"...the aspiring speaker needs no knowledge of the truth about what is right or good... In courts of justice no attention is paid whatever to the truth about such topics; all that matters is plausibility..." A Glossary of Rhetorical Terms with examples.
posted on May 31, 2008 - View this thread

Lessons from Past Western Incursions in the Middle East. A speech by Juan Cole at the New America Foundation in which he discusses his new book, Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East, and the relevance and lessons of Napoleon's expedition in Egypt to the current American occupation of Iraq. A shorter version, covering many of the same points, is in this article: Pitching the Imperial Republic.
posted on Aug 26, 2007 - View this thread

American Rhetoric :: an online archive
posted on Aug 22, 2007 - View this thread

My Right Wing Dad is a new-ish and rather informal blog that aims to provide "a chance for folks to examine the unrestrained rhetoric that is quietly passed from in-box to in-box in America," by hosting a collection of the emails that form an often untraceable and unacknowledged part of public discourse in the U.S., especially on the Right. Tagged by category (for example: God, college, flag, liberal, and World War II), the amateur archive presents a range of colorful opinion, not all of it strikingly accurate, and some of it offensive. In efforts to understand liberal and conservative habits of communication, it may be worth considering the role of forwarded email in the electoral process, and the reasons that the forwarding of email is popular among some people, and whether this behavior tends to correlate with particular political opinions. The emails hosted on MyRightWingDad may in any case be enlightening, unless you're already on the forward list of someone in the know.
posted on Aug 15, 2007 - View this thread

The British Transform Drug Policy Foundation has recently released their 2nd guide After the War on Drugs: Tools for the debate. Described as a guide for prospective and current policy reform advocates, it enumerates the points typically brought up against reform, and offers strategies to rebut them. Somewhat of a counterpoint to the US DEA's Speaking Out Against Drug Legalization.
posted on Aug 9, 2007 - View this thread

State of the Union Addresses 1790-2006 :: complete texts
posted on Jan 3, 2007 - View this thread

"Stay the Course," R.I.P. (1885-2006).
posted on Oct 29, 2006 - View this thread

Nutpicking : It's a new and long overdue slur to describe the increasingly common practice on the right (and yes, on the left, too) of cherry-picking random comments or hate emails to smear your entire opposition as raving nuts. The worst so far: this execrable WSJ op-ed by Lieberman adviser Lanny Davis. Can the new term (which is modeled on the success of Godwin's Law) succeed in shaming the nutpickers? Either way, the practice is likely to become more common, especially if the "netroots" actually win some races this November.
posted on Aug 14, 2006 - View this thread

Beyond metaphysics, there is 'pataphysics. Beyond metaphor, there is pataphor.
posted on Jan 15, 2006 - View this thread

Begging the Question, Defined Thank you, Anthropomorphic T. Rex, for explained exactly what "begging the question" means, in an easily accessible format.
posted on Jan 8, 2006 - View this thread

Audio link to the Inaugural Address delivered January 20, 1961.
posted on Nov 22, 2005 - View this thread

Remember how you wrote when you were in high school? Would you have been secure enough to post one of your essays online? [.doc files] Essay.org has compiled a collection of essays (in various languages), in order to "provide free essays for entertainment, education, and publishing." (My favorites are definitely the persuasive essays.)
posted on Aug 25, 2005 - View this thread

Do you know your rhetoric? You can hear how it is used in the top 100 American speeches of all time, 63 of which have the original audio recordings! (prev.) The list has some odd omissions, such as the Gettysburg Address (and here in convenient presentation form) and non-American speakers like Churchill, so this shorter international list may be useful. While the slow decline in the quality of presidential addresses is much lamented, scriptwriters are stepping up, see for example, top movie speeches of all time ("Smells like victory" beats "You can't handle the truth"). So, MeFiers, do any of these still inspire, or is rhetoric dead?
posted on May 24, 2005 - View this thread

Want to see the results of all the hateful anti-gay rhetoric? While other forms of crime continued to fall, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs has documented a 4% increase in anti-LGBT crime in 2004, coming on the heels of a 26% increase in the last half of 2003. This spike in violence parallels the exact same period since the Right went into demonic, anti-gay hyperdrive following the Supreme Court's Lawrence v. Texas decision in July of 2003. Since then, church pews and the public airwaves have been awash in ugly, anti-gay rhetoric and fear-mongering. "These words obviously do not just vanish into the ether - as intended, they are absorbed and become fuel and justification for violence. To say otherwise defies reality. -- The Matt Foreman, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (via think-bomb)
And these are just the reported incidents.
posted on Apr 28, 2005 - View this thread

