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Article: Rhetoric and Political Culture in Nineteenth-Century America.
- Article from:
- Argumentation and Advocacy
- Article date:
- September 22, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 American Forensic Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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By Thomas W. Benson. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1997; pp. 199. Price $31.95.
This volume is a nicely-edited selection of papers presented at the 1992 University of Minnesota conference on Public Address. As such it constitutes a significant entry in the ongoing debate over methods of rhetorical criticism and the theoretical status of the texts of individual speeches. But the book does not live up to the promise of its title.
The volume begins with a conference keynote in which Edwin Black postulates an aesthetic opposition between a "rhetoric of power," illustrated by Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, and a "rhetoric of ...