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ABSTRACT
Political rhetoric is underpinned by its relationship to context. Scholars have struggled to articulate this relationship by relying upon an ontological perspective of rhetoric and situation. This paper utilizes a new, problematological philosophy of rhetoric in context that overcomes these limitations. This approach employs a logic of question and answer which articulates the contingency of rhetoric as well as the structuring effects of context, conceived as social distance. This paper makes three conceptual innovations; philosophically redefining the rhetorical situation via a social problematology; developing a relational conception of situation; and originating a rhetorical theory of situatedness.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Nick Turnbull is Lecturer in Politics at The University of Manchester. His research focuses on political questioning in policy and politics. He is a specialist on problematology and the author of several works on the subject, including the book Michel Meyer’s Problematology: Questioning and society (Blooomsbury 2014) and articles in the Revue Internationale de Philosophie, Critical Policy Studies, Philosophy and Rhetoric and History of the Human Sciences.
ORCID
Nick Turnbull http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3496-8418
Notes
1. The contentious interpretations that resulted reflect debates within philosophy about how to read Dewey's work. The symbolic-interactionist tradition emphasized the interpretive elements of pragmatism in arguing for the theory-dependence of observation (see Bernstein, Citation1966 and Rorty, Citation1991)).