Arguing over Texts: The Rhetoric of Interpretation

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Synopsis
From the Constitution to the Bible, from literary classics to political sound bites, our modern lives are filled with numerous texts that govern and influence our behavior and beliefs. Whether in the courtrooms of our judiciaries or over our dining room tables, we argue over what these texts mean as we apply them to our lives. Various schools of hermeneutics offer theories of how we generally understand the world around us or how to read certain types of texts to arrive at the correct or best interpretation, but most neglect the argumentative and persuasive nature of every act of interpretation. In Arguing over Texts, Martin Camper presents a rhetorical method for understanding the types of disagreement people have over the meaning of texts and the lines of argument they use to resolve those disagreements. Camper's fresh approach has its roots in the long forgotten interpretive stases, originally devised by ancient Greek and Roman teachers of rhetoric for inventing courtroom arguments concerning the meaning of legal documents such as wills, laws, and contracts. The interpretive stases identify general, recurring debates over textual meaning and catalogue the lines of reasoning arguers may employ to support their preferred interpretations. Drawing on contemporary research in language, persuasion, and cognition, Camper expands the scope of the interpretive stases to cover textual controversies in virtually any context. To illustrate the interpretive stases' wide range of applicability, Arguing over Texts contains examples of interpretive debates from law, politics, religion, history, and literary criticism. Arguing over Texts will appeal to anyone who is interested in analyzing and constructing interpretive arguments.
Copyright:
2017

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9780190677145
Related ISBNs:
9780190677138, 9780190677121
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Oxford University Press
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
History, Nonfiction, Religion and Spirituality, Language Arts
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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