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This article explores the roots of (African American) rhetorical theory through an examination of Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom. Rhetorical theory in this case is a forcible call for antislavery unity between races that at the same time rejects notions of the body as a racial essence. This essay attempts to make Douglass's rhetorical theory clear so that we can better understand how the key term functions today.

The question of non-Western difference has come to feature prominently across the field of comparative rhetoric, where it is often presupposed that an irreducible difference separates Western from non-Western rhetorical and cultural production. It is on the basis of this presupposition that critics have established a politics of comparative inquiry, whereby restituting the pure consciousness of a non-Western subaltern subject is understood to subvert the hegemony of Western thought. But what exactly is the nature of this difference? In this article I examine the recent turn toward Latin America in the field of comparative rhetoric to argue that this presupposition serves as a constitutive topos—that the object of Latin America is invented rhetorically in the very act of comparative inquiry—and that this presupposition yields a political impasse that the field has yet to think through. Drawing on recent work in Latin American studies, I argue for a rearticulated notion of subalternity as a methodological approach for dealing with this impasse.

English Language MOOCs (LMOOCs) employ multimodal resources to enhance second language learners’ engagement and motivation. This study examined the multimodal instructional discourse in English LMOOCs in a Chinese MOOC platform, focusing on the rhetorical relations between the linguistic mode, termed verbiage, and two non-linguistic modes, namely facial expressions and gestures. Employing Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) as its theoretical framework, this study involved a multimodal discourse analysis of 12 English LMOOCs. Specifically, it analyzed and compared the distribution of facial expressions and gestures, and rhetorical relations between verbiage and facial expressions and between verbiage and gestures in six nationally accredited quality LMOOCs and six regular LMOOCs without such national accreditation. The results revealed a significant association between course type and the use of the two non-linguistic modes. In addition, Elaboration, Emphasis, and Preparation were the three relations identified in two types of modal synergy: Verbiage + Facial expressions (i.e., V + FEs) and Verbiage + Gestures (i.e., V + Gestures), the latter also containing Restatement relation. A significant association between course type and the distribution of rhetorical relations was only identified in the V + Gestures but not in the V + FEs. This study contributes important insights into how linguistic and non-linguistic modes work together for meaning-making in LMOOCs and provides evidence for the applicability of RST in analyzing multimodal online teaching. Implications for practitioners are finally addressed. Plain language summary Understanding how different forms of communication are used in English language learning courses on a Chinese online learning platform This study explored how English language courses that are taught online—known as LMOOCs—use various ways of communication, such as video and text, spoken words, facial expressions, and gestures, to support student learning. We used a method called Rhetorical Structure Theory, which helps analyze how diifferent parts of a message relate to each other, to examine the structure of communication in these courses. We compared nationally accredited English LMOOCs in China with regular ones that do not hold the same accreditation. We found that there was a connection between the type of course and modes of communication. Our study identified different ways that verbal and non-verbal communication worked together, such as providing more information, emphasizing important points, and preparing students for upcoming content. Interestingly, we observed a unique way that verbal and non-verbal communication worked together, called “restatement,” which only appeared in regular English LMOOCs. Our findings offer a novel understanding of how different forms of communication are used in online language courses and demonstrate that Rhetorical Structure Theory is a valuableframework for analyzing instructional discourse.

Rhetorical Structure Theory has enjoyed continuous attention since its origins in the 1980s. It has been applied, compared to other approaches, and also criticized in a number of areas in discourse analysis, theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics. In this article, we review some of the discussions about the theory itself, especially addressing issues of the reliability of analyses and psychological validity, together with a discussion of the nature of text relations. We also propose areas for further research. A follow-up article (Taboada and Mann, forthcoming) will discuss applications of the theory in various fields.

In recent publications and casual conversations, we have sensed that the discipline is at an exigent moment of generational change. The prevailing feeling is not only about the retirements of influential scholars, mentors, and teachers, nor solely about the passing of beloved colleagues. The feeling is also that the discipline-establishing work that many of those scholars produced is not being carried forward in our ongoing scholarly conversations. We share this sense of loss. In part, it's personal--the ideas, mentorship, and collegiality of many of the scholars who have recently passed were influential in our own intellectual and professional development. In part, it's editorial--our reading of recent submissions to CCC suggests that the commitments developed by our disciplinary predecessors often remain, but the scholarly genealogy whereby one understands how those commitments emerged seems to be fading. Here, obituaries of scholars, writers, and teachers who made specific contributions to CCCC and CCC are presented.

Authors and illustrators of children’s literature often tend to view their readers as vulnerable and in need of protection. They take on the responsibility of shielding their implied readers from the impact of the conflict that they are writing about, either by including elements that enable the children to distance themselves from the narrative or by choosing presumably less-distressing elements. They draw the boundaries for what is acceptable and what isn’t in narratives about border-crossing for young children. In order to analyze the power hierarchy between the adult creators and the young readers in such conflict narratives, I employ the framework of Rhetorical Theory of Narrative to explore the choices made by the illustrators and authors of five contemporary picture-books about Arab refugees to consider how the scenes of the conflict are being shown through images and words. I also examine how these depictions are likely to impact the reader, who takes on the role of witness while reading the words and the pictures.

This essay examines Rhetorica ad Herennium 4.1–10, arguing that it is part of a programmatic textual performance. The author likens his crafting of rhetorical examples to a kind of visual display for the reader. He also explores the tension between the orator's rival imperatives to perform for an audience and to remain rhetorically inconspicuous. This tension helps us to understand the place of the Rhetorica in the Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition. It also sheds light on how textual performance becomes integral to negotiating that tradition.

This Research Brief discusses transformers—the core engine for most artificial intelligence applications. The brief situates transformer technology within the field of rhetoric and composition by surveying recent studies; highlights the innovative aspects of transformers; and, finally, thinks through (Majdik and Graham) the operations of transformers and generative AI through Miller’s theory of topoi, illustrating one way in which rhetoric and composition scholars and teachers can critically engage with generative AI in instruction and research.

This work on Pauline Discourse-Rhetorical Strategies for Community Building in the Book of First Thessalonians is carried out to examine how Apostle Paul deployed language in communicating his thoughts to the Thessalonian church in order to encourage them in their faith in Christ while establishing them as a strong community within the Thessalonian society. Previous research works on the book of First Thessalonians have either centered on theme, structure, and arguments on date and authorship in analysing the book. Discourse-rhetorical strategies for community building have not been investigated. This study uses the following discourse-rhetorical theories in its analysis: elements of Aristotelian Rhetoric, particularly Logos, and Bitzer’s Rhetorical Situation Theory. The data is composed of 14 utterances, purposively selected through careful reading and observation. The study finds that the rhetor responded politely to the exigence of the tendency to fall away from faith because of persecution by deploying identification strategy. He presented his exhortations, command, and instructions by deploying logos and use of persuasive strategies. The study concludes that rhetorical analysis is a very useful tool for discovering potent strategies political or religious leaders employ in communicating their thoughts and ideas to their audiences.