Cinema is a sensuous object, but in our presence it becomes also a sensing, sensual, sense-making subject. Thus argues Vivian Sobchack as she challenges basic assumptions of current film theory that reduce film to an object of vision and the spectator to a victim of a deterministic cinematic apparatus. Maintaining that these premises ignore the material and cultural-historical situations of both the spectator and the film, the author makes the radical proposal that the cinematic experience depends on two "viewers" viewing: the spectator and the film, each existing as both subject and object of vision. Drawing on existential and semiotic phenomenology, and particularly on the work of Merleau-Ponty, Sobchack shows how the film experience provides empirical insight into the reversible, dialectical, and signifying nature of that embodied vision we each live daily as both "mine" and "another's." In this attempt to account for cinematic intelligibility and signification, the author explores the possibility of human choice and expressive freedom within the bounds of history and culture.

Methodologies for the Rhetoric of Health & Medicine charts new methodological territories for rhetorical studies and the emerging field of the rhetoric of health and medicine. It advances the larger goal of differentiating the rhetoric of health and medicine as a distinct but pragmatically diverse area of study.

The nature and function of language as Man's chief vehicle of communi cation occupies a focal position in the human sciences, particularly in philosophy. The concept of 'communication' is problematic because it suggests both 'meaning' (the nature of language) and the activity of speaking (the function of language). The philosophic theory of 'speech acts' is one attempt to clarify the ambiguities of 'speech' as both the use of language to describe states of affair and the process in which that description is generated as 'communication'. The present study, Speech Act Phenomenology, is in part an exam ination of speech act theory. The theory offers an explanation for speech performance, that is, the structure of speech acts as 'relationships' and the content of speech acts as 'meaning'. The primary statement of the speech act theory that is examined is that presented by Austin. A seconda ry concern is the formulation of the theory as presented by Searle and Grice. The limitations of the speech act theory are specified by applying the theory as an explanation of 'human communication'. This conceptual examination of 'communication' suggests that the philosophic method of 'analysis' does not resolve the antinomy of language 'nature' and 'function'. Basically, the conceptual distinctions of the speech act theory (i. e. locutions, illocutions, and perlocutions) are found to be empty as a comprehensive explanation of the concept 'communication'.

Current rhetorical and critical theory for the most part separates writing from consciousness and presumes relative truth to be the only possible expressive goal for rhetoric. These presumptions are reflected in our tradition of persuasive rhetoric, which values writing that successfully argues one person's belief at the expense of another's. Barbara Couture presents a case for a phenomenological rhetoric, one that values and respects consciousness and selfhood and that restores to rhetoric the possibility of seeking an all-embracing truth through pacific and cooperative interaction. Couture discusses the premises on which current interpretive theory has supported relative truth as the philosophical grounding for rhetoric, premises, she argues, that have led to constraints on our notion of truth that divorce it from human experience. She then shows how phenomenological philosophy might guide the theory and practice of rhetoric, reanimating its role in the human enterprise of seeking a shared truth. She proposes profession and altruism as two guiding metaphors for the phenomenological activity of "truth-seeking through interaction." Among the contemporary rhetoricians and philosophers who influence Couture are Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Martin Buber, Charles Altieri, Charles Taylor, Alasdair Maclntyre, and Jürgen Habermas.

The basic theme of this volume is excellent. Readers are treated to fascinating explorations of communication at the boundaries between discourses and selves. The essays address important theoretical issues, and do so often by treating significant social issues. Most welcome is the constructive tone that is for the most part maintained throughout the volume, demonstrating an effort to understand, engage, and critically assess different discourses and selves (and others) at once, without valorizing one over the other. An essential theme running through this volume is the idea that our efforts to engage, as well as other's efforts to engage us, have been seriously impaired because of problems which are fundamentally communicative in nature. More specifically, there is general agreement among the contributors that the voice of other has not been sufficiently heard, and this on account of how discourses of the human sciences, as well as other dominant discourses (e.g. law) have structured our interaction with other. Each of the essays helps to clarify the nature of the communicative failing and to develop an appropriate corrective action.