Rhetorical theory

Writers live in a world of texts and believe in the power of texts to reconstruct or construct the material world as representations. Writers also live outside of the material sites I have described in this text, but they are called upon to (a) theorize about the ways that this world works (b) represent its successes and failures in accident reports and investigations (c) analyze and comprehend failures of language and failures of technology and (d) use their analyses to construct instructions, policies, and procedures to prevent disasters in the future. 

Ideally, we could argue, a complete training course should teach miners the rules and procedures they need to apply in their daily work. If we view knowledge as unembodied—unconnected and abstracted from the material environment, immutable and mobile, miners should be able to read and understand instructions as easily in a coal mine as in a classroom (ignoring the obvious differences in visibility caused by poor lighting and dust in a mine). 

The notion of embodied sensory information, however, does not presume that knowledge can exist prior to sensation. More importantly, this notion recognizes that much of the information miners will need cannot exist within texts prior to action, sense, or response. Thus, while texts can provide guidelines, indices, and tips for recognizing predictable signs of risk and hazard, miners must observe, sense, and recognize hazards within highly specific local 

The dynamic and uncertain material environment of a coal mine thus raises ethical questions about textbook notions of instructions as systematic procedures designed to translate expert knowledge to lay audiences or to prescribe safe behaviors for highly local and unpredictable environments. In questioning traditional notions of instructions, however, we must face the uncomfortable question of practice and an even more problematic question erf liability. How can we convince miners to follow safe practice if we cannot prescribe safe practice And more important, how can we safeguard miners rights to a safe and responsible workplace if we reject the notion that experts can predict and prescribe safe practices in the workplace  

The problem with valorizing pit sense, of course, is that it inscribes both the power and responsibility for safety in individual miners. Miners with pit sense escape hazards. Those without pit sense—the unlucky, the accident prone, the disbelieving—encounter more than their just measure of injury and loss. Many miners believe this. One apprentice miner attributed his own recent string of accidents—a torn ligament in the knee, a broken finger, and lacerations on his arm—to a problem of luck. 

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Readers familiar with rhetorical theory will recognize the influence of two important mentors in my work. Richard Young s work in invention has... 

By demonstrating the social constructedness of knowledge claims, rhetorical theorists have helped us understand the nature of the invisible negotiations and power relationships that influence knowledge in science." Rhetorical theory has provided a powerful tool for understanding the rhetorical... 

Because the quality of writing varies widely in an industry where writers have little training in rhetorical theory, the quality of narratives also varies. The title of the U.S. Bureau of Mine s draft report on Errors and Unexpected data speaks for itself. ( Unexpected data refers to data that is either physically impossible or extremely unlikely, like the 75 reported examples where the seam height was either less than 10 inches or greater than 200 inches. Accident narratives contain many typographic and spelling errors. Writers abbreviate key words to fit the accident narrative into the space allo-... 

Rhetorical theory was not developed to help individuals document the dy namic uncertainty of a hazardous environment. 

This analysis has important implications for rhetorical theory and suggests that rhetoricians must reexamine how individuals and agencies might manage these diverse perspectives when they work to construct an understanding of hazards in their work. Chapters 5-9 explore this idea in detail. 

I began my research with the hope that 1 could convince agencies that they could take advantage of rhetorical theory to improve technical documentation in risky environments. My research has demonstrated that rhetoricians can also benefit from the methods of others in order to understand how individuals communicate outside of written texts. 

Selber, S. A. (1999). User-centered technology A rhetorical theory for computers and other mundane artifacts./BTC, 13(4), 457-470. 

Alan Rocke claims that the advocacy of the method of hypothesis, which had been familiar to physicists for a generation, began to replace inductivist rhetoric in chemical circles just about the time that Kekule was formulating his benzene theory. But the method of hypothesis was a familiar one to chemical leaders like Berzelius and Dumas, and Dalton hardly avoids the fact of his hypothetical reasoning by his, indeed, inductivist rhetoric.51... 

Alchemy is ubiquitous, multiple, and self-repIicating. But what is alchemy A practice A theory Some combination of both A historical oddity or an atemporal spiritual mode Is alchemy primarily about the production of gold from a base substance If so, what does one do with the product Display it like a trophy Drink it in order to extend life infinitely Project it in order to make more gold And then what Like a coin that is passed around so often it is clipped, sweated, and worn, alchemy has entered our rhetorical circulation, so that the original circumstances of its... 

Hollander takes the term from Angus Fletcher s masterful book Allegory Theory of a Symbolic Form. It is important to stress allegory here as a spatial and geometrical disposition of images, deriving, in part, from rhetorical and theatrical traditions. 

This is especially important to mention since Revel s two-part book, as published in 1905, presently remains the single documented, published source for Duchamp s notorious preoccupation with le Hasard, or Chance. Curiously, in spite of so much ink spilled on the subject of Duchamp s theories of chance, no one ever cites what M. Revel had to say about the subject, even though—to repeat a rhetorical point—his book remains the artist s only documented source material for his celebrated aleatory researches. At that time, of course, Duchamp was scarcely unique in pursuing the artistic possibilities presented by the operations of Chance—but Duchamp remains the only avant-garde artist known to have perused Revel s treatise. - But first we must see what Duchamp himself actually said and did in practice concerning matters motivated by le Hasard. 

Cheetham, M. A. The Rhetoric of Purity Essentialist Theory and the Advent of Abstract Painting. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991. 

She had a theory and the question was almost rhetorical by the time she d voiced it, but confirmation from De Schalles s lips would offer some share of satisfaction. 

Nevertheless, the commitments behind the two accounts are different. The advocates of the teleological view are devout naturalists. Their rhetoric seems to suggest that they endorse the sort of naturalism which is at odds internal realism. They are also committed to metaphysical realism. In fact, the principal advocate of this approach, Ruth Millikan has actually argued against Putnam s internal realism ( Metaphysical Antirealism ). I understand the motivation behind this commitment, even though I do not think it is justified. The theory presupposes that... 

Freud s work suffered from two fatal scientific defects, which his brilliant rhetoric could not overcome. One was the absence of relevant brain science, which he knew was indispensable and would some day force revision of his theories. For this he cannot be blamed. He was a creature of his time and his ambition pushed him a century ahead of that time. But because Freud was trained as a biological scientist, we can in all fairness ask why he was so careless as an observer. Why were his data so limited Why was his focus so narrowly fixed ... 

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