ABSTRACT
This volume takes up rhetorical approaches to our primarily linguistic understanding of how names work, considering how theories of materiality in rhetoric enrich conceptions of the name as word or symbol and help explain the processes of name bestowal, accumulation, loss, and theft. Contributors theorize the formation, modification, and recontexualization of names as a result of technological and cultural change, and consider the ways in which naming influences identity and affects/grants power.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
section |75 pages
Performing Identity
chapter |16 pages
From “Big Time” to “Turd Blossom”
George W. Bush and the Rhetoric of the Political Sobriquet
section |63 pages
Reinforcing Hegemony
chapter |14 pages
The Female Frankenstein
Naming Practices Constructing What It Means to Be a “Woman”
section |61 pages
Creating Public Memory
chapter |12 pages
Eponymous Elixirs
Mrs. Pinkham, Nineteenth-Century Patent Medicines, and the Rhetoric of Naming
chapter |14 pages
The Genome, the Meme, and the Teme Go off the Map
Observing Naming, Metaphor, and Circulation in Three Contested Terms
