52 min listen
Jeanne Fahnestock, “Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion” (Oxford UP, 2011)
Jeanne Fahnestock, “Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion” (Oxford UP, 2011)
ratings:
Length:
58 minutes
Released:
Mar 15, 2012
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
A thing I enjoy about this job is being encouraged to read books that unexpectedly turn out to be profoundly relevant to my own interests. Jeanne Fahnestock‘s new book, Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion (Oxford University Press, 2011), turns out to be just such a volume. I read it with a constant sense of surprise that this long and distinguished tradition provides insights on many objects of current linguistic enquiry (and indeed a sense of embarrassment that I didn’t already know that). But there is plenty in this book for readers who don’t share my eccentric obsessions. On the one hand, there’s a careful and very readable account of the numerous techniques identified by rhetoricians, from amphiboly to antimetabole. On the other, there’s vivid exemplification of the rhetorical effects that can be achieved, with examples from influential literary, political and scientific texts. The reader is left in no doubt that rhetoric is alive, well, and perhaps more powerful than ever. In this interview, we talk about the status of rhetoric as an object of study, and its recent renaissance. We discuss the usefulness of the exhaustive distinctions identified by rhetoricians of the past, and their relevance to users and analysts of language today. And we consider the ultimate goal of persuasive language use, the attainment of the (rhetorical) sublime.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language
Released:
Mar 15, 2012
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Robert Lane Greene, “You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws and the Politics of Identity” (Delacorte Press, 2011): Isn’t it odd how the golden age of correct language always seems to be around the time that its speaker was in high school, and that language has been going to the dogs ever since? Such is the anguish of declinists the world over, by New Books in Language