Examines the relationship of civic discourse to built environments through a case study of the Cabrini Green urban revitalization project in Chicago.

RHETORIC the counterpart of Dialectic. Both alike are concerned with such things as come more or less within the general ken of all men and belong to no definite science. Accordingly all men make use more or less of both; for to a certain extent all men attempt to discuss statements and to maintain them to defend themselves and to attack others. Ordinary people do this either at random or through practice and from acquired habit. Both ways being possible the subject can plainly be handled systematically for it is possible to inquire the reason why some speakers succeed through practice and others spontaneously; and every one will at once agree that such an inquiry is the function of an art.

Urban sprawl is omnipresent in America and has left many citizens questioning their ability to stop it. In Distant Publics, Jenny Rice examines patterns of public discourse that have evolved in response to development in urban and suburban environments. Centering her study on Austin, Texas, Rice finds a city that has simultaneously celebrated and despised development. Rice outlines three distinct ways that the rhetoric of publics counteracts development: through injury claims, memory claims, and equivalence claims. In injury claims, rhetors frame themselves as victims in a dispute. Memory claims allow rhetors to anchor themselves to an older, deliberative space, rather than to a newly evolving one. Equivalence claims see the benefits on both sides of an issue, and here rhetors effectively become nonactors. Rice provides case studies of development disputes that place the reader in the middle of real-life controversies and evidence her theories of claims-based public rhetorics. She finds that these methods comprise the most common (though not exclusive) vernacular surrounding development and shows how each is often counterproductive to its own goals. Rice further demonstrates that these claims create a particular role or public subjectivity grounded in one's own feelings, which serves to distance publics from each other and the issues at hand. Rice argues that rhetoricians have a duty to transform current patterns of public development discourse so that all individuals may engage in matters of crisis. She articulates its sustainability as both a goal and future disciplinary challenge of rhetorical studies and offers tools and methodologies toward that end.

From the beginning, rhetoric has been a productive and practical art aimed at preparing citizens to participate in communal life. Possibilities for this participation are continually evolving in light of cultural and technological changes. The Available Means of Persuasion: Mapping a Theory and Pedagogy of Multimodal Public Rhetoric explores the ways that public rhetoric has changed due to emerging technologies that enable us to produce, reproduce, and distribute compositions that integrate visual, aural, and alphabetic elements. David M. Sheridan, Jim Ridolfo, and Anthony J. Michel argue that to exploit such options fully, rhetorical theory and pedagogy need to be reconfigured.

Since the 1967 riots that ripped apart the city, Detroit has traditionally been viewed either as a place in ruins or a metropolis on the verge of rejuvenation. In Digital Detroit: Rhetoric and Space in the Age of the Network, author Jeff Rice goes beyond the notion of Detroit as simply a city of two ideas. Instead he explores the city as a web of multiple meanings which, in the digital age, come together in the city’s spaces to form a network that shapes the writing, the activity, and the very thinking of those around it. Rice focuses his study on four of Detroit’s most iconic places—Woodward Avenue, the Maccabees Building, Michigan Central Station, and 8 Mile—covering each in a separate chapter. Each of these chapters explains one of the four features of network rhetoric: folksono(me), the affective interface, response, and decision making. As these rhetorical features connect, they form the overall network called Digital Detroit. Rice demonstrates how new media, such as podcasts, wikis, blogs, interactive maps, and the Internet in general, knit together Detroit into a digital network whose identity is fluid and ever-changing. In telling Detroit’s spatial story, Rice deftly illustrates how this new media, as a rhetorical practice, ultimately shapes understandings of space in ways that computer applications and city planning often cannot. The result is a model for a new way of thinking and interacting with space and the imagination, and for a better understanding of the challenges network rhetorics pose for writing.

"Examines concepts for persuasive communication. Explores the art of rhetoric and how it aids in clarification when we speak to communicate, but also helps to protect us from clarity when we speak to maintain our connections to others"--Provided by publisher.

In The Art of Rhetoric, Aristotle demonstrates the purpose of rhetoric—the ability to convince people using your skill as a speaker rather than the validity or logic of your arguments—and outlines its many forms and techniques. Defining important philosophical terms like ethos, pathos, and logos, Aristotle establishes the earliest foundations of modern understanding of rhetoric, while providing insight into its historic role in ancient Greek culture. Aristotle’s work, which dates from the fourth century B.C., was written while the author lived in Athens, remains one of the most influential pillars of philosophy and has been studied for centuries by orators, public figures, and politicians alike. HarperTorch brings great works of non-fiction and the dramatic arts to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperTorch collection to build your digital library.

The white man's burden, darkest Africa, the seduction of the primitive: such phrases were widespread in the language Western empires used to talk about their colonial enterprises. How this language itself served imperial purposes--and how it survives today in writing about the Third World--are the subject of David Spurr's book, a revealing account of the rhetorical strategies that have defined Western thinking about the non-Western world.Despite historical differences among British, French, and American versions of colonialism, their rhetoric had much in common. The Rhetoric of Empire identifies these shared features--images, figures of speech, and characteristic lines of argument--and explores them in a wide variety of sources. A former correspondent for the United Press International, the author is equally at home with journalism or critical theory, travel writing or official documents, and his discussion is remarkably comprehensive. Ranging from T. E. Lawrence and Isak Dineson to Hemingway and Naipaul, from Time and the New Yorker to the National Geographic and Le Monde, from journalists such as Didion and Sontag to colonial administrators such as Frederick Lugard and Albert Sarraut, this analysis suggests the degree to which certain rhetorical tactics penetrate the popular as well as official colonial and postcolonial discourse.Finally, Spurr considers the question: Can the language itself--and with it, Western forms of interpretation--be freed of the exercise of colonial power? This ambitious book is an answer of sorts. By exposing the rhetoric of empire, Spurr begins to loosen its hold over discourse about--and between--different cultures.