Rhetorical Listening in Action: A Concept-Tactic Approach (Studies in Rhetorics and Feminisms) by Krista Ratcliffe

Rhetorical Listening in Action: A Concept-Tactic Approach (Studies in Rhetorics and Feminisms) Reviews

• 
  Mary

  Heaven knows I wanted to love this book. I quite like Krista Ratcliffe's work generally, and I enjoyed her conference presentations leading to this book. I also like rhetorical listening, so it was weird that this book made no mention of Boothe's book (I keep checking the index and bibliography, but no, nothing) introducing many of the key elements of rhetorical listening.
  
  One of the difficulties of this book is knowing quite what it is. Is it theory? Certainly it's part of the "Studies in Rhetorics and Feminisms" series. But then there's a lot of discussion of how to "do"--the tactics of the approach. These sections feel pedagogical, as they gives steps to write rhetorical analyses that employ the concepts to various rhetorical objects and moments. The examples are fun--a lot of political cartoons, popular movies and TV characters--so I'd like to use this book for my students, but the theory is dense, so maybe just grad students? The issue of rhetorical listening is so important, and I'm eager for any new ideas of how to clarify, disseminate, and imbue it with value among laypeople. But I'm not certain whether this is a book for me to require, recommend or just summarize to others.
  
  Here are some of my notes:
  
  "Sometimes, however, listening is not he ethical choice (people must make that decision situation by situation), but when it is the right choice, listeners should treat the false or dangerous claims and cultural logics as objects of inquiry" (27).
  
  Cultural logics change over time, from place to place, and intersect. Various cultural logics huant every situation and become embodied (30).
  
  "A person or text is always a member of a larger cultural group" (47).
  
  Ecology of memory stuff--check out more with Tell's book about Emmett Till (80-85)
  
  Modern rhetoric is "the study of how people use signifying systems and how signifying systems use people " (160).
• 
  Erika

  Brilliant. Ratcliffe is a rhetorician that I will return to again and again as I teach my students and consider my own scholarship.