Quintilian on Effective Language

Books 8 and 9 of the Institutio take up the third major division of rhetoric, elocutio or effective rhetorical style. Here Quintilian offers an encyclopaedic review of choices and devices at the word, sentence, and passage level, providing examples of their functions and potential abuses. Book 8 covers three of the four virtues of style: correctness, clarity, and ornatus or force. Quintilian favours everyday usage in word choice and warns against the faults of monotony, excess, and offensiveness. He praises visualizing language (enargeia), demurs on sententiae or pithy expressions, and reviews amplifying tactics, such as placing an item in, at the top, or even beyond a rising series, leading to speechlessness. The final section reviews twelve tropes, with special attention to how metaphors are invented. Book 9 opens with a definition of figures of speech as departures from normal usage, and discusses how the form of an expression contributes to its function. It then covers the ‘figures of thought’ such as prosopopoeia and irony, and the syntactic figures or schemes including figures of repetition. The last part treats compositio, involving word order, sound, and rhythm. Using the metrical vocabulary of poetry, Quintilian analyses prosody in terms of the proportion of long to short syllables, creating the pace of a passage, and then discusses prose rhythm in terms of the comma, colon, and period. Overall, Quintilian’s rich and complex treatment of rhetorical style should fuel continuing investigations.

Quintilian as Master of Prose

As a complement to Chapter 7, which deals with Quintilian’s theory of rhetorical style, this chapter examines his own mastery in a wide range of different style levels and effects. It makes clear that while in Books 8 and 9 and chapter 12.10 of his Institutio he teaches eloquence by telling, he is teaching it by showing throughout his work. In order to provide his readers with samples of as many different stylistic shades and functions as possible, he performs a great variety of styles from sober and plain didactic prose (docere) to pleasant imagery (delectare), from humour to deep sadness (movere), designing even his prefaces as stylistic models. Moreover, he uses his abundant eloquence for persuasive as well as for didactic purposes to spur his pupils and readers to devote themselves to the lofty goal of oratorical and moral perfection. Thus, Quintilian presents himself in his textbook not only as a brilliant teacher, but also as a powerful orator.

The Rebel Yell: On You-Tube's Burlesque Traditonalists and Their Alt-Right Audiences

Background: This article examines how the rhetorical style of the “alt-right” builds a political audience through a study of the Rebel, a Canadian YouTube news channel. Analysis: This study analyzes the rhetoric of two hosts on the Rebel, Lauren Southern and Gavin McInnes, and finds their style marked by the use of the vernacular slang associated with subcultural communities of the alt-right. Conclusion and implications: The unique rhetorical style on display points to micro-celebrity culture and techniques as a key to the proliferation of the alt-right. Contexte : En étudiant la chaîne canadienne the Rebel, cet article examine comment la rhétorique de la « droite alternative » construit une audience politique. Analyse : Nous analysons la rhétorique de deux hôtes, Lauren Southern et Gavin McInnes, et trouve que leur style est marquée par l’utilisation de l’argot vernaculaire associé aux communautés du « alt-right ». Conclusions et implications : Leur style exposé comment la culture et les techniques des micro-célébrités influence la prolifération de l’alt-right.

Authoritarian Leadership Politics and Constraints on the Executive: A Mediation Analysis of Ideology, Populism, and Civil Group Balance of Power

Why do some regimes slide further into autocracy while other regimes, similar in their formal institutions and economies, move toward democratization? What can explain the erosion of longstanding traditional institutions in autocracy? I contend that the answer lies in the ideology of the dictator with rhetorical style in a secondary role. Specifically, ideological programs of aggressive social change necessarily weaken existing civil society constraints and the reliance of the regime on ideology for legitimacy increases the power of ideological support groups. The combination of ideological agendas hostile to existing social structures with the instrumental use of populist rhetoric to bypass existing constraints is corrosive to both civil society and the institutional constraints it supports. This project will demonstrate using mediation analysis that radical leadership ideology results in the erosion of institutional constraints with changes in civil society as a causal mechanism, and that populism's role is secondary.

Rhetorical Conclusions in Nahmanides’ Torah Commentary

This paper examine Nahmanides’ rhetorical style in his Torah commentary, addressing his convention of concluding his biblical commentaries with a flourish, both in form and content. The origins of this rhetorical device in the literature preceding Nahmanides is presented, followed by a demonstration of its embodiment and development in Nahmanides own Torah commentary.

