Exam 11: Contemporary Rhetoric III: Texts, Power, Alternatives

Provide the term for the following definitions: -In Foucault, discourse that is controlled by being prohibited.

Michel Foucault uses the term ___________________ to represent the totality of discursive practices for a society within a defined period of time.

Michael V. Fox has noted that argument was not central to Egyptian rhetoric. In what ways, if any, is contemporary American rhetoric moving away from argument and toward other discursive forms?

For Foucault, discourse was inseparable from knowledge, and determined the way in which power operated within a society.

Many feminist rhetorical theorists have tried to distinguish the goals of a feminine rhetoric from other disenfranchised groups, arguing that feminine rhetorical goals should take precedent.

Which of the following models does Sally Miller Gearhart say characterizes the male oriented rhetorical tradition, and which she finds fundamentally violent?

Provide the term for the following definitions: -Foucault's term for "the set of rules which at a given period and for a given society define" the limits of discourse, knowledge and power.

What is the basic feminist criticism of the Western rhetorical tradition?

What did Cheris Kramarae mean when she referred to women as a "muted" group?

What is your response to George Kennedy's claim that the Western rhetorical tradition is unusually aggressive and competitive when contrasted with other rhetorical traditions?

Structuralism examines the "oppositions" embedded in a discourse to point out how concepts are invested with meaning by contrast.

What tenets characterized the Structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss?

Rhetoric in ancient China focused on writing rather than speaking because there was very little sense of a public citizenry or public oratory.

George Kennedy uses a study of comparative rhetoric to argue that non-Western forms of rhetoric were less competitive than the Greek rhetorical tradition.

Cheris Kramarae quotes the heroine in Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd to the effect that "it is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs." What is your reaction to this statement from Hardy's novel?

Which of the following is the name for the rhetorical form used by the Lo Dagaas people of northern Ghana, in which the initiate learns twelve thousand verses and tells a personalized version of a community story?

Michel Foucault and the feminist rhetoricians discussed in Chapter Eleven perceive that rhetorical practices are crucial to either the existence, preservation, or criticism of culture. Summarize the two views of the relationship between rhetoric or discourse and culture represented by Foucault and the feminist critics. Which view do you find more persuasive?

Because postmodernism was a reaction against structuralism it is sometimes called post-structuralism.