Kaufer,
David and Brian Butler. Rhetoric and the Arts of Design. Mahwah,
N.J.: Earlbaum, 1996.
Tag: tactics
“We Are Coming” – Logan (1999)
In 691 (Method~ologies) this week we’re considering historical methods and
reading for such methods specifically through the Shirley Wilson Logan’s work in
"We Are Coming": The
Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Black Women. In the
preface, Logan speaks briefly to her method: "Since rhetorical analysis requires
an understanding of the formal features of a text in conjunction with its
historical context, I consider pertinent historical details–biographical,
social, political and cultural. Moving from the historical, I address
various characteristics of a chosen text in the light of these details.
The selection of characteristics is informed by classical rhetoric and its
twentieth-century reconstructions. My hope is that these discussions might
also add to a clearer understanding of nineteenth-century culture and of the
ways in which the persuasive discourse of nineteenth-century black women adapted
itself to its multiple audiences and multilayered exigencies" (xvi). As
well as any passage I could locate, these few sentences give a fairly complete,
succinct overview of the project.