Knowledge Claims in Rhetorical Criticism

Abstract

As an academic discipline, communication resides on the cusp of Snow’s (1959)“two cultures” dominated respectively by literature and science. It draws on the research methods and traditions of both the humanities and the social sciences. It is not surprising that the relationship between these modes of inquiry is often contested. Are they totally independent, are they mutually supportive, or does one function mainly to serve the needs of the other? Forty years ago, Bowers (1968) published an article contending that the significant function of rhetorical criticism was “prescientific.” In contrast to the traditional view that critics focus on a single rhetorical text in a single context, Bowers urged that they offer insights in the form of testable hypotheses, which would culminate in the advancement and refinement of scientific theory. This he regarded as a “nobler view” of criticism than the traditional one. Bowers did not suggest that the only legitimate criticism was “prescientific” or that critics should see themselves solely as aiding the generation of scientific insights. But his article, at least implicitly, does privilege the critic who defines the primary task in this way.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 35 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.