Mere Rhetoric

Foucault takes us from torture and hanging to the more nefarious complete control of our wills to show us that when we are unfettered, we are not free.

I always state my demands, says the pirate. This is a good way to remember the 5 Canons of Rhetoric "Invention, Arrangment, Style, Memorization and Delivery." Today we talk about the canons of rhetoric and how to use them to prosecute piracy without a single cannon.

Hot, fresh rhetoric, straight from the 2014 Rhetoric Society of America conference! Two excellent addresses focus on whiteness: Linda Martin Alcoff, the keynote speaker, and Kris Radcliffe, the speaker at the luncheon on Sunday.

From the 2014 Rhetoric Society of America, we honor the keynote speaker from the 1988 RSA conference--composition historian James Berlin!

Sieze the day! Or the rhetorical situation..! Or, wait, does the rhetorical situation seize you? Bitzer, Vatz and High King Aragorn II, son of Arathorn today on Mere Rhetoric.

Stand up for what you think, but make sure you're standing in the same place as your interlocutor. Rhetoric's stasis theory gives us categories of Fact, Definition, Quality and Procedure to make sure we're arguing the same thing when we argue.

Do you know what's hard? Schoool. Do you know what's harder? School when you're hungry and oppressed. Paulo Freire knew how terrible it was to feel like you didn't have control, like you weren't the subject of your own life. Today, Pedagogy of the Oppressed on Mere Rhetoric.

Our hairy-hearted hero of the Second Sophistic was young, brilliant--and inclined to expand the traditional divisions of style or stases into more specific categories.

Cicero's De Oratore dialogues in the moment of peace before the brewing political crisis. Today we talk about how sometimes you want to sit down and philosophizze about rhetoric in the face of political disaster. And wait until you hear what you need to know if you want to be an orator in Cicero's mind. Jeremy P Smyczek joins me in talking about De Oratore.

Sometimes being smart, eloquent and beautiful just aren't enough, like if you're an illegitimate girl in 17th-century Mexico. Sor Juana's defense of the rhetorical education of women today on Mere Rhetoric.