•  ”I — I don’t think that Senator Obama understands that there was a failed state in Pakistan when Musharraf came to power.”
• “What Senator Obama doesn’t seem to understand that if without precondition you sit down across the table from someone who has called Israel a “stinking corpse,” and wants to destroy that country and wipe it off the map, you legitimize those comments.” (see enthymemes below)
• “He doesn’t understand that Russia committed serious aggression against Georgia. And Russia has now become a nation fueled by petro-dollars that is basically a KGB apparatchik-run government.

 The implication is that if someone doesn’t agree with you, it is because they are stupid.

2. Take whatever steps necessary to show that you can pronounc Ahmadinejad correctly, even if it means trying three times:  

“Here is Ahmadinenene (ph), Ahmadinejad, who is, Ahmadinejad, who is now in New York, talking about the extermination of the State of Israel, of wiping Israel off the map, and we’re going to sit down, without precondition, across the table, to legitimize and give a propaganda platform to a person that is espousing the extermination of the state of Israel, and therefore then giving them more credence in the world arena and therefore saying, they’ve probably been doing the right thing, because you will sit down across the table from them and that will legitimize their illegal behavior.”

3.  Use enthymemes with questionable premises. Because who is smart enough to wonder about the connecting premises?   

Example: ”we’re going to sit down, without precondition, across the table, to legitimize and give a propaganda platform to a person that is espousing the extermination of the state of Israel, and therefore then giving them more credence in the world arena and therefore saying, they’ve probably been doing the right thing, because you will sit down across the table from them and that will legitimize their illegal behavior.” 

Missing premise: If you talk to someone, you condone and legitimize  their opinions. 

So, by extension, we should just not talk to people with whom we disagree, because that would be legitimizing their opinions. 

And if someone disagrees with you, it is because they are naive/stupid/crazy anyway.  

So there’s really no purpose or reason for persuasion in McCain’s world, is there?     

It’s a total non sequitor, which we know thanks to this article: Kimble, James J., and Lester C. Olson. “Visual Rhetoric Representing Rosie the Riveter: Myth and Misconception in J. Howard Miller’s “We Can Do It!” Poster.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 9.4 (2006): 533-69. Kimble and Olson conclude that the feminist message of this poster was limited in WWII; it was basically produced for internal use at Westinghouse alongside many more posters that depicted women in traditionally feminine wartime roles. 

On second thought, the comparison may be more apt than I thought.In World War II, women were encouraged to apply their domestic skills to the technical workplace with such jinglas as this one from the Women’s Bureau bulletin, “What Job Is Mine on the Victory Line”?

If you’ve sewed on buttons, or made buttonholes, on a machine

You can learn to do spot welding on airplane parts.

If you’ve used an electric mixer in your kitchen,

You can learn to run a drill press.

If you’ve followed recipes exactly in making cake,

You can learn to load shells.

Maybe this poster is implying something similar: 

If you’ve been a beauty pageant winner,

You can learn to give speeches in front of millions.

If you’ve slaughtered and dressed a moose,

You can learn to lead our country in battle.

If you’ve been mayor of a small town,

You can learn to be vice president of the nation.  

My particular copy was used by a Mary Richardson in 1911.

I have yet to take more than a cursory glance, but I did encounter this snippet from the introduction, which might interest some of you body/athletics and rhetoric people. Carpenter is distinguishing rhetoric, as an art, from sciences like chemistry. Among the arts he lists engineering, as well as “music, dancing, painting, swimming, and many similar kinds of activity”:

The engineer,–to a very great extent,–and even the swimmer,–to a very small extent,–must understand the principles on which their arts rest, and these principles may be considered as constituting the science of engineering and the science of swimming; but the success of the practising engineer and the practical swimmer depends upon the skill with which they apply these principles. Now, rhetoric is essentially an art. In order to write well we must, of course follow–consciously or unconsciously–certain principles; but theknowledge of these principles is not the main thing. The essential part of rhetoric is that we shall act, that we shall acquire skill in the application of the principles we study, in the practice of the art we are learning.

Carpenter doesn’t go so far as to enumerate some of the bodily aspects of rhetoric except for a section on handwriting (p.15), where he says that bad handwriting can be due to “tremor or stiffness in the muscles,” defective eyesight, or “a deficiency in the writer’s power of visualizing” (15).
Also, in his section on “barbarisms,” Carpenter notes that the term “dude” appeared “about fifteen years ago,” which would place it in 1895. Who knew?

