Explore the vast range of titles available.

Moral considerations underlie partisan and ideological identification along with a variety of political attitudes, yet we know little about how elites strategically appeal to the public’s moral intuitions. Building on Moral Foundations Theory, we investigate the causes and consequences of elite moral rhetoric in the debate over stem cell research. Through content analysis of 12 years of coverage in the New York Times, we find that proponents and opponents of stem cell research engage in distinctive patterns of moral rhetoric and place different weight on the foundations. We also demonstrate that the prevalence of moral rhetoric increases during periods of legislative activity, and we find some evidence that moral rhetoric increases in response to the opposing side’s use of moral language. Merging our content analysis with seven national surveys, the analysis shows that moral rhetoric has had a substantial effect on public attitudes regarding the fundamental considerations underpinning the debate.

Meaningful learning requires deep engagement with ideas. Deep engagement is supported by the critical thinking skill of argumentation. Learning to argue represents an important way of thinking that facilitates conceptual change and is essential for problem solving. In order to appropriately apply argumentation practices to learning, we first discuss reasons for using argumentation in learning environments or instruction. Next, we describe the skills of argumentation along with difficulties that learners experience when trying to argue. Following a brief description of the kinds of argumentation to persuade an audience of the validity of your position or solution (rhetorical) or to attempt to resolve differences in opinions or solutions (dialectical), we describe methods and guidelines for eliciting arguments from students. We conclude with processes for assessing the quality of student-generated arguments.

Intersectionality has become a key concept for social justice advocates and socially conscious scholars in feminist studies, critical race studies, queer studies, sociology, and many other fields. Yet prevailing conventions and habits of argument in scholarship and social life have led to distorted and destructive critiques of intersectionality that are damaging to feminist antisubordination scholarship and activism. These actions at the scene of argument constitute an academic feminist public through articulations that serve as socializing pedagogies. This article examines four rhetorical frameworks and two accompanying tropes that interpellate feminist subjects in ways that are destructive to antisubordination struggles. They allow hegemonic logic to masquerade as radical critique. Feminists cannot escape the use of patterned language, claims, and arguments, but we can insist on looking more closely at the scene of argument in order to determine how conventionalized framing rhetorics and tropes serve us badly when they are presented as convincing rhetorical moves that gain purchase by undermining radical critique. The scene of argument is a terrain laden with traps but also a shared social resource for which we are all responsible. Transforming the terms of reading and writing at the scene of argument can help us tell the truth and not get trapped.

Developments in the democratic theory of representation and deliberation enable renewed consideration of the ancient controversy over the proper place of rhetoric in politics. Rhetoric facilitates the making and hearing of representation claims spanning subjects and audiences divided in their commitments and dispositions. Deliberative democracy requires a deliberative system with multiple components whose linkage often needs rhetoric. Appreciation of these aspects of democracy exposes the limitations of categorical tests for the admissibility of particular sorts of rhetoric. Prioritization of bridging over bonding rhetoric is a step in the right direction, while sometimes producing misleading results. A better systemic test asks whether or not rhetoric promotes an effective deliberative system linking competent and reflective actors.

This article examines three cases that have been identified by scholars as \"manufactured\" scientific controversies, in which rhetors seek to promote or delay public policy by announcing that there is an ongoing scientific debate about a matter for which there is actually an overwhelming scientific consensus. The comparative study of argumentative dynamics in the cases of AIDS dissent, global warming skepticism, and intelligent design reveals the deployment of rhetorical traps that take advantage of balancing norms and appeals to democratic values. It also reveals the ineffectual counterarguments marshalled by defenders of mainstream science. By exploring the inventionalpossibilities available to those who would respond to manufactured scientific controversies, this article equips readers and their students to confute deceptive arguments about science and engage in a more productive public debate. In so doing, this article initiates an Isocratean orientation to the rhetoric of science as afield of study.

Past research is not clear on the process by which rhetorical questions influence persuasion (i.e., increased focus on message arguments vs. on the persuasion agent). Based on recent theories of persuasion knowledge and rhetorical figures in advertising, our model delineates conditions under which rhetoricals are likely to enhance argument elaboration (low salience of the rhetorical) and those under which they are likely to direct attention on the message source (high salience of the rhetorical format). Two experiments support the model and suggest that salience of rhetorical figures has the potential to influence not only the direction of message processing but also the effectiveness of various ad executions.

My focus is the 'logico-rhetorical module' (Sperber, 2000). This mental module, Sperber hypothesizes, is an evolved ability of human beings to examine critically what someone is saying, for example, to detect inconsistency or inadequate evidence in an argument. On the assumption that we have this natural ability, Chilton (2005) questions the need for Critical Discourse Analysis; in contrast, on his reading of Sperber's work, Hart (this issue) argues the opposite. In this article, I agree with Chilton's (2005) stance to the extent that the competence of the logico-rhetorical module is, generally speaking, adequate for enabling critical engagement with verbal input. That said, I highlight two (non-competence related) limitations of the logico-rhetorical module for detecting inconsistency in arguments. To address these limitations, I hold a new approach is needed in Critical Discourse Analysis. This is one which draws on the corpus linguistic method; I refer to it as Electronic Deconstruction.

Drawing on sociological and philosophical studies of science, science educators have begun to view argumentation as a central scientific practice that students should learn. In this article, we extend recent work to understand the structure of students' arguments to include judgments about their quality through content analyses of high school students' written explanations for 2 problems of natural selection. In these analyses, we aim to explicate the relations between students' conceptual understanding of specific domains and their epistemic understanding of scientific practices of argumentation as they try to learn science through inquiry. We present a method that assesses the warrant of explanatory claims, the sufficiency of the evidence explicitly cited for claims, and students' rhetorical use of specific inscriptions in their arguments. Students were attentive to the need to cite data, yet they often failed to cite sufficient evidence for claims. Students' references to specific inscriptions in their arguments often failed to articulate how specific data related to particular claims. We discuss these patterns of data citation in terms of what they suggest about students' epistemological ideas about explanation and consequent implications for inquiry-oriented, science education reforms.

In an oft-cited 1990 essay, Michael Calvin McGee argues forcefully for the significance of fragmentation as a defining feature of the postmodern condition, suggesting that it requires a reframing of rhetorical criticism to put the emphasis on con/text construction and critical rhetorical praxisl. This essay seeks to delink McGee's fragmentation thesis from modern/coloniality by rethinking the problematic of text/context circulation from a global perspective attentive to coloniality.

The decision of the European Union to expand to Central and Eastern Europe is a puzzle for rationalist intergovernmentalism. This approach to the study of European integration accounts for most of the preferences of the state actors and many characteristics of the intergovernmental bargaining process but fails to explain why it resulted in the opening of accession negotiations. I introduce the mechanism of rhetorical action in order to show how the supporters of enlargement succeeded in overcoming the superior material bargaining power of their opponents. Through the strategic use of arguments based on the liberal norms of the European international community, the “drivers” caught the “brakemen” in the community trap and, step by step, shamed them into acquiescing in Eastern enlargement.