In 63 B.C., Cicero gave his first speech against Catiline. You can hear the opening paragraph read in Latin, or read a translation into English. Though Cicero was a consul denouncing a rebel, the famous opening sentence is now frequently used by those challenging authority (even if it's just the tyranny of Richard Stallman).
posted on Jul 11, 2004 - View this thread

Peitho's Web: Classic Rhetoric and Persuasion.
posted on May 13, 2004 - View this thread

American rhetoric online "A database of 5,000+ full text, audio and video (streaming) versions of public speeches, sermons, legal proceedings, lectures, debates, interviews, other recorded media events..." all in one unbelievable ugly website. From Roosevelt to Malcom X to Ursula LeGuin to Bush as text or stream with Scesis Onomaton from Bill Murray(mp3). Here's for a starting point for the aesthetically picky. Excellent resource- ie 21minute Malcom X "Ballot or Bullet" (mp3) speech!- from a prof at a public university in Texas that that makes me reconsider lynx but excites me about the internet.
posted on Nov 11, 2003 - View this thread

Why I Hate Advocacy. Baseball, politics, and programming languages? Mark Jason-Dominus created a classic article that is really about the general human tendancy towards flawed dialogue and the pitfalls surrounding evangelism, even though it's specifically directed towards the perl programming community. Indeed, as in the past, some may see the "spectre of Metafilter itself" in Mark's words.
posted on Aug 4, 2003 - View this thread

The Wooly Bullies Of MetaFilter - Uncovered! Sweating heavily as I perused this unholy website's rhetorical machinations late into the night, I was suddenly shaken by a strange feeling of dread, for it was the spectre of MetaFilter itself I was seeing before my bulging eyes, in all its hideous familiarity, emerging from the fetid depths of my guilt-wracked soul...
posted on Feb 27, 2003 - View this thread

Standing With Osama? "Some of the more bilious right-wing pundits... have taken to describing those who oppose the invasion as 'siding with Saddam.' But if such sleazy rhetoric is allowable, then maybe we should say that those like our President, who seem to have ignored Osama’s decrees, or like Powell, who are hawking a Saddam/Al Qaeda connection based on overblown evidence, are standing with Osama." Is this accusation fair? If so, is it productive? I doubt it, but I'm not certain. Rohan Gunaratna, the author of "Inside Al Qaeda," warns that an invasion of Iraq would undermine the international campaign against Al Qaeda and give terrorist groups a new lease on life. Oh well, at least it's funny. [Via Cursor.] [More inside.]
posted on Feb 19, 2003 - View this thread

Conversational Terrorism Protect yourself from responding to or using these rhetorical cheats. (via the lovely boingboing)
posted on Jan 22, 2003 - View this thread

Silva Rhetoricae: the Forest of Rhetoric. Don't know what an erotema is? Just why are you so stupid? Can't tell an apoplanesis from an aposiopesis? Then Gideon O. Burton's excellent guide to classical and renaissance rhetoric may be for you.
posted on Jan 8, 2003 - View this thread

The tendency toward euphemism, catchwords, bites and labels displacing description of uniquicity. Battles of rhetorical titans!
posted on Apr 18, 2002 - View this thread

Compassionate Conservatism? Why is anyone surprised by the difference between campaign rhetoric and action once in office?
posted on Feb 12, 2002 - View this thread

Propaganda analysis: A very interesting page on how to recognize and avoid emotionally-charged propaganda and political rhetoric. A broader question would be, how do you go about analyzing competing truth-claims made by environmentalists and anti-environmentalists, pro- and anti-gun control activists, Moonies, socialists, libertarians and capitalists? Are there any hard and fast rules you use to choose who and what to believe in a world of name calling and information glut?
posted on Jan 17, 2002 - View this thread

Having trouble keeping your parallelism and chiasmus straight? Or biting your nails over whether to use zeugma, prozeugma, or diazeugma? Fear not. The Handbook of Rhetorical Devices is here.
posted on Sep 17, 1999 - View this thread