I intend to approach the issue of tradition indirectly by first considering some problems connected with rhetorical agency. This strategy might seem awkward, if not dangerous, since it entangles two equally complex and disputed concepts. Nevertheless, I hope to show that, within the humanistic strand of rhetoric, these concepts are linked in a way that is not currently recognized but has an important bearing on our understanding of both. Specifically, I argue that the humanistic approach entails a productively ambiguous notion of agency that positions the orator both as an individual who leads an audience and as a community member shaped and constrained by the demands of the audience. This tension, I maintain, becomes intelligible when we understand how tradition can function as a mediating force between individual and collective identities, and once viewed from this angle, tradition emerges as the primary resource for rhetorical invention. Before proceeding to this argument, I need to explain the sense in which I am using the term “humanistic,” since humanism, like tradition and agency, is also a concept that carries with it a variety of different and largely unrelated meanings. Consequently, I want to be clear that I am not referring to a kind of secular religion, as in a “religion of humanity,” or to the version of pragmatic philosophy developed by William James and F. S. C. Schiller, or to the ideological formation often called “liberal humanism.” Instead, I have in mind a rather specific development in the history of rhetoric that begins in classical Greece with Protagoras and Isocrates, appears in Rome under the sponsorship of Cicero and Quintilian, rises to prominence again in the Renaissance “humanists,” and still

Le dernier numero du Quarterly Journal of Speech presentait notre analyse critique du discours de Lincoln a Cooper Union. Bien que les considerations methodologiques y soient peu developpees, nous supposons que les fondements neo-classiques en sont apparents. Nous avions propose une explication plus elaboree de notre approche methodologique dans une premiere version ; mais les editeurs avaient estime qu’un unique article n’offrait pas assez d’espace pour tout a la fois justifier la demarche, ...

est publié en français avec l'autorisation de la revue.En guise d'introduction Prononcé le 27 février 1860 dans la grande salle de l'Union Cooper pour le Développement de la Science et de l'Art 1 , peu avant la création du Parti républicain, les élections présidentielles de novembre 1860 et à la veille de la guerre de Sécession (1861-1865), le discours de Cooper Union prend place à une période riche en événements fondateurs de l'histoire des Etats-Unis.Aussi est-il nécessaire d'en rappeler le contexte politique, indispensable à la bonne compréhension de l'analyse proposée par Michael Leff.Abraham Lincoln, alors avocat de campagne, originaire du Kentucky mais résident dans l'Illinois depuis l'âge de vingt ans, s'y opposera au sénateur démocrate Stephen A. Douglas, représentant de l'Illinois, sur le problème de l'esclavage.Cette question délicate avait fait l'objet de nombreux compromis législatifs fragiles entre le Sud esclavagiste et le Nord abolitionniste.À mesure que la jeune nation s'étendait vers l'ouest, les conditions dans lesquelles les nouveaux territoires seraient admis dans l'Union, en qualité de « territoire organisé », revêtaient une importance décisive.Dans l'histoire des États-Unis, un territoire organisé (organized territory) était un territoire pour lequel le Congrès américain avait voté un Acte organique, comprenant une déclaration des droits (Bill of Rights), qui en déterminait le système de gouvernement.Un territoire organisé différait d'un État américain par le fait qu'il possédait un gouvernement autonome limité, mais qu'il était soumis à la constitution américaine et que l'autorité ultime sur ce territoire était détenue par le Congrès.

Il y a vingt-cinq ans, Wayland Maxfield Parrish arguait dans son essai desormais classique, « L’etude des discours oratoires », que les critiques se devaient d’isoler et d’evaluer avec soin le « contenu » d’un discours donne. Cette « tâche souvent ardue » exigeait selon lui de separer « ce qui etait dit du comment c’etait dit », et la meilleure facon d’y parvenir etait « de faire un resume de la pensee du locuteur en evitant d’utiliser les formulations de l’original » (1954 : 14). S’en tenant...

J’aborderai ici la question de la tradition de maniere indirecte, en prenant d’abord en consideration certaines questions liees al’agentivite rhetorique. Cette strategie peut sembler maladroite, voire meme perilleuse, puisqu’elle enchevetre deux concepts aussi complexes que controverses. J’espere neanmoins montrer que, dans le champ de la rhetorique, ces notions sont reliees par un lien qui influence fortement notre maniere de les apprehender, bien que ce lien n’ait pas ete ouvertement reconn...

