Making Food-Systems Policy for Local Interests and Common Good

The unjust distribution of poor health outcomes produced via current United States food systems indicates the need for inclusive and innovative policymaking at the local level. Public health and environmental organizers are seeking to improve food environments from the ground up with locally driven policy initiatives but since 2010 have increasingly met resistance via state-government preemption of local policymaking power. This analysis seeks to understand how political actors on both sides of preemption debates use rhetorical argumentation. In doing so, we offer insights to the meaning-making process specific to food systems. We argue that advocates for local food-system innovations are forwarding understandings of food and community that contradict the policy goals they seek. We offer suggestions for local food and environmental advocates for adjusting their arguments.

The Rhetoric of Lithuanian MeToo Discourse

The great spread of the phenomenon of MeToo, a global movement promoting the publicity of the facts of sexual harassment, has also received a response in Lithuania: anonymous stories in blogs have grown into a provocative discourse that has attracted a great deal of attention. The aim of the research presented in this article is to characterise the discourse of MeToo in terms of rhetorical expression that has not been discussed yet: to identify and elicit the dominant elements of rhetorical argumentation. The empirical research was conducted using the method of rhetorical analysis that allows distinguishing and defining in rhetorical categories the models characteristic to rhetoric appeals. The method of rhetorical analysis combined with directed content analysis, as well as with critical discourse analysis. Following the methodology of provocative narrative research, it was analysed the material published at the time of maximum intensity and involvement in the discourse, such as testimonies, publications, interviews, and comments of women who have been subjected to sexual harassment. The results of rhetorical discourse analysis allow us to discuss the culture of accusation in which the normalization of victim condemnation is prevalent, and logical reasoning gives way to prejudice-based emotional appeals.

THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE FOR THE REST OF THE SCIENCES OF THE ANTI-CRIMINAL CYCLE

In the light of the unification of the sciences of the anti-criminal cycle into one general scientific specialty, the question of the «leader» of this science arises. Purpose: to convince readers that this should be the science of criminal procedure. Methods: the authors use the methods of dialectical and formal logic, comparison, description, interpretation. Some techniques of rhetorical argumentation are also used. The main argument advanced by the authors in favor of their position is based on a new type of post-classical law-based approach, according to which law is a process. Therefore, actual criminal law is the meaning of the text of the article (articles) of the Criminal Code in the context of the operative part of a conviction, another final procedural decision in the case. Results: the authors conclude that the modern science of criminal law, while remaining dogmatic, is held captive by outdated («classical») ideas about criminal responsibility, criminal law relation, the basis for them and their origin, as well as other concepts of material determinism. It is suggested that procedural determinism should be a scientific methodology, focusing on the primacy of the process and the derivation of substantive law phenomena, including criminal law itself, from the process. In the article, in the likeness of «Luther's theses» objections to dogmatism and the foundations of the reformation of criminal law knowledge are presented.

The Impact of Rhetorical Argumentation on Achieving the Mastery of Fluency and Accuracy in Communicative Competence: A Case Study of 2 nd Year Students at the University Des Frères Mentouri, Constantine

The present study is a comparison between the impact of rhetorical argumentation and narrating stories on students’ fluency and accuracy in communicative competence. We aimed at evaluating the usefulness and suitability of these tasks, and their efficiency when it comes to teaching fluency and accuracy by analysing the direct effects of the tasks on the indices of fluency and accuracy. The problematic issue in this research investigates the effects of the task rhetorical argumentation, and whether it is an important task that teachers should rely on it in teaching speaking in academic contexts. The sample is composed of 65 students which are divided in between 30 students in the control group and 35 students in experimental group. The data was collected by a test which was used to evaluate three main areas which are: classroom interaction, topic knowledge and language knowledge. The results of the experiment show that there are two types of fluency which are procedural and automatic. Rhetorical argumentation can be used to develop procedural fluency, and not automatic since the task is considered as difficult and students were not familiar with it.

