Epideictic Rhetoric

The fact that epideictic aims at building a consensus, a " homonoia " among a community is well established since the first known rhetorical treatises. Making students exercise this rhetorical genre would then probably be of great interest to our society. I was teaching Latin and Greek in Belgian secondary schools during four years and decided to explore this hypothesis by making my students practice epideictic exercises. For they constitute the main model that may inspire us today, I took inspiration from exercises as they were practiced during classical Antiquity. After taking into account theoretical and practical aspects inherent to my teaching area, I decided to work on the so called 'paradoxical encomium'. My students were then asked to write the encomium of a neutral, or blameworthy object or person. This paper presents the results of this experiment. I will here focus on the concrete practice of such exercises, on the basis of my own teaching experience. I will broach benefits, but also technical and ethical problems that teachers and students may encounter while practicing them in a nowadays classroom and will illustrate my purpose with examples of productions written by some of my students, from 15 to 17 years old, in a Brussels school of the general secondary education in 2015.

While the concept of communication has long been bound to a reductive model of the exchange of information, very few scholars of communication would argue that these assumptions are realistic, without a long list of qualifying caveats. But the concept of communication, built from the integration of semiotic signification with the idea of information as the 'carrier' of transmitted meaning, is so deeply ingrained and simple that even displacing it can seem futile, if not absurd. Nevertheless, these foundational assumptions tightly constrain the ways in which any interactional phenomena can be conceived--and constraints upon our ways of understanding communication drastically limit our capacity to understand our worlds and the social processes that generate them, at any scale or level of abstraction. 

Communication as Gesture traces the concept of communication from its roots in classical rhetoric to its integration in structural linguistics, semiotics, information theory, and cybernetics, integrating perspectives from contemporary rhetorical theory, relational psychology, interactional sociology, philosophy, cognitive linguistics, discourse studies, multimodal semiotics, and more. Because so much of our contemporary world is lived with and through digital media technologies, the study of new media and social media provides a rich illustration of the constraints imposed by our reductive assumptions--and hints at the possibilities generated by rethinking them. The gesture theory of communication introduced presents a dimensional account of communication that is intuitively accessible and theoretically rich while overturning reductive assumptions of the linear character of interaction.

https://books.emeraldinsight.com/page/detail/Communication-as-Gesture/?k=9781787565166

This article explores the relationship between historiography and panegyric in Late Antiquity. It argues that in his Oration 59, a panegyric addressed to Constantius II and Constans in the late 340s, Libanius of Antioch adopts and deploys several authoritating topoi developed by historians. The article's conclusions address Libanius’ political objectives in the composition of this speech, and his relationship with the emperor Constantius II.

This essay analyzes two speeches delivered by President Ronald Reagan on June 6, 1984, within the broader context of Reagan's Cold War foreign policy rhetoric. In his remarks at Pointe du Hoc and Omaha Beach, Reagan provided a vivid narrative of D-Day and applied the moral lessons of World War II to the present Cold War struggle between U.S. democracy and Soviet communism. In this essay, I analyze both speeches—Reagan's address at Pointe du Hoc and his
remarks at Omaha Beach—as independent and yet interrelated rhetorical moments within
Reagan's larger Cold War foreign policy narrative. Both speeches exemplify Reagan’s common
themes of U.S. patriotism, moral resolve, and commitment to the Western democratic alliance.
I first describe how Reagan's speeches on the fortieth anniversary of D-Day echoed themes
from his 1982 Address to the British Parliament and his 1983 speech to the National Association
of Evangelicals. I then analyze each speech separately, drawing on the archives of the Reagan
Library to illuminate the White House's goals for Reagan's remarks and showing how those
goals were manifested in the speeches themselves through a close reading of both texts.

Framed in a critique of digital and new media studies, this dissertation returns to the roots of the study of communication and interaction in rhetoric, linguistics, semiotics, information theory, and cybernetics to develop a philosophy and theory of communication anchored in a pre-symbolic concept of gesture. This reevaluation of communication processes allows for the articulation of communication as dynamic interaction in spacetime, which allows attention to communicative agency and the relations among communicators, communications technologies, and the environments and ecologies in which they are necessarily situated. This, in turn, while drawing from assemblage theory, affect theory, embodied and distributed cognition, interactional sociology, and relational psychology, provides a novel conceptualization of agency in human and non-human forms, as well as the relations among them. The foregoing is anchored in a relational ontology that critiques many of the contemporary, taken-for-granted assumptions about character of ‘information’.

