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American Food Rhetoric

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Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics
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Synonyms

Agricultural mythology; Food identity; Food metaphor; Food politics; Food tropes

Introduction

Definitions of rhetoric have evolved over the course of Western intellectual history. As a result, understandings of this civic art can range from the strategic manipulation of symbolic forms for persuasive ends to a constitutive process that is central to the formation of identity. In its infancy, the Aristotelian conception of rhetoric as a persuasive appeal deployed by speakers to gain the advocacy of an audience was highly influential (Kennedy 1991). From this traditional standpoint, rhetoric can be summarized as a process whereby an advocate meets an external challenge with a specific set of symbolic appeals, overcomes situational constraints, and achieves personal and communal objectives (Bitzer 1992). This narrow view of rhetoric began to expand as a result of theorists such as Kenneth Burke, who positioned it at the center of human symbolic commerce, suggesting that it played...

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Correspondence to Stephanie Houston Grey .

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© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Grey, S.H. (2014). American Food Rhetoric. In: Thompson, P.B., Kaplan, D.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0929-4_493

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0929-4_493

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

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