Public rhetoric pedagogy can benefit from an ecological perspective that sees change as advocated not through a single document but through multiple mundane and monumental texts. This article summarizes various approaches to rhetorical ecology, offers an ecological read of the Montgomery bus boycotts, and concludes with pedagogical insights on a…

This essay examines the definitions and practices of argument perpetuated by popular composition textbooks, illustrating how even those texts that appear to forward expansive notions of argument ultimately limit it to an intent to persuade. In doing so, they help perpetuate constricted practices of argument within undergraduate composition…

Individual agency is necessary for the possibility of rhetoric, and especially for deliberative rhetoric, which enables the composition of what Latour calls a good common world. Drawing on neurophenomenology, this essay defines individual agency as the process through which organisms create meanings through acting into the world and changing their…

Contemporary argument increasingly relies on quantitative information and reasoning, yet our profession neglects to view these means of persuasion as central to rhetorical arts. Such omission ironically serves to privilege quantitative arguments as above "mere rhetoric." Changes are needed to our textbooks, writing assignments, and instructor…

We argue that the Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers, with its dual emphasis on literacy and occupational skills, can serve as a new model for writing classrooms and writing program administrators. We further contend that the "contact zone" classroom should be replaced with community-based "federations." (Contains 9 notes.)

This essay examines women's commencement addresses presented from 1910 to 1915 at Vassar College. These addresses are significant because they reveal the students' rhetorical education and the "available means" upon which these women drew in developing a public voice. By prompting reflection and the potential for change, the commencement addresses…

This article examines nutritionist Lydia J. Roberts's use of the "democratic approach" as a rhetorical strategy both to build solidarity among scientists and to enact participatory research in a rural Puerto Rican community. This example suggests that participatory scientific methodologies are not necessarily democratic but may function…

Our article seeks to integrate alternative voices into traditional rhetorical study by turning to "Bitch" and "BUST," two mainstream zines that serve as dynamic examples of young women's rhetoric in action. We believe these zines are shaping the present and future of women's rhetoric. Their most significant contribution to the understanding of…

This article examines the various uses to which Stephen Toulmin has been put in composition studies. It presents data on citations of Toulmin in nine journals, considers appeals to Toulmin in several strains of composition scholarship, and argues that composition scholars ought to attend more carefully to Toulmin's later works. (Contains 4 tables…

This article argues that the ideas of "play" and "abduction" in Charles Peirce's work represent an inventive theory of argument that opens up the kinds of activities that can be called "arguments" and avoids some of the struggles over imposed beliefs with which recent argument theory has grappled. (Contains 12 notes.)

The phrase "academic bullshit" presents compositionists with a special dilemma. Because compositionists study, teach, and produce academic writing, they are open to the accusation that they both tolerate and perpetuate academic bullshit. We argue that confronting this problem must begin with a careful definition of "bullshit" and "academic…

The Japanese martial art of aikido affords a framework for understanding argument as harmonization rather than confrontation. Two movements, circling away ("tenkan") and entering in ("irimi"), suggest tactics for arguing with adversaries. The ethical imperative of aikido involves protecting one's adversary from harm, using the least force…

Scholars in rhetoric and composition have explored political issues of identity and language for some time; however, we have only begun to develop an understanding of why the identity politics of Native scholars are so different from other scholars of color and whites. Native scholars take considerable risks in composing identities--they can face…

This essay argues for the value of an ecological metaphor in conceptualizing, designing, and enacting research in writing studies. Such a metaphor conceives of activities, actors, situations, and phenomena as interdependent, diverse, and fused through feedback. This ecological orientation invites composition scholars to research rhetorically: to…

In this essay, I propose that the field of composition/rhetoric can make important contributions to the understanding of ethics based on our critical perspective on language as interactional and rhetorical. The actual language of decision making with ethical dimensions has rarely been studied directly in the literature, a crucial gap our field can…