Festliche Preisverleihungen sind Gelegenheiten, bei denen von den Preisträgern eine kurze Rede erwartet wird. Obwohl die Dankesrede eine kleinere Randgattung innerhalb des epideiktischen Genres ist, steht sie im Mittelpunkt des Ereignisses. Rhetorikhandbücher geben zahlreiche Ratschläge, wie eine gute Festrede vorbereitet werden soll, um zu unterhalten, zu bewegen und zu belehren. Ziel dieser Untersuchung ist es festzustellen, welche Eigenschaften der Dankesrede die Zuhörer als erwünscht oder unerwünscht wahrnehmen und welche Charakteristika am meisten zur Qualität festlicher Dankesreden beitragen. Das Korpus der gesprochenen Texte bilden 30 Dankesreden anlässlich kroatischer Preisverleihungen in den Bereichen Schauspiel, Sport, Musik, Fernsehen, Literatur und Wirtschaft. Die Audio-Aufnahmen der Dankesreden wurden einer Gruppe von Hörern zur Bewertung in folgenden Kategorien vorgelegt: interessant, geistreich, hoher Sprachstil, feierlich, emotiv, persönlich, originell, bescheiden, vorbereitet und spontan. Zusätzlich wurde zu jeder Rede die offene Frage gestellt, was dem Zuhörer an der Rede gefallen oder nicht gefallen habe. Die Resultate der Perzeptionsanalye lassen erkennen, dass die Interessantheit einer Rede mit der Eigenschaft des Geistreichen, des Originellen, des Emotionalen und des Persönlichen in Verbindung gebracht wird und die Eigenschaft des Festlichen im Wesentlichen nur mit dem hohen Sprachstil und der Vorbereitetheit des Textes korreliert. Einige Eigenschaften können sowohl erwünscht als auch unerwünscht sein, z. B. Dialekt, Persönliches und Kürze.Die besten Dankesreden haben Eigenschaften, die im Grunde schwer miteinander zu verbinden sind: Einerseits soll der Text vorbereitet sein (hoher Stil, Wortwahl, Figuren, Originalität der Geschichte, Humor), andererseits wird bei der Ausführung Spontaneität (Aufrichtigkeit, Emotionalität, Persönlichkeit) erwartet.

Na presente dissertação analisamos a fabricação da imagem imperial de Tito Flávio Domiciano (81-96), último representante da dinastia flaviana (69-96), a partir da aproximação do princeps com figuras divinas, semidivinas e históricas. Para tanto, mobilizamos um corpus documental que contempla um conjunto de moedas cunhadas em Roma durante os quinze anos do governo de Domiciano, além de um poema épico escrito por Públio Papínio Estácio, a Aquileida. Em nosso entendimento a propagação das associações da imagem daquele imperador com deuses, semideuses e personalidades históricas nas cunhagens e nas letras permitiram a cooptação de forças provenientes do senado, do exército e da população romana, o que contribuiu, desse modo, para a manutenção da legitimidade do princeps. As moedas de Domiciano construíram, tanto nas inscrições quanto nas imagens, a figura do imperador como dotado de virtudes como a fortitudo, a gloria, a concordia, a liberalitas e de pietas para com os deuses e familiares, além de filiar as realizações militares do princeps aos precedentes flaviano e augustano. Na Aquileida, Estácio o comparou ao lendário guerreiro Aquiles e deu precedência ao imperador, em termos de virtudes, à história deste, além de ter construído o personagem como exemplum de destreza bélica e portador da pietas, conceitos basilares no contexto do Principado e por conseguinte, flaviano. Utilizamos como arcabouço teórico o binômio representação e práticas cunhados por Roger Chartier (1991; 2002), a noção de propaganda aplicada aos Estudos Clássicos de Paulo Martins (2011) e de Ana Teresa Marques Gonçalves (2013), o conceito de teatrocracia por Georges Balandier (1982) e de poder simbólico de Pierre Bourdieu (2005). Além disso, utilizamos os preceitos da retórica epidítica provenientes dos tratados antigos tais como os escritos de Cícero, do Auctor ad Herennium, de Quintiliano e de Menandro, o Retor, por entendermos que nosso corpus estava inserido em um interdiscurso retórico. O método empregado foi o da Análise de Conteúdo a partir da técnica da análise categorial tal como exposta por Laurence Bardin (2011).

