Overview

Rhetorical Figures in Science breaks new ground in the rhetorical study of scientific argument as the first book to demonstrate how figures of speech other than metaphor have been used to accomplish key conceptual moves in scientific texts. Examples, both verbal and visual, range across disciplines and centuries to reaffirm the positive value of these once widely-taught devices.

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9780195117509

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While many books deliver less than they promise, a few, like Rhetorical Figures in Science, deliver more. In a well-crafted argument and a well-exemplified series of chapters, Fahnestock undermines our comfortable sense that, aside from metaphor, the figures can be safely ignored by rhetorical theorists and critics, that the study of such schemes as antithesis, incrementum, gradatio, antimetabole, ploche and polyptoton is the preserve only of pedants.

"""While many books deliver less than they promise, a few, like Rhetorical Figures in Science, deliver more. In a well-crafted argument and a well-exemplified series of chapters, Fahnestock undermines our comfortable sense that, aside from metaphor, the figures can be safely ignored by rhetorical theorists and critics, that the study of such schemes as antithesis, incrementum, gradatio, antimetabole, ploche and polyptoton is the preserve only of pedants.""--Quarterly Journal of Speech ""Jeanne Fahnestock's book displays a range of erudition not only in the history of science but in the history of rhetoric as well...It is impossible to provide an adequate review of the wealth of evidence offered in the book. But even readers not familiar with all of the sciences discussed should find sufficient illustrations from other literature to make them grateful to Professor Fahnestock for this illuminating study.""--Rhetorica ""Fahnestock's own argument is solid, well documented, and convincing, and her book is a significant contribution to the history as well as the rhetoric of science.""--ISIS ""'Once and for all,' Jeanne Fahnestock argues in her soon-to-be-a-classic book, 'the figures should come out of the cabinet of curiosities'. If the diligent, imaginative, bracing scholarship of Rhetorical Figures in Science does not accomplish that goal, then I'm a monkey's uncle: this book is a masterwork: easily the most important book in rhetoric of science over the last decade: among the most important books in rhetoric-period-over at least the same stretch: the foremost contribution to figuration since I don't know when, maybe since Peacham: a study no one in the field of rhetoric can afford to do without: get it.""--Rhetoric Society Quarterly"

While many books deliver less than they promise, a few, like Rhetorical Figures in Science, deliver more. In a well-crafted argument and a well-exemplified series of chapters, Fahnestock undermines our comfortable sense that, aside from metaphor, the figures can be safely ignored by rhetorical theorists and critics, that the study of such schemes as antithesis, incrementum, gradatio, antimetabole, ploche and polyptoton is the preserve only of pedants. --Quarterly Journal of Speech Jeanne Fahnestock's book displays a range of erudition not only in the history of science but in the history of rhetoric as well...It is impossible to provide an adequate review of the wealth of evidence offered in the book. But even readers not familiar with all of the sciences discussed should find sufficient illustrations from other literature to make them grateful to Professor Fahnestock for this illuminating study. --Rhetorica Fahnestock's own argument is solid, well documented, and convincing, and her book is a significant contribution to the history as well as the rhetoric of science. --ISIS 'Once and for all, ' Jeanne Fahnestock argues in her soon-to-be-a-classic book, 'the figures should come out of the cabinet of curiosities'. If the diligent, imaginative, bracing scholarship of Rhetorical Figures in Science does not accomplish that goal, then I'm a monkey's uncle: this book is a masterwork: easily the most important book in rhetoric of science over the last decade: among the most important books in rhetoric-period-over at least the same stretch: the foremost contribution to figuration since I don't know when, maybe since Peacham: a study no one in the field of rhetoric can afford to do without: get it. --Rhetoric Society Quarterly

Author Information

Jeanne Fahnestock is Professor of English at the University of Maryland. She is the author of Rhetorical Figures in Science and co-author of A Rhetoric of Argument.

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