I posted this response to the article itself:

I heartily second the comments above, and would also remind Bauerlein that the discipline of rhetoric has its roots not (at least not primarily) in the teaching of grammar (historically a separate discipline), but in the teaching of argumentation, persuasion, and critical skills that prepare students to participate in what the Greeks called the agora and what we now variously call the public sphere, democratic politics, or civil society. It is because many of us ground our scholarship in this tradition that we take on topics such as race, gender, sexuality, class, and current events—topics which shape the public sphere in which we encourage our students to participate through their writing. Good writing involves understanding the ideas, concepts, and ideologies that shape contemporary arguments about these and other issues, the audiences that advance these arguments, and possible strategies for engaging in these debates—not just in the proper use of semi-colons.

I would only add that the field of rhet/comp would be a very dreary one indeed if it were confined to the kinds of issues Bauerlein seems to suggest for us–what he calls “basic writing.” I assume he means that we should be teaching only the mechanics of writing, not the content of writing. If this is true, then we end up with the same content/style split that we’ve been battling against for ages. *SIGH*

Side project #1: Teaching legal writing. I’ve been doing this with my partner, KRGP, for some public defenders in the state, but we’re considering extending the practice into a side consulting business for other lawyers (hopefully the ones with a little extra cash).

Side project #2: Writing a knitting book. My partner in crime and I are starting to get the ball (of yarn) rolling over at Fiber Smarts. The idea is that we’ll use our status as rhetoric professors as part of the gimmick. We’ll be the Knitty Professors, offering insights and occasional historical/literary illusions. More importantly, I plan to translate my experience as a technical writer into knitting patterns you can actually understand, since many of them have obviously not undergone user testing. The knitted items themselves will be as intuitive and user-friendly as possible, too. For instance, any color pattern will make sense and will allow you to know what you need to do by looking at your work rather than consulting the written pattern continually.

Anyway, I’m wondering if these side projects are really a good idea? Do any other academics out there have side project or opinions on them? I’m of course not going to let them distract me from my main job but it does seem like fun to work on something else for a change.

Slow warming doesn’t make for memorable images on television or in people’s minds, so activists, journalists and scientists have looked to hurricanes, wild fires and starving polar bears instead. They have used these images to start an “availability cascade,” a term coined by Timur Kuran, a professor of economics and law at the University of Southern California, and Cass R. Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago.

The availability cascade is a self-perpetuating process: the more attention a danger gets, the more worried people become, leading to more news coverage and more fear. Once the images of Sept. 11 made terrorism seem a major threat, the press and the police lavished attention on potential new attacks and supposed plots. After Three Mile Island and “The China Syndrome,” minor malfunctions at nuclear power plants suddenly became newsworthy.

The “availability cascade” seems to combine the rhetorical notion of kairos (right timing) and a ubiquity topos–find a threat everywhere, and it seems more urgent to people and deserving of action. While I don’t think the “availability cascade” is anything new, it does seem to nicely capture the idea of momentum within rhetorical situations–the ways in which arguments and also affects are produced and gain force over time.

In other news, I was watching Ovation last night (they were showing a program called “Art or Not,” in which regular people and art experts weigh in on the merit of various artists, including this guy.

Anyway, there was definitely an “availability cascade” going on in terms of Ovation’s advertising, which featured at least one infomercial type product during every commercial break. Here are the top 4 most ridiculous ones I saw:

4) The AeroGarden.

Infomercials always want to show you how useful their products are by demonstrating multiple uses. Ever need to cut metal cans in half? Buy a Ginsu knife! The AeroGarden shows us that we can not only grow herbs, but also tomatoes and lettuce (or by extension, any other kind of vegetable, I’d guess).

3) The Listen Up personal sound amplifier, which allows you to “turn the volume up for yourself” on everything from church sermons to tv shows. But it’s not just for older people who are losing their hearing. In case your neighbors don’t think you are creepy enough already, you can also use it to eavesdrop on their conversations while you pretend to be checking your mail.

2) Napa Grape Lights, which you can use to create the perfect atmosphere for everything from gourmet dinners (create a centerpiece) to rockin’ parties (use the strobelight setting) to a romantic spa bath (string them around your tub).

