Summary Of Rhetorical Figures In Science By Jeanne Fahnestock

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As an English professor in the University of Maryland, Jeanne Fahnestock is one of the modern rhetoricians with several master pieces. She mostly focuses on scientific rhetorical analysis in argument, especially in word choice and figures of speech. Her notable works are Rhetorical Gigures in Science(2002), A Rhetoric or Argument(2003) with Marie Secor, Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion(2011). The book A Rhetoric of Argument with Marie Secor discusses about arguments in four aspects: definition arguments, causal arguments, evaluation arguments and proposal arguments. These four aspects, now become standard in many argument texts, give readers a constructive, engaging way to analyze arguments by other writers and to construct their own arguments. Her book Rhetorical Figures in Science breaks new ground in the rhetorical study as it first demonstrates how figures of speech other than metaphor have been used to accomplish key conceptual improvements in scientific texts. Later in her book Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion, which is also this journal is based on, she offers a renewed appreciation of the persuasive power of the English language. Fahnestock demonstrates how …show more content…

Then Fahnestock raises her theory based on historical analysis that the combination of Old English and additions from Old Norse is the core vocabulary in contemporary English, which is “the oldest layer in the language and the source of its simplest and most frequently use words”. (Fahnestock ,2011) Thus this analysis explains why most daily life words like preposition and simple nouns are all Germanic roots, since Germanic roots are developed from Old Norse. (DOES IT NEED