T ESSAYS by Michael Leff (coauthored with Andrew Sachs) and Michael McGee offered in this volume, ostensibly as illustrations of two competing approaches to rhetorical criticism, display greater anxiety about the critical object than about the critical method. This is somewhat perplexing, because the names of Leff and McGee are associated with two different ways of conducting practical criticism: textual and ideological. In this special issue devoted to the interplay of those two methods, we find their chief proponents less concerned with rearticulating their methodological commitments and strategies than with totalizing the critical object as "iconic" or as "fragmentary." Our perplexity is also heightened by the fact that since the publication of Edwin Black's Rhetorical Criticism: A Study in Method (1965) there has been greater excitement and anxiety, partly intensified by the innovations of Leff and McGee, over the preferred "method" than over the privileged "object."

these reflections on working group discussions held at the ARS meeting has quickly taken me back to Evanston in mid-September 2003 and to the extraordinarily productive and provocative work that got done there. I vividly remember listening as Jerzy Axer and then Jeffrey Walker sounded an emergent theme: rhetoric, they said, is a teaching tradition. I remember being surprised at this theme - in fact, I would not have predicted it, and that surprise took me even further back, to the disappointment I felt in having a proposal rejected for an ISHR meeting: awe do not accept papers on pedagogy, the letter said. The dismissal of pedagogy is not unique to ISHR, of course; MLA and NGA have also been reluctant to yield pedagogy a place at the disciplinary table. Even in the GGGG, which was founded on pedagogical concerns, a sometimes bitter conflict has sprung up between theory and practice, with those advocating for the crucial role of theory arguing that studies in composition/rhetoric will not prosper or mature unless the field gives up its attachment to practice, to pedagogy. So I was surprised at the primacy of pedagogy at the ARS conference, and I was heartened by it as well. As Mike Leff has since remarked, at ARS, all roads lead to teaching. In his essay in this issue, Jerry Hauser offers a retrospective explanation for the marginalization of pedagogy and teaching: the ancient Greek rhetorical tradition, grounded in the paedeia and on the capacitating the individual student to lead the life of an active and responsible citizen gave way to the model of the German research institution, with its emphasis on and valorization of discovering new knowledge. This is an elegant explanation, one that leads to Hauser's equally elegant peroration: capacitating students to be competent citizens is our birthright It has been ours since antiquity. Modern education has stripped us of We need to reclaim it. What became increasingly clear to me is that a second key term that animated the conference - performance - must also play a central role in any such reclamation. In retrospect, I realized that every keynote address touched not only on pedagogy but also on performance: the performance of teaching; the performance of civic duty and discourse; the performance of student speaking and writing; the performance of disciplinarity. As I listened and talked, the focus on performance and pedagogy seemed perfectly to bridge the rhetoric/composition and communication traditions to which

In this contribution I will present some characteristic differences between rhetoric and dialectic that appear in the pre-modern tradition and that offer a basis for understanding more recent developments.1 Then, in light of this historical analysis, I want to characterize some current approaches to dialectic. Finally, I want to maintain that a hybrid conception of dialectic has the virtue of negotiating between logic and rhetoric, or more properly, between strictly propositional views of rationality and strictly instrumental views of persuasion.

(2001). Lincoln at Cooper Union: Neo‐classical criticism revisited. Western Journal of Communication: Vol. 65, Rhetorical Criticism: The State of the Art Revisited, pp. 232-248.

In his essay “Disciplinary Identities: On the Rhetorical Paths between English and Communication Studies,”; Steven Mailloux laments the separation between rhetoricians in English and Communication and issues a call for them to join a multi‐disciplinary coalition. Mailloux tries to connect the two by studying their disciplinary histories, and I respond to his account of developments in Communication. While his history of the discipline seems flawed in detail, I argue that his main point holds true and is a matter of considerable importance: Communication‐rhetoricians generally have adhered to a scientific rather than a “rhetorical, hermenemic”; conception of disciplinarity, and this commitment has hampered their ability to enter into interdisciplinary endeavors. But there is also another significant difference between rhetoricians in the two disciplines. Communication rhetoricians, for a variety of reasons, have a weaker sense of internal disciplinarity, and I argue that an unstable disciplinary self‐conception results in a confusion between disciplinary rhetoric located at a particular academic site and the global rhetoric of disciplinarity. Dealingwith this problem presents a major problem for Communication‐rhetoricians and for those who seek to establish effective interdisciplinary ties between English and Communication.

The paper presents a historical overview of some characteristic differences between rhetoric and dialectic in the pre-modern tradition. In the light of this historical analysis, some current approaches to dialectic are characterized, with special attention to Ralph Johnson's concept of dialectical tier.