Abstract: The analysis explores the main arguments of Noam Chomsky’s short book, Media Control that also reprints the monograph “The Journalist from Mars: How the ‘War on Terror’ Should Be Reported.” The problematic is Aristotelian rhetoric and Enlightenment rationality (justice) in civic discourse (Lógos) as compared to the thematic of dialogic reasonableness (Eulógos). Chomsky’s assumption of, and critique of, “old rhetoric” [Aristotle’s rhētorikḗ] is followed by a discussion of Chiam Perelman’s “new rhetoric” [presocratic poiētikḗ / epideiktikos / gērys] and his “incarnate adherence” (giving voice to) concept of the Universal Audience as a function of Epideictic argumentation. This is also a critique of Stephen Toulman’s neo- Aristotelian model of rhetorical “warrant” and its connection to Charles S. Peirce’s normative semiotic of the “argument cycle.” Heidegger’s and Lakoff’s concept of discourse framing is associated with Michel Foucault’s rhetoric concept of an ethic of social discourse for the common good (parrhe- sia) in the age of Umberto Eco’s hyperreality media that displays Baudrillard’s simulacra, such as Donald Trump.

Aristoteles’e göre, epideiksis Klasik Çağ Atinası’nda üç temel hitap etme biçiminden birinin oluşturucusudur. Diğer hitabet türlerinin oluşturucuları ise “tavsiye etme” (symbouleusis) ve “hukuki doğruları tesis etme” (dikaiōsis) edimleridir. “Gösteren” ya da “gözler önüne seren” (epideiktikos) bir söyleme biçimi olarak epideiktik hitabette “övgü” (ainos) ve “yergi” (mōmos) merkezi unsurlar olarak belirirler. Kökleri arkaik şiirin farklı vezinler ve vesilelerle dillendirilen dizelerine kadar takip edilebilecek olan epideiksis, söylemi belirli bir insicamla inşa etme yaklaşımına, yani genel çizgileriyle ifade edildiğinde “övgü” (ainos) ve “yergi”nin (mōmos) dengesine dayanır. Epideiktik hitabet Eski Yunan’ın söyleme biçimlerinin sağladığı ivmeyle aşama aşama inşa edilen ve daha ziyade Atina örneğiyle tanıdığımız klasik “kent-devleti”nin (polis) işleyişini belirleyen bir gidişat olarak değerlendirilebilir. Bu aşamaların şiirsel biçimleri içinde genel olarak epinikion şiiri, özellikle de Pindaros’un dizeleri ön plana çıkmaktadır. Klasik Yunan’da epideiksis’in zirvelerinden biri olarak anılabilecek Isokrates’in eriştiği epideiktik üslup Pindaros’un övgü-yergi söylemi kadar Gorgias’ın varlıkla ilgili yaklaşımını ifşa eden Helene’ye Övgü’dekine benzer kanıtlamalarla da belirli bir diyalog içindedir. Bu diyaloğun yakından incelenmesi epideiktik hitabetin tarihsel seyri ve Klasik Yunan’daki misyonu kadar, klasik “kent-devleti”nin (polis) iletişim ve yönetişim dilinin de netleşmesini sağlar. Bu bildiride, Klasik Yunan’da özellikle siyasetin dili olan symbouleusis ile hukuğun dili olan dikaiōsis’in yanı sıra ortaya çıkan ve sonuçta “vatandaş”ın (politēs) dolayısıyla “kent-devleti”nin (polis) ortak dili haline gelen epideiksis’in bu konumu nasıl kazandığı ve Klasik çağın sonlanmasıyla bu önemli makamı nasıl kaybettiği ele alınacak.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Epideiktik hitabet, epideiksis, polis, Klasik Yunan, Arkaik şiir, övgü, yergi

Im Beitrag wird eine der grundlegenden Methoden in der altrussischen Hagiographie untersucht, deren Wesen darin besteht, dass der Autor einer Vita, eines Lobliedes oder einer Liturgie bei der Darstellung eines jeden neuen Heiligen für gewöhnlich versuchte, ein diesem entsprechendes „hagiologisches Modell“ unter den großen Glaubensbekennern der Vergangenheit zu finden, um den zu preisenden Heiligen in Analogie zu diesem darzustellen. Im Beitrag wird das Verhältnis zwischen der literarischen Methode der Angleichung an hagiologische Modelle und der geistigen Erfahrung aus der christlichen Anthropologie untersucht:  Es werden eine Reihe von Aussagen östlicher Kirchenväter (Basilius der Grosse, Dyonysios der Areopagite, Johannes Klimax, Maximus Confessor) angeführt, die dem Thema der „Angleichung“ gelten. Außerdem wird der innere Zusammenhang zwischen dem Prinzip der literarischen Angleichung  und demjenigen der Nachahmung (des geistigen Lehrers, des gleichnamigen Heiligen oder der Heiligenviten) im realen Leben verfolgt.

