1st Edition
Adaptive Rhetoric Evolution, Culture, and the Art of Persuasion
Introduction Part I 1. Classical Naturalism 2. Nature, Nurture, and Negativity: Wilson’s Consilience and the Art of Rhetoric 3. Is it Adaptive? Is it Rhetoric? Part II 4. Animal Signaling and the Art of Persuasion 5. Deception, Mimicry, and Camoflage 6. Rhetoric and Theory of Mind 7. Evolutionary Memoria: Grounded Cognition and the Fourth Canon Conclusion: The Significance of an Interdisciplinary Approach
Biography
Alex C. Parrish is Assistant Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication at James Madison University, USA.
"In this well-researched, cross-species study, Parrish employs a biocultural paradigm when tracing the origins of rhetoric. He reveals the artifacts of humans' communicative past via the lens of animal signaling, uncovering how animals exercise persuasive tactics in order to overcome difficulties that are similar to human problems ... No other book examines rhetoric from this perspective in such a thorough way."
- K L. Majocha, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, in CHOICE
"Parrish's book is important. It brings together a wide range of findings in the sciences and humanities; it endorses a much broader conception of communication that extends beyond animals, akin to ongoing inquiries in biosemiotics; and, most centrally, it expands rhetoric beyond the confines of the human."
- Ryan Hediger, Kent State University at Tuscarawas, in Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment
