Alle Publikationen
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2017
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(2017): Narratives and Online Decorum. The Rhetoric of Mark Zuckerberg's Personal Storytelling on Facebook. In: STYLE 51 (3), S. 374-390. DOI: 10.1353/sty.2017.0031
Abstract: The article ties in with and attempts to further interests in the - rhetorical aspects of personal storytelling by examining what is taken to be a pervasive yet understudied form of purposeful storytelling. The overall aim is to investigate how the narration of intimate biographical events may be used to influence or mold matters of decorum or appropriate behavior. Through close reading of the use of narratives in a Facebook post by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the article argues for the potential meta-decorous nature of such posts; in addition to their private content, they are about what posting is or should be, and therefore also about what it may be, or should mean, to be someone posting on Facebook. Consequently, these personal stories are read as peculiar amalgamations of the personal, the strategic, and the moral.
Keywords: Appropriateness, Art des Kommunikationsmediums, das Persönliche, decorum, doppelter Treffer, Facebook, Identität, Identitätsstiftung, Intimität, Kommunikation, Kommunikationsstrategie, Mensch-Maschine-Releation, Mensch-Technik-Relationen (MTR), Moral, Morals, Öffentlicher vs. privater Raum, Rhetorik, Situationsbedingter Kontext, Social Network, Social Network Einfluss, Soziale Angemessenheit, Storytelling, Strategien zur Erlangung von Sympathie, Wissen um Normen 2016
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(2016): ON DECORUM. FROM THE CLASSICS TO POSTMODERNITY. In: QUAESTIO IURIS 9 (3)
Abstract: Considering that the observance of decorum is important to assure good human relationships, especially in the public sphere, and, also, that episodes of breach of decorum are recurrent in Brazilian public life, I propose to recover this classical concept, since its re-evaluation is opportune and urgent. I present therefore a historical revision of the concept of decorum starting from the classics and find that, although this concept has undergone changes, its fundamental aspect, the intimate connection with ethics, has been maintained until the present day. Evidence that this classical concept still survives is the existence, in many countries, of “codes of ethics and decorum” of legislative, judicial and other organs. I find, however, that this concept is sensitive to culture, which is proven in the contrastive analysis of a sample of episodes of the violation of decorum by judges of the American Supreme Court and of the Brazilian Supreme Court. I found that, although violations of Americans are less severe than Brazilians, the reactions of the media and American citizens are much more energetic, because decorum for the Americans is a value that they hold dear, while in Brazil it is a dead letter, lacking be ressurected. I also present some reflections on the arrogance of those who hold power, an attitude to which I attribute the cause of many occurrences of the breach of decorum nowadays.
Keywords: Brasilien, Breach of decorum, decorum, Decorum in der Öffentlichkeit, Ethik, Fehlverhalten, Gericht, Grenzen, Grenzüberschreitung, Judikative, Kommunikation, Kultur, Kulturvergleich, Macht, Medien, Medienwirksamkeit, Öffentliche, diskursive Aushandlung von Anstand, Öffentlicher Diskurs, Rechtswissenschaft, Rhetorik, Richter, Soziale Angemessenheit, Umgangsformen, USA, Werte -
(2016): Multiple Audiences as Text Stakeholders. A Conceptual Framework for Analyzing Complex Rhetorical Situations. In: Argumentation 30 (4), S. 467-499. DOI: 10.1007/s10503-016-9394-6
Abstract: In public communication contexts, such as when a company announces the proposal for an important organizational change, argumentation typically involves multiple audiences, rather than a single and homogenous group, let alone an individual interlocutor. In such cases, an exhaustive and precise characterization of the audience structure is crucial both for the arguer, who needs to design an effective argumentative strategy, and for the external analyst, who aims at reconstructing such a strategic discourse. While the peculiar relevance of multiple audience is often emphasized in the argumentation literature and in rhetorical studies, proposals for modelling multi-audience argumentative situations remain scarce and unsystematic. To address this gap, we propose an analytical framework which integrates three conceptual constructs: (1) Rigotti and Rocci's notion of communicative activity type, understood as the implementation of an interaction scheme into a piece of institutional reality, named interaction field; (2) the stakeholder concept, originally developed in strategic management and public relations studies to refer to any actor who affects and/or is affected by the organizational actions and who, accordingly, carries an interest in them; (3) the concept of participant role as it emerges from Goffman's theory of conversation analysis and related linguistic and media studies. From this integration, we derive the notion of text stakeholder for referring to any organizational actor whose interest (stake) becomes an argumentative issue which the organizational text must account for in order to effectively achieve its communicative aim. The text stakeholder notion enables a more comprehensive reconstruction and characterization of multiple audience by eliciting the relevant participants staged in a text and identifying, for each of them, the interactional role they have, the peculiar interest they bear and the related argumentative issue they create. Considering as an illustrative case the defense document issued by a corporation against a hostile takeover attempt made by another corporation, we show how this framework can support the analysis of strategic maneuvering by better defining the audience demand and, so, better explaining how real arguers design and adapt their topical and presentational choices.
Keywords: breites Publikum, Communicative Activity Type nach Rigotti und Rocci, Goffman, Interaktionspartner, Kommunikation, Kommunikationswissenschaft, Konversationsanalyse, Öffentliche Darstellung, Öffentlicher vs. privater Raum, Öffentlichkeit, Publikumswirksamkeit, Rhetorik, Sozialer Raum / Kultureller Kontext, stakeholder, Stakeholder Concept (of Communication), Strategien zur Erlangung von Sympathie, Theory of interaction (Goffman), Wissen um Normen 2015
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(2015): Developing Democratic Dispositions. Eighteenth-Century Public Debating Societies and the Generative Capacity of Decorum. In: RHETORIC SOCIETY QUARTERLY 45 (4), S. 324-345
Abstract: This essay argues that public debating societies that emerged in Britain in the later eighteenth century functioned as sites of invention where citizens could develop dispositions associated with a more inclusive form of democracy. I locate the generative aspects of these forums in the principle of decorum. I argue that this principle functioned as a means for participants to negotiate traditional codes of conduct and standards of speech that constrained interactions among various constituents of the body politic. To illustrate this claim, I focus on the clash of codes exemplified in an encounter between a Quaker woman and a member of Parliament in a public debating forum. By highlighting these discursive interactions, this essay extends current conversations in public sphere theory that call for a focus on the processes and forms of rhetorical engagement among diverse publics.
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(2015): Verecundia, risa y decoro. Cicerón y el arte de insultar. In: Isegoría (53), S. 445-473. DOI: 10.3989/isegoria.2015.053.01
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3989/isegoria.2015.053.01 Abstract: Sobre la risa puede hablarse de muchas maneras; cabe, por ejemplo, una aproximación fisiológica, otra psicológica o una tercera sociológica, que los antiguos no desatendieron por completo, si bien Cicerón prefirió investigar sus posibilidades retóricas. A nadie se le oculta la relevancia de chanzas y chistes para disponer a la audiencia de manera favorable o para ridiculizar al adversario; tampoco que esta estrategia, a despecho de su efectividad y por la misma, puede sobrepasar los límites de lo aceptable o de lo provechoso. Cuestión tanto más grave cuanto que el orador puede y debe reírse de asuntos que, considerados en sí mismos, carecen de gracia. La retórica ciceroniana de la risa plantea y desemboca en una ética y una táctica del humor atenta al estudio y posible codificación de los principios rectores de tan poderoso recurso, que debe utilizarse de manera conveniente, adecuada y decorosa (pues de todas estas formas puede traducirse la palabra griega prépon y la latina decorum), lo cual presupone que no siempre es así y, por lo que interesa en estas páginas, que hay risas indebidas, próximas al vituperio, que pueden acarrear dificultades a quien las provoca, pues siempre es peligroso reírse de los poderosos. Cicerón, sin duda, era un individuo que insultaba mucho, con ingenio, gracia y en ocasiones con extraordinaria agresividad.~~~
2009
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(2009): Politeness and Politics in Cicero's Letters. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press
Abstract: This book presents a fresh examination of the letters exchanged between Cicero and correspondents such as Pompey, Julius Caesar, and Mark Antony during the final turbulent decades of the Roman Republic. Drawing upon sociolinguistic theories of politeness, it argues that formal relationships between powerful members of the elite were constrained by distinct conventions of courtesy and etiquette. By examining in detail these linguistic conventions of politeness, the book presents new insights into the social manners that shaped aristocratic relationships. Specific topics include a discussion of the role of letter-writing within the Roman aristocracy; the epistolary use of linguistic politeness to convey respect to fellow members of the elite; the deployment of conventionalized expressions of affection and goodwill to cultivate alliances with ambitious rivals, and the diplomatic exploitation of “polite fictions” at times of political tension. The book also explores the strategies of politeness employed by Cicero and his correspondents when making requests and dispensing advice, and when engaging in epistolary disagreements (Cicero's exchanges with Appius Claudius Pulcher, Munatius Plancus, and Mark Antony receive particular attention).