”A Rhetorical Rescue Operation. King Harald V of ­Norway’s Eulogy After the Breivik Attacks and Kenneth ­Burke’s Dramatism as a Theory of Social Change'"

The article is a pentadic analysis of King Harald V of Norway’s eulogy held a month after July 22, 2011. An inter­pretation of the motives of the speech, the study is based on ­Kenneth Burke’s view of ambiguity as a necessity for transition related to Barbara A. Biesecker’s view of dramatism as a theory of social change. With its plethora of strategic points of necessary ambiguity, the speech’s tension balances epideictic unification with the politically flavoured memory of victims whose primary shared characteristic is their social responsibility. In this tension, grounds are found for a claim that rhetorical empowerment enables victims and reduces domination by stressing social responsibility as a ­universally available source of rhetorical agency. The eulogy is interpreted as a pivotal point of rhetorical social change and a ­performance of social responsibility, empowerment and public mass care."

The Book of Wisdom is considered a coherent text characterised by genre syncretism. This article aims to examine the praise of wisdom in the Book of Wisdom for its persuasive functions. The encomium was used in the analysis as a typical genre of epideictic rhetoric. The text of the praise was analysed from the perspective of the features distinguishing this genre and determining its underlying structure. The analysis led to the conclusion that the author used the possibilities of the genre to teach the recipients what wisdom they should seek and to encourage them to take actions to achieve it. The encomium in the Book of Wisdom was subordinated to advisory rhetoric and is an essential element in the work's structure.

Epideictic discourse has been and remains an enigma in rhetorical studies. The concept has been considered from numerous perspectives, but praise and blame, the purposes Aristotle ascribed to his third genre, still remain pervasive in our understanding of it. Following scholars who have questioned how well Aristotelian definitions of the concept can explain epideictic discourse in antiquity (Chase, 1961; Duffy, 1983; Walker, 2000), these essays will examine the political functions of the classical funeral oration (Epitaphios Logos), a quintessentially epideictic form of rhetoric. To date, few studies (Hesk, 2013 is a notable exception) explore the influence of political exigencies that confronted the ancient orator when speaking in ceremonial contexts. Responding to the sparse treatment of the subject, this project applies close reading of two extant funeral orations from classical Athens to investigate the connection between funerary discourse the prosecution of war efforts.
As a work of conceptually oriented criticism, it aims to add to, modify, or reconceive of the epideictic genre and illuminate aspects of the text and context of the speeches under study. I propose that Aristotle's conception of epideictic is insufficient to explain the discourse of his contemporaries because it ignored the political ends ceremonial orators pursued, in particular, those of Demosthenes and Hyperides, two orators for whom we have extant texts of a funeral oration each delivered. By drawing on the works of modern rhetorical theorists including Chaïm Perelman, Lloyd Bitzer, and Kenneth Burke, I argue for a more fluid conception of the epideictic genre, one that is determined more by the immediate exigencies of the rhetorical situation than by the traditional tropes thought to govern the tradition.

Propomos uma reflexão filosófica com base na Poética e Retórica aristotélicas acerca da natureza das atividades musicais, especificamente as atividades de canto coletivo em que se insere o canto coral. Consideramos que as musicalidades, especialmente as artes do canto, integram não apenas a poética, mas também a retórica epidíctica. O epidíctico se ocupa de todo tipo de discurso que enaltece e censura os costumes instituindo e reafirmando significados simbólicos que agregam ou mantêm as ligações entre os membros de um grupo. Por essa via, consideramos o canto coral como uma das expressões da oratória epidíctica.

