Cfp: Annual Conference, Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric, Concordia University, June 2-4, 2010.

Special Session: "Rhetorics of the Exception, the Exceptional, Exceptionality" (Chair: Michael Purves-Smith, Wilfrid Laurier University) Scholars are invited to propose papers on the topos of the exception and exceptionality. When and how does "exception" create a rhetorical space? How does rhetoric depend on a dialectic of the expected as opposed to the exceptional? Is there then a tension between endorsing the unusual and distancing oneself from something when we make or take exception? The answer might include any rhetorical strategies that may be described or defined in connection with "to except." The subject may encompass both exceptional rhetoric and the exceptional rhetor. A few possible approaches: • What persuasive strategies are available to those who would rise in the court of public opinion when everyone and everything is seen to be exceptional? • Is the appeal to the exceptional, pervasive in the realm of advertising, the last resort of rhetoric in the midst of a landscape of communication dominated by "twitter?" • What is the rhetorical impact of American exceptionalism? Do we have permission to take it for granted and is there any parallel between it and the exceptionality implied by Quebec as a distinct society or special status for aboriginal people? • Finally, is the subject of exception contained by the classical topos of difference? Open Sessions on Rhetoric: Papers concerning more general aspects of rhetoric are always welcome: • Rhetorical theory • Rhetorical criticism • History of rhetoric • Rhetoric in popular culture • Media communication • Discourse analysis • Rhetoric of political and social discourse • Pedagogy of communication • Rhetoric and the media • Sociolinguistics and pedagogy • Semiotics • Professional and technical communication Further information is available at the CSSR website: www.cssr-scer.ca.