The Rhetoric of Intention in Human Affairs
By (author) Gary C. Woodward The College of New Jersey
Publication date:
12 September 2013Length of book:
160 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksDimensions:
237x157mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9780739179048
The Rhetoric of Intention in Human Affairs is an insightful account of the rhetorical and psychological habits we exhibit when we must explain the reasons others act. The assumption that we can know what motivates another person is fed by more hope than certainty, and yet it is evidence of a very human impulse. Beginning with a clear template for defining various tiers of motives-talk, this innovative and accessible study moves through a series of chapters exploring the unique demands imposed by different circumstances. These sections cut a wide swath of analysis across a diverse range of human actors including: conspiracy theorists who find the designs of coordinated agents behind random events, theater performers creating “backstories” for their characters, journalists grasping to name the motives of newsmakers, prosecutors who must establish another’s intent in order to prove a criminal act, and the devout who grapple with what divine intervention can mean in a cruel world. Readers will recognize themselves in these pages, gaining an appreciation for the rhetorical analysis of human behavior.
Timely and important, this book focuses on the rhetorical and psychological habits of intention—an approach rarely taken. More often the subject of philosophy, intention is analyzed here as rhetoric and as part of lived experience offering an immediacy and a self-revelatory dimension that is outside the purview of a philosophical analysis. Woodward also elucidates the enigmas, paradoxes, and fantasies that expressing intention—one's own, others', and 'representations of intentions'—create about what one can and cannot know. Woodward draws on a wide variety of disciplines, scrutinizing their discourse in light of intention: e.g., motivation in theater, attribution in journalism, liability and culpability in law, and 'reading' God in religion. He proposes that 'intention talk is frequently anchored by discourse referencing internal states, external states, a role template, and a model of moral worth.' He demonstrates that rhetorical acts concerning human intention perpetrate follies as well as truths, but he argues that it is human nature that leads one to grapple with intention. This is a fine resource for those interested in rhetoric, communication, law, politics, or psychology. . . .Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.