How do various types of epideictic rhetoric (‘ER’) deployed by leading national political actors affect the normative diffusion of both securitization and desecuritization (hereinafter ‘(de)securitization’) processes and functional implementation of corresponding policy outcomes regarding national minorities (‘NM’s) in the European Union’s member states? This question focuses on the evolving relationships between the ‘6 As’ (actors, audiences, arenas, alliances, activities and aims) of interconnected institutional networks of governance as they reshape national minorities’ (de)securitization processes (‘NMDP’) within the EU. This paper addresses the above question by choosing as its case study Romania – a unitary nation-state that simultaneously includes a significant Hungarian national minority and various other NMs, and acts as kin-state to the ethnic Romanians of the Republic of Moldova. It analyses how the concrete and credible deployments of various types of ER with respect to these minorities (ie. the independent variable) trigger processes of sustainable resonance  – composed of symbolic resonance, normative resonance and functional resonance power vectors – re-framing national minority (de)securitization policy outcomes in Romania (ie. the dependent variable) and resulting in the consolidation of embedded (de)securitization networks of governance. This study first posits a primary hypothesis, stating that embedded (de)securitizing processes of national minorities in Europe require the coalescence of sustainable resonance networks incorporating the Hexagonal Cast of actors representing various audience levels, then tests six specific explanatory hypotheses derived therefrom. Together, these six explanatory hypotheses aim to deconstruct the web of interactions between NMs’ Hexagonal Cast (‘HC’) of actors – the host state, the kin-state, the main national minority group, other national minorities, international organizations (‘IO’s), transnational activist movements – and to explain how these interactions are shaped by and in turn re-shape evolving ontological foundations and self-understandings of both the Romanian state and of the wider European multi-level governance (‘MLG’) project (ie. the intervening variables) since the fall of the Ceaușescu authoritarian-nationalist communist regime in December 1989. This paper thus develops an original analytical approach to the study of the dynamic relationships between various types of ER – ie. totalizing epideictic rhetoric, neoliberal epideictic rhetoric, immanent epideictic rhetoric and deictic epideictic rhetoric – variously deployed by Romania’s four Presidents since 1990 – Ion Iliescu (‘Iliescu’), Emil Constantinescu (‘Constantinescu’), Traian Băsescu (‘Băsescu’) and Klaus Iohannis (‘Iohannis’) –, of NMDPs and of their policy outcomes, as well as of competing state-building projects in this EU member state – that is, the nationalizing state project, the liberal-democratic state project, the pluralist state project and the multi-level governance project.  It thereby aims both to contribute to ongoing theory and praxis efforts to move beyond the ‘Culture as Security and Security as Culture’ paradigm of the European Project, as well as to contextually re-frame the deterministic Identity-Territory-Rights Nexus (‘ITRN’) that still remains the cornerstone of the conceptual framework of existing European political institutions.

Epideictic rhetoric is not the type of rhetoric most commonly associated with the notion of political deliberation. Notwithstanding certain formulations in the Rhetoric that lend credence to interpretations that downplay or outright deny the political character of epideictic rhetoric, I will attempt to show that for Aristotle all types of rhetoric are inherently political; that his typological distinctions are less clear-cut than they first appear; and that the treatment of the epideictic form of rhetoric in fact applies most specifically to the epitaphios logos, the funeral oration. I will then move to a consideration of the crucial political questions raised about democratic politics by epideictic rhetoric in contexts of crisis.

Public memory scholars contend that depictions of a figure can never be definitive, but the “biopic” genre of film complicates this. Biopics may be an audience’s only exposure to a figure, lending them great significance in determining how culture remembers the individuals portrayed. This phenom- enon is explored through the biopic The End of the Tour, memorializing writer David Foster Wallace. The way that the film advances a specific reading of Wallace’s life has implications for the ways that popular culture informs the perpetuation of certain public memories. That Wallace’s story has been complicated by the #MeToo movement further implicates popular media in the formation of public memory. This article demonstrates how biopics embody the functions and form of epideictic rhetoric, and addresses issues of how epideictic power is accrued in media such as biopics in the contemporary neoliberal era. Wallace and The End of the Tour offer a unique opportunity to examine such issues due to fluctuations in his public reputation across the span of his life and death. Recognizing the consequences of mediated, neoliberal epideictic raises possibilities for future explorations of the relation between power and memory today.

Beyond the discourse of individual identity, cultural identity differs because there is a consciousness developed out of a shared history.  The expression and recreation of identity and the power of shared experiences through narrative experiences allow individuals to come to understand how aspects of their cultural identity are communicated and fostered.  The narrative paradigm will be utilized to examine Jesse Williams’ Humanitarian Award acceptance speech from the BET Awards in 2016 to see how aspects of identity and epideictic play off each other.  The focus of this paper will be on how the functions of epideictic operate as good reasons to reinforce the values of the Black community. It is the goal of this paper to analyze how ceremonial narratives are used to influence the maintenance of Black communal identity and to extend and reinforce the value of epideictic narratives as powerful discourse.

