Rhetorical knowledge

Although rhetoricians do not ordinarily distinguish between knowledge and its representation, rhetorical knowledge (knowledge about documentation practices) cannot tell us which specific standards or which specific forms... 

As I argue in the chapters that follow, we cannot simply settle disputes by affirming that each individual s subject position constructs an alternative—if rhetorically incomplete—version of reality. What if individuals do not have sufficient rhetorical knowledge to document that experience in writing. What if they cannot interpret an individual s tone or gesture How can they draw upon that experience to warrant judgments about the health and safety of workers How can others evaluate that knowledge if it is not documented in conventional (written) forms ... 

As editor of the Rhetoric, Knowledge, and Society series, 1 have had the opportunity to introduce many truly wonderful books, but none I think so graphically shows the importance and delicacy of written language in the world. The records, reports, science, and training manuals have provided ma-... 

The question is rhetorical. Once we learn from data, the quality of learning and the reliability of the obtained knowledge are conditioned by the quahty of the data. However, some examples of how data affect the results and the conclusions we draw from them may be of interest. 

Senac s rhetorical devices deserve some attention from historians for their reference to the ideal of universal knowledge. Ironically, he used the well-rehearsed Cartesian criterion of clarity to espouse the Newtonian turn. Ignoring the decades-old rhetoric that chemistry had finally emerged from its dark, hermetic past, Senac declared in the first page that chemistry still lacked clear principles ... 

The point that I am making would hardly need emphasis or elaborate illustration except for the fact that a certain understanding of science, modernity, and development has so successfully structured the dominant discourse that all other kinds of knowledge are regarded as backward, static traditions, as old wives tales and superstitions. High modernism has needed this other, this dark twin, in order to rhetorically present itself as the antidote to backwardness. The binary oppo-... 

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