* Why has 'the discursive turn' been sidelined in the development of a social theory of disability, and what has been the result of this? * How might a social theory of disability which fully incorporates the multidimensional and multifunctional role of language be described? * What would such a theory contribute to a more inclusive understanding of 'discourse' and 'culture'? The idea that disability is socially created has, in recent years, been increasingly legitimated within social, cultural and policy frameworks and structures which view disability as a form of social oppression. However, the materialist emphasis of these frameworks and structures has sidelined the growing recognition of the central role of language in social phenomena which has accompanied the 'linguistic turn' in social theory. As a result, little attention has been paid within Disability Studies to analysing the role of language in struggle and transformation in power relations and the engineering of social and cultural change. Drawing upon personal narratives, rhetoric, material discourse, discourse analysis, cultural representation, ethnography and contextual studies, international contributors seek to emphasize the multi-dimensional and multi-functional nature of disability language in an attempt to further inform our understanding of disability and to locate disability more firmly within contemporary mainstream social and cultural theory.

Ari Linden’s Karl Kraus and the Discourse of Modernity reconsiders the literary works of the Viennese satirist, journalist, and playwright Karl Kraus (1874–1936). Combining close readings with intellectual history, Linden shows how Kraus’s two major literary achievements (The Last Days of Mankind and The Third Walpurgis Night) and his adaptation of The Birds by Aristophanes (Cloudcuckooland) address the political catastrophes of the first third of Europe’s twentieth century—from World War I to the rise of fascism. Kraus’s central insight, Linden argues, is that the medial representations of such events have produced less an informed audience than one increasingly unmoved by mass violence. In the second part of the book, Linden explores this insight as he sees it inflected in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno. This hidden dialogue, Linden claims, offers us a richer understanding of the often-neglected relationship between satire and critical theory writ large.

Continuing its tradition of providing students with a thorough review of ancient Greek and Roman rhetorical theory and practices, A Synoptic History of Classical Rhetoric is the premier text for undergraduate courses and graduate seminars in the history of rhetoric. Offering vivid examples of each classical rhetor, rhetorical period, and source text, students are led to understand rhetoric's role in the exchange of knowledge and ideas. Completely updated throughout, Part I of this new edition integrates new research and expanded footnotes and bibliographies for students to develop their own scholarship. Part II offers eight classical texts for reading, study, and criticism, and includes discussion questions and keys to the text in Part I.

Guillaume Coatalen offers annotated editions of Richard Reynolds’s The Foundacion of Rhetorike (1563), which has not been edited since the 1945 facsimile edition, and of William Medley’s unknown Brief Discourse on Rhetoricke which survives in a single manuscript dated 1575.