Β΄ [Θ΄] Συνάντηση Ελλήνων Βυζαντινολόγων, 13-15-12-2017, Συνεδριακό και Πολιτιστικό Κέντρο Πανεπιστημίου Πατρών

Η ανακοίνωση αφορά στις διακυμάνσεις της έννοιας της ελευθερίας στα αυτοτελή εγκώμια πόλεων της Ύστερης Βυζαντινής περιόδου και ειδικά του 15ου αι.
Στα πρώτα αυτοτελή εγκώμια πόλεων της Ύστερης Αρχαιότητας, δηλαδή τον Παναθηναϊκόν του Αίλιου Αριστείδη και τον Ἀντιοχικόν του Λιβάνιου, όπως και στις οδηγίες του Μένανδρου του ρήτορα του 3ου αι. μ.Χ. για το πῶς χρὴ πόλεις ἐπαινεῖν, δεν απαντούσε καθόλου ως εγκωμιαστικός τόπος των πόλεων η έννοια της ελευθερίας από τους εξωτερικούς κατακτητές. Ωστόσο στη συνέχεια και μετά τη διακοπή του είδους κατά τη μέση περίοδο βλέπουμε στα αυτοτελή εγκώμια πόλεων της Ύστερης Βυζαντινής περιόδου την έννοια της ελευθερίας - τόσο με την τυπική της έννοια, της ελευθερίας δηλαδή από τους ξένους κατακτητές όσο και με ορισμένες σημασιολογικές διαφοροποιήσεις της - να εμφανίζεται όλο και συχνότερα.
Πρόκειται για μία αξιοπρόσεκτη ανάδειξη του στοιχείου της ελευθερίας ως τμήματος της συνολικής αρετής των κατοίκων των εγκωμιαζόμενων πόλεων, που κορυφώθηκε αλλά και διακόπηκε οριστικά με την ἐγκωμιαστικήν ἔκφρασιν Τραπεζοῦντος, τη συνταχθείσα από τον Ιωάννη Ευγενικό μεταξύ του 1447 και του 1450. Εκεί στο τελευταίο ουσιαστικά δείγμα του είδους των αυτοτελών εγκωμίων πόλεων, το οποίο γράφτηκε στο λυκόφως της ύπαρξης της Βυζαντινής αυτοκρατορίας, μάλλον δεν είναι τυχαίο ότι για πρώτη φορά στην ιστορία του συγκεκριμένου είδους η ελευθερία ως πολιτική αρετή κατέλαβε μία επί ίσοις όροις θέση δίπλα στις αρετές της δικαιοσύνης-φιλανθρωπίας, της σωφροσύνης, της φρόνησης και της ανδρείας.

Since his election in 2013, Pope Francis has attracted worldwide attention for his break with the public style of his immediate predecessors. This seeming rupture has often incited controversy,
particularly between liberals and conservatives in American Catholicism. This division was exacerbated by the 2015 publication of Laudato Si’, Francis’s encyclical letter on the environment. Yet the apparent divergence of opinion masked a more fundamental agreement that popes should normally steer clear of scientific matters. The belief that science is one thing and religion another rests on what Bruno Latour has called “the Modern Constitution,” which draws sharp divisions
between science and politics and relegates religion to the private sphere. Laudato Si’ rejects this framework in favor of a more holistic analysis articulated through epideictic rhetoric. I name this approach “nonmodern epideictic” and argue that it both confirms and supplements Latour’s
understanding of religious rhetoric.

Este artigo busca fundamentar a existência de tópicas epidíticas do louvor e da censura na primeira e décima segunda cartas das Heroides de Públio Ovídio Nasão. Recorre-se sobretudo ao segundo tratado de retórica epidítica de Menandro, o Retor, bem como a testemunhos antigos e modernos acerca do gênero demonstrativo. São reconhecidas categorias epidíticas em trechos das epístolas 1 e 12. Neles, incidem lugares-comuns do elogio e/ou vitupério: a família, a natureza, os feitos e os pedidos. A inclusão do demonstrativo nas Heroides, vinculando-se ao comum uso antigo da Retórica como recurso literário, auxilia a reconfiguração da imagem das personagens mitológicas femininas que, se na tradição são representadas como vítimas de modo geral, nessas epístolas, são constituídas como heroínas.

The purpose of this paper is to rediscover, inspired by Chaim Perelman, the full rhetorical nature of the epideictic genre and to correct certain superficial and erroneous conceptions of it. Also, I intend to explore the close relationship between social strength and vulnerability in this genre, and to study the dialectic between concord and exercise of disagreement. I will show furthermore that the epidictic discourses can be considered both as thebasis  as well as the center  of the whole rhetorical construct and of the democratic system in general. Finally, I will try to examine how an analysis in terms of disorder  and detour  can be fruitful for a better understanding of the epideictic genre.

This paper challenges the view according to which speeches of praise and speeches of blame perform a similar political function of gathering citizens (around a hero in the case of praise and against a scapegoat in the case of blame). It is argued that the idea, seldom challenged in literature on epideictic rhetoric, that blame is merely a reverse mirror of praise, is due to an overemphasis on logos.

This article introduces knowledge of the rhetorical genre of epideictic to design. The aim is to provide designers with concepts that stimulate their ability to deliberate about design choices and explore the arguments they may be making about the human-made world. The article begins with explorations of how to perceive the situations that designers may address, then rhetorical perspectives that may be useful when creating design arguments, and finally examples of how to use these rhetorical perspectives in design. Based on analyzed examples and theories on design problems, situational perspectives, and rhetorical genres, the article concludes that designers can benefit from perceiving their design as value celebration rather than problem solving.

Este estudo propõe examinar a recepção do texto da gratiarum actio
de Plínio a Trajano no panegírico a Teodósio, de Pacato Drepânio,
com o objetivo de demonstrar como o diálogo entre esses textos
participa do processo de constituição de um gênero laudatório
próprio do período imperial, o panegírico latino. Como primeiro
texto da coleção composta por outros onze panegíricos e o mais
antigo dentre eles, o discurso de Plínio é considerado modelar para
os demais e representa um novo tipo de oratória para Roma, não
apenas por seu contexto de realização, na presença do princeps,
mas por seu caráter simultaneamente elogioso e aconselhador.
Com a metade da extensão do texto pliniano, o discurso de Pacato
apresenta uma estrutura argumentativa, tanto na ordem e tipos
dos argumentos, quanto nas figuras utilizadas, quase
completamente análoga ao seu predecessor. Se, como afirma
Cícero (Brut. 163), a doutrina oratória pode ser extraída não apenas
dos tratados, mas também dos discursos deixados por um orador, a
imitação estrutural, temática e estilística feita por Pacato confirma
a prática pliniana como principal registro de uma concepção latina
sobre o elogio à época imperial que se consolida a partir do séc. II.

This essay reads The Civil War in France, Karl Marx’s account of the 1871 Paris Commune, as an example of revolutionary epideictic rhetoric that takes debt as a central unifying trope. Marx deploys the rhetoric of debt as a synecdoche to unify diverse French and international political constituencies around the political project of the Paris Commune. Simultaneously, in the wake of the Commune’s destruction, the trope of debt allows Marx to signal the political potential of the Commune outside its immediate context, inviting thinkers and activists after Marx’s time to invest in the Commune’s project in new and creative ways. I argue that this reading of The Civil War in France contributes to conversations about revolutionary community within Marxian rhetorical studies, as well as furthering discussions of the links between epideictic rhetoric and social change.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which partially discriminalised sex between men in England and Wales, all five living British prime ministers (Theresa May, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and Sir John Major) wrote exclusively for the LGBT news website PinkNews. Drawing eclectically on recent work on social representations of history and a rhetorical psychological approach to commemorative discourse, this article examines how these prime ministers represented the history of LGBT rights and how such representations were used rhetorically. The prime ministers figuratively represented the Act as the start of a long road to LGBT equality. In doing so, the historical event was anchored in a contemporary political agenda for LGBT equality. However, despite this being an outward display of unified celebration, these prime ministers indirectly engaged in the business of party politics by selectively praising the achievements of their own parties and omitting how LGBT rights have been advanced by their opponents. Theresa May in particular managed the Conservative Party’s brand. It is argued that representations of the past provide a selective and partial view of the history of LGBT rights in the UK but that we should go beyond examining the content of representations to examine how they are put to political ends.

In Hebrews 6:4-6, a frightening idea appears presented: that there are some people who begin as Christians, but leave the faith, and then have no hope of receiving salvation once more. However, the uncomfortable declaration in 6:4-6 is often interpreted without understanding the surrounding text (6:1-8), the culture of the time, and the rhetorical aim of the author. In this paper, I argue that the whole of Hebrews is epideictic rhetoric, using hyperbole and emotive language to bring the audience to a certain decision. This type of rhetoric has alternating exposition and exhortation style, and the Hebrews 6 text is in the exhortation section. Based on this location, 6:4-5 should not be viewed as a theological stance on apostasy, or post-baptismal sin. Instead, the author of Hebrews strongly desired the audience to grow toward maturity, so the writer employs strong, emotive rhetoric about the consequence of not acting Christ-like after conversion.

I identify three modern approaches used to theorize epideictic rhetoric and suggest that each approach has difficulty dealing with the category of presence assigned to the genre by Aristotle. Drawing on Thucydides and, through him, Pericles' funeral oration, I suggest that Jacques Derrida's funeral speeches provide a way of rethinking the epideictic genre's presence as rhetorical ethics. More specifically, I argue that the function of presence in epideictic rhetoric is to provide an ethical interruption, and that Derrida, as one of our most accomplished funeral orators, helps us clarify the category of presence as it is described in Aristotle's and Thucydides' discussions of epideictic oratory.

President Ronald Reagan’s June 6, 1984, “Address on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day” is one of his most celebrated speeches, and yet no critical assessment of the address exists in rhetorical scholarship. In this essay, I examine this speech as a deictic epideictic address, or a speech in which the rhetor uses the physical place, the immediate scene / setting, and the assembled audience as evidence to commemorate the past and chart a clear course for the future. Through this analysis, I argue that Reagan’s speech at Pointe du Hoc is exemplary because it relies on rhetorical vision and deixis to connect a past moment to the present, and in so doing, invites the audience to participate in the discourse emotionally, mentally, and even physically. I conclude by suggesting that a deictic approach to rhetorical criticism offers scholars a vocabulary to describe how speakers can “point” or refer to the physical and material elements of a speech setting as evidence.

This article analyzes arguments that music has the power to transform people in that it is relevant to an individual’s development and education. To this end, we compare the propositions on music by the ancient Greeks to the justifications in 2008 that defend music as a compulsory content in Brazilian schools. Rhetorical analysis from the perspective of argumentation theory was used to examine the discourse since argumentative schemes allow us to identify the values of groups. The conclusion establishes that loci of quality ground the premises of arguments in general and are based on epideictic rhetoric by strengthening adherence to the values proclaimed.

Nell'immaginario antico la sconfitta a Cheronea rappresenta una svolta epo-cale, tanto che, nell'epitaffio pronunciato da Demostene in onore dei caduti, la débacle sul campo di battaglia è paragonata al tramonto del sole sulla terra, men-tre, nell'orazione Contro Leocrate, Licurgo ricorda come la libertà dei Greci sia perita con i corpi dei soldati caduti 1. Come noto, in un contesto di crisi, come fu evidentemente quello del 338 a.C., l'élite politica ateniese e gli oratori di orientamento antimacedone sentirono l'esigenza di formulare e proporre un'ideologia comunitaria, non solo per mo-strare come, anche nel momento del tracollo, la città attica fosse esente da respon-sabilità concrete, ma, soprattutto, per ricostruire i principi cardine della Weltan-schauung della polis 2. In particolare, il presente lavoro si prefigge, innanzitutto, di analizzare l'ideologia costruita intorno agli Eroi Eponimi delle tribù attiche: come si vedrà dettagliatamente in seguito, queste figure svolsero una precisa funzione nella * Ringrazio Enrica Culasso Gastaldi e Daniela Marchiandi per il sostegno e le indicazioni of-ferte durante la stesura di questo contributo; sono altrettanto grato agli anonimi revisori per le pre-ziose osservazioni, che sono risultate di stimolo e di riflessione. 1 Demosth. LX (Epit.) 24; Lyc. I (Leoc.) 50. Sulla similitudine del sole, cfr. anche Hyp. VI (Epit.) 5. In merito alla battaglia di Cheronea, tra gli altri, rimando a Ma 2008 con discussione della bibliografia precedente. 2 La sconfitta sul campo militare può aprire un vero e proprio periodo di crisi, che richiede alla comunità uno sforzo comune di grande impegno per risanare la ferita, come è evidenziato, da ultimo, anche in Turner-Clark 2018, 5: «Defeat, like a virus, imperils the health of the state and therefore it best illustrates the state's ability to heal itself».

This article analyzes arguments that music has the power to transform people in that it is relevant to an individual’s development and education. To this end, we compare the propositions on music by the ancient Greeks to the justifications in 2008 that defend music as a compulsory content in Brazilian schools. Rhetorical analysis from the perspective of argumentation theory was used to examine the discourse since argumentative schemes allow us to identify the values of groups. The conclusion establishes that loci of quality ground the premises of arguments in general and are based on epideictic rhetoric by strengthening adherence to the values proclaimed.