The study of bullshit, what the author calls "taurascatics", has been making a splash of late. It was Harry Frankfurt who tossed the stone: his essay "On Bullshit" came out in "Raritan" in 1986, hit the "New York Times" best-seller list as a book in 1995, and has been adopted, adapted, and criticized across the academy since. The ripples spread…

This article offers a way of using the theory of audience design--how speakers position different audience groups as main addressees, overhearers, or bystanders--for written discourse. It focuses on main addressees, that is, those audience members who are expected to participate in and respond to a speaker's utterances. The text samples are…

Asks what it is that the audience wants. Suggests a reconceptualization of the rhetorical situation by re-engendering or transgendering the speaker/audience couple as "a hermaphrodite, as a con/fusion of Hermes, the god of messages, and Aphrodite, the goddess of love," as a way to invigorate rhetorical theory and current composition…

Proposes that writing pedagogies focused on models of audience analysis stultify invention and in doing so compromise the epistemic dimension of the writing they influence. Claims that classical audience analysis assumes a determinism that the separation of reader and writer denies. (HB)

Examines the rhetorical constructs of the "question-and-answer format" as it has been used widely both in popular, informative, advertising, and journalistic literature. Considers its classical origins, its intent and effect, and the ways in which it plays on the reader's resistance. (TB)

Explores whether individuals have implicit theories of persuasion. Examines how persuasive strategies are cognitively represented--identifies types of tactics in attitude change and social acceptability of persuasive strategies. Finds implicit theories of persuasion reflect the audience's familiarity with the topic. Finds also that implicit…

Discusses two kinds of rhetorical audiences: universal, and particular. Considers the approach a speaker takes regarding the audience type, which is usually a mixture. Discusses how a speaker brings the audience to the desired adherence despite the difference of audience type. (SC)

Argues that the relationship between writer and reader (or audience) must be reimagined in writing theory so as to recognize that neither is knowable or static. Suggests that Thomas Kent's theory of paralogic hermeneutics could help teachers advance a theory of audience that would act as a bridge between actual writing and theories of language.…

Reviews and redefines a concept known as the "rhetorical situation" through an examination of the political discourse of China during the 19th-century Opium Wars. Arrives at three alterations to the "rhetorical situation" concerning the role of the audience, the role of the culture's discourse tradition, and the interactive and…

Offers a self-critique of the authors' earlier work "Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy." Proposes an alternative to the agonistic approach to establishing the new at the expense of exposing the faults of the old. Aims to learn from the cultural, disciplinary, and institutional forces at…

This paper examines the origins of "dissoi logoi" (or twofold arguments) as a sophistic concept and pedagogical practice. A rationale is offered to explain why "dissoi logoi" should be adopted as a conceptual base for teaching invention in contemporary public speaking courses. Aristotelian and Protagorean perspectives on…

Examines the ways that social theories of audience have informed the perspectives of "invoked" and "addressed" readers--terms put forth by Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford. Critiques these terms, particularly for their failure to adequately acknowledge the multiplicity of readers. Argues that compositionists should embrace a more comprehensive social…

Suggests that through Kenneth Burke, writing teachers can approach writing as something to be feared, something to approach with trembling and mortification. Examines Burke's notion of how language "goads" writers to eliminate the response of others. Examines contemporary and Burkean approaches to writing that would help students to…

Suggests that technical writers should emphasize similarities rather than differences between oral and written discourse. Argues that implicit rules of conversation have much to offer the technical writer. Illustrates how the principles of conversation can be applied to the process of writing instructions. (KEH)

Develops a rhetorical account of how experts move fluidly among disciplinary criteria and use paradigms more as strategies than constraints. Analyzes how E. O. Wilson projects his sociobiology into several discourse frames, each presuming a different audience, purpose, and persona for himself as expert. Suggests that Wilson eludes disciplinary…