rhetoric | The Blogora

rhetoric

warning: Creating default object from empty value in /usr/local/www/apache22/data/mainsites/modules/taxonomy/taxonomy.pages.inc on line 33.

ambience and rhetoric

Submitted by Thomas Rickert on April 20, 2009 - 1:12pm

Playing: Brian Eno--On Land

When Josh came up to Purdue last Fall, he gave a great talk on EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena), backmasking, and so on. You remember the backward "Stairway to Heaven" brouhaha from the early '80s, yes? Good times, good times (little joke there for the Led Zep afficionados). The night before his talk, however, while we having dinner after I picked him up at the airport, we started talking about music in general. We are both big music fans, so there was lots to discuss.

Rhetoric Hits SXSW: Is Aristotle on Twitter?

Submitted by Jim Brown on March 14, 2009 - 10:20pm

Next week, a group of UT rhetoric folks will be presenting at South By Southwest Interactive, and we were recently interviewed by South By Texas State:

Lakoff's (P)rhetorical Analysis of Tonight's Speech

Submitted by Jim Brown on February 24, 2009 - 3:42pm

Ever since reading Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant, I've wondered whether he would ever see himself as a rhetorician. I'm hesitant to make the move of the disciplinary imperialist by claiming that everyone is "doing rhetoric" whether they know it or not. But Lakoff's political stuff so often reads like rhetorical analysis...and he NEVER uses the "r word." Here is Lakoff's pre-rhetorical (prhetorical...I like it) analysis of Obama's speech tonight to the joint session.

anniversaries of natal days

Submitted by Anonymous on February 23, 2009 - 5:58pm

Happy anniversaries of natal days to Fred Antczak today and to Wayne Booth tomorrow.

DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation

Submitted by Jim Brown on February 18, 2009 - 1:27pm

Awhile back, Byron posted a link to DJ Spooky's remix of Birth of a Nation. I was able to see a screening of the film here in Austin, and I thought I'd post a few thoughts.

I was very excited for this screening. One of the cool things about living in Austin is that these kinds of opportunities often present themselves. However, I have to say that I was a bit disappointed by the film. In his introductory remarks, DJ Spooky (aka Paul Mill, aka That Subliminal Kid) noted that the film was a way for him to explore the connections between the methods of the DJ and the methods of a film editor.

Now, maybe Girl Talk has completely warped my idea of the DJ method by mashing up a seemingly infinite number texts. Because this is what I had in mind. I thought the film would be a mashup of Birth of a Nation and other texts. For instance, when the voice over of Re-Birth of a Nation made reference to how Birth of a Nation laid the groundwork for racist imagery throughout American cinema, I thought I'd see some of that racist imagery. That is, I thought he'd mix in a slice of Godzilla or Black Snake Moan. This is the Girl Talk method: a dizzying mashup of various texts.

Markopolos on CSPAN

Submitted by Byron Hawk on February 4, 2009 - 3:45pm

I don't know how many of you caught Harry Markopolos on CSPAN this monrning, but he was pretty engaging. No Quarter seems to sum up my impressions of his testimony about Madoff and the SEC. The video doesn't seem to be working yet on the CSPAN site, but here's his original letter to the SEC.

Identity Remix

Submitted by Byron Hawk on February 3, 2009 - 6:20pm

First I want to thank Diane Davis and Jim Brown for inviting me to come and share this blog space for a little while, and blog about, well, I don’t know what yet. I follow Blogora a bit and have a sense of the discursive space, but don’t yet know who I am in that space. One thing I’ve learned about blogging is that you can’t necessarily police identity and audience boundaries in digital space, even when they are well established.

Exclusionar ... ily ... Faithfully....

law
rhetoric

Submitted by Anonymous on January 31, 2009 - 12:01am

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/31/washington/31scotus.html

(sorry my posts are so, er, enthymematic ...;
having troubles with fingers, wrists, hands, etc.
pith is it.)

Ouch, Stanley

Submitted by Cynthia on November 10, 2008 - 8:14am

In today's NYT, Stanley Fish serves up some blame in the torture blame game, and guess where he goes: rhetoric. "The emphasis is not on what is true, but on what works, what gets results even if the results are obtained by torture. If the testimony you are citing has been elicited by torture, just say that 'it was in order to discover the truth that our ancestors wished to make use of torture' ('Rhetorica ad Herennium')."

VP Debate Rhetoric

Submitted by Cynthia on October 2, 2008 - 10:41pm

A CNN Republican Strategist contributor just characterized the folksy Palin as 'young' and Biden as 'professorial.' Okaaaaaay. And your point is....? Being professorial is a bad thing in politics, obviously. It is an attempt to tie Biden to the 'liberal elite' of academia. Are we going to take this sitting down? Where are the professors of rhetoric to refute this rhetorical dig?