Complete Story
06/22/2012
Jeanne Fahnestock: Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion
Jeanne Fahnestock:
Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion
Oxford University Press, 2011
Cloth ISBN: 9780199764129
Paper ISBN: 978-0199764112
e-ISBN: 9780199918928 | DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199764129.003.0014
Winner of the 2012 Rhetoric Society of America Book Award
A comprehensive guide to the language of argument, Rhetorical Style offers a renewed appreciation of the persuasive power of the English language. Drawing on key texts from the rhetorical tradition, as well as on newer approaches from linguistics and literary stylistics, Fahnestock demonstrates how word choice, sentence form, and passage construction can combine to create effective spoken and written arguments. With examples from political speeches, non-fiction works, and newspaper reports, Rhetorical Style surveys the arguer's options at the word, sentence, interactive, and passage levels, and illustrates the enduring usefulness of rhetorical stylistics in analyzing and constructing arguments.
Features: A major reevaluation of the role of argument and persuasion in non-literary texts
Applies the tools of linguistics and literary stylistics to real text samples
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
I. Word Choice
1. Language of Origin
2. New Words and Changing Uses
3. Categories of Word Choice
4. Language Varieties
5. Tropes
6. Figures of Word Choice
II. Sentences
7. Sentence Basics: Predication
8. Sentence Construction: Modification
9. Sentence Architecture
10. Figures of Argument
11. Series
12. Prosody and Punctuation
III. Interactive Dimension
13. Speaker and Audience Construction
14. Incorporating Other Voices
15. Situation and Occasion
IV. Passage Construction
16. Coherence
17. Passage Patterns
18. Amplification
Appendix: Interclause Meaning Relations
Jeanne Fahnestock is Professor of English at the University of Maryland. She is the author of Rhetorical Figures in Science, and co-author of A Rhetoric of Argument.
