Download Modern arrangement

44 a
ARRANGEMENT: Modern arrangement
ad Herennium that includes the Latin text
with an
to
classical
English translation, an introduction
rhetoric, a dated but valuable bibliography, and an
excellent analysis of the text.
Aristotle. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Translated by George A. Kennedy. New York, 1991. A very
readable translation of Aristotle's Rhetoric with instructive notes and appendices.
Aristotle. Problems. Books 22-38. Translated by W.
S.
Hett. Rhetorica ad Alexandrum. Translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, Mass., 1937. The Loeb series places
Anaximenes's Rhetorica ad Alexandrum in the corpus
of Aristotle's works. An introduction and helpful
outline of the treatise is provided with the Greek text
and an English translation.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. De inventione-De optimo Senere
oratorum-topicc. Translated by H. M. Hubbell. Cambridge, Mass., 1949. Contains the Latin texts with
English translations, along with helpful introductions.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. De oratore. Books L-2. Translated
by E. W Sutton and H. Rackham. Revised edition.
Cambridge, Mass., 1948. First published 1942. De oratore. Book 3. De Fato-Paradoxa stoicorum-De partitione oratoria. Translated by H. Rackham, 1942.
These volumes contain the Latin texts with English
translations. These two volumes provide the reader
with Cicero's philosophy of rhetoric in the
as
De ordfore
well as more technical comments on topics such
as arrangement.
Enos, Richard Leo. Greek Rhetoric Before Aristotle. Prospect Heights, Ill., 1993. An introduction to the emergence of Greek rhetoric with some helpful com-
ments on early notions of arrangement.
Enos, Richard Leo. The Literate Mode of Cicero's Legal
Rhetoic. Carbondale, Ill., 1988. A study of Cicero's
application of his own rhetorical theory in his legal
arguments with a detailed treatment of his views on,
and practice of, arrangement.
Murphy, James J. Rhetoric 'n the M'cldle Ages: A History of
Rhetoical Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renais-
Berkele, 1974. An excellent explanation of
the transformation of classical canons of rhetoric
s4nce.
into the medieval arts of rhetoric. The detailed treatment of drs dictaminis is especially helpful in understanding its evolution from classical systems of arrangement.
Plato. Phaedrus. Translated
with an Introduction and
Commentary by R. Hackforth. Cambridge, Mass.,
1972. Offerc detailed biographical information on
Plato and an explanation of the issues behind his
critique of rhetoric.
Quintilian, Marcus Fabius. The institutio orato ria of Quin tilian. Translated by H. E. Butler. 4 vols. Cambridge,
Mass., 1920-1922. Offers the Latin text
with an En-
glish translation. A synopsis of each of the twelve
books is an aid to the reader, as well as important
background material on Quintilian, including a letter to his publisher, Trypho.
Schiappa. Edward. The Beginnings ofRhetoricalTlrcory in
Classical Greece. New Haven, 1999. A strong argument that challenges conventional claims about the
origins of rhetoric. Rhetoric's origin as a discipline in
Greece is viewed not by performance but by the articulation of theory.
Vickers, Brian. In Defence of Rhetoric. Oxford, f988. A
good overview of the history of rhetoric with a discussion ol dispositio throughout the volume.
LEo ENos
-RrcnnRo
Modern arrangement
Arrangement concerns how parts of a text
(whether spoken, written, or visual) can be defined, how they can be related to each other in a
hierarchy, and how they can be ordered so that
an audience experiences them in a certain sequence or configuration. From a rhetorical perspective, emphasizing the role of discourse in a
situation, arrangement is considered a controllable variable that influences an audience's response to a text. In other words, the same material might be more or less understandable or
persuasive depending on how it is placed on a
page or computer screen or sequenced in its delivery to an audience. Though arrangement was
one of the five maior divisions of classical rhetoric, it has not received the attention given to invention or style in the twentieth-century revival
of rhetoric. Even the term arrangemettt (or the
Latin dispositio or Greek taxis) is rarely used. Instead the terms form, struchue, ot organizcttion
usually appear when issues of arrangement are
discussed.
Attention to arrangement requires deciding,
first of all, what is being arranged. What "parts"
can or should be identified, and how can the
boundaries between different parts of texts in different media be constructed or perceived? Once
the parts or units of analysis have been defined,
discussions of their ordet their relative size, and
their relation to each other can follow. What options are available to describe the parts of texts
and their arrangement? In the following discussion, the term feaf can stand not only for spoken
ARRANGEMENT: Modern
or written (including printed) discourse but also
for nonverbal visual and video texts, and for texts
that mix modes of presentation.
Rationales by Content. The arrangement of a
text can be thought of in terms of how its subiect
matter is divided into topics, how these are sequenced, what relative amounts of space (for visual and verbal texts) or time (for aural texts) they
receive, and what relations of hierarchy (subor-
dination) or equality (coordination) are
estab-
lished among them. Schemes for arranging the
content of a text are usually based on some rationale, conventional or presumably natural, for
dealing with a subject. I:or example, verbal descriptions of a physical location often adopt some
strategic ordering of details in a visual field, such
as left to right or foreground to background, presumably recreating the order in which the observer would take in the scene. Biographies also
follow the "natural order" of the chronological
sequence of events in the subiect's life (though
they may open with a dramatic or famous mclment in a person's career).
The heaclings and subheadings in a text represent its arrangement as a sequence hierarchically ordered; some parts are presented as tnore
general and inclusive than others. In the past, the
concern of sixteenth-century rhetoricians like
llamus lvith "Methcd," with the successively
branching divisions of a subject, was also a concern to find the optimal way to arrange nraterial
based on inherent clivisions in it. Such divisions
ancl subdivisions, evcn when they are presented
in hypertext formats on a Web site, can be highly
conventional. For example, an encyclopedia article on a country will routinely include sections
on its geography, history, economy, and culture;
within
a single encyclopedia, these sections will
usually he sequenced in rne satne way, irnposing
the same order on evc.ry similar entry. How an
item is Derceived as distinct from another topic,
so l:hat it can be labeled as a separate section and
in some scheme of arrangement, obvi .
ously depends on decisions by the producers of a
text (authors, editors, book or Web-site desigr.rers), but these decisions are also constrained by
cultural or social conventions. Hence the way a
content area is defined and partitioned, and its
parts then sequenced, can suggest the knowledgeforming routines of a culture.
placed
Rationales by Acts
arrangement a
or Effects. The
45
arrange-
ment of a text can be described as the sequence of
acts its author performs, intentionally or not, or as
the sequence of effects the text has, or might have,
on its audience. (ln terms of speech-act theort
these correspond to the illocutionary and perlo-
cutionary acts accomplished by the text.)
[See
Speech acts, utterances as.l A "negative news,,let-
ter in business, for example, has the overall goal of
maintaining a good relationship with an addressee
while denying a request. 'lo achieve that overall
goal, the letter attempts a sequence of acts. Such
letters may start out with an attempt to placate the
addressee by acknowledging the original complaint or request in a positive way. Then the neg-
ative news will be delivered, followed by some
positive closing message, such as the offer of a discount coupon for a disgruntled consumer or a
wish for success to the disappointed iob candidate.
Reciprocally, the arrangement of a piece can
be described in terms of the series of effects it presumably has on an audience; for example, first
frightening or worrying them, and then reassuring them. When a question-and-answer arrangement strategy is used, an audience is first puzzled
or made curious, and then relieved or satisfied
with a surprising but plausible answer. (Nature
stories are often treated this way, especially when
written for children. "How do elephants drink
water?" the opening asks, and the text goes on to
answer.) Arguments that propose a course of action have a fairly fixed order of effects; they usually begin by creating or increasing anxiety or
outrage about a problem in the audience, then
offer hope with the proposed solution, and end
by arousing a commitment to act.
Rationales by Formal Features. The arrangement of a text can also be described in terms of
the placement and sequencing of various formal
features. Different type fonts and sizes, mixiures
of prose and dialogue, pa(agraphs of different
lengths, boxed or highlighted text, and unusual
margins, all of these are formal features that can
be alterecl and secluenced in a printed text. In the
case of an aural text, sections can be formally differentiated by pauses and by changes in the
speaker's pitch, volume, or speed of articulation.
[See Delivery.l The arrangement of formal elements becomes crucial when the text is either entirely visual (a photograph, a diagram, a single
46 a
ARRANGEMENT: Modern arrangement
video image) or a mixture of the visual and verbal
like a magazine advertisement, or of the verbal,
visual, and audio like a hypermedia Web site.
Formally distinct sections in a text can also be
identified by changes in the language used. Clas'
sical rhetorical theory recommended that the different parts of the six-part oration use different
levels of style and different densities of figuration
and changes in delivery-middle style for the
naftatio and grand style for the peroratio. lSee
Style.l Contemporary stylistics would describe
such differences as changes in register (e.g., colIoquial language versus legalese) or, in the char-
acterization
of Russian critic M. M.
Bakhtin
(1895-1975), as changes in primary speech genres, the language patterns characteristic of distinct verbal activities like military commands or
friendly letters (Speech Genres and Other Late Es'
sals, Austin, 1986). Changes in register or speech
genre may reflect the rhetor's awareness of different segments of the audience addressed. So, for
example, a scientific popularization may repeat
the same material in different registers, not
changing the content but changing the level of
accessibility. What constitutes a significant shift
in register, where these shifts occur, and how they
are sequenced are arrangement issues.
The formal linguistic markers of arrangement
may also involve metadiscourse, language about
language that includes the devices writers and
speakers use to signal how their texts are organized. The phrase "in conclusion" is an example
of metadiscourse that signals to an audience
where a speaker is in a text. Other examples include initiation cues ("Let us first consider") and
transitional devices ("Now I want to turn to").
These verbal devices have visual analogs (e.g., the
border around an image, the fadeout)' Even in the
absence of a strong preexistinS pattern for a text
shared by its author and audience, a sense of its
arrangement can be communicated with such
devices.
While arrangement strategies based on ordering the content, the acts or effects, and the formal
features can be described independently, theories
of arrangement, whether developed for analysis
or pedagogy or both, usually concern the overlay
or compatibility of divisions based on these three
rationales. Thus the sequencing or configuration
of formal features can reflect or reinforce the se-
quencing or configuration of the content or the
acts/effects. Acts of interpretation often depend
on deciphering one arrangement strategy in
terms of another. In the case of a sonnet, for example, formal divisions created by patterns of
rhyming within the fourteen lines are used to
make and mark movements in the content (e.9.,
stages of thought or thematic development) or in
the effects. Formal divisions marked by subheadings or hypertext links are taken to represent different aspects or parts of the content. Sections de'
fined by the acts they perform can also be marked
by content shifts and layout differences; so, for
example, the "negative news" letter, which per'
forms at least three speech acts, might segregate
each in a separate paragraph. Then, too, a text
representing a sequence of voices might give each
a formally distinct section in a text by manipulating indentation, spacing, type font, and so on'
Among twentieth-century rhetoricians, Kenneth
Burke (1897-1993) paid special attention to the
interconnections between form, content, and ef'
fect. He pointed out that when audiences expect
a text to conform to a certain formal pattern
(whether they derive that expectation from the
text itself or from elsewhere), and then have that
expectation fulfllled, they are more likely to be
persuaded by the content that completes the
form.
Updating Traditional Schemes of Arrangement. In classical rhetoric, the arrangement of a
typical couruoom speech was described as a se'
quence of six parts: an introduction, statement of
facts, partition, confirmation of the case, refuta-
tion of opponents, and conclusion (see above).
These parts were distinguished on the basis of
what effects they were supposed to have on the
audience. This traditional arrangement scheme is
still current in the common advice that a speech,
and many kinds of written texts, should have an
introduction, some kind of body that delivers
the author's arguments in an effective sequence,
and a conclusion. According to classical and early
modern rhetorical manuals, the options for
se-
quencing one's arguments depend on their
"strength," their persuasiveness with the intended audience. Rhetors were advised to order
arguments according to their increasing or decreasing strength, or to place their weakest arguments in the middle, and open and close with
ARRANGEMENT: Modern arrangement
stronger ones. While the notion of the "strength"
of an argument depends on an assessment of its
force for a particular audience, the Belgian rhetoricians Chaim Perelman and Lucie OlbrechtsTyteca questioned whether the "strength" of an
argument can be independently assessed (Tlre
New Rhetoric, Notre Dame, Ind., 1969), They
pointed out that an argument's strength for an
audience may in fact be created by its position.
Researchers in psychology and speech communication have attempted to find empirical bases
fbr various strategies of arrangement, devising ex-
periments to test such issues as whether "primacy" (coming flrst) or "recency" (coming last)
were more effective strategies for competing arguments. But the large number of variables involved in human communicative situationsmakes
it difficult to generalize from such studies.
Modern mass media (print iournalism, radio,
TV the Internet) present special complications
for the study of arrangement because the sequencing of information and arguments, the order in which certain appeals reach an audience,
is very difficult to predict, particularly because of
the "boundary" problem mentioned above. Marshall Mcluhan (1911-1980), a communication
theorist, stressed the differences imposed by
newer communication media, arguing that newspapers and television broke with the linear arrangenrent of written and spoken discourse by
presenting messages all at once or in mosaic fashion. 'lhough McLuhan's more extreme characterizations are not followed today, it is true that
the contemporary media consumer may glimpse
headlines in a newspaper, catch soundbites on
television news, read banners on a Web site, or
hear part of a radio talk show and subsequently
form opinions from a chaos of fragmented impressions and bits of information. Hence saturation and sheer quantity of exposure to a "message" given in single bursts may count for more
than the interrelationship of parts of a single mesby its carefully crafted arrangement.
Among newer media, the Intenret and webbed
sage achieved
environments in particular have brought about
speculation on new modes of arrangement. Ijirst,
the mixing of aural, verbal, visual, and video elements on the same screen presents arrangement
options unique to this medium. Second, hypertext links create "multidimensional" hierarchical
a
47
or branching schemes of arrangement. Third, the
possibility of wandering from option to option,
tbrward and backward, presumably gives the user
of a webbed environment more control of the sequence of inputs. Theories of arrangement with
these new technologies are the subject of recent
scholarly attention, with disagreements over how
much is really new in these new media.
Arrangement and Genre. Observations on ar-
rangement-on the length, sequence, and relation among parts of a text-can often be found
in critical analyses of individual works. Stanley
Fish's analysis of Freud's case study of "The Wolf
Man," for example, points out the rhetorical effectiveness of Freud's delayed disclosure of the
meaning of the dream (Doing What Comes Nafir
rally, f)urham, N.C., 1989). However, more systematic observations about arrangement can be
found in discussions of genres, recurring types of
texts (e.9., the inaugural address, the TV news
broadcast, the comedy of manners). Indeed, a
typical arrangement strategy can be one of the
distinguishing features of a genre, whether the
parts being arranged are defined in terms of content, act/effect, formal feature, or some combination of the three. Once the typical arrangement
strategy of a genre is defined, it then becomes
possible to discuss how individual examples add
to, delete from, or alter the typical configuration
of elements.
'l'he metagenre
"narrative" illustrates how variations on a standard arrangement strategy can
reflect the rhetorical situation of a text. In the
most general sense, a text is a narrative when its
parts are episodes or events (whether externaI or
psychological). Histories, biographies, news stories, movies, and novels all fall under this broad
classification. The default arrangement strategy
for a narrative is chronological sequence, but the
events constituting a narrative, real or fictional,
do not necessarily have to be arranged in the order in which they presumably occurred.'fhe possibility of rearranging the same basic narrative in
different ways is aptly illustrated in the first of the
progymnasmatic exercises in classical rhetoric,
the fable, where students were directed to take a
simple narrative and retell it in different ways,
first starting at the beginning, then in the middle,
then at the end. The typical newspaper story reflects yet another narrative arrangement strategy:
48 a
ARRANGEMENT: Modern arrangement
highly condensed version of events is followed
by a retelling in greater detail. The fact that the
same basic sequence of events can nevertheless
be arranged in different representations illusa
trates how narratives can be strategically shaped
for different rhetorical effects.
While literary genres (e.g., Bildungsroman, fl.lm
noir, haiku) are described by their content and/
or formal devices, rhetorical genres (e.g., funeral
orations, documentaries, summations before a
jury) are more typically described in terms of the
presumed acts performed or accomplished. Work
on rhetorical genres flowered in the 1970s, stimulated by the criticism of Kathleen Jamieson
(1975) who expanded the notion ofrhetorical situation defined by Lloyd Bitzer (1968) to include
among the constraints facing a rhEt1r the available "antecedent genres." Even in novel situations, a rhetor is nevertheless likely to adopt and
adapt forms of communication (genres) already
used in similar situations. (Cases made for such
precursors do not, however, always involve a discussion of the arrangement strategies typical in
the borrowed genre.) [See Hybrid genres.]
Genre has also proved to be a useful concept
in studies of the psychology of reading, or text
consumption in general. Theorists often distinguish "bottom up" strategies of comprehension
(where an understanding of a text's overall structure is built up from its parts) from "top down"
strategies (where understanding is based on a
prior model in the reader's mind). Psycholinguists have established that decisions about genre
facilitate comprehension. A reader's (or viewer's
or user's) familiarity with a genre, and with its
typical arrangement strategy, is a kind of background knowledge; such background knowledge
is often characterized in terms of its organization
into chronological or hierarchical configurations
known as "scripts" or "schemata." Highly conventional genres (e.g., recipes, weather reports,
introductions of keynote speakers) are in effect
formal schEmafa, familiar pattems of arrangement,
that assist readers in assimilating new content.
Arrangement and Functional Genres: Heu-
ristic Approaches to Arrangement. Interesting
work on genre and formal schemes of arrangement has been done by scholars who focus on
professional and technical communication. This
work aims to teach students and workplace pro-
fessionals how to produce texts of a certain kind,
especially in business and institutional settings
where documents are valued for their efficiency
and effectiveness. Advice on how to write functional genres (like resumes, business plans, or
progress reports) is often given in the form of an
ideal scheme of organization that is then frlled in
with content appropriate to the writer's immediate circumstances.
Among the most orderly of genres in terms of
its arrangement is the scientific research report
with, typically, the following fixed sequence of
sections: Introduction, Materials and Methods,
Results, and Discussion (IMRD). Scholars in the
history and rhetoric of science have investigated
the evolution and epistemology of this form,
which presurnably reflects the ideal order of experimental design, but which has also been criticized for misrepresenting the often chaotic nature of research procedures. Much work has also
been done on the optimal internal arrangement
of the individual sections of the research article,
especially its introduction, which, according to
John Swales (1990) and others, tends to follow a
fixed series of moves to achieve the rhetorical
goal of creating and occupying a research space.
Arrangement Below the Level of the Whole
Text. While classical rhetoric concerned itself
with the arrangement of a whole speech, it also
paid attention to smaller textual units and their
internal ordering. So, for example, a single line of
argument in a speech could take the form of an
epicheireme, a five-part argument with claim, reason, proof of reason, embellishment, and resume.
Some modern rhetoricians and composition theorists have also tried to define formal units
smaller than a whole text that might appear in
any genre or concern any subject matter.
The traditional "modes of development,"
once a staple of writing textbooks and now much
criticized, can be described as arrangement strategies that involve smaller segments of a text and
that are not bound to a particular genre or subiect
matter. The all-purpose modes include patterns
such as narration (arrangement by sequence),
classification (enumeration of the subgroups in a
large group), analysis (presenting the hierarchical
divisions in a subject), description (rendering a
scene or object according to a principle of spatial
ordering), cause and effect (linking antecedents
ARRANGEMENT: Modern
and consequents), and comparison-contrast (deploying likenesses and differences between two
entities either feature by feattrre or whole by
whole). 'I'he arrangement strategy of a single text
can be described as the sequence of the different
modes of development
it
uses.
In the late nineteenth century, the
Scottish
psychologist Alexander Bain (1818-1903) nominated the paragraph as the key structural unit below the level of the whole text (Irtglish Composi-
tiut ttrtd Rhetoric, enlarged edition, London,
1901), identifying principles of paragraph construction such as the "topic sentence," consecutive arrangement, and marked subordination.
Composition theorists in the twentieth century
continued this work by identifying types of paragraphs and describing their internal organization. The arrangement of a text could then be described as the sequence of items taken up in the
sequence of its paragraphs using different methods. De^sl.grs itr ltrose (London, 1980) by Walter
Nash is another attempt to define compositional
runits of roughly paragraph length. Behind this
work is the notion that similar arrangement strategies can be imposcd on textual units of different
length. So one can have an antithesis (the deployment of opposites or contraries) at the sentence level, the paragraph level, and even across
several paragraphs. [Sec, Antithesis; anil overvicw
art
ic
Ie ou
Composition.l
A smaller-scale theory of arrangement concerns "given/new" or "topic/comment" organization in gr()ups of sentences. Building on the
observation that sentences in Indo-European languages tend to put old or given information, material alreacly known to the audience, in the beginning of a sentence, and new information, the
"news" in the sentence, toward the end, patterns
of organization can be investigated across passages
of several sentences. So, for example, a passage can
maintain the same topic in a series of sentences,
or the new information in one sentence can become the given information in the next.
Arrangement in Visual Rhetoric. Arrangement in the sense of the disposition of static
parts, rather than the sequencing of effects in
time, becomes salient in the creation and interpretation of visuals such as illustrations, photographs, diagrams, emblems, drawings, or computer screens. Ihe study of arrangement in visual
arrangement
a
49
texts has been enriched by the considerable body
of knowledge on the physiology and psychology
of perception. There are well-established principles on, for example, what the eye can distinguish and how perceivers can fill in a visual lield
according to their expectations. At the same time,
unique cultural conventions also inform the configuration of parts of a visual; in Western iconography, a circle around a head can stand for holiness and the left to right ascension of a line graph
can represent an increasing quantity.
Scholars debate the applicability of principles
of arrangement derived from verbal texts to visual
texts. Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen's
Reading hnages: tlrc Gramnnr of Visutrl Design
(London, 1996) does use analogies drawn from
verbal arrangement to identiry the underlying arrangement strategies in visuals. For example,
Kress and van Leeuwen apply the principle of
given/new organization (see above) to the spatial
arrangement of visual elements, arguing that
what appears to the left in a visual is offered as
the familiar, established, or orginary, and what
appears to the right is the new, the created, the
outcome.
[See
also Hypertext.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
llecker, Alton. "A 'l'agmemic Approach to Paragraph
Analysis. " College Contpositiort ortd Corttttttntictttion 16
(1965), pp. 237-242. An identification of recurring
of paragraph arrangement such as l'RI
(topic, restriction, illustration).
Bitzer, l.loycl, F. "'l'he Rhetorical Situation." Phibsoplty
and Rhetoric 1.1 (1968), pp. 1-14.
Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Rerrediotion: Undcrstanditrg New L4edio. Cambridge Mass., 1998.
Makes the case that new media (e.9., webbed environments) "remediate" or extend earlier media but
are not radicall)'new.
Burke, Kenneth. Counte'r-Stuter??enf. New York, 1931.
Burke's first work, contains a discussion of three
t)'pes of form (arrangement): conventional, repetipatterns
tive, progressive. References to the same concept appear in later works.
Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs, and Kathleen llall Jamieson,
eds. Form and Genre: Shaping, Rlrctoricttl Acriol, Iralls
Church, Va., 1978. Introductory essay by the editors
defines rhetorical genres; discussions of genres in subsequent essays occasionally mention arrangement.
Clark, Ilerbert F{., and Susan E. Haviland. "Comprehension and the Given-New Contract." ln Discourse I'ro-
50 .
ARS DICTAMINIS
dnction and Comprehension. Edited by Roy O. Freedle.
Norwood, NJ., 1977. An investigation of the assumptions and reasoning processes used to make
sense of strings of clauses.
Dillon, George. Constructing lexts. Bloomington, Ind.,
1981. Chapter 3 contains a discussion of organization in terms of schema; that is, structures of information or presumptions about the normal that readers bring to a text.
Hovland, Carl I., IrvingJanis, and Harold H. Kelley. Ifte
Order of Presentation in Persuasion. New Haven, 1957.
VandeKopple, William. "Some Exploratory Discourseon
Metadiscourse." College Composition and Communication 36 (1985), pp. 82-93. Contains a survey of
many possible types of metadiscourse, including
those devices that signal arrangement.
Van Diik, Tevn. Macrostructures. Hillsdale, NJ., 1979.
From the perspective of text linguistics, a discussion
of how passages entail propositions at higher levels
of generality.
-J
EANNE
FrnNr,srocr
The classical account of empirical studies by psychologists on the position of arguments and their
ARS DICTAMINIS. The
comparative persuasiveness.
variety of medieval rhetoric that provided in-
Jamieson, Kathleen. "Antecedent Genre as Rhetorical
Constraint." Quarteily Joumal ofSpeech 6l (1975), pp.
406-415. Makes the case that in novel rhetorical situations, rhetors draw on earlier genres used in similar situations.
Jamieson, Kathleen. Eloquence in an Electonic Age. New
York, 1988. Claims that informal conversational
structure has replaced formal argument in televised
political exchanges.
Landow, GeorgeP. Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence ofContempotary Citical Theory and Technology.2d ed. Bal-
timorc, 1977 . Argues that the linear arrangement of
individual literary texts will be replaced by continuous webs of text.
Larsen, Richard. "Toward a Linear Rhetoric of the Essay."
College Composition and Communication
22 (1971),
pp. 140-146. An application of speech act theory to
arrangement, seeing a text as a sequence of acts to
achieve a goal.
Mcluhan, Marshall. The Gutenbug Galaxy: The Making
ofTypographic Mar. Toronto, 1962. Argues for differences between linear and nonlinear media.
Meyer, Bonnie J .F. The Organization of Prose and lts Effects
on Memory. Amsterdam, 1975. A psycholinguistic ap-
proach to the hierarchical organization of informa-
tion in
a
text.
Pitkin, Willis. "Discourse Blocs." CoIIege Composition and
Communication 20 (1969), pp. 138- 148. An attempt
to define units of arrangement according to theirdis-
course function (coordination, complementation,
subordination, superordination).
Snyder, Ilana. Hypertoi: The Electronic Labyrinth. New
York, 1997. A discussion of how reading and writing
practices are changed in hypertext environments.
Swales,
John M. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and
Research Settings. Cambridge, U.K., 1990. Includes a
useful summary of approaches to genre and a detailed discussion of the typical arrangement of sections in the academic/scientific research report, with
special attention to introductions.
ars dictaminis is the
struction in the composition of letters and other
epistolary documents. Between 1077 and 1085,
Alberic of Monte Cassino produced the first textbooks of medieval rhetoric that incorporated explicit instruction on Ietter writing. Within a generation, Adalbert of Samaria and Hugh of Bologna
had taken Alberic's innovation a step farther by
developing textbooks that focused exclusively on
letter writing, drawing their theory from the technical rhetorics of Cicero (De inventione) and
pseudo-Cicero (Rhetorica ad Herennium) and the
commentaries on them. [See Classical rhetoric.]
Adalbert's and Hugh's textbooks and those of
their contemporaries at Bologna in the first half
of the twelfth century established a genre that
eventually spread throughout Europe and is represented by hundreds of treatises in thousands of
manuscripts. In longevily and influence, the crs
dictaminis was the most successful of the medieval adaptations of classical rhetoric.
The typical treatise, called an a6 dictandi or
summa dictancli, combined a fairly standard range
of precepts, concerned chiefly with arrangement
and style, and illustrative examples or models for
imitation. [See Arrangement: Traditional arrangement; Imitation; and Style.] Dictaminal teaching
clearly reflects a fundamental conception of letters as official, public, and spoken texts. That letters are understood as quasi-orations can be seen
from the treatment of their component parts,
which is modeled on Cicero's analysis of forensic
speeches. By the mid-twelfth century, most teachers ofthe ars dictaminis recognized fivebasicparts
of a letter: (1) the salutatio or "greeting"; (2) the
captatio benevolentiae or "securing of goodwill,"
which alternatively was called the exordium, the
arenga (" harangue"), or even the proverbium (since
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
RHE,TORIC
Thomas O. Sloane
Editor in Chief
OXFORD
UNIVBRSITY
2001
PRESS
OXTORD
UNIVERSITY
PRESS
Oxford New York
Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogot6 BuenosAires Calcutta
Istanbul
CapeTown Chennai DaresSilaam Delhi Florence HongKong
Mumbai
City
Mexico
Melbourne
Madrid
Karachi Kuala Lumpur
warsaw
Nairobi Paris 56o Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto
and associated comPanies in
Berlin lbadan
Copyright O 2001 by Oxford University Press' lnc'
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc'
198 Madison Avenue, New York' New York 10016
www.oup.com
of Oxford University Press
trademark
Oxford is a registered
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced'
storedinaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted'inanyformorbyanymeans'
electronic, mechanical, photocopying' recording' or otherwise'
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press'
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Encyclopedia of rhetoric / Thomas O' Sloane' editor in chief'
p.cm'
Includes bibliographic references and index'
lsBN 978-0-19-512s95-5
1. Rhetoric-Encyclopedias' I' Sloane' Thomas O'
00-0s2870
PNi72 .E52 2001 808'.003
-dc?r
Enos' ed"
portions of ,,Feminist rhetodc" by Karlyn Kohrs Campbell previously appeared in Theresa
Age
Encyclopedia
Information
Co,iposiion: Communicition ftom Ancient fiyu t1 the
Routledge'
of
permission
(Garland 1996); tLey are included here by
of
Rhetoric
a-ii
EDITORIAL AND PRODUCTION STAFF
Execative Editor: Christopher Collins
DeveloPment Edifor: Mark Mones
Assistant Proiect Editor: Merilee Johnson
Copyeditors: Patricia Connolly, Alexa Firat,
Conitantina Rhodes Bailly, Martha Goldstein
Manufacturing Controller : Donna Ng
Book Designen Joan Greenfi eld
Monaging Editor: Matthew Giarratano
Publisher: Karen CaseY
579864
Printed in the United States of America
on acid'free PaPer