1) Kinoki foot pads, which remove toxins from your body while you sleep:

The Kinoki foot pads infomercial makes the best use of the “availability cascade,” because it lists all the toxins found in the typical persons foot pad after use (mercury, lead, etc.) and shows people taking the pads off their feet to reveal a bunch of brown/black gunk on them (presumably, the toxins they have removed from their bodies). By showing the commercial, oh, every 20 minutes or so, Kinoki does a pretty good job of making gullible people think they can purify themselves of environmental hazards through their feet.

Coincidentally, I’ve been reading about the conditions of scientific authorship in the 17th century, and found a similar set of conditions. Robert Boyle apparently used a team of technicians and assistants to not only conduct his experiments, but also to write up the results. According to Steven Shapin, Boyle let his assistant Denis Papin write some of the results of his air pump experiments. Even though Boyle depended heavily on Papin, Robert Hooke, and others for his experiments, though, these men were not seen as originators or authors of scientific knowledge because they lacked the qualifications to make knowledge–not technical qualifications, but class qualifications. Boyle was a gentleman and his assistants were not, and only gentlemen were considered disinterested enough to be trusted. Paid technicians were distrusted because, as Shapin says, “those that were paid to do something were pen to the charge that this was why they did it” (395).

I found a similar situation at work in my study of the Japanese Evacuation and Resettlement Study, a project conducted by Dorothy Thomas during World War II. Thomas used the field reports of a team of researchers (usually graduate students in anthropology)

We have a similar situation today, if it is true that many academics are relying on undercredited assistants for their work. The problem must not just be about time constraints and the economics of publishing, or about celebrity. It also has to do with similar kinds of the class relations of the academy and the position of graduate students, who are treated not as knowledge-makers in their own right.

This article also tells us something about the way people actually write. The article describes one professor’s research and writing practices as follows:

Several of his researchers say that Dershowitz doesn’t subscribe to the scholarly convention of researching first, then drawing conclusions. Instead, as a lawyer might, he writes his conclusions, leaving spaces where he’d like sources or case law to back up a thesis. On several occasions where the research has suggested opposite conclusions, his students say, he has asked them to go back and look for other cases, or simply to omit the discrepant information. “That’s the way it’s done; a piecemeal, ass-backwards way,” says one student who has firsthand experience with the writing habits of Dershowitz and other tenured colleagues. “They write first, make assertions, and farm out [the work] to research assistants to vet it. They do very little of the research themselves.”

Writing becomes not a gradual process of using research to draw conclusions, but a process of making assertions first and then backing them up with evidence. It reminds me of a research job I had in graduate school for a professor who was serving as an expert witness in a major trial. My job wasn’t to gather as much information as I could about the topic–it was to gather as much information as I could find to support his position. (Later he suggested that we write an article together based on my research. I would write up the results, and he would frame it, take first author credit, and make sure it got published. I declined. ) When the assertions are made ahead of time, the research and writing process becomes more like expert witnessing and less like openended inquiry. This makes me wonder about some of the assignments we give students–research papers with emphasis placed on making a strong claim and defending it with evidence. Are we encouraging this pattern of thinking and writing, one in which research becomes secondary to the act of making claims rather than a necessary (and enjoyable) prerequisite? Does this also say something about the way we argue now, privileging conviction over openmindedness?

In “Final Period,” Karen Houppert discusses a new birth control pill that eliminates periods completely, linking it to the recalcitrant argument that women are somehow physically and mentally debilitated by their periods. This argument has emerged periodically throughout the last 100 years (and more), and is generally trotted out any time women seek more rights or to enter into spaces from which they were previously excluded. In my research on women scientists during World War II I found an article by psychologist Georgene Seward, called “Psychological Effects of the Menstrual Cycle on Women Worker” (published in the Psychological Bulletin in 1944) in which she smashes previous arguments against women workers that were based on menstrual debility. She notes that women who got more exercise and worked more actually had fewer premenstrual symptoms, suggesting that PMS and related infirmities had more to do with culture than biology. Yet we still get the message that women are somehow weakened by menstruation and that, thanks to modern pharmaceuticals, we can just avoid menstruation all together.

Similarly, Paul Krugman argues that “the opponents of universal health care appear to have run out of honest arguments.” While I wish this were the case, even Krugman cannot magically vanquish all arguments against universal health care by fiat. I’m sure that they will continue to circulate as the debate continues, with opponents offering the same objections they’ve been offering for years: universal health care = higher taxes, longer waits, etc.

