Expel the Pretender

Eve Wiederhold

Description

Political fights are not waged over who is speaking the truth but over whether any given claim seems to be authentic. Expel the Pretender: Rhetoric Renounced and the Politics of Style examines how rhetorical style influences judgments about how to communicate integrity and good will. Eve Wiederhold argues that attitudes about style’s significance to judgment are both undertheorized and over-determined, especially when style is regarded as an embellishment rather than as a constitutive aspect of language use. Examining news reports covering controversial speakers including President Bill Clinton, Linda Tripp, and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, she demonstrates how rhetorical style is both belittled and yet remains a focal point for assessing public figures who have been publicly rebuked and discredited. Expel the Pretender claims style as a conflicted site of materiality, critiquing contemporary rhetorical theories that configure style as a dependable resource for democratic inquiry. Wiederhold argues that conceptions of style’s significance to judgment must be reframed to understand how we make decisions about who and what to believe.

Informations

• Publié par: Parlor Press, LLC
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781602355651
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Lauer Series in Rhetoric and Composition
Editors: Catherine Hobbs, Patricia Sullivan, Thomas Rickert, & Jennifer Bay
The Lauer Series in Rhetoric and Composition honors the contributions Janice Lauer has made to the emergence of Rhetoric and Composition as a disciplinary study. It publishes scholarship that carries on Professor Lauer’s varied work in the history of written rhetoric, disciplinarity in composition studies, contemporary pedagogical theory, and written literacy theory and research.
Books in the Series
Expel the Pretender (Wiederhold, 2015)
First-Year Composition: From Theory to Practice (Coxwell-Teague & Lunsford, 2014)
Contingency, Immanence, and the Subject of Rhetoric (Richardson, 2013)
Rewriting Success in Rhetoric and Composition Careers (Goodburn, LeCourt, Leverenz, 2012)
Writing a Progressive Past: Women Teaching and Writing in the Progressive Era (Mastrangelo, 2012)
Greek Rhetoric Before Aristotle, 2e, Rev. and Exp. Ed. (Enos, 2012)
Rhetoric’s Earthly Realm: Heidegger, Sophistry, and the Gorgian Kairos (Miller) *Winner of the Olson Award for Best Book in Rhetorical Theory 2011
Techne , from Neoclassicism to Postmodernism: Understanding Writing as a Useful, Teachable Art (Pender, 2011)
Walking and Talking Feminist Rhetorics: Landmark Essays and Controversies (Buchanan and Ryan, 2010)
Transforming English Studies: New Voices in an Emerging Genre (Ostergaard, Ludwig, and Nugent, 2009)
Ancient Non-Greek Rhetorics (Lipson and Binkley, 2009)
Roman Rhetoric: Revolution and the Greek Influence , Rev. and Exp Ed. (Enos, 2008)
Stories of Mentoring: Theory and Praxis (Eble and Gaillet, 2008)
Writers Without Borders: Writing and Teaching in Troubled Times (Bloom, 2008)
1977: A Cultural Moment in Composition (Henze, Selzer, and Sharer, 2008)
The Promise and Perils of Writing Program Administration ( Enos and Borrowman, 2008)
Untenured Faculty as Writing Program Administrators: Institutional Practices and Politics , (Dew and Horning, 2007)
Networked Process: Dissolving Boundaries of Process and Post-Process (Foster, 2007)
Composing a Community: A History of Writing Across the Curriculum (McLeod and Soven, 2006)
Historical Studies of Writing Program Administration: Individuals, Communities, and the Formation of a Discipline (L’Eplattenier and Mastrangelo, 2004). Winner of the WPA Best Book Award for 2004–2005.
Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English Studies Exp. Ed. (Berlin, 2003)


Expel the Pretender
Rhetoric Renounced and
the Politics of Style
Eve Wiederhold
Parlor Press
Anderson, South Carolina
www.parlorpress.com


Parlor Press LLC, Anderson, South Carolina, USA
© 2015 by Parlor Press
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
S A N: 2 5 4 - 8 8 7 9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wiederhold, Eve, 1961-
Expel the pretender : rhetoric renounced and the politics of style / Eve Wiederhold.
1 online resource. -- (Lauer series in rhetoric and composition)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.
ISBN 978-1-60235-564-4 (pdf) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-565-1 (epub) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-566-8 ( iBook) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-567-5 (mobi) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-562-0 (pbk. : acid-free paper)
1. English language--Political aspects--United States. 2. Persuasion (Rhetoric)--Political aspects--United States. 3. Mass media--United States--Language. 4. Freedom of speech--Social aspects. I. Title.
PE2809
306.44’0973--dc23
2015006905
1 2 3 4 5
Lauer Series in Rhetoric and Composition
Editors: Catherine Hobbs, Patricia Sullivan, Thomas Rickert, & Jennifer Bay
Cover design by Scott Warren.
Cover image by Lee Scott. From Unsplash. Used by Permission.
Printed on acid-free paper.
Parlor Press, LLC is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and multimedia formats. This book is available in paper, cloth and eBook formats from Parlor Press on the World Wide Web at http://www.parlorpress.com or through online and brick-and-mortar bookstores. For submission information or to find out about Parlor Press publications, write to Parlor Press, 3015 Brackenberry Drive, Anderson, South Carolina, 29621, or email [e-mail].


Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Authenticating the Liar
2 The Force of the Fit
3 The Politics of Ethos
4 Inhabiting the Call to Change
5 Conclusion: Passionate Linkages
Notes
Works Cited
Index
About the Author


To my idiosyncratic and lovely family . . .
with a shout out to Mr. Ko


Acknowledgments
Without the help of generous and thoughtful readers, this book would have remained stuck in the realm of fantasy. I am profoundly grateful to E. Shelley Reid and Deborah Kaplan, who wrestled with an early draft and did not declare it nonsense, but instead offered patient advice and generative feedback about how to focus and revise. Other generous colleagues who helped with editorial support and/or stimulating conversations include Robert Matz, Terry Zawicki, Tamara Harvey, Keith Clark, Stefan Wheelock, Barbara Gomperts, Richard Todd Stafford, Byron Hawk, Hephzibah Roskelley, Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater, Stephen Yarbrough, Nancy Myers, Wendy Sharer, Bruce Southard, Sara Littlejohn, Abby Arnold, and Brandy Grabow. I am especially grateful to Laura Micciche for demonstrating that academic writing can be both lively and meaningful. I owe a debt of gratitude (after all these years) to the creative faculty I was fortunate to work with at UIC, including Clark Hulse, Chris Messenger, Margherita Pieracci Harwell, Virginia Wexman, Michael Lieb, Gene Ruoff, William Covino, David Jolliffe, and especially James Sosnoski and Patricia Harkin. My sincere thanks to Publisher David Blakesley for seeing potential in the manuscript and to copyeditor Heather Christiansen for meticulous editorial assistance. Friends who have energized my spirit with wisdom, humor, aplomb, and encouragement include Annette Van, Jeanne Follansbee, Alexandra Schultheis Moore, Beth Franken, Jeanne Herrick, Cathy Colton, Consolato Gattuso (and Melissa, Tess, Dominick, and Jen), and Joe Rubino. I would also like to honor the memory of those who continue to matter, even if no longer here, including Antonetta Deddo, Helen Wiederhold, Charles Winslow Dulles Gayley, Michele Ciavarella Martinelli, Stephen Stallcup, Ryan Jenson Plachy, and Loran Dale Wiederhold. For evenings of merriment and camaraderie, I am most beholden to Denise Gayley, Joe Stack, Hope Nightingale, David Ellis, John and Margie Gayley, Anne Gabbert, Madi Ellis, and Iain Gayley. And above all, for support and inspiration (and pens, paper, eyedrops, and Italian sausage) I thank my family: Micki Deddo, Lou Armidano, Toni and Derrick Saunders, Brenda Leigh, Jeff Opie, Mark Wiederhold, and, especially, Jim Gayley, who sees between the leaves, hears what is unspoken, and understands my ideas before I do.


Introduction
P eople in the United States are expected to cherish the idea of free speech, but not all speech acts are welcome within public venues. The responsible citizen is expected to guard against the false claims and manufactured “talking points” of politicians whose rhetorical flourishes give cover to an unsavory lust for power. Political candidates tend to be commended when they speak with a blunt candor that seems to get to the facts and avoid verbal complexities. John McCain made an explicit promise when campaigning for president in 2008 to board the “straight talk express” in an effort to present himself as the people’s humble servant committed to a forthright style, as if making this pledge was unquestionably commendable and distinctive. The idea that honesty in speech means advancing past any distractions contrived by rhetoric has a long history in U.S. political discourse, its potency retained in part because of the undertheorized yet durable metaphor that crafts a conceptual linkage between linearity and discursive integrity.
This metaphorical cluster encodes a seemingly basic premise: methods exist for ascertaining how and what words mean. A promise to “speak straight” seems obtainable if language is imbued with a power to convey who signifies with probity and if citizens believe in their own integrity (i.e., honest citizens will know an honest representation when they see one and may justifiably castigate any speaker who puts forth anything but). Such beliefs create expectations about how language should be stylized, namely, that styles should be transparent so that rhetors may convey ideas that exist independently of the languages used to represent them. By channeling ideas and logic through figurative forms that do not obstruct the clarity of meaning, the plain style seems to fulfill this expectation.
One can hear echoes of the same idea in books such as the impatiently titled On Bullshit that found a publisher in 2005 as well as a receptive audience. Or in a 2008 advertisement for a local Chicago news station: “No bull. Truth in politics with Mike Flannery.” 1 It underwrites the endeavors of cable news hosts such as Anderson Cooper who devotes a portion of his nightly program on CNN to “keeping them honest” by comparing a given politician’s statements to “the facts.” And it is an element in every media commenta