In theory, the vagueness of the World Trade Organization-administered TRIPS Agreement should provide developing countries with ample opportunities for creative interpretations of its provisions. Despite this, developing country freedom to exploit these opportunities is diminishing rapidly. Dispute settlement jurisprudence is one cause, but this is far less significant than that the United State...

Th e author claims that analyses of “political discourse” or “political rhetoric” should be grounded in what it is that participants try to do politically with language. Words, actions, and events work together; words interpret events or actions, as well as constitute political facts, while actions in various ways help words gain their political effi cacy. Analyses of political rhetoric (or dis...

Given the increasing influence of religious fundamentalism on politics (e.g. the Christian right in the United States or the Muslim fundamentalism associated with Al Qaeda), the question of how we can conceive of law and order, or society itself, without employing repressive ideals becomes more urgent. We need a way of conceptualizing the origin and process of idealization (which is necessary f...

This paper is concerned with rhetorical argumentation that aims to alter the beliefs of the listener, and so to influence his future actions, as opposed to classical argumentation that is concerned with the generation of arguments, usually as logical proofs, for and against a given course of action. Rhetorical argumentation includes rhetoric moves such as Threat, Reward and Appeal. Rhetorical a...

An atmosphere of crisis enhances the power, especially of the Executive Branch, to frame and shape the characterization, understanding, and reality of conflict. This Article addresses the language, rhetoric, status, and legality of “war” by examining the complexity of decision-making for policy-makers in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It does so by looking both in...

Writing Skills Development (MERLOT, Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching). Provides links to sites that offer guidelines and tutorials on a variety of writing topics, including rubrics for assessing writing. See also the MERLOT English Portal (Language) for access to a broad range of materials for teaching and assessing writing. http://pedagogy.merlot.org/WritingSkil...

Barbara Ehrenreich and Deidre English were the first to expose medicine's complicity in patriachy. In Complaints and disorders and The sexual politics of sickness (Old Westbury, NY, The Feminist Press), they argued that, in defining women as sick, gynaecology had justified their exclusion from public life; in medicalizing the natural processes of pregnancy and childbirth, obstetrics had margina...

Writing Skills Development (MERLOT, Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching). Provides links to sites that offer guidelines and tutorials on a variety of writing topics, including rubrics for assessing writing. See also the MERLOT English Portal (Language) for access to a broad range of materials for teaching and assessing writing. http://pedagogy.merlot.org/WritingSkil...

Formal logic operates in a closed system where all the information relevant to any conclusion is present, whereas this is not the case when one reasons about events and states of the world. Pollard and Richardson drew attention to the fact that the reasoning behind statistical tests does not lead to logically justifiable conclusions. In this paper statistical inferences are defended not by logi...

The development of the profession and practice of forestry in the United States can be linked to urgent concerns regarding timber shortages in the late 19th century (Williams 1989). These were based largely on perceived failures of forest landowners to protect or invest enough in the productive capacity of their forests (Manthy 1977). The South, as the only major timberproducing region of the U...