Scientific Theories in the Exegesis of the Book of Genesis and Christological Polemics in the First Half of the Sixth Century: Methods of Argumentation using ἀναλογία and παράδειγμα

This article analyzes the use of scientific theories in the exegesis of the Book of Genesis and in Christological dispute between Diophysites and Monophysites in the first half of the sixth century, focusing on the conditions under which traditional methods of rhetorical argumentation could be applied and on using scientific models for explaining the phenomena of the created nature in order to clarify the aporias from the Book of Genesis and Incarnation. The argument using παράδειγμα (example) and ἀναλογία (analogy), which belonged to the repertory of methods from the Neoplatonic scholarly tradition, made it possible to discuss such heterogeneous phenomena as created and non-created as well as divine and human in theological texts by providing the rules for correct descriptions and for verifying their theological and philosophical accuracy. These two methods are analyzed against the background of Neoplatonic commentaries of Aristotle, while their application to theology is viewed through polemical argument in John Philoponus and Leontius of Byzantium. The Monophysite Philoponus used the argument from ἀναλογία to defend the Christological formula of one composite nature of Christ, while the Chalcedonian Leontius of Byzantium employed the method of argumentation from παράδειγμα for defending the presence of two natures in Christ.

An Instructive Story About How a Byzantine Princess Bravely Looked Deep into the Abyss of Oblivion

An Instructive Story About How a Byzantine Princess Bravely Looked Deep into the Abyss of Oblivion Anna Comnena’s beginning of the Prologue to her Alexiad is a fine literary and rhetorical piece. It is about the problem how destructive the passing of time is, and for which the only obstacle can be to consolidate the achievements of the past in a literary work. Such a line of thought was usually interpreted in the terms of the author’s rhetorical topos. Most frequently, this topos occurs in ancient historiography whose formal features were continued by Greek historians of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium). While not deyning that there is much to recommend in such an approach, the present paper tries also to pay attention to Anna’s life and stress the authenticity of her emotions. In this light the Preface to the Alexiad, while remaining an example of magnificent rhetorical argumentation, can also be seen as an authentic attempt ‘to stop’ time, an attempt made by an aging woman, conscious that this is the only chance to give meaning to her own life by preserving it in the memory of future generations, so, in a sense, to ‘immortalize’ it, given that it will be told in a written story, capable of surviving in time.

Rhetorical argumentation in popular science discourse: Features and prospects

The nature of popular science discourse in recent decades has acquired a convincing function, while it is addressed to an audience that is not always loyal to science. There are new requirements for writing argumentative popular science texts and they must contain arguments that depend on the target audience. The need for a broad mastery of the skill of writing well-reasoned popular science texts is associated with the issues of understanding how successfully their function has been implemented to convince the audience and thе explication of technologies that help make these texts convincing, including the creation of a database of typical basic arguments. It is believed that the methods of computer analysis used in computational rhetoric can be used to study the argumentative specifics of popular science literature, and rhetorical argumentation should be the most productive approach to argumentation in a popular science text because only it provides ways of interacting with the audience. However, there are constraints for the development of this direction that make it difficult to find and annotate arguments in a popular science text, namely: an ambiguity in understanding the argument and argumentation, modeling various arguments depending on the understanding of their structure and function, and finally, the target audience modeling. Explication of arguments in the text is possible through linguistic markers, but there is a problem of establishing the boundaries of the argument. Identifying the internal structure of text segment relationships solves this problem, however, annotating the text is sensitive to certain methods of modeling argumentation. Based on the basic model of Toulmin’s argument, the special aspects of modeling rhetorical argumentation and its dependence on the target audience are illustrated. It is proposed that the concept of a universal audience can hardly be adapted to practical tasks, and criteria that are consistent with the format of truths and the format of audience values, the implementation of which could bring the target audience closer to an universal one. The author demonstrates the features in the pragma-dialectical approach, which, despite its popularity in computational rhetoric, do not allow it to be fully adapted to popular science discourse.