiać, napominać and animować) or that they pay attention to the persuasion process itself (e.g. dowodzić, emundować się, perswadować, wywodzić, konwinkować, allegować, okazować and remonstrować). In addition, the following nouns are used: dowód, wywód, komparacyja, argument, perswazyja, konkluzyja and racyja. Diarists deliberately use a variety of lexis because they strive to name the verbal acts of the speakers as precisely as possible.

Rhetorical Entrapment in EU–Turkey Relations

This chapter describes and applies the rhetorical action approach to EU–Turkey relations. Generally, rhetorical entrapment denotes the mechanism by which actors are compelled to act in conformance with their prior argumentative commitments. In the context of EU enlargement, member states have committed themselves to enlargement norms and promises in line with the fundamental purpose and values of the EU (such as pan-European community building, liberal democracy and supranationalism). Rhetorical entrapment played an important role in bringing about Eastern enlargement when the Eastern European countries faced significant resistance among the old member states. Finally, the chapter analyzes the rhetorical entrapment mechanism in the accession process of Turkey, which had an even more unfavorable starting position. As long as Turkey progressed on meeting the official political criteria for EU membership, however, the opponents of Turkish membership were bound by their normative commitment and felt compelled to decide in favor of accession negotiations. The rhetorical entrapment mechanism also elucidates why accession negotiations began to stall soon after their start. The opponents of Turkish membership were released from the rhetorical trap when Turkey failed to heed its own promises and honor its own obligations as a candidate state.

Demystifying China’s Sanctions Behaviour

Chapter 7 examines which of the five competing hypotheses as detailed in Chapters 2 and 3 best explains China’s puzzling sanctions behaviour. It finds that China’s longstanding rhetoric against the use of unilateral sanctions had resulted in China not being able to openly threaten or admit to the use of such economic tools in its pursuit of political goals. China’s use of unilateral sanctions under the period of examination (if at all present) was therefore ambiguous and unofficial, targeted at narrowly specific sectors, and limited in scope. Furthermore, China found itself having to withdraw or further reduce the extent of sanctions when other parties used rhetorical action such as shaming or flattery to draw international attention to China’s behaviour.

China’s Sanctions Dilemma

Chapter 8 summarises the main findings of this book. Due to China’s longstanding sanctions rhetoric, Chinese decision-makers had until the end of Xi Jinping’s first term avoided making open use of unilateral sanctions during periods of political dispute. This was particularly the case when their target states used rhetorical action to draw international attention to China’s attempted use of economic coercion. This chapter then reviews the theoretical and policy implications and discusses the future of China’s sanctions rhetoric and behaviour. It also suggests areas for further study, in particular the balance between economic inducement and coercion in China’s grand strategy as well as the links between economics and security.

A Tardy Uptake

Following Carolyn Miller’s (1984) definition of genre as social action, subsequent work in the field of rhetorical genre theory has focused on two aspects of her account. The first is the claim that “a genre is a rhetorical means for mediating private intention and social exigence” (Miller, 1984, p. 163). The site of this mediation is now referred to as the subject—a term that is imported from psychoanalysis and critical social theory. I am concerned that the theoretical freight carried by this term—with its claim to address the “big questions” of subjectivity—diverts us from our focus on “how the genre works as rhetorical action” (Miller, 1984, p. 159). I shall replace the subject with the agent, moving then to argue that bringing uptake to bear on agency helps shift the debate to a more strictly rhetorical terrain. The second aspect that has been focused on is exigence: the “social motive” of rhetorical action, “an objectified social need” lying at “the core of situation” (Miller, 1984, pp. 158, 157). I consider an ambiguity at the heart of this concept of exigence between the work it does in accounting for punctual rhetorical action—the genre in actu—and its work in generalizing over some genre in virtu. Because of this, I move to replace exigence with alternative ways of conceiving the site of rhetorical action. Throughout, I accept broadly the framework of Rhetorical Genre Studies. While I seek to solve the problems through a rigorous reliance on rhetoric, I move beyond this frame when I discuss the restrictions on a theory of genre imposed by an exclusive assumption of verbal or discursive acts.

Graphic instinct: the account of graphic instinct: the account of rhetorical action and its instinctive roots in Peirce’s classification of practical sciences

Em um artigo intimamente relacionado a este, mostramos que o estudo mais maduro de Peirce sobre a retórica especulativa, em Ideas, Stray or Stolen, about Scientific Writing (1904), nos convida a refletir e apreender o fenômeno da retórica em sua totalidade. Seguindo pistas aristotélicas, Peirce – implicitamente – diferencia três aspectos categoriais da ação retórica, diferenciando entre (i) sua potencialidade [δύναμις] e perfeição [ἐντελέχεια] como uma faculdade instintiva de tornar signos eficazes em uma utópica arte universal, (ii) sua atualidade como um discurso prático normativo historicamente eficaz e que molda a prática retórica [τέχνη], referida como retórica comum; e (iii) sua formalidade, articulada pela investigação puramente teórica [θεωρία] das condições necessárias da eficiência dos signos em geral, intitulada Retórica Especulativa. Assim como nosso modo de ser com os outros em um mundo comum de compartilhamento de propósitos, a retórica, tanto para Aristóteles quanto para Peirce, constitui uma forma semiótica do summum bonum, cujo cultivo é essencial para o crescimento da razoabilidade concreta em qualquer comunidade política e na civilização como um todo. No presente artigo, começamos reconstruindo o relato da retórica de Peirce, no quadro de sua classificação das ciências práticas (Seção 2.1), e depois mostramos como esse relato da retórica como uma faculdade enraizada no “Instinto Gráfico” confirma a análise que apresentamos no trabalho anterior (Seções 2.2-2.3). Na seção final, tentaremos esboçar em que sentido a importância de conceber a retórica como uma δύναμις com uma ἐντελέχεια específica, ou “potencialidade-ideia” do aperfeiçoamento do desenvolvimento, pode nos ajudar a apreciar o papel histórico emancipatório que Peirce atribui às Ciências Normativas (Seção 3).

The strategic use of normative arguments in international negotiations

This article claims that normative arguments play a greater role in negotiations than existing scholarship implies. While the approaches of communicative and rhetorical action limit the use of arguments to environments that meet certain conditions, in fact normative arguments are widely used and can be found in almost every example of negotiations. This article seeks to explain this phenomenon. Negotiating parties that feel obligated to tackle normative arguments raised by the opposing side – either because of the presence of an audience or to maintain its reputation – have a number of tools at their disposal. Negotiators who are unsuccessful in tackling these arguments will tend to offer a proposal that is more attractive to the other side. Although normative arguments do not generally have a sweeping influence on the outcome of negotiations, they are still likely to play a significant role. The article applies this theoretical framework to the case of the lengthy negotiations between the EEC and Israel, in which the former had no material motivation and desire to cede to Israel’s demands and nevertheless did so.

Rhetorical Action and Constitutive Politics

This article reconstructs the concept of rhetorical action to excavate its original, recurrent, and—for many—discomforting links to constitutive politics. By examining the history of rhetorical action through the ancient period to the mid-17th century, I will argue that that relationship between rhetorical action and constitutive politics is a powerful prism for understanding actio. The article's contributions are twofold and compounding. The first is the establishment of a positive account of the relation between actio and constitutive rhetoric for the ancient politicians and early modern dramatists, which pushes the usual bookends of actio's history both backward and forward, providing analytical leverage to critically reflect on its standard history. The second contribution is a demonstration that much of the confusion and discomfort surrounding actio results from formulating actio negatively against its constitutive political threat. In sum, this article contributes to both the theoretical and historical understanding of rhetorical action.