ABSTRACT
This chapter considers some of the ways in which a rhetorical perspective on writing can help doctoral students gain control of their dissertation project. Classical rhetoric was concerned with spoken language, and new rhetoric expands that focus. Supervisors engage in many regulated rhetorical actions: proposals, reviews, grant applications, conference papers, articles, chapters, and so on. Doctoral students often produce term papers, comprehensive exams, research proposals, public defenses, and of course the dissertation itself. Thesis-writers citations and their approval or critique of others' research locates them in disciplinary debate, and the quality of their claims makes them sound confident, strident, cautious, boastful, or possibly even delusional. The rhetorical term for this is ethos—the character of the speaker—and developing it challenges students. In the classical tradition, rhetoric was seen as having five canons or arts. They were invention, arrangement, style, memorization, and delivery.