The English Translation of Complete Taḍmīn (Implication of Meaning) in the Third Sūrah (Chapter) in the Qur’an Āl ʕimrān

This research is an extension of the ongoing project of Nouraldeen (2020) and (2021). The project aims at studying and assessing the Qur’an translation of the āyāt (verses) which embodies one type of taḍmīn, complete taḍmīn, in the whole Qur’an. Also, this project endeavours to provide a suggested improved translation, where needed, to bring in the rhetorical style of taḍmīn. The importance of this project lies in appreciating the rhetorical aspect of complete taḍmīn, for it provides the reader with rich, additional meaning in a concise way. Four Muslim-Arabic authored English translations are studied and assessed through two sources in which complete taḍmīn can be identified. Textual analysis is applied to the source text and the target text. Sometimes, the translators pay attention to the implicit preposition in the āyāt and yet overlook the explicit preposition. Every so often, however, they translate the explicit preposition without recognising that this preposition is not standardly collocated with the explicit verb. Inconsistency is detected when translating different āyāt with the same explicit verb and preposition ـــ one time the implicit preposition is rendered, another time the explicit preposition is translated. I have already identified some other linguistic aspects which are essential to analyse and discuss in order to suggest improvements to the four translations. These aspects include, but are not limited to, the translation of the noun يوم ‘day’, being indefinite in the context of the Judgement Day; the translation of possession in English and Arabic; the translation of the coordinating conjunction و (literally translated as ‘and’); and the translation of preposing/fronting التقديم and postposing/backingالتأخير .

Presentational Markup: What's going on?

In the markup community, the role of presentational markup in facilitating the recognition of a document’s content objects has been part of the standard scenario of textual communication since the concept was introduced in 1987. Yet exactly how presentational markup makes the recognition of content objects more efficient and reliable has received little attention. We explore some possible accounts of what presentational markup does and how it does what it does. To this end, we prepare for comparisons with other non-linguistic contributions to textual communication, ranging from rhetorical style to punctuation. These are early, preliminary, and informal ruminations — a Balisage “Late Breaking” conversation. We are asking questions and inviting answers.

Quran and Metonymy: Literal, Semantic and Metonymic Translation (Analysis of English Translation of a Quranic Verse)

Metonymy is a rhetorical device widely used in the literary works of all the times. At the time when Quran was revealed the Arab were on the top of such idiomatic and rhetorical style of speech. Metonymy is the way to a hidden meaning or a far meaning from the apparent one. Translating metonymy creates problems while finding out the intended, desired and hidden meaning. These problems turn critical during translating the ‘Word of Heaven’. I have selected two consecutive metonymic phrases of Verse No. 43 of Chapter: The Women which is as under: ﴿ ِّنك ُ م ٌ د َ ح َ أ َ اء َ ج ْ و َ أ َ اء ِّسَ الن مُ ُ ت سْ َ م َ َل ْ و َ اِّئ ِّطأ َ غ ْ ال َ ّم ِّ ﴾ A total number of 32 Quran translators are randomly selected to find out the literal, semantic and metonymic translations of these two metonymic phrases. We can easily observe the various kinds of translation, sentence style, and shifts that create complexity for those readers who depend on translation. The paper quoted the stances of the Exegetes of Quran regarding these two adjacent metonymic sentences, determining the meaning mentioned by the majority of Exegetes and analyzde the English words used for rendering their meanings to find out which translation can be suggested for the source language general public to gain the real intended meaning as elaborated by the majority of Quran Exegetes.

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s Essentials of Hindutva: A Study of Its Philosophical Elements to Hindu Nationalism

In the early twentieth-century, the concepts of Hindutva, Samyavada or Nationalism and national identity, reconstructed amid currents of globalization and neo-colonialism. During this period, the calls for an independent India reached its height. While, Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru believed modern India’s strength depended on incorporating the solidarities of all Indians as they stood on the precipice of the postcolonial age, Veer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966), an ethnocentric nationalist, held that a strong Hindu nation was the only way to guarantee India’s security against the Muslim other and the British imperialism. Being the philosopher of Hindutva, Savarkar represented the ethno-nationalistic component to Hindu nationalism and looked to cultural motifs in order to unify the “true” people of India. He, therefore, wrote glorified histories of India and its millennia-old cultural traditions in his essays. This article analyzes and historically contextualizes the timing and the rhetorical style of V. D. Savarkar’s infamous extended essay “Essentials of Hindutva”. Received 9th December 2020; Revised 2nd March 2021; Accepted 20th March 2021

VII. ‘Judging beyond the sandal’: Law and rhetoric in D. 19,2,31 (Alf. 5 dig. a Paulo epit.)

D. 19,2,31 (Alf. 5 dig. a Paulo epit.) contains a juristic responsum composed in the intermediate rhetorical style. The recognition that the fragment has rhetorical aspects helps toward solving problems of authorship and makes the text intelligible from a legal perspective. The legal and rhetorical quality of the reply provides an insight into the intellectual culture of late Republican Rome.