Dr. Alex C. Parrish
Environment - Animals - Rhetoric of Science - Classics
Associate Professor
School of Writing, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
U.S.A.
Editor, H-Rhetor
Hear my interview on NPR: Nonhuman People
My Books ↓
The Sensory Modes of Animal Rhetorics: A Hoot in the Light
presents the latest research in animal perception and cognition in the context of rhetorical theory. Alex C. Parrish explores the science of animal signaling that shows human and nonhuman animals share similar rhetorical strategies—such as communicating to manipulate or persuade—which suggests the vast impact sensory modalities have on communication in nature. The book demonstrates new ways of seeing humans and how we have separated ourselves from, and subjectified, the animal rhetor. This type of cross-species study allows us to trace the origins of our own persuasive behaviors, providing a deeper and more inclusive history of rhetoric than ever before.
“Through this study of how the different (nonhuman) ways other animals perceive the world (electroreception, thermoception, echolocation) and how these in turn shape the forms of their communication and persuasion, Parrish further extends the field of human-animal studies to communication. As it decenters human exceptionalism, the interface with ‘animal rhetoric’ has important implications for the ethics of our treatment of other animals.”
(Kenneth Shapiro, Cofounder and President of the Board of the Animals & Society Institute, USA, and founding editor of Society & Animals: Journal of Human-Animal Studies)
“In The Sensory Modes of Animal Rhetorics, Alex Parrish offers readers (or human animals) novel insights into modes of communication among nonhuman animals through sensory channels far beyond sight and hearing. These unique communicative abilities across the phyla highlight the biological fundamentals under the cultural constructions of communication, the yin and yang of Parrish’s biocultural approach. The result of his multidisciplinary review is a new appreciation for the continuities across species in our evolved abilities to persuade.”
(Jeanne Fahnestock, Professor of English at the University of Maryland, USA and author of Rhetorical Figures in Science (1999))
“In this lively tour through recent research on the variety of sensory modes employed by animals, Parrish expands our vision of persuasion beyond the limitations of audio-visual rhetoric into the biocultural. Persuasion occurs not only through language and images but through touch, gestures, tastes, smells, and other modes in ways we don’t notice or are blind to. And, as Parrish argues, our inabilities to ‘listen’ to others leads to damages as well as real dangers.”
(Marilyn M. Cooper, Emerita Professor of Humanities at Michigan Technological University, USA, and author of The Animal Who Writes: A Posthumanist Composition (2019))
Rhetorical Animals: Boundaries of the Human in the Study of Persuasion.
This edited volume investigates the place of nonhuman animals in the purview of rhetorical theory; what it would mean to communicate beyond the human community; how rhetoric reveals our "brute roots." In other words, this book investigates themes that enlighten us about the likely implications of the animal turn within rhetorical studies. The present book is unique in its focus on the call for nonanthropocentrism in rhetorical studies. Although there have been many hints in recent years that rhetoric is beginning to consider the importance of an animal turn, as yet no other anthology makes this its explicit starting point and sustained objective. Thus, the various contributions to this book promise to further the ongoing debate about what rhetoric might be after it sheds its long-standing humanistic bias.
"In the excellent collection Rhetorical Animals, Bjørkdahl and Parrish have collected a range of robust investigations on the persuasive capacities of animals. These chapters expand existing conversations on ethics, rhetorics, and materiality, while pointing to new directions for exploring intra-animal persuasions, human-animal relationships, and the biotic bases for persuasion. Further, the scholars assembled here trouble longstanding assumptions about what rhetoric is, how it functions, and who has access to it, all while being critical and personal in equal measure."
(Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder, Associate Professor, School of Writing, Literature, and Film at Oregon State University, USA)
Adaptive Rhetoric: Evolution, Culture, and the Art of Persuasion
Rhetorical scholarship has for decades relied solely on culture to explain persuasive behavior. While this focus allows for deep explorations of historical circumstance, it neglects the powerful effects of biology on rhetorical behavior – how our bodies and brains help shape and constrain rhetorical acts. Not only is the cultural model incomplete, but it tacitly endorses the fallacy of human exceptionalism. By introducing evolutionary biology into the study of rhetoric, this book serves as a model of a biocultural paradigm. Being mindful of biological and cultural influences allows for a deeper view of rhetoric, one that is aware of the ubiquity of persuasive behavior in nature.
Human and nonhuman animals, and even some plants, persuade to survive - to live, love, and cooperate. That this broad spectrum of rhetorical behavior exists in the animal world demonstrates how much we can learn from evolutionary biology. By incorporating scholarship on animal signaling into the study of rhetoric, the author explores how communication has evolved, and how numerous different species of animals employ similar persuasive tactics in order to overcome similar problems. This cross-species study of rhetoric allows us to trace the origins of our own persuasive behaviors, providing us with a deeper history of rhetoric that transcends the written and the televised, and reveals the artifacts of our communicative past.
"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, Associate Professor of English at Kent State University at Tuscarawas, USA - in Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment)
"Parrish argues that we cannot separate the interplay of biology and culture; he offers a similar assertion about the study and practice of rhetoric. To understand reality is not simply to impose upon it, but to learn from all its dimensions, both the biological and the cultural. Such is the realm in which adaptive rhetoric dwells."
(Ronald C. Arnett, Chair & Professor of Communications and Rhetorical Studies at Duquesne University, USA - in Language & Dialogue)