How can there be writing without authors? Is gender a natural fact or an argument we make? What happens when communication goes digital? Why do we try to communicate at all? Such questions would not have occurred to the ancients who first developed rhetoric as an art of persuasion. Yet in our postmodern world, such questions are pressing as we discover a new appreciation for the power of language to shape human society, action, and even identity.
In this course, we will attempt to answer such questions by tracing certain issues – such as the author's agency and the construction of gender – that have been critical to the development of late modern and postmodern theories of language, discourse, and persuasion. Although our focus will be on rhetorical theory, we will also be drawing on some theorists and philosophers of language in the areas of literary criticism, linguistics, and communication as well.
Required Texts:
Foss/Foss/Trapp, Readings in Contemporary Rhetoric
Course Pack (Available @ the University Bookstore)
Created January 2010