Rhetorical Positions

To reconcile conflicting accounts, Nagy evaluates the location of each individual s experience in relation to the disaster. R. A. Cox, for example, could only feel the heat he did not observe the fire directly. L. S. Cox assumed an observer s viewpoint. He located the smoke inby Crosscut 36 and flames 

But miners also report secondhand information that they heard from others closer to the events. Thus, Lyons reports what the guys that was there before us said. These experiences enable Nagy to categorize the observer s rhetorical position as first-hand, second-hand, or merely reported.  

Nagy distinguishes between events, reported events, reconstructed events, secondhand information, references, and statements. Reported events enter the chronology of reconstructed events when they have been confirmed or verified as credible observations. Statements must be tested to confirm their reliability. 

Nagy discounts Lyons secondhand information because Lyons states that other people told him the fire moved inby 50 feet before he arrived on the scene. Instead, Nagy bases his conclusion on Nelson s firsthand observation that the fire did not move because Lyon s secondhand informa-ticm is not confirmed by the statement of other miners and E. R. Nelson specifically states that the fire did not change position during this time.  

In the final narrative, first-hand experience counts more than secondhand narrative, even when the secondhand observer reports information from miners who presumably had temporal advantage as observers during the crisis. When miners disagree, Nagy can test the rhetorical certainty of their observation by measuring the degree of distance between the observers viewpoint and the events they describe.  

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Like MSHA s interviewers, the British miner viewed events from a rhetorical position outside and above the experiences and observations of the miners he observed. Because he is not American, he can comment upon the events at a safe distance from the institutions and persons he observes. This miner was blackballed in England as a result of his own union activities during the 1984 strike. He is currently unemployed, though he is active in the labor movement and travels widely. 

Does a Silylene-Complex exist This rhetorical question is the title of a theoretical paper published in 1983 [84], As a result of an ab-initio calculation, the authors came to the conclusion that a moderately positive answer can be given. However, silylene complexes are thermodynamically less stable than carbene complexes (the MSi bond energy for the hypothetical complex (OC)5Cr = Si(OH)H is 29.6 kcal/mol, the bond energy of the MC bond in (OC)5Cr = C(OH)H is 44.4 kcal/mol) [85], and therefore silylene complexes should be difficult to isolate. 

See Gieryn 1983, 784. Gieryn, a sociologist of science, has called such rhetorical efforts to solidify a superior intellectual position for science by demarcating it from the non or pseudoscientific boundary-work. ... 

In my own case, I lost a federal position because of citing scientific research findings that undermined a politician s rhetoric. I did not suffer for my actions as did the Soviet biologists, but my dismissal surely serves as a warning to other government scientists and, perhaps more importantly, to nongovernment scientists who act as advisers to the government, that politics can trump science even in purely technical topics. 

Although irony is often an effective device, it can also cause great confusion, especially when it is written rather than spoken. Unless your readers thoroughly understand your position in the first place, they may become confused by what appears to be a sudden contradiction. Irony that is too subtle, too private, or simply out of context merely complicates the issue. Therefore, you must make certain that your reader has no trouble realizing when your tongue is firmly embedded in your cheek. And unless you are assigned to write an ironic essay (in the same vein, for instance, as Swift s A Modest Proposal ), don t overuse irony. Like any rhetorical device, its effectiveness is reduced with overkill. 

Lamartine s rhetoric, which rests on a glorification of the creative act (presented as a sacrifice, the artist / creator assuming a Christ-like position by offering his work to humanity) and an exploitation of the myth of the poverty-stricken artist, underlines what he sees as the injustice of the situation in 1841. This injustice is clearly seen in economic rather than aesthetic terms Romanticism and capitalism link up in Lamartine s rhetoric to defend literary property as a natural right. By equating intellectual work with any other work, the poet makes indeed perpetual literary property the only logical conclusion to his demonstration and presents his bill for a fifty-year posthumous right... 

We see here Rush urging adherence to his theory because it adds weight to the Christian revelation, and because it helps his fellow white Americans to exercise. . . universal benevolence toward the Negro. What this flowery rhetoric disguises is Rush s advocacy of the separation of the races, justified not by the outworn shibboleths of the traditional proslavery position, but by the latest discoveries of medical science. This is not merely my interpretation of Rush s intentions he himself says so. If the color of the Negroes be the effect of a disease, he writes, the facts and principles which have been here delivered should teach white people the necessity of keeping up that prejudice against such connections with them as would tend to infect posterity with any portion of their disorder. 

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