Major works
His most important works include Argumentation and the Social Grounds of Knowledge (1982) [1] and A Theory of Argumentation (1988). [2] He has published monographs in and served on editorial boards for Communication Monographs ,Informal Logic,Journal of the American Forensics Association,Argumentation,Social Epistemology and the Quarterly Journal of Speech. He has published more than 50 articles and book chapters on topics in rhetoric and argumentation. He was one of the founders and for many years was a co-director of the International Association for the Study of Argumentation based at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He has co-edited the proceedings of five of that organization's international conferences. He has recently co-edited with Frans van Eemeren,J. Anthony Blair,and A. Francisca Henkemans Anyone Who Has A View:Theoretical Contributions to the Study of Argumentation. Dordrecht:Kluwer. 2003. He has received distinguished scholarship awards from the National Communication Association,the American Forensics Association,and the Universities of Illinois and Louisville. Four of his books have received the Daniel H. Rohor Distinguished Scholarship Award from the American Forensic Association.
His Liberalism and the Problem of Knowledge:A New Rhetoric for Modern Democracy (1996) debunks the discourse of liberalism,arguing that its exaggerated ideals of authenticity,unity,and community have deflected attention from the pervasive incompetence of the rule by experts. He proposes a ground of communication that emphasizes common interests rather than narrow disputes.
Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse (trivium) along with grammar and logic/dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or writers use to inform, persuade, and motivate their audiences. Rhetoric also provides heuristics for understanding, discovering, and developing arguments for particular situations.
Communication theory is a proposed description of communication phenomena, the relationships among them, a storyline describing these relationships, and an argument for these three elements. Communication theory provides a way of talking about and analyzing key events, processes, and commitments that together form communication. Theory can be seen as a way to map the world and make it navigable; communication theory gives us tools to answer empirical, conceptual, or practical communication questions.
Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is an approach to the analysis of written, vocal, or sign language use, or any significant semiotic event.
Argumentation theory is the interdisciplinary study of how conclusions can be supported or undermined by premises through logical reasoning. With historical origins in logic, dialectic, and rhetoric, argumentation theory includes the arts and sciences of civil debate, dialogue, conversation, and persuasion. It studies rules of inference, logic, and procedural rules in both artificial and real-world settings.
Walter Fisher (1931–2018) was an American academic credited with formalizing Kenneth Burke's Dramatism and introducing the narrative paradigm to communication theory. Fisher was Professor Emeritus at the Annenberg School for Communication.
Narrative paradigm is a communication theory conceptualized by 20th-century communication scholar Walter Fisher. The paradigm claims that all meaningful communication occurs via storytelling or reporting of events. Humans participate as storytellers and observers of narratives. This theory further claims that stories are more persuasive than arguments. Essentially the narrative paradigm helps us to explain how humans are able to understand complex information through narrative.
Rhetoric of science is a body of scholarly literature exploring the notion that the practice of science is a rhetorical activity. It emerged after a number of similarly-oriented topics of research and discussion during the late 20th century, including the sociology of scientific knowledge, history of science, and philosophy of science, but it is practiced most typically by rhetoricians in academic departments of English, speech, and communication.
Robert Lee Scott was an American scholar influential in the study of rhetorical theory, criticism of public address, debate, and communication research and practice. He was professor emeritus in the Communication Studies Department at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of five books, numerous articles in speech, communications, philosophy, and rhetoric journals, and contributed many book chapters. His article "On Viewing Rhetoric As Epistemic", is considered one of the most important academic articles written in rhetorical studies in the past century.
Dale Hample is an American argumentation and rhetorical scholar, associate professor at the University of Maryland. He has published many peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and written one book and edited another.
Joseph W. Wenzel was an American argumentation and rhetorical scholar. He was Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Sally Ann Jackson is an American scholar of argumentation, communication, and rhetoric. She is a professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Curtis Scott Jacobs, , is an American argumentation, communication, and rhetorical scholar.
G. Thomas Goodnight is an American argumentation and rhetorical scholar.
Daniel J. O'Keefe is an American communication and argumentation theory scholar. He is the Owen L. Coon Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. His research concerns persuasion and argumentation, with a focus on meta-analytic synthesis of research concerning persuasive message effects. This program of work often addresses the question of whether normatively good argumentation contributes to persuasive success.
John Louis Lucaites is an American academic. He is a professor emeritus of rhetoric and public culture at Indiana University. In 2012, Lucaites was appointed as associate dean for arts and humanities and undergraduate education at Indiana University. His research concerns the general relationship between rhetoric and social theory, and seeks to contribute in particular to the critique and reconstruction of liberalism in contemporary social, political, and cultural practices in the United States.
Genre criticism is a method within rhetorical criticism that analyzes texts in terms of their genre: the set of generic expectations, conventions, and constraints that guide their production and interpretation. In rhetoric, the theory of genre provides a means to classify and compare artifacts in terms of their formal, substantive and contextual features. By grouping artifacts with others which have similar formal features or rhetorical exigencies, rhetorical critics can shed light on how authors use or flout conventions for their own purposes. Genre criticism has thus become one of the main methodologies within rhetorical criticism.
Informal logic encompasses the principles of logic and logical thought outside of a formal setting. However, the precise definition of "informal logic" is a matter of some dispute. Ralph H. Johnson and J. Anthony Blair define informal logic as "a branch of logic whose task is to develop non-formal standards, criteria, procedures for the analysis, interpretation, evaluation, criticism and construction of argumentation." This definition reflects what had been implicit in their practice and what others were doing in their informal logic texts.
Jimmie Wayne Corder was a scholar of rhetoric.
David H. Zarefsky is an American communication scholar with research specialties in rhetorical history and criticism. He is professor emeritus at Northwestern University. He is a past president of the National Communication Association (USA) and the Rhetoric Society of America. Among his publications are six books and over 70 scholarly articles concerned with American public discourse, argumentation, rhetorical criticism, and public speaking are books on the Lincoln-Douglas debates and on the rhetoric of the war on poverty during the Johnson administration. His lectures on argumentation and rhetoric can be heard in a course for The Teaching Company.
Anthony Edward Schiappa, Jr. is an American scholar of communication and rhetoric, currently Professor of Comparative Media Studies/Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he holds the John E. Burchard Chair of Humanities; from 2013 to 2019, he also served as the program's Head. Previously, he spent seventeen years in the Communication Studies Department at the University of Minnesota, the last seven of which he served as chair. He is the author of eight books and numerous articles that have appeared in classics, communication, English/Composition, philosophy, psychology, and law journals.
