Post-Truth Rhetoric and Composition (Current Arguments in Composition) - Softcover

McComiskey, Bruce M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1607327449 ISBN 13: 9781607327448

Verlag: Utah State University Press, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

Post-Truth Rhetoric and Composition is a timely exploration of the increasingly widespread and disturbing effect of “post-truth” on public discourse in the United States. Bruce McComiskey analyzes the instances of bullshit, fake news, feigned ethos, hyperbole, and other forms of post-truth rhetoric employed in recent political discourse.

The book frames “post-truth” within rhetorical theory, referring to the classic triad of logos, ethos, and pathos. McComiskey shows that it is the loss of grounding in logos that exposes us to the dangers of post-truth. As logos is the realm of fact, logic, truth, and valid reasoning, Western society faces increased risks—including violence, unchecked libel, and tainted elections—when the value of reason is diminished and audiences allow themselves to be swayed by pathos and ethos. Evaluations of truth are deferred or avoided, and mendacity convincingly masquerades as a valid form of argument.

In a post-truth world, where neither truth nor falsehood has reliable meaning, language becomes purely strategic, without reference to anything other than itself. This scenario has serious consequences not only for our public discourse but also for the study of composition.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bruce McComiskey specializes in rhetoric and composition, classical rhetoric, and professional writing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His publications include Microhistories of Composition, Dialectical Rhetoric, Teaching Composition as a Social Process, Gorgias and the New Sophistic Rhetoric, and the edited collection English Studies: An Introduction to the Disciplines.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Post-Truth Rhetoric and Composition

By Bruce Mccomiskey

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2017 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60732-744-8

Contents

Post-Truth Rhetoric, 
Bullshit, 
Fake News, 
Ethos (at the Expense of Logos), 
Pathos (at the Expense of Logos), 
The Trump Effect, 
Post-Truth Composition, 
Consequences of Neglecting to Act, 
Notes, 
References, 
About the Author, 

CHAPTER 1

Post-Truth Rhetoric and Composition

On November 8, 2016, the United States of America elected real estate mogul Donald J. Trump to be its forty-fifth president. Trump did not win this election in the usual way, with an occasional negative ad but in general using sincere argumentation and ethical persuasion in order to demonstrate that he has the most relevant experience and the best plan to move the country forward. Instead, Trump won the election using unethical rhetorical strategies like alt-right fake news, vague social media posts, policy reversals, denials of meaning, attacks on media credibility, name-calling, and so on. All of these unethical rhetorical strategies, constantly televised and repeated throughout the year-long campaign and election cycle, have deeply affected public discourse in general, not just Trump's personal use of it. The Southern Poverty Law Center and others call this negative influence of Trump's rhetoric on social institutions and cultural interactions "the Trump effect," or a generalized increase in violence and hatred throughout the country.

Trump's campaign and election represent a rhetorical watershed moment in two ways: first, there has been a shift in the way that powerful people use unethical rhetoric to accomplish their goals; and, second, there has been a shift in the way that public audiences consume unethical rhetoric. Not surprisingly, the organizations that are most committed to promoting and teaching ethical rhetoric and writing have viewed this rhetorical watershed moment as a direct challenge to their missions and as an exigence for calls to rhetorical action.

On November 21, 2016, Gregory Clark, president of the Rhetoric Society of America (RSA), emailed a message to all RSA members on the organization's listserv, and this message was subsequently posted on the RSA website. In this statement, Clark identifies the rancorous election as a powerful exigence for an ethical response. Clark's response to this rancor, which was also rhetorically successful (resulting in Trump's election), emphasizes RSA's core values: diversity, inclusion, and respect. The very fact that Clark felt the need to reaffirm these values signifies a certain anxiety that Trump's successful rhetoric represents a direct challenge to RSA and its rhetorical mission.

On the very next day, November 22, 2016, Susan Miller-Cochran, president of the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA), sent a message over the WPA-L listserv, reaffirming that organization's core values and condemning the negative rhetorical strategies that were so divisive and so successful throughout the 2016 campaign and election process. The CWPA statement is similar to the RSA statement since it reinforces CWPA's core values — diversity and inclusiveness — in the wake of a campaign that succeeded by exploiting latent xenophobia. The CWPA statement is different from the RSA statement, however, since it directly condemns institutionalized inequality, and it calls upon its members to "explicitly act against the structures that cause injustice today." The CWPA statement is a call to rhetorical arms. The exigence of this statement (like RSA's) is a general anxiety among writing teachers that their core values have been called into question, and the intent of the statement is to reinforce support for any action writing teachers and program administrators might take to oppose the unethical rhetorical values that were so successful in the 2016 election.

A couple of weeks later, on December 6, 2016, the weekly NCTE Inbox email, sent to all members of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), contained a link to a new statement from the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), the "Statement on Language, Power, and Action." Like the other statements, the CCCC statement reinforces the core values of the organization: the power of language, commitment to diversity and justice, responsible inquiry, and ethical communication. The same general anxiety that fuels the RSA and CWPA statements also fuels the CCCC statement — demeaning and disempowering, though ultimately successful, rhetoric and writing. Although the CCCC statement does not directly promote action against oppressive institutional forces (like the CWPA statement does), the CCCC statement is clear that language is powerful and must be used and taught responsibly, not just strategically, with the intent to win at all costs.

Although not one of these three institutional responses uses the term post-truth, it is clear that the rhetorical strategies associated with post-truth politics and rhetoric are at the heart of their exigence. In November 2016, Oxford Dictionaries announced post-truth as its word of the year. The Oxford Dictionaries web page defines post-truth as an adjective "relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief." Although the word post-truth is not new, Oxford Dictionaries selected it as word of the year because of a "spike in frequency" following the UK's Brexit and the US presidential campaign and election. During the past year, Oxford Dictionaries explains, "Post-truth has gone from being a peripheral term to being a mainstay in political commentary, now being used by major publications without the need for clarification or definition in their headlines." There is nothing post-truth about the word post-truth; it is a fact of life, it is here to stay, and, as rhetoricians and teachers of writing, we're going to have to deal with it.

In its current usage, post-truth signifies a state in which language lacks any reference to facts, truths, and realities. When language has no reference to facts, truths, or realities, it becomes a purely strategic medium. In a post-truth communication landscape, people (especially politicians) say whatever might work in a given situation, whatever might generate the desired result, without any regard to the truth value or facticity of statements. If a statement works, results in the desired effect, it is good; if it fails, it is bad (or at least not worth trying again). In Post-Truth Rhetoric and Composition, I describe the unethical rhetoric that has emerged in our post-truth world, and I discuss some of the consequences of post-truth rhetoric for composition studies. My intent is not to solve the problem of post-truth rhetoric, but only to define and describe it. We as a community of writing teachers will have to solve the problem of post-truth rhetoric collectively and over time.

POST-TRUTH RHETORIC

In their most powerful forms, rhetorics deal with sound arguments and reasoned opinions, not certain facts, foundational realities, or universal truths. When positivist science determines certain facts and foundational realities, and metaphysical philosophy reveals universal truths, there is not much work left for rhetoric to accomplish, other than to dress scientific facts and realities and philosophical truths in beautiful and...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Utah State University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1607327449
• ISBN 13: 9781607327448
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 50
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar