List of works
Book chapter
The rhetorical logics of racist accusation and defense
Published 2021
Local Theories of Argument
In the United States context, racist political discourse has changed over time, broadly moving from explicit race-baiting appeals to implicit forms of race-card play. In the pre-civil-rights era, rhetorical actors often embraced racism as a political ideology. In the period after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, racial appeals now predominantly appear in two forms: either as code language or as accusations of reverse racism. Appreciating the generic and particular is indispensable for evaluating this race-card play. There is a generic expectation for the presidential statements following such a tragic event. The pronouncements ought to offer an unambiguous reaffirmation of the principle of equality. In cultural context, impugning the intelligence of a minority group member, or comparing that person to an animal is racist. Argumentation around public accusations of racism offers a particular intersection between burdens of proof and presumptions.
Book chapter
The Visible and the Invisible: Arguing about Threats to Loyalty in the Internet Age
Published 2019
Networking Argument: Affective Argument and Popular American History, 274 - 279
This chapter examines loyalty as a civic virtue and demonstrates that sign reasoning advances disloyalty claims through the rhetorical topos of the visible and the invisible. It argues that the rise of the lone-wolf terrorist has made invisible signs increasingly salient. Among the flammable elements, loyalty is dry kindling because its virtuous status rests on problematic, contingent relationships that inevitably clash with rights-based limits on sovereign authority. Scholars often conceive the concept of loyalty as a public obligation, a moral virtue with a dispositional attachment to some end apart from the self. Like Oceania and the political philosophy of Ingsoc, the post-9/11 world of lone-wolf terrorism relies on increasingly robust systems of surveillance to make visible those signs of disloyalty. The chapter concludes that invisibility is a key premise in justifying aggressive counterterrorism policies as a defensible exception to liberal democratic norms.
Book chapter
Published 2015
Rhetorical criticism: perspectives in action