What accounts for “rhetorical recalcitrance”? It doesn’t seem to have much to do with logic, that’s for sure, but it does have a lot to do with the values, beliefs, habits, and customs that give certain arguments a kind of “rightness” or “appropriateness” to audiences. Plus, these resistant arguments tend to have a lot of backing from economic interests.

On an unrelated note, from a NYT Editorial on Conrad Black: “there is nothing so frighteningly passive-aggressive as a well-irked Canadian.”Also, with regards to Canadian Exceptionalism: “In Canada, any disagreement with the United States is typically cast in David and Goliath terms, with the Canadians as beleaguered underdogs and the Americans as rapacious swindlers (see: soft wood lumber, treaties regarding).”

“Canada is an open, free and democratic society with the strongest economy in the G8 today, while also being a proud and independent country with our own way of life. Canada’s political structures differ substantially from those in the United States. Our cultural values and social models have also been shaped by unique forces and we’ve made our own policy choices to meet our own needs.”

As is often the case in Canadian rhetoric, the primary function is differentiation from the United States. Maybe I’m being cynical, but I’m really not sure how this “third way” is all that different from the American approach, unless Harper is assuring Chileans that they can still sell and market whatever their equivalents are to Canadian bacon, stuffed moose dressed up as Mounties, and mass produced “First Nations” artwork.

To explain this phenomenon, we generated the following hypotheses:

1) A revolutionary country requires an early investment in producing national identity through rhetoric, while a country that gradually weans itself away from the great mothership has less of a need to do so, (until it is struck by its own identity crisis much much later in the 1970s.)

2) In America, rhetorical displays of patriotism are produced and driven by the market (see “Proud to Be an American,” etc.) I guess that’s the true definition of freedom–no one has to force you to produce patriotic pap for the radio; it just naturally arises from the patriotic spirit of the nation. Or something. In Canada, the market does not naturally produce rhetorical displays of patriotism. At least not in song. It didn’t even produce many good singers until the CANCON rules were inaugurated. So these have to be commissioned by the government, as was the case when the government sponsored a contest for a song to commemorate the 125th anniversary of confederation in 1992. The song sucked, not surprisingly.

Apparently Canada has a long list of patriotic songs, including these:

At The Canada Jubilee
Bells of Canada
Canada, Land of the Maple Tree
Canada in My Pocket
The Canadian Boat Song
Canadian Folk ‘Overture’
The Canadian Girl
Canadian Man
Drink Canada Dry
Hockey Night in Canada Theme
Sweet, Sweet Canada
Un Canadien Errant (A Wandering Canadian)
Young Man From Canada

Aside from “Oh Canada” and “God Save the Queen” (which really isn’t about Canada) and “Hockey Night in Canada” (which as far as I know has no words), I haven’t heard of any of them. And I’ll bet most of these were commissioned for various milestones in Canadian history.

3) Canada defines it self in contradistinction to the United States, and you can’t wax poetic (or rhetorical) about a lack.

*****

In case you were wondering, here’s more about Canadian Girls in Training:

World War II didn’t start the uniform trend for women. Far from it. But the pseudo-military uniform, outside of wartime, was usually meant for girls and teenagers who were encouraged to join clubs and training groups, I think. I belonged to Explorers and then to Canadian Girls in Training. Both were kind of nautical-themed. In Explorers, we had to wear a white blouse onto which we sewed these different badges. I think you had to get six of them, for things like memorizing the Explorer creed or what have you. Then you could move up to CGIT, where you got to wear a sailor blouse called a middy (see left). The uniform also entailed a “lanyard,” which I think was some kind of white rope thingy. I forget. The whole point of these organizations was to emulate the premier group, the Girl Guides, who were in turn emulating either the American Girl Scouts or the British Girl Guides. I wanted to be a Brownie (precursor to Girl Guide), in part because they had a cute brown uniform that they got to wear to school on Remembrance Day. We didn’t wear our Explorer uniforms on Remembrance Day.

Aside: The whole episode is kind of representative of my childhood. Whenever I asked for something, my mom would give me a reasonable facsimile, which she thought was better. But I just wanted the original. So, for instance, I wanted a Mr. Potatohead and asked for one for 7 consecutive Christmases. Instead, I got this kind of dumpy, flat, pear shaped plastic thingy that came with a bunch of different Colorforms for hair, eyes, and clothing. Not the same as a Mr. Potatohead. I’m not knocking Colorforms or anything, though. In fact, if I had this set I’d probably still play with it. It’s very mod.