2001
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(2001): Arbitria-Vrbanitatis. Language, style, and characterization in Catullus ’cc.39 and 37’. In: CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY 20 (2), S. 239-272
Abstract: This article describes how cc. 39 and 37 create distinct tones of voice and use them to preclude the social pretensions of Egnatius in different spheres. The style of c. 39, markedly oratorical—and non-Catullan—in the syntax of its opening lines, develops into the voice of a respectable senex by way of archaisms of vocabulary and syntax and is capped by a figure of humor otherwise absent from the polymetrics, the apologus. The style thus creates a voice perfectly suited to chastise Egnatius' social ineptitudes and, more importantly, constitutes on the verbal level an embodiment of the standards of the urban elite. Catullus thus illustrates to Egnatius that a subtle system of social gestures can be learned - something which Egnatius, for all his apparent pretensions to social prominence, manifestly has not grasped, marred as he is by the habit of grinning inappropriately. C. 37, which ends with an attack on the same Egnatius, is far different in tone, commingling tokens of artfulness with vulgarity and forcefulness. That mixed style exercises ironic decorum towards Lesbia's lovers, who are themselves an oddly mixed group, well-off on the one hand, but "backstreet adulterers" on the other. But the two tones of voice, and indeed the two groups of lovers, also embody the paradoxes of the Roman construction of stylish behavior, which could be represented as elegant dalliance or reprehensible vice. Inasmuch as Egnatius' fashion affectations, ridiculed at the poem's end, fail to qualify him for the ranks of Lesbia's lovers, he is represented as outside sophisticated society, however it be constructed. In concert the two poems utterly derail Egnatius' social pretensions: c. 39 as it were outflanks him on the "right," barring him from respectable society, and c. 37 outflanks him on the "left," barring him from the "jet set."
1971
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(1971): Sense and Nonsense in St. Vincent. Speech Behavior and Decorum in a Caribbean Community. In: American Anthropologist 73 (3), S. 762-772. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1971.73.3.02a00160
Abstract: Speech behavior, among the Afro-American peasants of St. Vincent, British West Indies, is the focus of a high degree of interest, self-consciousness, and value judgment. A segment of the speech economy of Vincentian peasants is analyzed in terms of a native taxonomy of speech acts and related terms, illuminating Vincentian ideas concerning proper and improper behavior as well as the realm of speech behavior itself. The analysis paves the way for a consideration of the conduct and significance of the tea meeting, one of the most popular performance events on the island and a key to the dynamics of social change in contemporary Vincentian society.
Keywords: Ethnographie, im/proper, proper behaviour, improper behaviour, Kommunikation, Kultur, Kulturelle Normen, Kulturelle/soziale Rituale, Kulturvergleich, Linguistik, Non/sense, Rhetorik, Sinn, Sinnproduktion, Sinnzuweisung, Soziale Angemessenheit, Speech Behaviour, Sprachgebrauch, Sprechakt, Sprechgewohnheit, Sprechökonomie, Taxonimie, Teezeremonie
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